Always Friday

by Jan Hudson

  If she caved in, she’d be with Dan and they might be happy for a while, but she would hate being caught up in the corporate rat race again. If she went, sooner or later Dan would slip back into his old ways. She could envision the pattern. It would be this emergency or that, a few extra hours here and there, and before he realized it, he’d be a workaholic with blinding headaches and a bleeding ulcer again. Their relationship would become more and more strained until love turned to resentment and there would be nothing left. Didn’t he know what going back to his old habits would do to him? Did he have some kind of unconscious death wish?

  A part of her believed that perhaps Dan loved her enough to forget that damned elevator company. Any day now, he’d discover that he was not indispensable to a stupid business that he despised, that his family would be happier if he’d follow his own dream. But he was stuffed to the gills with integrity. She sighed. The same strength of character that was making him so stubborn was one of the many things that attracted her to him. If he were any different, he wouldn’t be the same man she loved.

  Damn! She grabbed a pillow and flung it across the room. It hit the sampler and set it swinging on its hook. The embroidered words seemed to mock her. It seemed as if the fates were conspiring against her and snickering about it.

  “But I didn’t get my home, Granny Prophet!” she shouted at the taunting axiom. “The treasure is gone and the man I love is determined to become a martyr!”

  She got in bed, curled into a fetal position, and pulled the covers over her head. She might as well accept the fact that she and Dan were finished. He’d made his decision, and she’d made hers. He wouldn’t change his mind, and she couldn’t. It was a deadlock. And she was wretchedly bitter and angry and miserable, miserable, miserable.

  If she didn’t stop wallowing in her misery soon, forget about a life with Dan, and get on with the one she had, she’d go mad. She had friends and family and businesses to occupy her time and energy. She’d survived worse things—though, at the moment, she couldn’t recall what.

  Maybe, she decided as she got up to get her pillow, she’d look into the feasibility of hiring a team of divers to search Lake Livingston. Maybe launching herself into a new project would keep her mind off Dan. Her option to buy the house still had a few days to go. Maybe she could still salvage a remnant of her dream. Maybe.

  She picked up Casey’s journal and the folder of papers that the clerk in Livingston had copied for them. She glanced through the sheaf of plats and deeds and tax roll information, but her perusal was only halfhearted, and she laid them on her night-stand to wait for another time.

  Twisting and turning, she punched her pillow a dozen times before she finally fell into a restless sleep.

  Her dreams were filled with rainbows and pots of gold chasing her. She tried to elude them, to run and hide, but each time they found her hiding place and forced her to run again until they chased her into the basement. Rainbows like giant ribbons of cellophane tape swooped around her, trying to stick to her head, while pots dive-bombed her like frantic bats and dumped showers of gold coins with every pass. Covering her head with her arms, she ran round and round, sinking deeper into the dirt as she tried to escape. When she was up to her knees and couldn’t move, the floor caved in and an elevator zipped her to the deck of a Spanish galleon. The deck was piled high with gold and gemstones that hurt her bare feet to walk across them.

  At the helm of the ship stood a woman who looked like Casey Prophet, in the portrait down the hall. A red-plumed buccaneer’s hat topped her flowing hair and her long dress billowed behind her like a rainbow-colored sail. Long strings of jewels around her neck sparkled as she threw back her head and laughed. “The Bible!” she shouted over the howling wind and pounding waves. “Remember your Bible verses!”

  Heart racing, Tess’s eyes flew open and she sat straight up in bed. Relieved to find that she’d been dreaming, she lay back down and took deep breaths, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.

  Remembering the bizarre happenings that had seemed so real, she shook her head. “How weird.”

  * * *

  Even though her day was busy, helping Becky at the Mermaid in the morning and filling in for Nancy at the Sea Song in the afternoon, the dream continued to bother her. It popped into her mind at the strangest times.

  After dinner that evening, Tess wandered into the second floor sitting room where the two older women were playing cribbage. “Aunt Olivia,” she asked, sitting on the arm of her aunt’s chair, “do you remember much about your grandmother Casey?”

  “Oh, my, yes. After Poppa died, we moved back here with her and Grandpa Marsh. Octavia and I were only six, and she practically raised us. She was a gas.”

  “I remember her, too,” Martha said, laying down her cards. “I always loved to visit Olivia and Octavia because their grandmother was such fun. She had a yellow Buick convertible that she would load a bunch of us kids in, and we’d go zipping around town, singing at the tops of our lungs. What ever happened to that car, Olivia?”

  “As I recall, she drove it off a pier one New Year’s Eve. Jumped before it hit the water. She said the brakes went out, but Grandpa was mad as a hornet. He gave her holy hell. Said one of these days she was going to kill herself with her crazy antics. She just laughed and patted his cheek. Grandma lived to be ninety-eight. Healthy as a horse until she died in her sleep one night. I always thought that she died because she missed Grandpa Marsh so much and just got tired of living without him.”

  “They used to give such wonderful parties,” Martha said. “And how she loved scavenger hunts and treasure hunts. Why, I remember one—it must have been when you and Octavia were sixteen—that she had us chasing all over the island for clues. Wade Dorset caught his pants on fire getting one out of the hotel chimney.”

  Before the two launched into any more reminiscences, Tess asked her aunt, “Do you remember something about Grandma Casey and Bible verses?”

  “Do I ever!” Olivia put her hand on her chest and rolled her eyes. “There were twenty-seven of them. Momma had to learn them, and Octavia and I had to learn them. And we had to solemnly promise to teach them to our children. I remember Grandma teaching them to your mother, too, from the time she was just a little thing. At least once a year until she died, she would call each of us in and have us recite. If we complained, she would scowl at us, pat her Bible, and say, ‘The secret of this family’s blessing is in this book. Never forget it.’ I think one of the reasons I stayed away from home so much after I graduated from college was to get out of reciting those blasted verses.”

  An elusive childhood memory flitted through Tess’s mind. “Did Grandma Octavia teach them to me?”

  Olivia laughed. “She tried to, but you always got them mixed up and cried. I think she finally gave up.”

  “Do you remember them?”

  “It’s been a lot of years since Grandma died. I’m not sure I can recite them anymore.” Cocking her head and fluttering her long eyelashes, Olivia said, “I believe the first one was Proverbs 8:21 and the next, Proverbs 8:33. And let me see, I think the next one was in Psalms. Or was it Ecclesiastes? Maybe it was Luke. Oh, dear, Tess, it’s been too long. What made you think of Grandma’s verses?”

  “Something I dreamed about. I’m going up to read for a while. If I don’t see you in the morning before you leave, have a safe and fun trip.” She kissed her aunt’s cheek.

  “Are you sure you won’t come and spend a few days at the farm with us?” Olivia asked. “You always enjoy the races, too.”

  “Not this time, thanks.” She bent to kiss Martha good night.

  Martha captured her hand. “Tess, I’m so sorry things didn’t work out with Danny. I was hoping—”

  “I know, Aunt Martha.” Tess patted the blue-veined hand. “It’s okay.” Swallowing the lump in her throat, she managed a smile. She’d hadn’t told either of the women how far her relationship with Dan had progressed. There hadn’t been time to announce their engagem
ent before it was broken. Now it was just as well. “Good night.”

  In her room, Tess propped up in her bed and picked up Casey’s journal of adventures in searching for treasure along the “rainbow trail” marked by the multicolored stones on the Bible case. She read the whole thing through again. It ended with finding the four chests near San Augustine in east Texas.

  Laying the book aside, she leaned back against the pillows and stared at the sampler. Knowing what she did about Grandma Prophet, it didn’t make sense that Casey would leave a fortune buried in the ground when, even so many years ago, civilization was already encroaching on the hiding places.

  Suddenly, a thought popped into her head and she grabbed the folder of papers from the Livingston court house. She searched through them until she saw a familiar name. She froze.

  There it was.

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Granny, you sly dog!”

  In 1889, Acacia and Marsh Prophet had purchased Nathan Power’s farm for fifteen hundred dollars. They sold it a few years later for less than half what they paid for it. Tess giggled. Some people probably thought that Grandma Casey was a poor businesswoman.

  Well, so much for the idea of divers. Casey had probably dug up the other treasure as well.

  Still smiling at the bittersweet loss of her last hope for her house, she looked at the sampler which had belonged to Anna. It was the only personal thing of her mother’s that she owned, and, for as long as she could remember, it had hung in the same spot in her room in Galveston. She glanced to the rocker in the corner and recalled lovely memories of Grandma Octavia sitting in the chair, with Tess in her lap, telling her stories of all the wonderful women in their family. Not one of the ladies had ever been conformists. They’d all been free-spirited, fun-loving, ready to try anything, and devil take the hindmost. For some reason, only girls had been born in the family, never a single boy.

  She got up, placed the journal and the papers on her desk, and went to draw her bath.

  * * *

  Heart pounding and her breath coming in short gasps, Tess struggled to wake from her dream. Casey Prophet’s laughter still echoed in her ears, and she could hear her shout over the wind and water, “Remember your Bible verses!”

  Her eyes opened and she jerked upright. It was the same dream! Every bit of it was an exact repeat of the night before. It was so real that she felt her hair to see if there were rainbow tapes stuck on her head.

  Why had she had the dream again?

  She got up, went to the bathroom, and washed her face. The whole time she brushed her teeth, the words came over and over in her mind. Remember your Bible verses.

  Pulling on red knit shorts and a matching T-shirt, she went downstairs. Although the house was empty and quiet, the delicious aroma of coffee wafted through the rooms. The four had already left for the farm in Louisiana, but the red light on the pot was on.

  “Bless you, dear Ivan,” she said, pouring a mug and taking a sip.

  Leaning against the counter, she took another swallow. Remember your Bible verses. The admonition went round and round in her head, playing mental hide-and-seek with a vague, elusive memory of something Grandma Octavia had told her when she was a little girl. What was it?

  She filled her mug again and took it upstairs with her. In her room, she went to her desk and found the little white Bible her grandmother had given her when she was eight. Opening it, she read the writing on the fly page.

  Suddenly, the memory popped up of Grandma Octavia rocking her and saying, “Shhhh, Tess, don’t cry. We’ll write them down and put them in a secret place. And one day, when you have a little girl, you can tell her about it.”

  The secret place.

  She walked to the sampler and took it off the wall. Glued to the backing was an envelope, yellowed with age. Inside was a card which listed twenty-seven verses. The first two were Proverbs, just as Aunt Olivia had remembered. What was so special and secret about those verses? Were they intended as some kind of message? She started to pick up her white Bible to look them up, but something made her pause.

  No, not this one. The other one. She laid the card on her desk.

  Her heart thudded against her ribs as she went to Olivia’s sitting room to retrieve Violet’s Bible from the old trunk. The familiar smell of camphor touched her nose as she opened the curved top. She picked up the stone-studded case and closed the trunk lid. Hugging the wooden box to her, she resisted the urge to run back to her room. Instead she walked very slowly and reminded herself to breathe normally.

  She placed the case on her bed and ran her fingers over the meandering trail of stones on the front. The first one was red; the second, orange; then, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The colors of the rainbow.

  As if in slow motion, she took the Bible from its case and carried it to her desk. Sitting down, she pulled a pen and pad from a drawer and propped the card against the crown of a red-plumed buccaneer’s hat.

  She sucked in a deep breath and opened the book to the eighth chapter of Proverbs. The words of verse twenty-one were underlined.

  That I may cause those that love me to inherit substance; and I will fill their treasures.

  She wrote it on the pad and turned to the thirty-third verse of the same chapter. It, too, was underlined.

  Hear instruction, and be wise, and refuse it not.

  Okay, she thought, the words were nice but was there a message here? The next was a selection from Ecclesiastes.

  I gathered me also silver and gold, and the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces. . .

  Her heart began to flutter, and a sheen of perspiration broke out on her upper lip. Was Casey talking about recovering the treasure? She quickly wrote down the next five, which were only a few words underlined from passages in Psalms, Acts, 2 Samuel, and Mark.

  From power . . . the church in the wilderness . . . rock . . .fortress . . . treasure . . . I will shew you . . .

  Her heart started pounding in earnest and her hands shook as a slow grin spread across her face. From power was Nathan Power’s farm; the church in the wilderness was the place outside Lufkin where the church had once been near the springs; the rock fortress was the Old Stone Fort. Looking up, she squeezed her fists in a gesture of excitement. Grandma Prophet had gathered up the treasure in all the other places. No wonder she and Dan couldn’t find it.

  “But what did you do with all of it, Granny? Show me, show me!” She checked the next several verses, which had a word here and a phrase there underlined, and wrote them down.

  . . . a bride . . . built a house . . . laid the foundation . . .

  Which bride? Violet? Electra? Casey?

  . . . the flood rose . . . shaken of a mighty wind . . . So we built the wall . . .

  “You’re talking about the great hurricane and building the seawall.”

  . . . out of great tribulation . . . island . . . moved . . . my house . . .filled . . .

  The grade-raising of Galveston when the yard and the basement were filled in! Tess wiped the perspiration off her lip with the back of her hand, took another deep breath, and went back to her task. She meant this house. Grandma Casey’s house.

  . . . in the earth, hid . . . money . . . earth on top . . . the earth is full of thy riches . . .

  “Yippeee!” Tess screamed and threw her pen in the air. “The treasure is in the basement! My God, all these years, we’ve been sitting on a fortune. Where in the basement, Granny?” She retrieved her pen from where it had rolled under the bed and sat down to decipher the last eight verses.

  When she’d finished, she held up her pad and read the last words aloud. “Seek, and ye shall find under the place where she hath also furnished her table, a place for the gold. Find the blessing in thine house. It shall be an inheritance for what things ye have need of.”

  Tossing down her pen, she closed her eyes and dropped her head back. For all those years, an unbelievable treasure had been buried in the basement beneath the dining table
. She looked at the sampler Grandma Prophet had stitched for Tess’s mother, Anna, and laughed. Now, the words made sense.

  You may follow rainbows to find pots of gold, but the real treasure of the family is in the foundation of our home.

  All she had to do was go downstairs and dig it up. There would be riches enough to buy her house and a whole string of racehorses for Aunt Olivia and Aunt Martha. She could probably buy Friday Elevators and close the damned place down if she’d a mind to. The thought was tempting.

  Her only regret was that there was no one around to share in her good fortune. Not Aunt Olivia. Not Dan.

  She sighed. And shrugged. Oh, well. She wasn’t going to let any sad thoughts spoil her moment of triumph. She’d found the treasure. By damn, she’d finally found it!

  And she was going to go downstairs and dig it up and laugh while she ran her fingers through every last bit of it.

  * * *

  It was as dark and musty as a tomb down there. It was a tomb of sorts. Maybe not as rich as King Tut’s, but near enough for her, she thought as she held Hook’s mechanic’s light high. She’d tried a flashlight, but the darkness had swallowed up the pitiful beam. So she’d gone to the garage and found the brighter light. The long extension cord trailed behind her like a tail as she made her way to the spot she estimated to be directly under the dining table.

  The ceiling of the basement was so low—or rather, the floor was so high—that Tess practically had to duck-walk or scoot on her knees to get around in some places. She swiped away a cobweb and sneezed at the dust it stirred.

  She looped the lamp cord around a nail in a board overhead. It was probably the same nail Casey and Marsh had used to hang their lantern when they buried their treasure. Or did they have electricity then? She shrugged. No matter.

  When the light was secure, she picked up the short-handled entrenching tool she’d found in the garage and knocked away more cobwebs. She sneezed again. Wiping her nose on her shirt sleeve, she began to dig. In only a few turns of the shovel, she hit metal.

  “Tess!” a deep voice called out.