The Everything Carry-All
A Young Adult Timeline Novel – by Richard T Harrell
Chapter 1
A tiny room and a big world
Montague’s Whatever-You-Want Antiques smelled perfectly stuffy. It was the kind of smell that enticed an explorer to look for treasure maps. But, if you didn’t much care for exploring or even exploits, it smelled like a wonderful old book ready to open on a rainy day. Gurtrude didn’t like it… the smell, that is. But she liked books and even books about explorers. She wasn’t sure what an exploit would look like and she would never become one herself. An explorer, that is. Never. Ever.
Gurtrude worked the counter at Montague’s Whatever-You-Want Antiques and, though she wasn’t always agreeable, she agreed with the store’s name. You could find anything here. And she was okay with that since it was her job and whatever most every customer wanted, they could take from the shelf on their own. But not always, and that bothered her. When they wanted something from the top shelf, or way high on the wall, like that painting of the fishbowl. Or if they wanted something from the loft upstairs, like the children’s toys and books, she wasn’t okay with that. Even though it, too, was her job.
But the one place she never went, the one place she never told anyone about, even if they hadn’t yet found whatever-they-wanted, was the bargain basement. She heard from the very few customers who discovered the bargain basement, and then wandered down the stairs that took them there, that, for everything you found in the main shop, there were four more of different sizes, shapes and colors on the shelves in the basement.
Gurtrude never went to the basement, even if it was technically a part of her job. Until that Saturday when her friend, Scully, who use a wheelchair to get around needed whatever-he-wanted. And that’s where Gurtrude discovered what an exploit was. That is when she became Gurtrude the Explorer.
Scully liked the small bookshelf for sale near the front window of Montague’s and he’d have been happy with it, except he liked things clean and in order. When things worked and looked exactly right, he was happy. He had lots of books and they were carefully set on his shelves at home in perfect order. All the blue books were alphabetized. All the green books were alphabetized. And so on. And, while this bookshelf worked like one, he decided in a moment that he didn’t like stickers all over his bookshelves.
It wasn’t that he had anything against stickers. He’d gotten plenty at school for reading, writing, keeping his desk orderly, and such. But, Scully kept his stickers alphabetized in a little square wooden box he had found earlier here at the Whatever-You-Want. He never put them on furniture, especially bookshelves. He couldn’t count the number of Happy Smiley Faces or apples with bites out of them or flags from countries he’d never visited. He’d never seen Fall Out Boys or the Jackson Five. He wondered who was supposed to Give a Hoot, or Don’t Pollute. He didn’t know how to locate Where’s the Beef? But, he was well aware that Frodo Lives!
The bargain basement was the one place in Montague’s he couldn’t navigate, so Scully pleaded with Gurtrude to please find the same kind of bookshelf minus the stickers. From the bargain basement. She finally gave in with a loud “AURRGHUUU” that trailed off at the end like it always did right before she didn’t want to do something, but did it anyway.
Gurtrude looked over the railing at the assorted rows of shelves, cabinets, hutches, and credenzas, anticipating they would shape-change into a monstrous maw as soon as she entered them. She carefully eased down the steps. They were wide enough and the railing on one side was dependable. But she was alone, with the maw. She wished Scully could come down with her. Or anyone else.
As she stepped onto the bare concrete floor, she quickly surveyed her surroundings. Lots of shelves, but none like the shelf that Mr. Sticker surrendered for sale at her store. From her position on the floor – remember, she had never been in the bargain basement before, ever – it didn’t look nearly as deadly as from way upstairs. There were long, rusty poles stretching into the shadowy ceiling and there were long white light tubes along each aisle. Some didn’t work and others buzzed and flickered, making the whole room feel like she was inside a giant insect.
But, at least there seems to be some order, and the rows of stuff hadn’t morphed or shape-changed. Yet. Hanging from the high ceiling were actually signs that said where stuff was. Down the row she first faced, there were vintage clothes, license tags, baskets, football shoulder pads, and a row of glass cabinets filled with tiny pastel statues of people with big teardrop eyes. The sign hanging over that row announced “Frozen Goods.” Don’t trust the signs, she filed away to add to her collective distrust of this enormous buzzing room.
Gurtrude found at least one more of the signs may have misinformed her, so she turned to the right to look at the opposite row. That sign announce “Fresh Shrimp.” All she saw were books, and books, and more books. She walked down this aisle since books usually were safe, as long as they stayed on their respective shelves. Every binding, every color, every size, and every shape filled the shelves. Still no empty bookshelf sans stickers.
Then she saw the next sign. It pointed to a double door that looked like one you might push on to exit a theater. And written on the sign in ancient fancy letters was simply, “Exploits.”
If Gurtrude had never wanted an exploit, she would have turned around and reported to Scully, “sorry, no sticker-less shelves here.” But, she didn’t. She experienced an emotion that, up until today, she’d never felt. One thing she never suffered from was curiosity. But seeing this sign pointing to who-knows-what, and Gurtrude was curious. And when she opened the door into what was a small lobby or waiting room, the light behind her reveal a dusty, beat-up, half unlatched suitcase. On it was a note. And on the note was “To Gurtrude.”