The Hunt – Chapter 1 – 6

Chapter One – The Invitation

6.

  “Come on, you two!  Get up now!”  Chuck yelled from the kitchen.

  “Well, I have to get going,” Linda smiled at him from her seat at the table.  “You have been a parent for how long now?”

  Chuck smiled at her from his leaning position against the sink counter with his coffee cup in his hand.  “Only ten years but it seems like never.  Coffee to go?”

  Linda rose from her spot at the table, smoothed her soft green skirt and walked toward her husband of fifteen years.  She slowly surrounded him with her arms and placed her head on his chest.

  “I don’t thank you enough, do I?”

  “Sure you do, honey,” Chuck answered as he hugged her back. 

  “How?” she looked up at him.

  “Just like this.”

  There was a sudden drumming of running feet echoing through the house heading straight toward them.  Two boys raced toward them, one blond like his father, the other a redhead like his mother.

  “Boys,” Linda cautioned them with her mom voice.

  Charlie, the younger blond boy, sat down at the table while the other, Fred, walked toward his parents.

  “Do you guys have to be so lovey-dovey all the time,”  Fred smiled as he threw his arms around the both of them.

  “You are all gross,” Charlie said from the other side of the room.  “What’s for breakfast?”

  Linda looked at her husband and shrugged.  “I gotta go.  You all have a nice day, Chuck,  what’s on your plate anyway?”

  “Oh you know, the usual. Nothing but laundry and television,” he hugged her hard and gave her a small kiss.

  Linda smiled, turned and kissed Fred on the head and walked over to Charlie and did the same to him.  She turned and headed through the kitchen archway into the living room to the coat closet near the front door.  Chuck hadn’t moved from his leaning post against the counter watching her all the way to the front door and now as she turned toward him, blowing him a kiss and waving, she opened the door and left the house.

  “Dad,” Charlie interrupted his focus on his wife.  “Breakfast?”

  He looked at his sons and said, “What day of the week is it?

  Fred, the oldest of the two by a year, responded, “Thursday.”

  “Right!  So, what’s for breakfast?” Chuck quizzed them.

  “Cereal,” Charlie yelled out before his ten year old brother had the chance.

  “Okay,” Chuck turned and pulled down three boxes of cereal from the cabinet.  “Who wants corn flakes, rice crispies or cocoa puffs?”

  “Cocoa puffs,” Fred took the box to the table.

  Chuck pulled three bowls from the cabinet and the box of corn flakes for himself, walked to the refrigerator to grab the milk.  He then joined his sons at the table.

  “So, boys, what’s your schedule for the day?”

  “You know, the usual,” Fred said smiling at his father.

  Chuck shook his head as he poured a little milk over the cereal in each bowl and pushed one to each boy.

  “I have a test today,”  Charlie mumbled through cocoa puffs he had stuffed in his mouth.

  “In what subject?” Chuck asked as he sipped his coffee.

  “Oh you know,” Charlie pulled the carton of milk toward him.  “The usual.”

  The two sons and their father laughed together.  Then Charlie took a swig of milk directly from the carton.

  Later, the house was quiet, and Chuck was sitting in his brown leather recliner reading the news on his phone.  He heard the slither of letters sliding into the house from the mail slot in the front door.  He pulled the lever on the side of the chair to right himself, got up and walked to the door.  He collected the envelopes from the floor and returned to his chair.  He straightened the mail and ranked them by size in his lap when he spied the postcard.  He separated it from the rest to look at it first.  He couldn’t remember the last time he saw one.  He did remember that his Dad would get them postcards from the cities he visited when he traveled for work.  Chuck smiled to himself about how he and his brother and sister would grab from their Mom the one meant for them.  Those cards would always display some feature of the city Dad was at and his scrawl on the back saying something like ‘if you were with me, I’d take you here, love Dad’.

  Chuck turned the card to the front to view a tall, full Christmas tree, smartly decorated with garland, flashy ornaments, and candles on every branch.  It was an old portrait and the tree is standing in a parking lot of a gas station, sporting the name Kerls’ Gas Station and Mini Mart.  He recognized it right away.  This postcard was from his hometown, from Candlelight.  He quickly turned it over as he wondered, who is sending him a postcard from Candlelight, Missouri?  His eyes immediately scanned to the bottom of the card.  No signature.  He then looked at it more closely.  His name and address were neatly printed on the left side that was separated from the message on the right by small thin diagonal line.  He began to read the message out loud:

  “You are invited to participate in a Scavenger Hunt.  If you are interested, please bring a quarter, an ornament, and a bar of soap to the location on the front of this card at 12:00 Noon on Saturday, May 7.”

  Chuck turned the card back to the front and leaned back in his chair, looked to the ceiling and asked no one in particular, “A quarter. An ornament and a bar of soap?  A scavenger hunt?  What’s going on?”