Sweet Surprise

By Nancy

"They do what?"

Hoss asked his question with such disbelief that I looked up from the book I was reading by the fireplace. He leaned on the dining table as he sat across from Adam, and his forehead creased in a heavy frown.

Adam, slumped in his chair with his legs crossed at his ankles, didn’t take his eyes off the newspaper he held. "They decorate a tree."

"Who does?" Joe stood from where he’d been laying on the fireplace rug, a lantern beside him so he could make hand shadows on the ceiling.

"In England."

"Aw." Hoss waved his left hand in dismissal. "That explains it."

Adam lowered the paper enough to peer at his brother. "What does that mean?"

"Well everybody knows those people over there do all kinds of strange things."

"Everybody? And who is everybody?"

"Adam," Hoss said slowly and with exaggerated patience, "ain’t they the people that have a queen and all that? Knights killing dragons that come out of those big lakes?"

"Seems to me that somebody else believed in monsters coming out of lakes one time."

"That ain’t the same thing."

"Hmm." Adam raised his newspaper.

Joe was beside Adam by then, and the eagerness on his face caused me to smile. Then frown. Joe and eagerness often equal disaster. "Hey. Adam. We could decorate our trees. Not all of ‘em, but some of ‘em out front."

"They don’t decorate outdoor trees, Joe." Adam lowered the paper again and smiled. "They decorate indoor trees."

Oh no.

Joe snorted in derision. "Everybody knows trees don’t grow inside."

"Everybody," Adam muttered as he repeated Joe’s word.

Joe jammed his hands against his waist and his chin rose. "Did you ever see a tree inside a house?"

Adam’s blue eyes sought me out and then he nodded. "I don’t remember it, but Pa said our friends in Ohio had a tree in their house for Christmas."

Hoss rolled his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "That’s just one of Pa’s stories."

Why did Hoss assume that my stories are fabrications?

"And your ma"– Adam pointed to Hoss–"set up a tree in the house the first Christmas that Pa and she were married."

"She did?"

She did.

"She did." Adam nodded and then returned his attention to the newspaper. "The royal family in England has a tree. They decorate it with candy–"

"Candy!" That was Joe.

"–and fruit–"

"Aw come on Adam. We ain’t gonna find fruit this time of year. Won’t have any until that pass opens up to California in the spring." That was Hoss.

"–and gingerbread."

"What is this . . . gingerbread?" Hop Sing asked from the end of the dining table, putting down the pencil with which he was writing.

Hmm. I hadn’t had gingerbread in a long time. I sipped the tea in my mug to stop my mouth watering.

"Ma used to make that." Joe leaned toward Hop Sing, his elbows propped on the tabletop. "It’s real dark and tastes real good and has these spices in it. And you can smell it cooking all over the neighborhood." Joe swung his right arm wide and almost hit Adam in the face.

I had another sip of tea.

"The thing is," Adam said, "if they prepare it one way, it’s a cake but they if prepare it another way, it’s cookies."

"Well, don’t that beat all." Hoss shook his head. "Hanging cakes and cookies on a tree."

"And candles," Adam added.

"No!" My shout came back at me from the far wall. All four of them looked at me in surprise. "No candles," I said in a slightly more controlled voice.

Joe ran to me and put his hands on the arm of my chair. "Does that mean we can put a tree in the house?"

Back at the table, Adam raised his brows and pursed his lips. It was a poor attempt at hiding a smile.

"A small one," I answered my youngest son.

"How tall?" He seemed to mistake my meaning.

"As tall as you."

Joe opened his mouth, I’m sure to say something along the lines of that not being very tall. But for once he thought ahead and realized what he would be saying. He narrowed his eyes at me and said, "Yes, Pa." Then he returned to the table.

I smiled and went back to my book. At least until Hop Sing asked how to make gingerbread. Then I looked back at the table.

Hoss was gazing up at the ceiling, thinking. Adam had his head tilted back and his eyes closed. Joe’s mouth was twisted to one side as he drummed the fingers of his left hand on the tabletop.

"Ma used butter," Joe said with assurance.

"Dark sugar," Hoss added.

"Flour. Saleratus." Adam snapped his fingers. "And vanilla."

"Seems like she put in some salt, but not much," Hoss said.

"And ginger." I spoke before I knew I had.

Hop Sing spread his arms wide. "It is very good to know what goes in gingerbread. But must know how much."

Hmm. Now we had a problem. Marie had never used a written recipe that I knew of.

I closed my book, stood and put it on the fireplace mantel, and then joined my family at the dining table. We spent a good hour but finally we’d reconstructed the measure of ingredients close enough that Hop Sing felt confident with our directions. He decided that cookies would be more sensible to hang from the boughs of a tree than cakes would. We agreed.

"Or," Adam said as he pointed his right index finger toward heaven, "we could make a house with it."

"A house!" Hoss and Joe exclaimed.

Hop Sing shot to his feet and waved his arms. "No, no, no. No house. Not enough ginger and we have no more until spring when mountains thaw."

I looked at Adam from the tops of my eyes. "A house?"

"Not a house house. A house. A little one made out of gingerbread cookie." He passed the newspaper to me. "They make them in Germany. Like the house that Hansel and Gretel found in the woods."

Hansel and Gretel. I decided not to state the obvious. But Adam read my mind.

"I know it’s a fairy tale, Pa. But people build little houses and they put icing on them and decorate them with candy."

"Candy!" That was Joseph.

Leave it to Adam to find something to plan and build in the dead of winter. I didn’t even look at the newspaper. I handed it back to him, shaking my head.

"Pa?" Adam lowered his head and gave me the look he’d used as a child when he’d asked please. "Are you forbidding us?"

Forbidding the building of a cookie house? I save forbidding for activities a bit more questionable. I closed my eyes slowly and said no, I was not forbidding them. The words were scarcely spoken before Hop Sing and my sons put their heads together and plotted the placing of a tree in our home and the assembly of a cookie house.

The next day, immediately after morning chores and breakfast, the boys rode out to find the perfect tree. I could stand on the front porch, my breath fogging in front of me as I looked out on the snow, and see plenty of young trees that would suit their needs. But the boys seemed to think they needed to go farther afield. They returned a quarter hour or so before the noon meal and although they stomped on the front porch until I was afraid the rafters would shake, they still tracked in snow. Somehow the tree, though, was snow-free.

The tree. It was taller than Joe, closer to Adam’s height. I let that go by. Hoss had come up with the idea to anchor it in a bucket of sand. The sand, it would seem, was from the lakeshore. Given how rocky that shore usually was it must have been all the sand available. To my disbelieving eyes, they positioned the tree alongside the fireplace. A well-timed, low-voiced warning from me caused them to relocate the bucket and its contents to the dining area, near the windows that look out on the porch.

The noon meal was a cold one, bread, meat, cheese, and dried apples. The hot tea did little to chase the chill after a morning working outside. Hop Sing was busy refining our recipe, muttering to himself that the proportions were wrong. "Would have ginger soup if follow this," he declared. If it had been hot, I would have eaten it.

By evening, though, the air was filled with the most amazing aroma. One that took me back to boyhood and then rushed me into the kitchen in New Orleans. I could almost feel the thwack of the wooden spoon on my knuckles when Marie caught me stealing . . . sampling . . . the cake while it cooled on the worktable.

Hop Sing had chosen to make cookies. He’d fashioned a hole in the top of them, through which we could string ribbon. We decided we didn’t want the tree overly decorated so we ate several cookies to keep them from going to waste. Adam and Hop Sing spent that evening cutting the larger pieces of gingerbread into the shapes needed for the building of a cookie house. Hoss and Joe tied tassels made of knitting yarn to the tree’s boughs and I oiled the harness leather that no longer seemed important to anyone else on the ranch.

A snowstorm hit the day before Christmas. We followed the ropes to the barn and corral. Did as few chores as possible. And sought refuge in the house, which greeted us with the scent of gingerbread, pine, and coffee. Lots of warm, rich coffee.

"What about the candy?" Joe demanded as we admired the tree.

"Ain’t no way anybody’s riding to the Trading Post to get candy to put on a tree, little brother." Hoss rested his hands on his hips and shook his head. "Don’t even think about it."

"I could make some," I offered.

I hadn’t seen such panic on my son’s faces since I’d suggested we dig a secondary well to fill the horse troughs last spring. It had only been a suggestion.

Hop Sing didn’t look distressed; he looked stern. "No Cartwright cook in this house."

"Hop Sing," I cajoled, "this is an easy recipe. Marie made it all the time and I helped her." Once. "It’s sugar, cream, vanilla, butter and pecans."

Oops. Pecans are plentiful in New Orleans. Less so in the Sierras.

"Pine nuts," I said after a quick glance at the crockery jar where Hop Sing stored them. "I can make pralines with pine nuts."

"Pa," Adam said gently, so as not to bruise my feelings, "you do a lot of things well. But you can’t cook." To hear him tell it, he had thrived as a child in spite of my cooking.

Fine. I admit it. The first batch, which was small because Adam had persuaded me to do a test of it, was a bit thin. But it made a nice sauce to pour over biscuits the next morning. Hop Sing’s biscuits.

The next lot, well, it came out a bit too stiff. Joseph was of the opinion that the clumps would make even better skimmers on the lake than biscuits. My biscuits.

But the third group. I must say – without a hint of conceit – the third batch of pralines was exceptional.

Hop Sing and the boys tasted one each.

Hop Sing smiled and nodded. "Very good."

"Ummmmmm!" Hoss said with his mouth full.

"Pa, these are the best I ever had." Obviously Joe didn’t remember his mother’s pralines.

I lifted my chin and turned toward Adam. Would he eat his words along with my candy?

My oldest son slowly looked down at the praline in his hand. He took another bite. His eyes widened and then they lit with mischief.

"Pa," he said wonderingly, "Christmas miracles still happen."

The End