Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving comes just after the narrator returns from deployment with the 4th Infantry Division, but the holiday’s promise of reunion is complicated by his isolation and unease. His parents are in Texas, and he eventually reaches them for Thanksgiving dinner and a visit to a dying family friend; the route there, however, depends on a stranger’s offer of a ride.

Return and Leave

At the soldiers’ return gathering, families fill the stands, cheering, waving, taking photographs, and filming. Once the formation is dismissed, other soldiers reunite with spouses and children. The narrator leaves the gym as anxiety rises, unable to share in the family celebration around him. The contrast between the public homecoming and his private distress sets the emotional terms of this Thanksgiving.

The transition back to the barracks is brisk. The narrator is reassigned from Echo Company to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, and his new roommate is a stranger whose Xbox 360, Pepsi, contact lenses, and headset are among the few details he remembers. The holiday leave lasts until the following Monday, with Thanksgiving falling on Thursday.

In Killeen, the narrator buys a cell phone but is caught out by a contract and texting costs he does not know how to judge. He calls his parents to say he has returned safely. His mother explains that she and his father are flying to Texas to visit his father’s dying friend in Dallas; because Dallas is only a few hours from Killeen, the narrator says he will try to meet them.

An Unexpected Ride

The narrator buys clothes, sheets, and a table lamp at Walmart, then drinks heavily back at the post, where a store near the main gate sells alcohol around the clock. Drunk, he calls Emily and is hurt that she was not there when he arrived. He says he suspects she has been unfaithful, exposing how the longed-for reunion with his partner has instead become another source of anger and disappointment.

The next day, a woman asks how he is doing. He tells her he has just returned with the 4th Infantry Division and hopes to get to Dallas to see his parents, though he has not worked out how. She offers to drive there to see her own family and gives him her phone number. At the mall, he meets her again, contributes money for gas, and travels north with her on Interstate 35.

Halfway through the drive, she offers him Vicodin. He notices a scar on her arm and hears that it came from a car accident in which she and her niece were injured. She describes the painful memory of her niece being frightened and hurt while rescuers struggled to reach them. The narrator responds that the accident was not intentional and that such things happen. Their exchange briefly gives the journey the character of a shared confidence, though they are strangers brought together by a practical need and an offer of medication.

The Holiday in Texas

The woman drops the narrator in a Fort Worth hotel parking lot, where his parents are staying. After wishing her well, he joins his parents for Thanksgiving dinner at Houlihan’s beside the hotel. They then go to the hospital to see his father’s dying friend.

Thanksgiving thus becomes a modest, concrete reunion rather than a resolution of the narrator’s wider dislocation. He has made it back from deployment and reached his parents, but the scenes surrounding the holiday also show his anxiety, his strained relationship with Emily, and the improvised means by which he gets from Killeen to his family.