Free The House Without a Christmas Tree by Gail Rock

gas.
    â€œDad, can you take my bike in the back of the pickup? I need air in my tires.”
    â€œCan’t you just ride up and get it yourself? I’ve got a lot of errands to run.”
    â€œDad, you told me never to ride on flat tires. It’ll ruin them! And new bike tires are very expensive!” I could always get to Dad by mentioning money. It was the thing he seemed to think about most.
    â€œOK, OK,” he said, and I grabbed my coat and went out with him.
    Dad was always acting irritated about one thing or another, but I knew that was just his nature. Actually I believed he enjoyed my company, even if he wouldn’t admit it. Of course I did have quite a talent for annoying him, and sometimes it would flare up into a real battle. Grandma usually played referee and kept things from getting out of hand, and I was learning to watch my step around Dad and not provoke him.
    Dad was the quiet type, and didn’t talk much. He was tall and slender, and his dark hair was just beginning to gray at the temples, around his stern face. My mother had died more than ten years ago, just after I was born, and Grandma had come to live with us then. I knew Dad missed my mother a lot, and he hardly ever talked about her to me. Dad, Grandma and I had been a family ever since, and somehow our three generations managed to get along with each other.
    I always enjoyed going for a ride with Dad in his old, red pickup truck. He kept it well tuned, doing all the work himself. He didn’t think much of men who couldn’t tune their own cars, and besides, he hated spending any money that wasn’t absolutely necessary. He had owned the truck for a long time, but he was so careful with it that it was in better shape than many newer ones on the road.
    It had been tractor-red when he first bought it, and he had taken it in for a paint job when it began to look shabby. The body shop had run out of red paint and had mixed in a bit of yellow and the truck had come out a bright, orangey red flame color, almost sporty looking. Dad was furious with them, but he wasn’t about to pay for another coat of paint, so he drove around in our bright red truck, looking embarrassed and hoping the color would fade quickly.
    Neither of us was very good at talking about personal things with each other, and a rattling along the back roads gave us something to talk about … how high Olson’s corn was or how low the Platte River was or whether those were Holsteins or Guernseys in the Allens’ pasture or whether it looked like rain over to the West. It was always pleasant for both of us, chugging along in the old red truck.
    We pulled in at Tony’s Texaco Station, and Dad got the truck filled up while Tony checked my tires. I told him they had to be in good shape that day because Carla Mae Carter and I were going to ride out in the country to get fall bouquets, and it would be quite a trip. Tony said it was a good time for milkweed pods because all the fuzz hadn’t blown out of them yet. I asked if he had seen any particularly good ones anywhere, and he said he thought there were some over toward the river. He put my bike into the back of the truck, and I hopped in, and Dad started to back out.
    Just then a beat-up Model T was pulling in, and it bumped into the back of our pickup with a big bang. Dad got out, hopping mad, and so did the other driver, a gnarled, grubby old man who looked to be in his eighties. They seemed to recognize each other.
    â€œWhy the hell don’t you watch where you’re going?” Dad yelled.
    â€œYou backed into me!” shouted the old man. “You can’t drive any better than you can dig a pond.”
    â€œI never dug a bad pond in my life,” yelled my dad. “I ought to sue you for the money you owe me on it.”
    â€œThat money will just about pay for the damage you done my car!” shouted the old man.
    â€œDamage!” yelled my dad. “Hell, it