Chapter 55

November 22, 1979

Benny walked into his parent’s house without knocking. After all, this was his family home and he had been invited for dinner. It was his first visit in nine months. He had begged off on other invitations using the excuse of school or working on houses. There just weren’t too many excuses one could use to escape Thanksgiving. He did manage to surprise the whole family by being early. Not everyone was happy to see him.

Upon entering the house, Lana screamed at him, “You didn’t knock! You don’t live here, anymore. You have to knock before you come in.”

Benny ignored her, with the consequence that it really got her going. Her screams got louder.

“Lana! Shut up,” her father bellowed from the kitchen.

“He didn’t knock!”

“He doesn’t need to knock.”

“He doesn’t live here anymore. He has to knock.”

“He’s still a member of this family. He doesn’t have to knock.”

Lana glared at Benny and said, “You have to knock.”

By this time, most people would probably want to pound Lana six feet under with a pile driver, but Benny really didn’t care. It was like listening to mindless chatter, one just doesn’t pay any attention to it. That was what really fueled her fury - he just didn’t care what she thought.

His mother and father came out from the kitchen. His father had been snacking on the celery sticks prepared to go with dinner.

“Where’s Cathy?”

“She’s not coming,” Benny answered.

His mother looked over at the extra place at the time. She had just assumed that Cathy would be coming with him.

“Oh. Is there a problem between you two?”

“There’s no problem,” Benny answered not understanding the direction in which the questions were headed.

“So why isn’t she here with you?”

“She’s having Thanksgiving with Sandra.”

Wanting to get a dig in, Lana said, “She got smart and dumped him.”

His mother, concerned that Benny might have been dumped by her, asked, “You don’t think it is odd that a woman doesn’t spend Thanksgiving with her fiancee?”

“She’s not my fiancee.”

“She’s not?”

“No. We’re just friends.”

“You dated forever.”

“Yes, but it was nothing serious,” Benny replied. “It was convenient for both of us.”

Three pairs of eyes stared at him wondering what he meant by it was convenient for both of them. That was not a normal way to describe a dating relationship. His father assumed that they went together on double dates because Tim was dating Sandra and Cathy was her best friend. His mother was just puzzled by it.

“I knew it! You’re a queer!” Lana shouted.

“Get your sick mind out of the gutter.”

“You’re a queer!”

“If you ever say that to me again or about me to anyone else, I will make you pay,” Benny said in that calm deliberate manner which suggested he was very serious.

As if daring him, she asked, “What will you do?”

Wishing that he had access to a photoshop program, Benny said, “I’ll go into the dark room at school and use the equipment there create a picture of you having sex with a woman. It will be a very explicit picture and there will be no doubt that it is you in the photograph and that you’re having sex with another woman. I’ll send it to a couple of people at school.”

Lana’s eyes bulged out.

“Can you really do that?” his father asked.

“Yes. It would take some time, but the photographic techniques are rather simple. Find a picture of a person that’s similar to the person you’re going to add into the image, block out the original face, and use a double exposure to put the alternate face on it. Use a filter to soften the image so that no hard lines show up. Print it and you’re done. It’s how they do special effects in Hollywood. It can be quite convincing, particularly if people want to believe it.

“You’ve seen in movies where someone does a kind of transformation over a couple frames of the movie. Person turns from a regular person to some kind of monster. It’s just simple photographic manipulation. The hardest part is getting the base image right.

“I’d go to the adult store and buy some lesbian pornography. I’m sure that out of a couple of magazines, I’d find a picture of someone who’s body looked close enough to Lana to be effective. To be honest, I don’t think it would take too long to find an image that would work.”

“You can’t do that,” his mother said horrified.

“I can and I would,” Benny said. He looked at Lana and said, “I’m tired of you talking crap about me. It ends, now.”

She swallowed.

“Do you have anything further that you want to say about my sexual orientation?”

“No,” Lana answered.

Extremely worried that she was going to have a suicidal daughter on her hands, his mother said, “Benny, please don’t do that to your sister. You have no idea what it would do to her.”

“I know exactly what it will do to her. It will destroy her. It’s her choice. I’ve made a promise, and I’ll keep it. She says that to me again, or says that about me, I will deliver. Everyone will believe she’s a lesbian, and there will be what looks like photographic proof to back that up.”

His father said, “Benny. Don’t.”

“Dad. She’s stepped over the line. I’ve now delivered a warning. It’s up to her to decide what happens next.”

“Benny, you can’t do that.”

Benny looked at his parents and then Lana. He pursed his lips. He turned and walked to the wall with family pictures. He removed a recent picture of Lana from the wall and headed towards the door. Everyone watched him trying to grasp was happening.

“Benny!” his father shouted. “Don’t go!”

“Sorry, Dad. It’s been better this time around, but Lana is a bitch. She always has been, and she always will be.”

Benny waved the frame with the photograph around. He turned and walked out leaving behind a family that was absolutely stunned by his actions.

Tim and Lily entered her parent’s house ... without knocking. Everyone was happy to see her. Everyone meant quite a crowd. It was a large family gathering. Sandra’s parents were there. They were expecting Cathy and Sandra to arrive at any minute.

Lily had been living on her own for almost three months with only a couple of visits over that time. Her mother and father wanted to hear about her adventures in school. She was more than happy to tell them. Tim stood back and watched.

After the initial flurry of conversation, her father asked, “What can I get for you two to drink?”

“I don’t know,” Lily answered a little puzzled by the question.

“Beer, wine, scotch...”

Rather uncertain how she should answer, Lily meekly replied, “I’ll take some wine?”

“One wine for the lady. How about for you, Tim?”

“Iced tea.”

His answer seemed to surprise everyone. There weren’t too many young folks around who would turn down a beer or a glass of wine, particularly around other adults. Extending the offer by a parent was a -kind of acknowledgment that the child was an adult.

“Iced tea? Really?”

“If it’s not a bother. Water is just as good.”

“It’s no bother,” her father said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like a beer?”

“Benny and I don’t drink. It’s not because we have a problem with it. It’s just, we’ve never really wanted it.”

“I didn’t know that,” Lily’s father said.

“It’s true. We’re just not drinkers of alcoholic beverages.”

Lily’s father went off to the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine for Lily and a glass of iced tea for Tim.

Tim raised his glass and said, “Happy Thanksgiving.”

Everyone else raised their glass and replied.

“So, Tim. Now that you’ve fixed up all of the houses, what have you been doing with your time?”

“Believe it or not, I haven’t been doing much of anything. I can’t really afford to do much at the current time. Everything we’ve got to spare has been put into the silver market.”

Sandra’s father said, “I didn’t believe you when you told me it was going to take off, so I didn’t invest right away. I finally bought in at thirteen, after watching it for three months. It’s sitting at sixteen, now. I’m thinking of selling it. That’s better than a twenty percent return.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. We’re not selling until it hits forty,” Tim said.

Both Mr. Millers were speechless. The idea that the price silver could hit $40 an ounce sounded outrageous. A couple years before then, when the highest silver got was a little over $4 an ounce people would have laughed at you for even suggesting it would go up to $10. When it reached $6, people didn’t think it would ever go any higher than that. No one would laugh now. The question anyone following the market was asking was how high would it go. Tim had just planted a flag in the ground.

Like everyone else Tim trusted, they were all collecting silver coins as fast as they could. It was amazing just how many silver coins from before 1964 were in circulation. A dime or a quarter was just change. Enough change added up to a dollar. Very few people thought about coins in terms of their silver content, at least not enough to remove silver coins from circulation. The price of silver hadn’t really captured the imagination of the public so folks hording silver coins hadn’t become common. Even by 2024, sixty years after they were last minted, there were still a few silver coins in circulation.

The topic of conversation soon shifted from silver back to college, particularly when Cathy and Sandra arrived. They were sophomores, now. There was a bit of wisdom of having ‘been there and done that’ getting passed to Lily. Some of the advice, such as don’t put off writing papers until the last minute, was likely to be ignored, just as they had ignored that kind of advice during their first semester in college. Tim, not being in college, sat off to the side listening to the discussion.

Finally, the call to come to table was sent out from the kitchen. It was soon followed by traffic to and from the kitchen to deliver food. The family took seats at the table in a chaotic manner as everyone tried to figure out some kind of seating order. All that anyone agreed on was that the two Mr. Millers belonged at opposite ends of the table.

The turkey that Lily’s mother carried out of the kitchen was huge. Tim estimated that it had to have weighed over 20 pounds. Once all of the food was on the table and everyone was seated, the dishes started making the rounds. It wasn’t long before each plate was overloaded with food. There was a slight pause while Lily’s father said grace. It was Thanksgiving and tradition demanding thanking God for the plenty that came to them.

Tim listened to the prayer thinking about the world that he had left when he died. Thanksgiving had stopped being about thanking God. He really wasn’t sure who or what people were thanking for the good fortune that came their way. More often than talk about appreciating what they had, the conversation was about Black Friday sales. It seemed to him that even Black Friday had changed from being a day of actual low prices to a day of pretend low prices.

They hadn’t been eating for more than five minutes when the telephone rang. Irritated at the interruption, Mrs. Miller went to answer it. She came back a minute later to tell Tim that the call was for him. This was odd enough to attract attention. Everyone watched him when he returned to the table with expression of curiosity.