The Diary of Mattie Spenser - By Sandra Dallas Page 0,1

makes trips back and forth from the house to the Dumpster, or runs up and down the stairs of the carriage house—which never once housed a carriage. Hazel’s conservative father owned a car when he built the place, but he wasn’t convinced that automobiles were here to stay. So he erected a carriage house instead of a garage, in case horses made a comeback.

Since I try to keep track of where Hazel is, I knew that she was in the attic of the carriage house when she called out to me in an alarmed voice one afternoon. I was gardening, and I rushed through the gate that connects our yards, yelling up through the open hayloft door, “Are you all right?”

“Come up, dearie,” Hazel cried in a voice that held more exasperation than panic.

Nonetheless, I took the narrow stairs two at a time, and I found Hazel bent over in the center of the room, at about the spot where the new people intend to put in a hot tub.

“I’ve gotten so clumsy lately. I let the trunk lid slam shut on my dress, and now I’m caught. I can’t reach over there to lift the lid, and if I try to pull out my dress, I’ll rip it. Can you believe it, pinned to a trunk by my skirt!”

I carefully lifted the lid, and Hazel straightened up, examining her skirt for tears. I ran my hand over the soft black leather of the old trunk. It was handmade, put together with brass nails that had turned black with tarnish. The inside was lined with mattress ticking, now soiled and torn. An oval brass plate on the front of the trunk was engraved M.F.M.S., Mingo, C.T.”

“The trunk belonged to my grandmother. Those are her initials,” Hazel explained when she saw me rubbing my hand over the ornate lettering. “Mingo is in the eastern part of the state. It’s almost a ghost town now. The C.T. isn’t Connecticut. It stands for Colorado Territory. Grandmother came out here before Colorado was a state, which means sometime prior to 1876.” Hazel dropped the hem of her skirt. “No harm done, except to my pride. All that trouble for nothing, too. There wasn’t a thing left in that trunk. I must have cleaned it out last week.”

“Yes there is,” I said, peering inside. “Over there in the corner. It’s a book.” I reached inside and picked up a worn leather volume that lay on the mattress ticking. “Maybe it fell out of the lid when it slammed shut. There’s a sort of hidden compartment in the top. Look.” I pointed at a four-inch square of cardboard, covered with a trunk manufacturer’s label, which hung down from inside the bow-top lid. It had covered an opening. “That stick lying in the bottom of the trunk must have held the flap shut. See, it goes through the two brass loops on either side of the opening, to pin this piece of cardboard in place.” I held the label flat against the lid and pushed the stick through the two loops. “It’s pretty obvious, so it’s not really much of a hiding place.”

Hazel removed the stick, let the label flop down, and thumped the lid, but nothing else fell out. “Apparently not, because that’s the only thing in here. No hidden treasure.”

I didn’t laugh; I was too busy examining the little book I’d fished out of the trunk. It was well worn, but its marbleized edges were still a brilliant mix of red, blue, and black. A flap on the back cover of the book once held it shut by sliding into a leather loop on the front, but the loop was gone, replaced by a rusty safety pin. Hazel wrinkled her nose when I handed her the volume. “I’m so tired of old books. My family read them all the time and saved every one. Give me television any day.” Instead of taking the book from me, she pointed to a pile on the floor. “Toss it onto the heap with the rest of the trash, unless you want it.”

I started to throw it into the pile. Hazel had already given me a dozen leather-bound books, and they were in better shape than this one. If I kept on accepting things from her, I’d be in Hazel’s spot one day, having to sort through it all and dispose of it. Still, I liked the little book, and cleaned up, it would look pretty propped up on