Bush Family Thanksgiving, circa 1959

Tender moments in the Bush family.

The Bush household was abuzz with delight and excitement on this, the most American of holidays.

The grand dining table was set, looking ready to for the Queen of England or Grandpa Prescott's old business partner, poor Herr Hitler.

Being a large family, Barbara and George Sr. had many rules and protocols for the children to follow.

One of the older children was selected to pour the wine.

One of the boys was chosen to sit at the right hand of his father.

And another child was chosen to go into the Family Room and select the "guest of honor."

To look at them in later years, no one would have suspected that George Sr. and Barbara Bush had once been randy newlyweds. They copulated prodigiously, producing the brood who would be corporate executives, state governors and even president of the United States.

But there was an even larger brood who would never take part in the Bush Dynasty.

There was a contingent of Bushes who lived in luxury, but never found their way out of the Family Room, except on certain holidays.

These were the dozens of fetuses preserved in formaldehyde in large specimen jars.

George Sr. loved rough sex, particularly inserting foreign objects into his wife's birth canal. Under normal circumstances, this merely made for a night of great pleasure. But times when Barbara was pregnant, it caused unwanted complications, usually ending with a baby-ferret-sized fetus emerging from between Barbara's legs, skewered on the fireplace poker George Sr. was using on her.

Stillborn, accidentally aborted, or merely "off" like George W., these creatures were still Bushes and they were treated as Bushes -- lining the cherry wood shelves of the Family Room, illuminated by soft lights that rose and fell in brightness as each day progressed.

And one of them joined the family at each holiday dinner.

There was Fay, Boregard, Steen, Prescott II, Evelyn, Constance, Shay, Rush, Leicester, Barbara I, Barbara II, Barbara III, Werner, among many others.

Each had cherubic, Venutian faces, closed eyes and a certain unfaltering tranquility about them as they floated in chemical oblivion.

George W. loved the Family Room. His father always told him, "There's nothing more important than family . . . after money, power, prestige, vengeance and looking good, of course."

He slowly inspected the shelves filled with jars; the inanimate Bush-things seeming completely unaware of his presence. It was like being in a room filled with frozen ghosts. George W. would've spoken quietly to them, but he sometimes had nightmares about being in the Family Room and the little eyes within the jars suddenly opening, and little hands pushing the lids off and tiny arms hoisting small, deformed, inchoate bodies from their jellid resting place.

So, he looked at them in silence. He couldn't tell which were girls or which would have been boys, just by looking. There were plaques with names on them before each jar, which indicated gender.

George W.'s favorite fetus was Boregard -- because he had a big head. George W. fancied Boregard would've been a scientist or some kind of big thinker with a head like that. The word "hydropcephalic" was not part of George W.'s vocabularly at that time. In fact, "hydropcephalic" would never be a part of his vocabulary.

He hefted Boregard in his jar down from the shelf. Feeling the weight of it in his arms, George W. fancied Boregard would have been a great football player.

When he returned to the dining room, the family was seated at the table: Neil and Marvin, Momma and Poppa, Dorothy, Jeb and Great Granny Booba Pierce, who sat there in a fog of incontinent dementia.

"Oh, so we have Boregard join us, again," said George Sr.

No one noticed Barbara bristle at the memory of Boregard's emergence in the world after a lengthy S&M beating her husband gave her while wearing a leather gimp mask and a clothes pin on his penis.

"Set your brother at his place," George Sr. said. George W. obeyed.

* * *

The Bush family was just being served the fifth course of their meal by their black servants when four year old Neil and three year old Marvin became animated.

George Sr. was just reaching for the riding crop he kept in a specially made holster on his mahogany chair, when one boys pulled the table cloth, clattering dishes, spilling glasses of wine -- and sending Boregard and his jar crashing to the parquet floor.

The slowness of the jar's fall reminded George Sr. of the time he crashed his bomber plane in World War II, and ejected, sending the rest of his men to their watery graves.

The heavy jar cracked in two like an egg.

The odor of formaldehyde-pickled humanity rose in the room.

"Cinco de Mayo!" shouted Great Granny Booba Pierce, for no reason at all.

The first emotion George Sr. felt was anger, then rage, then fury, but each was stomped out by his overriding pragmatism.

He slapped Neil and Marvin out of the way and picked up the rubbery corpse of Boregard.

The site of the glistening dead thing made Barbara faint -- actually, she only pretended to faint because she knew the sexual frenzy the sight and feel of the dead fetus would arouse in her husband and she wasn't about to defile the hallowed day by succumbing to his desires. Then she remembered that he had no qualms about raping her in her sleep, so she quietly crawled under the expansive dining room table.

"Want me to take care of that, Mr. Bush?" one of the servants said.

George Sr. wheeled on the servant, slapping him away. "No," George Sr. roared.

He looked at the malformity in his hands, then looked at the dining table in disarray.

He swept the turkey and gravy boat from the dining table, and then held Boregard aloft.

"This is a Bush!" he shouted. "You don't throw a Bush in the garbage!"

"I was only gonna bury him in the yard," said the cowering servant, whom George Sr. had struck.

"You don't bury a Bush!" George Sr. glared at his children and grandmother-in-law. "A Bush is a Bush!"

George Sr. then took a bite of Boregard as though he was something from a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

The children screamed, but their father -- face smeared brownish with fetus innards -- told them to remain in their seats.

He tossed a leg to George W. and an arm to Jeb. They feasted reluctantly.

When George Sr. finished disemboweling Boregard with his teeth and tongue, he tossed the emptied carcass onto the plate in front of his grandmother-in-law. She put the carcass on her head and declared, "I am a Daughter of the American Revolution!"

George Sr. fell to his knees and fumbled his penis out of his pants. He masturbated profusely and moments later ejaculated, unknowingly, into the face of his hiding wife.

* * *

The Bush family continued bringing jars out of the Family Room on holidays and occasions. Traditions die hard.

Servants, however, do not.

Every servant working Thanksgiving 1959 was executed and their bodies disappeared by George Sr.'s friends in the Central Intelligence Agency.

As they hefted the last of the body-bagged corpses into the unmarked cargo van, George Sr. had said to them, "I owe you one, boys."

No one answered. Not until George Sr. received a telephone call weeks before another Thanksgiving -- Thanksgiving of 1963.