Guess who's coming to Thanksgiving dinner!

A Space Station Tale

By Lisa Williamson

Every culture has some type of harvest festival.  A time when everyone comes together to give thanks for a bountiful growing season.  They are tied to the autumnal seasons planetside but when you are out in the deep dark without a world below, it can be difficult to plan a festival of thanksgiving.

When I was a sprattling living back in the Mother world we picked fruit, ate pies and stuffed ourselves with turkey.  What is turkey you ask?  Well it was a big bird, a fowl that we baked or roasted or fried.  We would fill it with stuffing and enjoy a harvest meal.  Now I know a lot of you were born on ships or grew up on worlds far from here but as kids we used to look forward to this feast of food that came each year.  It was a time when all your far-flung cousins would come and you got to play and talk and celebrate family.

Of course we are on a station and when making a feast you have to remember not everyone eats meat.  Sure surprised me how many vegans there were out here.  No, I don't mean those tale green skinned highbrow types, I mean people who won't eat meat.  They have no idea what they are missing.  A fine juicy drumstick or the moist white breast meat filling up your plate, oh my was it good.  Stuffing filled with all kinds of good stuff like apples or cranberries and herbs.  My mouth waters just thinking about it.

Over the years of running this place I have had to come up with some really out there meals.  Each traveler wants that taste of home when they come to celebrate here in the deep dark.  I have made yams into a dozen different dishes.  Moon cakes of all kinds fill my kitchen and the pasta seems to over flow and that is just for the humans who stop by to eat.

Finding a Denebian crawfish thingie to stew up or a Venusian swiggle worm, well it gets interesting.  Usually I have to start to bartering months in advance and let me tell you it gets pricey.  Made me really glad that we were down to a skeleton crew this year.

See being the chief cook and bottle washer along with the head of hydroponics means I get all those requests for a taste of home.  I can work what seems like a miracle at times but just once I wanted to put together a meal that was purely from my old, old home. 

Not too many out here have ever seen Earth, never mind seen the part of the world I came from.  Yeah, they know what pumpkins are, thanks to my Halloween fun but have they ever had sweet potatoes with mini marshmallows on top?  Heck do they even know what a marshmallow is?  I can assure you they don't.  After last year's disaster I decided that I would close up shop and only feed my family.

Yeah, so I am not married, don't have kids and certainly don't think the rest of my brothers would make it this far into space but hey I work with these people all the time right?  So I started my bargaining and got my special treats together and for once we were really slow.  Nothing was due in for at least a week, just me and the rest of the skeleton crew with time on our hands.

So I baked and I stuffed, stewed and marinated.  Let me tell you keeping the nosey tasters out of my kitchen was a battle.  Jimmy from engineering just had to make sure I was cooking up his haggis to his momma's recipe.  Tinka wanted her auntie's peach cobbler and well the rest just wanted a taste of the rest.  It was both annoying but also so sweet.  Reminded me of home in my Nana's kitchen watching her wield that massive wooden spoon of hers.

Well it was nearly time for dinner.  The turkey was roasting In my special oven and the pies were cooling out of the way of greedy deck hands and I was just turning the loaves into pans when I got a call on the comm unit I keep by the oven. 

Expecting that it was one of the deck hands begging me for an appetizer I have to admit I wasn't using my Sunday manners as my Nana used to say.  Well after a stunned moment or three the voice on the other end surprised me!

"Who taught you words like that?"

I swear you coulda picked me up off the floor.  Never in a dozen years did I expect to be hearing the voice of my baby brother on the other side of that old comm unit.  Hell it is only supposed to be able to pick up and broadcast within the station and last I knew he was back taking care of the homestead.  Told me that I was a damn fool shipping off into the big dark and all.

"Mikey?  Is that you?"

"Yup its me.  Thought I would come visit for a spell."

Now you have to understand that Mikey is my little brother, my planet bound little brother.  He never could stand being off the ground in anyway.  He was like most of my family; throw backs to the oldest way of doing things.  Part of why I left old Earth was that I wanted adventure, not to stay down on the farm.  How he could be sending me a message on the comm unit was something confusing to me.  "Visit?  Mikey how on the green hills of Earth do you think you will get here?"

"Well you see, that be a surprise, big brother."  I could hear the humor in his voice.  "See you before dinner!"

When I went to interrogate the little monster all I got was dead air.  "Before dinner?"  I looked about my kitchen.  All the food was nearly ready.  Dinner was scheduled for 1800 hours and that was only an hour away.  How could he be here before dinner?  How could he be here?

Well I quickly whipped out some more of my family's super secret dishes, decanted the cranberry sauce and ran into hydroponics to pull up the turnips.  I personally despise those white roots but little brother loved them.  If it wasn't a joke, some odd radio glitch, I dern well better have them on the table for him.

After setting them on to boil I bustled up to the Tower.  Now no we don't actually have a tower on the station but the command center is always called the tower.  The old names are just one of those fun things about space travel.  Lucky for me one of my favorite ladies was on watch today.  Kerrie is a lovely little thing, all big brown eyes and red curls.  At one time we had been more than friends so she always had a smile for me.

"Well my favorite chef, what are you doing here?"  She was sitting at the comm desk with her feet up, looking like a kid with a secret.

"I just got the oddest call on that old unit in my kitchen.  I thought it only worked inside the station?"  I was pretty sure I was right but you never know in space.

Kerrie shrugged and flipped through the old school magazine in her lap.  "Been some new parts brought in for that unit.  I worked on it just last week, remember?"

Well I did not remember that at all but it could be true.  I was running myself ragged getting that last ship full of refugees out of the station so I could have missed her in there.  "Oh.  Okay."  I turned, biting my lip and then turned back to her pulling a face.  "That don't explain my brother's call.  What is the range on that thing?"

Kerrie just gave me her cute smile and then turned as static filled the room.  That sure sign of incoming comm traffic.  I rolled my eyes and left.  Yeah I could have bugged her more but something you learn early with Kerrie is not to push your luck.  She is the gatekeeper, so to speak, in this place.  Everything goes through her boards sooner or later.

Heading back down station I stopped and talked to friends along the way.  No one had a clue about an incoming ship or if anything was due in.  I could have pulled rank and ordered them but it ain't something I do.  Yeah I have rank.  Other than the stationmaster I have been on this station the longest.  Hell to be honest I was here before he was.  I fed the crew that built this place back when.

So I went back to my kitchen and between simmering and basting tried to figure out what was going on.  When I left the farm my family had all thought I was nuts.  No McHard had left the land since before the Wall was built.  Okay to be truthful there was my great many times grandfather who left the old homeland and moved to the colonies.  He started up the second branch of the old clan. 

I was the first to leave Mother Earth.  That urge to go to the starS made my family confused.  They didn't understand leaving a perfectly good planet to go live on a tin can in space.  After a lifetime I never expected to see them again.

Dinner was just about ready when one of my busboys came in.  Calling Hershel a boy was a bit of a stretch.  Ya see his people don't have sexes, not really but what can you expect from a race evolved from Broccoli.  Okay, something that looks like broccoli.  He was a great busboy but keep him away from the salad.  I mean it; you don't want to know what he does!

Well Hershel told me that the tables were all set and that my guests had arrived.  "Guests? What guests?"  After pulling the turkey from the oven and putting the rolls into bake I wiped my hands and pushed my way through the swinging doors.

"Hey there big brother!"  I stopped in shock as I spotted not just Mikey but the whole damn clan!  I mean there was Mikey, Johnny, Whitey and little sister Sarah. 

I stood with my jaw hanging as I counted heads.  There were the brothers, their spouses and kids, all standing just outside my galley.  Twenty-seven McHards from all over and I was in shock.  My jaw dropped further when a voice I had never thought to hear from again spoke up.

Pushing her way past tall and short cousins, brothers, sister in laws, nieces and nephews was the grand dame of the clan, Mary Margaret Gillcrest McHard. She had not left the homestead for as long as I could remember.  Told me when I went off to space that I was disowned.

"Grandma Mary?" 

She came toward me and took my hands.  Looking me up and down, she shook her head and sighed.  "Thirty years boy.  Thirty years and you never come back and visit?"

I tried to say something but my jaw just flapped.  She grinned and wrapped her arms about me and hugged me like I was still the little boy at her knee.  "Lord above we missed you, boyo.  So show me this kitchen I have heard so much about."

I let her lead me about just like I had when I was a sprattling and she was the head of the homestead.  She had been pushing one hundred back then and I never expected to see her again once I left home.  I mean yeah we are a long-lived bunch but she was well past the age that put you in the dirt. 

She was still spry, I could tell by her step.  Yes, she leaned on a cane but she should have been in a rocking chair on a porch back home, not stomping her way across the deck to my kitchen.  I managed to catch up and open the doors to my sanctum sanctorum before she bustled through.  I waved off the rest of the clan, leaving them in the hands of my busboys to get settled down around the tables.  Okay, might not have been wise to leave my clan to mingle with the incoming space station staff but what was I do to?

Grandma Mary stepped through and paused as she took in the gleaming palace of culinary delights I had put together over the years of working on the station.  She smiled and then went from place to place, checking a pot here, nodding at the ovens there.  I was both proud and nervous.  This one tiny woman had taught me the basics of my craft so many years ago.  What would she think of the equipment that was far from what she used back home.

After a long moment she turned and smiled.  "My boy, you have done well haven't ye?"  She gestured at the simmering pots and nodded.  "Everything is nearly ready isn't it?"  She started toward my quarters to take a look. 

See I have everything in one place.  Kitchen, hydroponics and of course my sleeping space are all together.  I quickly stepped past her and scooped up a few things, tossing them into a drawer.  I really didn't need my old grandmother catching sight of those things!

She smiled at me with a twinkle in her eyes and then sniffed and stepped around me to twitch the covering on my bed.  "About how I remember."  She fingered the old pillow on my bed with a sad smile before looking up at me.  "You kept it still?"

I nodded silently and she pulled me down for a hug and a soft few words.  "She would have loved being here."  She then headed back out.

See that pillow belonged to the reason I left old Earth.  Not something I want to think about or go back into so I followed her.  She bustled all the relatives out of my kitchen and was chatting with my sou chef. 

What you think I do everything in a station this size?  I have a whole battery of assistants, most of who were off station for the holiday.  When we are slow I let them go off to visit their families of course.  Unlike my leafy busboy, Crystal was not really flexible about going places.  Ya see when I say her name is Crystal that is just what I call her.  Her name is unpronounceable by us fleshies but she did not care.  She somehow ended up with a palate that matched what most of us fleshie types preferred. 

Well she and Grandmother Mary Margaret were talking about recipes and arguing over the best spice to use.  I was torn between adding my two cents and the rest of the work I needed to do when Hershel called out from the dinning room.  "Mic!  Need you!"

Sighing I rushed out to the dinning room and shook my head.  My brother Mickey was juggling the good dishes and Hershel was trying to snatch them out of the air.  See Hershel believes if one dish gets damaged I might cook him up for dinner.  Now it might have something with a threat I made a while back but really I wouldn't.

It might have been a lifetime since I yelled at him but my little brother paused like I wanted him to.  "MIKEY MCHARD, ENOUGH!"

"Aw, come on big brother."  I would swear the boy hadn't changed in all the time I had been gone.

Somehow I managed to get the family settled at a table off to the side, the regulars set at their tables and the food was brought out.  Like any chef I was the last one to the table and there were only a few rolls tossed and my relatives managed to not insult the crew of the station.  All in all I was relieved, that is until Grandma Mary Margaret tapped her knife on her glass and the room actually grew quite.

She smiled as she stood and looked about the dinning hall.  "I am sure all of you here would like to know why the McHard Clan descended on your little Thanksgiving dinner."  There were a lot of yeahs and sures and I held my breath.  Even if I was embarrassed, I was intrigued.

"Commander Frank Ernest McHard is the eldest son of my son departed, Derek.  As such he is the eldest heir of the Clan McHard.  When he left the homestead it was decided to let him find his place in the universe but now that he has," she turned to face me.  "The entire clan has picked up and moved to be with the new head of Clan McHard."

There were cheers from my brothers, cousins, nieces and nephews but I just blinked.  "Head?"  I must have been hearing things.  By leaving Earth I had given up any chance of being what I didn't want to be.  I can tell you right at that moment I must have panicked because I started mumbling about finding a rock to hide on.  There was no way my entire family could be coming here.  There was just not anyplace to put them.

As I started to move back to my sanctuary I felt a hand on my arm.  Crystal, Hershel and the rest of my team all smiled and kept me in place.  Crystal pulled me down to her and whispered in my ear.  "Don't worry boss, they all ready have quarters and jobs."

I had to deal with all that silly backslapping and congrats from family and friends.  It was so embarrassing and just to top it all off Grandma Mary Margaret started in on showing me pictures of girls she had vetted to be the new clan head mistress.  See what happens when the family comes to dinner?  Wonder if I can find a ship heading deeper into the Black?