Most of the people had gone home, although a few good friends lingered on. The day had closed into night and the moon was ripe, along with the wheat.
Uncle Albert was in his secluded bedroom in the north wing of the house. When Albert came to stay, the family had given him the north wing. They said it gave them an eerie feeling, so they left it alone. Albert chose the last bedroom at the end of the bland, gloomy hallway. It was the one with the adjoining bathroom.
Uncle Albert wanted to start earlier but time wouldn’t let him. He came only yesterday. He knew it wouldn’t rain for another three weeks. The crops had to be harvested before they shrivelled up and crumbled down.
The family had not done anything about it, but only because Mrs. Crud was busy night and day on the phone calling everyone she knew just to make sure they were all right. Susie and Cal Crud were working hard enough getting their clothes on in the morning and their pyjamas on at night. To solve their problems they cut several holes in the extra large type garbage bags and wore them.
Downstairs, Mrs. Crud was saying that she was truly sorry that she hadn’t returned the set of copper cookware to aunt Lucille. She promptly hung up the call, snapped off the lights and ran upstairs. Mrs. Crud was terrible stingy, so she saved the mess for tomorrow.
Meanwhile, back in the dim light of the sleeping rooms, Susie was planning her escape. She wanted to be a lawyer in one of those big glass offices in Nashville. Tomorrow they would have to start the harvest and take Susie out of school, which would ruin Susie’s career plans. First thing she knew she had to do was tear apart her garbage bag.
Now that she was changed into clothes that made her look twenty years older, she took her bus ticket to Nashville and her essentials that she had packed previously in her travel bag and took off. She had to change her name. It was to be Sue Crudential.
Quietly she crept down the hallway. She slowed as she was passing the north wing. Gazing down the hall, she could not see Albert. She slipped past anyway. She grabbed some food when she got downstairs. Then took the kerosene lamp and lit it. She slipped out of the door with ease and stepped out into the night.
Uncle Albert remembered what brother Joe had said in earlier days, “Some day I’ll buy a farm with a shed and in that shed will be buried a box with all my treasure in the right hand corner.” Albert, always believing what older brother Joe said started digging. Poor Joe and family hadn’t even moved into the house when Joe was run over by a street car in Nashville.
As Sue was stepping along, she heard a faint digging sound. It was coming from the shed. She slinked over and peered through the grease stained window. It was uncle Albert. She saw him unearth a metal box, about the size of a bread box. She knew that it was the treasure old dad always talked about. As she stepped toward the door of the shed, she violently slipped on a banana peel she had carelessly tosssed there yesterday.
Her kerosene lamp flew out of her hand and rapidly began to set fire to the three thousand acres of unharvested land. She quickly got up and ran into the shed to confront uncle Albert. Albert jolted at the sound of the door opening and immediately turned around.
“What are you doing here Susie and where’s your garbage bag?”
“I am here to take that box”, she said.
“Oh no you don’t. I’ll kill you first”, he said.
“I’m the one closest to the door. Ill be out of here in seconds. Any longer in here and we’ll go up in flames. The fields are all on fire”, she said.
Albert gazed through the greasy window and saw his fifty percent share go up in a puff of smoke. So taken aback by the shock was Albert that he fainted. She had to think of her future, so she took the shovel and crashed it down over Albert’s head. That was that. Albert was dead. She scooped up the box and ran.
In a last minute assoication with her discarded reality, she turned around to see flames leaping up the side of the house where mom and brother Cal were sleeping.
Running aimlessly away from the extending flames, she suddenly fell into the artificial tiget pit Cal had dug up the day before. Just before the metal box hit her on the head, she realized that she wasn’t right for the job anyway.