Barkley Thanksgivings

1863

"Oh, Silas, the table is beautiful," Victoria Barkley said, and touched one of the roses in the centerpiece.

"Thank you, Mrs. Barkley," Silas said, and left to go to the kitchen to keep tending the dinner.

"Why is it so pretty tonight?" Eugene was only five. He didn't understand.

"Because, Eugene, today is a holiday," Victoria said. "It's a day for giving thanks, all over the country. President Lincoln has proclaimed it so."

"In the middle of a war?" Eugene asked. "I'm not thankful for that."

"Little brother, mind your manners," big brother Nick said. "Nobody's thankful for a war, but we can be thankful that we're still together." And he said it and left aside some of his own thoughts about the war, about his decision that if it was still going on when he turned 17 in the spring, he was going to go help fight it. He hadn't shared that yet, because….

"We're not together," Audra said. "Jarrod isn't here."

The oldest Barkley brother had been gone for more than two years, back east, fighting the war. Victoria was pretty sure that by now Audra and Eugene didn't even remember who Jarrod was, they were so small when he left. To them he was just a name, an empty place at the table beside Nick's.

Today the chair would still be empty, but there was a plate set there. "Why is there a plate there?" Eugene asked.

"Because we're thankful for your big brother even if he can't be here with us tonight," Tom Barkley came in on this part of the conversation. "He's doing important work, and we want God to know that while we are thanking Him for his many blessings today, we are remembering that we have left your brother in His care and we trust that he'll come home safe."

"I still don't know how we can be thankful for a war." Eugene's voice was quieter now. He was still confused but less confident in saying so.

Victoria put an arm around him and kissed him on top of the head. She knew that the empty plate at the table was traditional when a soldier had been killed, but today, this first national Thanksgiving, she especially wanted to acknowledge her first-born as she prayed he was still alive. Just as President Lincoln wanted the nation to be thankful for all its blessings even in the middle of a civil war, she wanted her family to be thankful for the sacrifice Jarrod was making in not being here.

There was another reason too. She looked at Nick, and she could read his eyes. She knew that Nick would be taking off as soon as he was 17 next year. Jarrod had left at 17, and Nick had always been in a sort of competition with his older brother. He would be going at 17 too, if this war was not over. There might be two empty plates at this table next Thanksgiving day.

Tom Barkley could read his wife's eyes as easily as she could read Nick's. Tom put an arm around Victoria but spoke to Eugene. "Gene, it's not that we're being thankful for the war itself, but there are things about it to be thankful for."

Silas came in at that moment, to set more dishes on the table.

Tom nodded toward him. "One of the reasons we're having a war is because a lot of people want to keep people like Silas chained up working for them, and to be able to buy them and sell them like cattle. And a lot of us want them to be treated like people, just like us."

Eugene's face still screwed up. "People want to keep the cooks and the housemen chained up?"

Even Silas smiled at that. "No, it's negroes they want to keep chained up," Tom said.

"Why?" Eugene asked.

"That, my son, is a question with a long and complicated answer," Tom said. "Tonight, let's just be thankful for men like your brother Jarrod who are fighting to make a new country where nobody is bought and sold like an animal. Let's be thankful we're together. Remember, this is the first national Thanksgiving Day. If we're lucky, your children, and their children, and all the Barkleys yet to come will sit down together on this day and give thanks for each other."

"And for us?" Audra asked.

"If we're lucky," Tom said.

"Dinner is ready to be served, Mr. Barkley," Silas said.

"All right, everyone," Tom Barkley said and everyone sat down. "Eugene, why don't you give the blessing, and be sure to give special thanks today."

Eugene bowed his head. "Dear God, we give thanks for this good food, we give thanks for Silas for making it, we give thanks for our brother Jarrod who is off fighting to save people like Silas, and we thank you that from now on there will be a special Thanksgiving Day. And we hope all the Barkleys who come after us will have Thanksgiving Day too."

XXXXXX

2020

On a difficult Thanksgiving Day 157 years later, a woman looked across her family's table. It was pretty empty this year. Disease was keeping people from traveling to be with their families, and only she and her husband were here right now. After dinner they had planned to Zoom with the children and grandchildren and enjoy each other's company from a distance. Right now, Evelyn Barkley Taylor looked at the very old photo on the sideboard across the room taken during another Thanksgiving season very long ago, with the two adults named Tom and Victoria Barkley, and their two grown sons beside them in Union soldier's uniforms, their blonde daughter about eight years old in front of them, and the seven-year-old boy beside her.

The little boy who had been Evelyn's great grandfather. The only one of these people she'd ever been able to meet – sort of. The one in the other photograph on the sideboard, an old man in this photo holding her as a baby on a Thanksgiving Day during another war called World War II.

Oh, the wars her great grandfather went through, never fighting in one himself but enduring the sacrifices people had to make at home just so she could celebrate this difficult Thanksgiving Day so full of disease and disruption. Her husband, Alan Taylor, saw how she looked at the photos, and he took her hand. "Don't worry. Next year – we'll all be here again and celebrating together – just like they celebrated after their war." He nodded toward the photos. "You wait and see."

"I hope so," Evelyn said. "But even if we're not – at least those long-ago Barkleys are with us today just like the kids are, even if it has to be at a distance."

Alan smiled. "You bet they are."

And Evelyn sighed. "Too bad they don't have Zoom..."

The End