The House Without a Christmas Tree (9 page)

We loved speeding along the back roads on our bikes, and being out in the countryside gave us a great sense of freedom. There were few houses outside of town, just acres and acres of cornfields and wheatfields and grazing cattle. There were hardly any trees, except those that farmers had planted around their houses and for windbreaks along the sides of fields, so you could see for miles. Sound seemed to carry farther out in the country too. You could hear a dog barking a mile away, or a distant train whistle or the hum of big truck tires on another highway far to the North, and if you were lucky enough to ride past a meadow-lark in the summer wheat, he would fling sweet notes right in your ear. The larks had gone South by this time of the year though, and the cold wind stung our faces as we pedaled past the brown stubble of harvested corn.

One mile out on the highway was the Platte River, which was even more forbidden than the highway, and across the Platte River bridge was certainly the most forbidden place of all—old Walter Rehnquist's farm. I had an idea that we would find some big, fat cattails there, because they always grew in the marshy areas on riverside property like his. I headed straight for it, not telling Carla Mae where we were going.

Crossing the long, high bridge was scary, because it was old and narrow and full of holes, any one of which could send you sprawling off a bike. You had to get across quickly, because if cars came from both sides at once, there was just no room for a bike to get out of the way. There was a curve at the far end, so you couldn't see if cars were coming or not, and we got off our bikes and put our ears to the deck of the bridge to see if we could hear anything coming from up the road. We heard nothing, and we jumped on our bikes and rode across as fast as we could, lurching in and out of holes and hanging on for our lives. We tried not to look over the side of the bridge at the chunks of ice floating far below in the muddy water.

When we had gotten safely across, we stopped, panting with excitement and exertion. While we were standing there catching our breath, we heard a clopping noise on the bridge and looked back to see a classmate of ours, Billy Wild, coming toward us on his horse. Carla Mae was always teasing me about liking Billy. Sometimes he was OK, but a lot of the time he was disgusting, showing off his cowboy boots and his horse and yanking my pigtails and being a real pain.

“Hi there!” he called out.

“Here comes creepy Billy Wild—showing off,” I whispered to Carla Mae.

“His horse looks like Roy Rogers' horse, doesn't it?” asked Carla Mae.

“No!” I said, impatiently. Carla Mae did not know a thing about horses. “Billy's horse is gray, and Trigger is a palomino.”

“I mean its hair looks like Trigger's hair.”

“That's not hair, dodo, that's a mane.”

“Hi, what are you doing?” Billy asked as he rode up to us.

“That's for us to know and you to find out,” I said in my coolest tone.

“Wanna ride, Carla Mae?” he asked.

“No, thanks,” said Carla Mae.

“Why not?” asked Billy.

“I'm afraid of horses,” she said.

“Afraid?” I said, disgusted with her, and stroked Cloudy's nose.

“C'mon, Carla Mae,” he said. “I'll hold on to you.”

“Not me,” she said.

“You wanna ride, Addie?” Billy asked.

“Will you get off and let me ride by myself?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“You're a girl—you might fall off,” he said, giving me a smug grin.

“Oh, drop dead!” I said, angrily. “Come on, Carla Mae, let's get out of here!”

We jumped on our bikes and started down the road.

“He's really cute,” Carla Mae said, looking over at me to see my reaction.

“Cute!” I snorted. “He's a dodo and always will be!”

“He offered us a ride!”

“Sure,” I said. “Because he wants to hang on to us and squeeze us. Yuck!”

Carla Mae laughed, and we rode on toward Rehnquist's.

Grandma had told me that Rehnquist had lived on his old farm alone for nearly fifteen years, since his wife had died, and that he never spoke to anyone and had no friends. The Rehnquists had never had any children, so he was still farming his place all alone. He had been selling off his land bit by bit, and had sold all his milk cows. He still had a few acres for growing vegetables, and in the summer he would come into town in his battered old car and sell corn and tomatoes and cucumbers and a few eggs to the grocery store.

As we rounded a bend in the road I saw the farm, and I knew it must be his place because his old Model T was in the yard. The big, old barn stood empty, with a broken hayrake rusting in the barnyard. Near the barn was his house, a boxy, white farmhouse with peeling paint and a big porch across the front with a creaky old porch swing.

I knew we shouldn't be there, but my curiosity had been aroused, and I wasn't going to be deterred by the mere threat of a horrible death.

Chapter Three

I stopped and got off my bike, leaning it up against the fence a few yards down the road from his house.

“Why are we stopping here?” asked Carla Mae.

“Come with me,” I said, starting to climb the fence.

“Why? Whose house is that?”

“Old Man Rehnquist's.”

“Old Man Rehnquist's!” she gasped. “We can't go in there!” Carla Mae knew about Rehnquist's feud with my father, and being a loyal friend, she was perfectly willing to consider him her personal archenemy too.

“Who says we can't go in?” I asked, and went over the fence. “There's a little stream down there behind that barn, and I bet the cattails are great. I could see them from the road.”

“Are you nuts? He'll come out and blast us to smithereens with his shotgun!”

“We'll jump on our bikes and beat it with the cattails if he comes out with his gun.”

“If he comes out with a gun,” said Carla Mae, “you can forget the darn cattails—I'll be running so fast you won't even see me.”

“Chicken.”

“Yeah? I bet you'll run even faster.”

“We'll see,” I said, pretending to be brave.

We quickly sneaked to a spot behind the barn where we couldn't be seen from the house. We were planning our next move when suddenly there was a noise from around the corner. We both flattened ourselves against the barn wall. I knew a shotgun would poke around the corner any second, and it would be all over. We waited a moment and nothing happened. I could feel my heart beating all the way through to my back.

I cautiously crept up to the corner of the barn and peeked around. Then I saw what the noise had been. There was a pinto horse there, eating some hay out of an open stall and bumping the door as she put her head in and out. I stepped softly toward her, and motioned Carla Mae to come along. When I got closer, I saw it was a mare with the prettiest face I had ever seen on a horse. She backed off when we approached, and I held out some hay to her. She looked at us for a moment, and then came slowly forward and nibbled the hay out of my hand.

“Addie, come on!” hissed Carla Mae.

“Wait a minute—I just want to get a good look at this horse. She's beautiful!”

“Oh, for gosh sakes! Horses aren't beautiful!”

Carla Mae was not much interested in horses, and she had no patience with my love for them. I would have happily given up any member of my family or any friend, including Carla Mae, to have a horse, but the mere mention of the word was enough to guarantee an argument from my father. He had grown up on a farm, and he saw nothing thrilling about a horse. He simply did not respond to my fantasies of riding at a gallop across the plains beside Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

“Addie!” said Carla Mae. “Are we here to get cattails or not?”

“OK, OK. Just a minute!” I searched around in my pockets and finally found the wax paper-covered lump of oatmeal-raisin cookies. I took one and held it out to the horse. She gave it a delicate sniff and then chomped it down whole. I laughed and rubbed her nose. She looked very interested in the rest of the cookies, but I put them back in my pocket.

“Watch out, she might bite you!” said Carla Mae.

“Never,” I said. “Look at her, she's so gentle. She's pretty too. I wonder what her name is? You know what she looks like? Marble cake, like my grandmother makes.”

“Yeah,” said Carla Mae. “She does, sorta. Will you come on!”

“OK. Good-bye, Marble Cake—oh, she's so dirty! She really needs grooming, and she's too fat.”

“Addie!”

“All right, all right, I'm coming! Don't be so nervous!”

I reluctantly left the horse, and we sneaked up beyond the barn to the field where the cattails were waiting for us. I was thinking about the horse and wondering why the old man even kept her. He obviously didn't ride her, and I felt sorry for her, standing around alone all day with no exercise. I vowed I would come back and see her again somehow, and get to know her, even if Rehnquist was our archenemy.

When we got to the edge of the stream, we knew we had to work fast. The little marshy spot where the cattails grew was easily visible from Rehnquist's house, and we would have to get what we needed before he spotted us and came out and blasted us to Kingdom Come with his shotgun.

We worked in a hastily planned assembly line. I cut cattails with the old scissors, and as soon as I had a handful, I passed them quickly to Carla Mae. She wrapped newspaper around them for protection and tied them in a bundle. We worked frantically, and just as we were finishing up the second bundle, we heard the door of the house slam, and there he was.

His scraggly white hair was flying out from under his old cap with the ear flaps, and he was moving the best he could in his heavy wool jacket. His pants were tucked into the tops of high rubber boots. He had his shotgun in hand and was shouting something unintelligible at us.

“Addie!” screamed Carla Mae.

“He can't get us from that range with a shotgun,” I shouted. “Do one more bunch!” I slashed clumsily at another clump of cattails and nearly threw them at Carla Mae. She fumbled with the string.

“Hurry!” I shouted at her, putting the scissors carefully back into my jacket pocket.

“Oh, I can't tie it!” she shrieked, and got up and started running back toward the fence and our bikes. I grabbed the other bundles of cattails and followed close on her heels. Marble Cake stopped chewing her hay for a moment and stared curiously at us as we streaked by her. We leaped over the fence, and when we got to our bikes, we threw the cattails into our baskets without waiting to lash them down.

Rehnquist was coming down off the porch toward us and leveling the gun in our direction.

“Git outta here!” he shouted in his raspy old voice. “Git offa my property, or I'll shoot ya!” He was so furious I was sure I could see foam at the corners of his mouth even from that distance.

“Go on, or I'll git the law on ya!” he bellowed, and shambled toward us as fast as he could on his gimpy old legs.

“Git!” he shouted again, and sighted through the gun and squinted at us, twisting up his grizzly old face.

We strained and grunted, pushing our bikes over the rutted road, and took off as fast as we could go. We pedaled standing up, pumping with such force that our bikes lurched back and forth under our hands and we could hardly steer. The loose cattails went flying out of my basket with every bump. As we rode away, I looked back, and Rehnquist was still standing out in his front yard, shouting into the wind and waving the gun.

About a half-mile down the road, we stopped to catch our breath and giggle with fear.

“Holy Moley,” said Carla Mae breathlessly, hand over her heart. “That was close!”

“Oh, I wasn't scared,” I bragged. “He probably can't even shoot straight.”

“I don't want to find out,” she said.

“Nuts, we lost half our cattails. Why didn't you tie up that last bunch?”

“I didn't feel like getting killed,” she replied.

“Aw, we're practically bulletproof with all these clothes on,” I said.

“Yeah?” said Carla Mae sarcastically. “Then how come you were riding even faster than I was, getting out of there?”

“I can't help it if my bike goes fast,” I said, irritated. “It's these dumb, skinny tires.”

“Ha!” she said, giving me a knowing look. For a best friend, Carla Mae could sometimes be very annoying.

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About the Author

Gail Rock grew up in Valley, Nebraska. After receiving a BA in fine arts from the University of Nebraska, she moved to New York and began a career in journalism. She has worked as a film and TV critic and has done freelance writing for newspapers and magazines.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1974 by Gail Rock

Cover design by Kelly Parr

ISBN: 978-1-4976-7381-6

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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