The Thanksgiving Treasure
Read The Thanksgiving Treasure Online
Authors: Gail Rock
The Thanksgiving Treasure
The Addie Mills Stories, Book Two
Gail Rock
With acknowledgments to Alan Shayne and Eleanor Perry, who did so much to bring “Addie” to life.
For Grandma and Dad
Contents
Prologue
I'm an artist now, and I live and work in the city. At Thanksgiving time, I go to the supermarket and buy a turkey all wrapped in plastic. It's not much like the Thanksgivings I remember when I was growing up in a little Nebraska town in the 1940s.
Dad would drive out to a nearby farm, and my grandmother would have the farmer chase his turkeys around the yard a little, and she'd give them the once-over, and somehow choose the best one. The farmer would hold it down, and Grandma would poke the turkey in the chest a few times to be sure it was tender. Then there would be a lot of squawking and flying feathers, and we'd wrap the fresh turkey in newspaper, put it in the trunk of the car and drive home with it.
I remember those Thanksgivings, with the cranberries, creamed onions, squash and dressing, and one special one, when I found out what Thanksgiving really means.
Chapter One
It all began on a Saturday morning in November, 1947. I was up early, and it was one of the few mornings of my life that I managed to get out of the house before breakfast. My grandmother had the idea that, if you didn't eat breakfast before you left the house in the morning, your whole body would fall apart by noon. I had visions of my bones going soft and my fingernails turning black and all of my long, brown hair dropping off on the ground behind me as I ranâall because I didn't eat my oatmeal before I went outside.
The only reason Grandma let me out that morning was that I had promised to be back in ten minutes. I wanted to run uptown to the post office and see if the special mail I was expecting had come. I ran the three blocks, burst through the post office door and stood gasping in front of our box, hoping to get the combination right the first time.
We had an old post office in Clear River, and the boxes were finicky. If you didn't get the dial turned to the exact place where the number clicked in, the box wouldn't open, and you'd have to start over again. Our combination was 3 to the right, 6½ to the left and 8½ to the right. I missed twice, and finally took off my gloves. I rubbed my hands together vigorously and tried to think of myself as a safecracker. I turned the dial delicately right, then left, then right again, and it finally clicked open.
There, with the other mail, was the pink “package” slip I had been waiting for. I ran to the window with it and asked Mrs. Dillon, the postmistress, if I could please have my package. She handed me a big manila envelope addressed to me, “Miss Adelaide Mills.” Up in the corner was the return address, “Hollywood, USA.” I ripped it open, and stood there looking at the photograph with an ecstatic expression on my face.
“Looks like something good,” Mrs. Dillon said, smiling.
“It's terrific!” I said, and turned the photo so she could see it.
“My!” she said. “That's something!”
“I gotta go,” I said, and tore out the door so I could get home within the promised ten minutes. Otherwise Grandma would be ready to send out the county sheriff to look for the starving child who hadn't eaten her oatmeal before leaving the house.
I barreled through the kitchen and dumped the other mail on the table in front of Dad and Grandma.
“It came, it came, it came!” I shouted.
“My Glory! What a racket!” said Grandma. “What came?”
“From Roy Rogers!”
“That all?” said Dad, going through the other mail. “Thought somebody left you a million dollars.”
“This is worth more than money to me,” I said. “Look at it!” I held it up for them to see.
“Sure looks like Roy Rogers,” Dad said sarcastically. For some reason he was not thrilled by Roy Rogers.
“All dressed up in his fancy duds,” said Grandma, admiring the photo. She understood because she had loved horses too, when she was a girl.
“And look at Trigger, Dad. Isn't he nifty?”
Dad looked skeptically at the photo. He was always hearing hints about horses from me, and he did his best to ignore them.
“It's autographed!” I said.
Dad squinted at it and read, “Keep smilin', Roy Rogers. Trigger, Smartest horse in the movies.”
“Sit down and eat, Addie,” said Grandma, giving me the quick once-over to see if I had suffered any ill effects from traveling six blocks without breakfast.
I propped the photo against the sugar bowl so I could look at it as I ate. “I'm going to put this on my bedroom wall where I can look at it first thing in the morning, when I wake up.”
“It's your Grandmother's bedroom too,” said Dad. “She might not like that cowboy on her wall.”
“I don't mind,” Grandma smiled. “I like Roy Rogers movies. They always have happy endings.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but Roy and Dale always spoil it at the end by acting icky with each other.”
“That's a happy ending!” said Grandma.
“Yuck!” I replied emphatically, and finished my oatmeal in a hurry. Dad was putting on his coat and getting ready to go uptown for some gas.
“Dad, can you take my bike in the back of the pickup? I need air in my tires.”
“Can't you just ride up and get it yourself? I've got a lot of errands to run.”
“Dad, you
told
me never to ride on flat tires. It'll ruin them! And new bike tires are very expensive!” I could always get to Dad by mentioning money. It was the thing he seemed to think about most.
“OK, OK,” he said, and I grabbed my coat and went out with him.
Dad was always acting irritated about one thing or another, but I knew that was just his nature. Actually I believed he enjoyed my company, even if he wouldn't admit it. Of course I did have quite a talent for annoying him, and sometimes it would flare up into a real battle. Grandma usually played referee and kept things from getting out of hand, and I was learning to watch my step around Dad and not provoke him.
Dad was the quiet type, and didn't talk much. He was tall and slender, and his dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples, around his stern face. My mother had died more than ten years ago, just after I was born, and Grandma had come to live with us then. I knew Dad missed my mother a lot, and he hardly ever talked about her to me. Dad, Grandma and I had been a family ever since, and somehow our three generations managed to get along with each other.
I always enjoyed going for a ride with Dad in his old, red pickup truck. He kept it well tuned, doing all the work himself. He didn't think much of men who couldn't tune their own cars, and besides, he hated spending any money that wasn't absolutely necessary. He had owned the truck for a long time, but he was so careful with it that it was in better shape than many newer ones on the road.
It had been tractor-red when he first bought it, and he had taken it in for a paint job when it began to look shabby. The body shop had run out of red paint and had mixed in a bit of yellow and the truck had come out a bright, orangey red flame color, almost sporty looking. Dad was furious with them, but he wasn't about to pay for another coat of paint, so he drove around in our bright red truck, looking embarrassed and hoping the color would fade quickly.
Neither of us was very good at talking about personal things with each other, and a rattling along the back roads gave us something to talk about ⦠how high Olson's corn was or how low the Platte River was or whether those were Holsteins or Guernseys in the Allens' pasture or whether it looked like rain over to the West. It was always pleasant for both of us, chugging along in the old red truck.
We pulled in at Tony's Texaco Station, and Dad got the truck filled up while Tony checked my tires. I told him they had to be in good shape that day because Carla Mae Carter and I were going to ride out in the country to get fall bouquets, and it would be quite a trip. Tony said it was a good time for milkweed pods because all the fuzz hadn't blown out of them yet. I asked if he had seen any particularly good ones anywhere, and he said he thought there were some over toward the river. He put my bike into the back of the truck, and I hopped in, and Dad started to back out.
Just then a beat-up Model T was pulling in, and it bumped into the back of our pickup with a big bang. Dad got out, hopping mad, and so did the other driver, a gnarled, grubby old man who looked to be in his eighties. They seemed to recognize each other.
“Why the hell don't you watch where you're going?” Dad yelled.
“You backed into me!” shouted the old man. “You can't drive any better than you can dig a pond.”
“I never dug a bad pond in my life,” yelled my dad. “I ought to sue you for the money you owe me on it.”
“That money will just about pay for the damage you done my car!” shouted the old man.
“Damage!” yelled my dad. “Hell, it looks better now than it did before you hit me.” With that, he got back in and started to pull away.
I was embarrassed because Tony and all the guys in the station were watching and grinning their heads off.
“I'll get that money out of you one of these days!” Dad shouted at him as we drove off.
“Not in this life, you won't!” the old man shouted back.
“Is that old man Rehnquist?” I asked, as we drove off.
“Yeah,” said Dad, angrily. “Stinking old goat.”
I had guessed as much, because I had heard the story of Dad's feud with Rehnquist more than once around home. He was considered an archenemy of my family. He had once hired my father to dig a pond in his far pasture. My father went with his backhoe machine to do the job, and after it was finished, Rehnquist had only paid for half the job because the pond leaked.
My dad said it leaked because Rehnquist had insisted it be dug in the wrong place, and Rehnquist said it leaked because my father had done a bad job. Dad and Rehnquist never spoke again, until that morning at Tony's Texaco. The mere mention of Rehnquist in our house was a guarantee of name-calling by my fatherâsomething in which he seldom indulged. I, of course, believing my father to be right in all matters of business and tests of honesty, had no doubt that Rehnquist was the villain.
“Where does he live?” I asked, as we drove toward home.
“Way over on the other side of the Platte River bridge,” said Dad. “End of nowhere. He lives like a hermit.”
“A hermit? You mean he lives in a cave or a hut?”
“No, a run-down old farm. He won't let anyone come near the place. Doesn't talk to anyone.”
“Oh,” I said, thoughtfully. “Then he's a misanthrope.”
“A what?”
“Misanthrope. We learned it in vocabulary a few days ago. That's a word for a person who hates people.” I was always very good in vocabulary and tried to remember to use the new words we learned.
“Well, he hates people all right,” said Dad. “I hear he keeps a shotgun to chase them away.”
“Do you think he'd really shoot anybody?”
“Huh!” said Dad disgustedly. “He's just the type!”
Archenemy or not, I was more intrigued than ever with old man Rehnquist now that I had actually seen him.
Chapter Two
As soon as I got home I started getting dressed for the day's ride. First, long underwear, wool socks and heavy wool pants; then a carefully planned combination of shirts and sweaters that would fit under my warm, blue wool jacket.
