The Aluminum Christmas Tree by Thomas J. Davis

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The shiny aluminum tree was the symbol of everything he thought was right in their lives and everything she thought was wrong. It was 1958 and Jimmy Jackson had it all: a wife, two kids, and the promotion that was his ticket to success. Finally, he could afford all those things he had gazed at in the Sears Roebuck catalog. But now that he had the money, would he find that the true cost was more than he could pay?

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The Aluminum Christmas Tree

Rutledge Hill Press

Chapter One

Mildred Jackson had lived in the same house her entire married life. Three children, a husband, several horses, and twice remodeling and adding on had made a mark on the family homestead that simply couldn't be moved. But the children had left town years before, her arthritic back made it harder and harder to take care of the horses, and her husband, Jim, had passed on the year before.

Mildred knew it was time to move on. Closer to town. Something easier to keep up.

She and her cousin Caleb had made a good start packing that day. She worked in the house while he climbed up into the carport attic to clear it out. The hours sped by, and Joyce, Caleb's wife, phoned to say she had a good supper ready for the three of them. So it was time to stop for the day. Mildred went outside to the carport and called up to her cousin.

"Just a second," Caleb answered. Mildred looked around, seeing how neatly Caleb had stacked the boxes he'd brought down. He and Jim were just alike-orderly. Though she'd never visited the attic-that had been her husband's domain-she knew that all of those boxes sat up there just as straight and measured as a corn row.

"This beats all I've ever seen," Caleb said as he wrestled down a box, his gray hair matted to his forehead by the sweat of an honest day's work.

He let out a short laugh and cocked his head toward the attic. "Did you know you had two boxes of old Sears catalogs up there?"

"You don't say," she replied as Caleb set down the box and climbed up to bring down the other one.

Mildred pulled open the tucked-in flaps of the box and picked up the first catalog in the stack-Christmas 1958. She started to flip through the pages. But then something else caught her eye. Another box nearby, good-sized and age-worn white in color.

She bent down on one knee and tenderly ran her hand across it.

When Caleb came down from the attic, he saw his cousin kneeling beside one of the boxes. He watched her finger as it traced something, lettering of some sort. A soft sob escaped her lips, and he saw tears roll down her face. He dropped the box of catalogs and took a few quick steps toward her, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?" he asked.

"Look here," Mildred said. "Jim's handwriting." She gave a little sniffle, and Caleb took out his handkerchief for her. "If that don't beat all," she said, more to herself than anything else. "I would've thought he'd just throw this thing away."

Caleb read the words on the box.

DO NOT OPEN! DO NOT THROW AWAY! ALWAYS REMEMBER! DON'T EVER FORGET! ALL THAT GLITTERS AIN'T GOLD, IMPORTANT THINGS CAN'T BE BOUGHT AND SOLD.

After being lost in thought for a moment, Mildred said, "I know what's in that box." Then she gave Caleb a little smile. "Don't worry about me. I'm okay. Just help this old woman up."

After gently pulling Mildred to her feet, and thinking she might want to talk about the memories this box held, Caleb said, "Well, I want to see what inspired Jim Jackson to poetry." Trying to lighten the mood a little, he teased, "As long as it's not some deep, dark secret."

Mildred stood mulling things over. She pretty much had herself pulled together. Then she looked at the 1958 Christmas catalog again. On the front, her husband had written, "page 54." Slowly, she opened the dusty old catalog. The latest, newest, and best of 1958 passed before her eyes as she turned the pages. Finally she settled on page 54. She let out a little laugh.

"You won't believe what's in this other box," Mildred said. "Wait just a minute, and I'll get some scissors."

She stepped inside for a moment and then came back out, scissors in hand. She made for the box, then hesitated.

"Hey," Caleb said, "if you want to wait and do this later, that's okay. Looks kind of private."

"Oh, I suppose the private of it all ended when Jim died," Mildred said. "Anyway, I know what's in here. And the note was to himself, not to us." And with that, Mildred ran the scissors' sharp tip along the tape and opened the box.

Caleb looked down, open-mouthed. He saw silvery slivers of something densely packed. Mildred picked up the Christmas catalog where she had left it. "See, on page 54."

Caleb saw aluminum Christmas trees lighting up the page. There were three of them-best, good, and, from what Caleb could tell, downright scrawny-all shining with a tinseled gleam. The middle one, both in quality and price, had been circled in pen. Another circle marked an accessory: a kind of light projector connected to a translucent plastic wheel.

"Never knew you had one of those things," Caleb said, an unspoken question in his voice.

"Oh, we had one, but not up for Christmas Day," she replied.

"Got to be a story in there somewhere," Caleb suggested.

"Yes, but it'll keep, least 'til after supper. I know what it's like to have food on the table and folks show up late. Let's get going. We can recollect over coffee after supper. I do get to stay for coffee, don't I?" Mildred only half asked.

"And dessert, if I know Joyce," Caleb replied. "C'mon, then, let's get on."

"Alrighty, then," Mildred replied, picking up the 1958 Sears catalogs to take with her-not just Christmas, but the Fall/Winter edition as well.

* * *

"Well, hey, Mildred." Joyce Smith hugged her warmly. "How'd the packing go today?"

"Made a good start," Mildred said. "That husband of yours can put in a decent day's work when someone sets him to it."

"Worked hard enough to be hungry, despite the insults," Caleb rejoined with a smile.

So they all sat down to a country supper. Caleb looked over the dining table, steam rising off mashed potatoes, green beans, fried chicken, and cornbread. He held out his hands, one to his wife and the other to his cousin. With head bowed, he prayed, "For mercy everlasting, O Lord, we're thankful. Amen."

It was a short prayer, but heartfelt and powerful. When Caleb and Mildred ate at their granny's table when they were children, it was the prayer that their granny often prayed. Caleb, even as a child, heard those few words and realized a whole life's meaning stood behind them. So he often said the same prayer now, seeing as how so much of who he was came from his granny.

After everyone had taken a few bites, Joyce asked Mildred, "When do you expect the kids?"

"Oh, the weekend. Two more days like today, and we should have everything ready." A sigh slipped past Mildred's lips.

"You sure you're up for this, honey?" Joyce asked as she reached over and squeezed Mildred's hand.

"Oh, I think so-though I hate to leave Smoky Hollow. I loved coming out here when Granny was alive-it was my second home. Always jealous of Caleb for the good life he lived out here in the country." She sighed again. "Well, I got my spell of it, didn't I? A town girl growing up and growing old, a country girl in the middle. Not a bad thing, really."

Joyce patted Mildred's hand.

"Worst of it's been done, anyway," Mildred went on. "Found a place for the last of the horses last week. Should've done it some time ago, I guess, when I got where I couldn't ride much. Still, I liked having 'em around. Watching 'em go has been about as bad as the children leaving home."

"Worse, seems to me," Caleb said. "I always thought you treated those horses better'n your kids."

"Oh, I did not!" Mildred reached over and gently slapped Caleb's arm. "But I did love them. That's part of what made being out here so nice, having horses. Mamma always said I was tetched in the head for wanting the trouble of it." She paused a second. "Course, when you love something, usually it's not as much trouble as seems to other folks."

They ate in silence for a bit, each with thoughts of growing up and growing old and moving on. The thought that ran through all their heads at some point was how fast it all seemed to have gone, that time between the growing up and growing old.

"Well," Joyce finally asked, "you left any room for dessert? I fried some apple pies, and we've got ice cream to go with it."

"That'd be fine," Mildred said.

"How about a bit of coffee to wash it down?" Caleb asked.

"Sure," Mildred replied. "It'll be nice while we talk."

Joyce served up the pies and ice cream while Caleb started coffee. Then he said, "Mildred's brought us books and a story. We can look at the books while the coffee finishes, then we can all sit back and hear a good story."

"Don't know that it's a good story, but maybe an interesting one. And packing up the house has put me in the mood to reminisce." Mildred retrieved the Sears catalogs from where she had put them when she first came in. She sat back down at the table and thumbed through one of the thick books.

"You know," she said, "Jim's mamma used to say there were only two books in the world worth reading-the Bible and the Sears catalog." Mildred laughed. "Being a schoolteacher, I didn't ever know quite how to take that."

"Well, judging by the boxes I brought down, Jim must have loved the Sears catalog, too," Caleb said.

"What do you mean?" Joyce asked.

"You wouldn't believe!" Caleb exclaimed, "Brought down two boxes of nothing but catalogs."

"Time was, early in our marriage," Mildred said, turning a page, "when Jim would stare at one of these things for hours, going on about what the world 'out there' was all about and how he was gonna make it big and move out into that world, buying up all the things he saw in the catalog." Mildred sat and gazed at the pages.

Caleb got up to get the coffee. He knew enough about stories not to interrupt with questions that didn't need to be answered yet. There's storytelling and story listening, and Caleb and Joyce both knew to listen to the story as it was told, throwing out the occasional comment to help grease it along. But that would come later. Caleb poured everyone a cup of coffee.

He watched Mildred as she brought the cup to her lips, giving a quick puff and taking a big sip, daring the coffee to burn her lips. In certain ways, Caleb thought, Mildred stood as the spitting image of her mamma-a straight talker and a straight shooter. A touch of gentleness came to her from her granny, and the result was a woman who spoke her mind yet knew, in certain situations, that the "what for" she wanted to give someone might best be kept to herself at the moment. After all these years, the cousin he grew up with was still one of his favorite people.

Mildred started her story by pointing to the date on the catalog. "If you recall, 1958 was when you two were still living down in Augusta," she said.

"About halfway through medical school," Caleb said. "Real busy. Baby on the way. Didn't get up this way any that year."

"That was a bad year, in a way, for Jim and me," Mildred continued. "The only bad year we really ever had."

Caleb and Joyce sat still, listening.

"Threatened to kick him out," Mildred said, a short snort coming out. "Can you imagine that-me and Jim not being together? That's how bad it got." She ran her hand across the Sears catalog. "Some women got to worry about their man straying. I had to worry about a catalog. And it wasn't the underwear section, either." Mildred laughed again, all of them knowing it wasn't just the young boys who liked to turn to the ladies' underwear pages.

"Those days, Jim got to where he figured the road to happiness was paved with pages from the Sears catalog," Mildred went on. "He wanted everything he saw in there. Thought having stuff made you somebody, and Jim wanted to be somebody so badly he couldn't stand it."

"Well, he ended up pretty well, didn't he? Once he got in the apple business," Joyce said.

Mildred nodded. "We did all right, I guess. Got the kids through school. And better than that, Jim said, was always having a place for them to work. Kept them out of trouble."

Mildred took a sip of coffee. "It wasn't just the kids, though. Something about that orchard worked wonders for Jim. His own place, running things his way. Made him feel worthwhile. Jim was a good man," Mildred said emphatically. "He just needed something to help him remember that. And me giving him a good swift kick on occasion." They all laughed. The image of Mildred actually kicking Jim Jackson, him a good foot taller than she was and retaining most of his life the athletic body of his youth, was something they relished-all the more so because, if Mildred thought it needed to be done, she'd have done it.

"Jim just had to quit running from himself long enough to get a good idea of what he was really made of," Mildred said. "But for six months or so he ran like crazy, hoping to be a big business whiz with offices everywhere except in Gilmer County."

"Suppose all that business with his daddy embarrassed him a bit?" Joyce offered.

"Oh, a little, for a while. But I once told him, there's good and bad with every family. Find out what's good and hold on to it; change the bad, and if you can't, try your best to overlook it; and try to raise your young'uns a little better than you were. That's all anybody can do."

"Still," Caleb allowed, "given the kind of life Jim thought he was going to have, coming back to Smoky Hollow must have been hard."

"It was," Mildred answered. "And it didn't help that Mamma would lay into him every time he tried to talk about the glory days. She'd tell him, 'The past is past, the future ain't got here yet, so just be glad for what you got.' Sometimes Mamma's advice didn't sit well with Jim."

"You don't say!" Caleb let out, and they all laughed. Lois Holt's advice was a little hard for anyone to take. Caleb had been on the wrong side of his aunt Lois's "plain sense" advice too many times to let the comment pass.

"Well, whatever else you can say about it, Jim's folks left all the young'uns plenty of land-at least that didn't get taken away," Joyce said. "Just glad Jim had the sense to get into apples when he did. And now look," Joyce went on, a teasing tone to her voice, "the sale of one of the premier apple orchards in the county has set you up to live a life of luxury in the big city."

Mildred just shook her head and smiled. She took another drink of coffee, pondering a bit about life and her husband and what life might hold now.

"You know," she said, "Mamma was right that the past is past. But sometimes there's teeth in the memories of what's gone before...."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Aluminum Christmas Tree by Thomas J. Davis Copyright © 2007 by Thomas J. Davis. Excerpted by permission.
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