The Mailbox on 156
John Brook IV
The mailbox lay in the ditch. Eric gingerly stepped one of his flip-flop-covered feet down into the ditch and picked it up; turning the mailbox over in his hands, he inspected it for damage. The box was virtually unblemished, and Eric looked up naively expecting someone to be watching.
But there was no one. Only the hot August sun beating down on the white gravel road that made Eric squint as he thought whose shit list am I on.
A few, Eric could think of as he climbed out of the ditch. His most recent lover affair didn’t seem smart enough to mess with him this way. He hadn’t pissed off any neighbor’s. He stopped having loud parties at his home, opting to entertain his rowdy fraternity brothers at his lake house.
Being a loan officer at the bank hadn’t won him a lot of friends. The housing bubble burst peeved some customers, but they knew the risk they took with the loan.
This didn’t look like vandalism. Most likely something hooked the box, twisting it off. A farm implement, maybe. Eric placed the box in the bed of his truck, returning shortly with his cordless drill. Remounting the mailbox to the post he considered the ordeal a fluke.
But the next morning, as he was leaving for work, he saw the mailbox in the ditch again. This time obviously dented.
An image floated into his head: teenagers, bored from the monotony of their summer vacation, cursing back roads while smoking cigarettes they’d bought off an upperclassmen. The radio blasting, as one of the teenagers said, “Watch this,” while leaning out the car window, bat in hand, and smacking the mailbox like Ken Griffey Jr. The punks’ friends, oohing as wood and metal connected.
He would get more pissed if he wasn’t guilty of the same small-town shenanigans. A silly rite of passage for teenagers once the novelty of just driving wore off.
Eric was already going to be late for work. He didn’t have time to return to the house for the drill. After digging a minute under the backseat of the truck, he found a roll of black electrical tape and he jerry-rigged the box back on top of the post, using most of the roll of tape. As he went to put what was left of the roll back, he spotted a lone Band-Aid that had somehow come to reside behind the seat. Taking it out of its sterile wrapper, he placed it on the mailbox, before tearing off to work.
When he arrived home from work, the mailbox was still in place, faithfully holding his mail. He decided to leave the box as-is for a few days, allowing the culprit a chance to see their destruction was nothing compared to his perseverance. He figured an old target wasn’t as fun as a fresh one.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge as he went to change clothes. Then, went out to the horse lot and hollered for the girls who raced up to the barn. He stood there petting the horses in between sips of his beer, waiting for Rogers’s arrival.
Roger shoed Eric’s horses. Eric knew Roger had been in the armed service by a Cold War Veteran hat he wore like an order, but didn’t know which branch. By his age, Eric figured he had been in Vietnam, but had never asked. Eric had also heard wild rumors he’d worked for the CIA. Roger carried a cane most of the time. That “most of the time” meant that when he was in town, Roger’s hobbled leg deterred him from any work. But for cash money, in the right company, the limp became lubricated enough, he didn’t need his cane. Most people knew he didn’t use the cane around home, so it was suspected to be a gimmick.
“Hey, Easy-money.” Roger said through the rolled-down window after pulling up to the barn.
“Hey.”
“Band-Aid on the mailbox. Nice touch.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“Which former concubine was it?”
“Hell if I know.”
Roger’s knowledge of Eric’s conquests didn’t derive from Eric but other means, like the coffee shop. Roger loved fact-checking rumors about Eric’s love life, hearsay that was often sprinkled with facts.
“You want a beer?”
“Is it some of the microbrew bullshit?”
“Yes.”
“Then, no.” He said, opening the door to get out. “Well, let’s see, Racheal ended three months ago, after your buddy’s bachelor party got out of hand in KC. But I don’t think she’d know which end of the bat to hold. Yes, to me, this looks like the work of Brianna.”
“You would know better than me.”
Eric reiterated the happenings as Roger labored on the horses’ hooves. Roger shook his head every now and then, while mumbling a few curse words that were directed at Eric’s story or the horse Roger was working on.
“What you need is one of those game cameras,” Roger said through a gap made by two nails in his mouth, when Eric had finished.
“Great idea, except I don’t have one. You know I don’t hunt.” Eric didn’t hunt. The fact is, he had used hunting seasons to his advantage several times, swooping in on a lonesome damsel left alone to ponder where her boyfriend’s priorities stood.
“You hunt. Just not in the woods,” Roger said. It was comments like these that bonded their relationship. Light teasing thrown into conversation that paralleled his frat brothers’ conversations.
“When’s the last time you got laid, gimpy?”
“Spring of ’99,” Roger said. “You call the post office yet?”
“No.”
“It is a federal offense but pretty hard to prove. I tell you what: I got one of those game cameras. After I leave here, I’ll come back and hide it, looking at your box.”
“Cool.”
Eric fed a little grain to the horse as Roger gathered his tools back into his blazer. Rekindling with his cane, Roger’s limp was back as Eric paid him in cash before watching him leave.
Eric spent the rest of the evening on the porch, texting two different girls while drinking beer. One, he’d met in party cove. She had fake tits, lived in KC, and loved horses.
All girls seemed to love horses, which was a big part of his reason for having them. Of course he rode and enjoyed them, but girls’ faces lit up when he showed them a picture of his “girls” on his phone. The other girl he’d met on Match.com, and sometimes liked to have phone sex, but didn’t seem interested at the moment. So he had just kept up bland conversations with them in forlorn hope, while doing his best not to get them confused as he got drunker. Hungover the next morning, his head was throbbing when he came up the drive to what was left of his mailbox.
Are you kidding me? He thought, putting the truck in park. He immediately looked around for Roger’s camera, but couldn’t see it. He found the box in the ditch. Instead of crushed, it was shredded into shards mixed with electric tape, making it look like some huge smashed spider.
“What the…?” he said, stepping and then bending down to retrieve it, carefully holding his tie with one hand and clutching the remains of the box. It was blown apart at the rivets, the back nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t vandalism; this was sabotage. He suddenly really hoped Roger had returned with the camera. He looked around hard this time, trying to find it. But his eyes, feeling dry from his hangover, ached and he gave up.
“That old fart. He’d better not have let me down,” Eric said, dropping the box back into the ditch.
~ ~ ~
“They did what?” Roger asked a few minutes later on the phone.
“They blew up my mailbox.”
“Like Hiroshima?”
“Like what?”
“Jeez, really? You don’t know…never mind. They blew it up, huh?”
“Fuck yes. Did you put your camera out? I couldn’t see it.”
“Of course you couldn’t see it. Think I wanted someone to steal it?”
“Well.”
“I’ll come get if after a bit and look at what we got. Christ, Easy-money, I hope it was some good tail.”
~ ~ ~
Eric spent most of the work day Googling mailbox-related searches: fines and jail time possible, prevention, priced steel mailboxes, even a do-it-yourself mailbox that promised to break the juvenile delinquent’s arm when he vandalized your mailbox. But he read nothing about blowing up mailboxes.
During his lunch break, he stopped at the hardware store, purchasing a new mailbox and the ingredients for the DIY mailbox that promised to make regretful vandals.
When he got home, Roger was waiting on the porch. He showed Roger the items to make the vandal-proof box.
“You’re telling me you cut that three-inch PVC to fit the length of the box and then pour Quikrete in around it?” Roger asked.
“Then once it sets, you put it on the post. And when the punk slugs it with his bat, he’ll wish he hadn’t.”
“I don’t think that little ole post will hold a box full of concrete, slick. And more likely his mom and dad will sue you for medical compensation.”
“Whatever, dude. Where’s your photos?”
“I’ve got the SD card in my regular camera. Don’t get too excited.” Roger said, pulling the camera from his pocket and handing it to Eric. Eric flipped on the camera and started scrolling through the pictures. The first were of deer from last season that Roger hadn’t erased. Then, pictures of Roger walking away from the camera, Eric’s mailbox in the background, followed by quick flashes of cars zooming past with a couple showing only the rear-end.
“I think the cars were moving too fast for the camera’s speed. Keep going,” Roger added.
The pictures go noticeably darker, and soon headlights added such a glare that only the lights of the vehicles could be seen. Roger, looking over Eric’s shoulder, cleared his throat:
“Whoa, slow down. I think the next three you’ll want to see.”
Eric kept going until he noticed that in one picture, a vehicle was stopped, its headlights hampering any chance of telling the make or model. He scrolled some more and there was a picture with a flash. Evidently, of the mailbox blowing up.
“Son bitch. You can’t tell shit.”
“I told you not to get excited. I just wonder what they used to blow it up.”
Eric suddenly envisioned the teens again, gathered this time in one of their parents’ garage, unwrapping and taping gray sticks together as tightly as they could. The usually fun sparkler turning into a hillbilly explosive meant for the mailbox on Farm Road 156.
“A sparkler bomb.”
“As in fireworks?”
“Only you tape them together. I’ve made one before.”
“Isn’t that fortuitous?”
“I never blew up a mailbox.”
“You still made one. What’d you blow up?”
“A dead cow carcass.”
“What?” Roger asked.
Eric nodded his head. It was true.
“One summer me and my friend were working on his grandpa’s farm. When one of the cows died calving. We heard about sparkler bombs somewhere. We made it but decided that having a bomb was no fun if you didn’t blow anything up and decided to blow up the dead cow. We tried cutting her stomach to insert it in her belly. In our minds we pictured it being easy, like when Han Solo cut open that Tauntaun to keep Luke Skywalker alive. That bitch’s hide was so tough, our pocket knives wouldn’t cut it. We ended up digging a small hole kind of under its back. We light the fuse and ran. The cow didn’t really move much, but blew a big hole out its side, revealing its guts.”
“What the hell is a Tauntaun?” Roger asked.
“It’s this furry thing they ride around, scouting. You have seen Star Wars, right?”
“Nope.”
“Really? It’s a classic.”
“Casablanca is a classic. So what makes you think they used a sparkler bomb on your mailbox?”
“Teenagers with no payments and bad spending habits love things that go boom.” Eric said, handing the camera back to Roger. Roger tapped his cane on the ground a few times, then limped to a patio chair to sit.
“You realize you’re pretty much screwed, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Most likely it is teenagers, bent from boredom. If you put up a new box, they’ll just destroy it again, even your DIY anti-vandalism box. If it’s not vandalism, then it’s someone out for revenge, someone you humped and dumped, possibly. Or it could be…”
“Could be what?”
Roger sat in the chair with a knowing stare that made Eric wonder if perhaps his friend had more experience than just trooping around the jungles of Nam.
“Were you in Vietnam?” Eric asked.
“No, Grenada.”
“Then why don’t you wear a hat that says Grenada?”
“They don’t make them.”
Roger continued to stare at Eric.
“How’d you get your limp?”
“Can’t disclose that.”
Eric would bet on it now, Roger was some former government operative wounded on the job and placed in a relocation program in the rural Ozarks.
“You’ve been in more than just the military, haven’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Stop talking, Easy-money, and think.”
“Think about what?”
Roger cocked his head slightly and continued staring.
“Do I really have to spell it out? Who would be the most pissed that you live here?”
Eric’s mind swirled through his mental Rolodex of potential antagonists. He couldn’t think of any teenagers he had peeved. The neighbors seemed cool. If it was an ex-girlfriend, he would limit the possibility to three women. Brianna would be on the top of that list. Anyone foolish enough to break into his house to recover the things she’d left was crazy enough to blow-up a mailbox.
“Brianna?” Eric asked.
“You educated idiot. You can’t see the forest for all the trees. How’d you get this place?”
“Foreclosure, but so what?”
“So what? Your bank was the one who loaned Mr. Howard the money.”
“Bro, it wasn’t my fault he lost the place.”
“He might not see it that way.”
“So he beats the shit out of my mailbox, seems a little ridiculous, besides, Mr. Howard moved to Bolivar, I think. He wouldn’t waste his time driving over here just to destroy my mailbox.”
“Never underestimate a retired vet.” Roger said.
“Oh, yeah. You two are American Legion buddies. Call him up.”
“We haven’t talked in a while. And if it was him, I don’t approve of this behavior. The real question is how to catch the guy. The strikes are random.”
“I need a drink,” Eric said, leaving the porch briefly and returning with two Coors Lights that even Roger would drink. They both sat on the patio, sipping and thinking.
Eric still wanted to try his DIY anti-punk mailbox. Sure, they’d only destroy it again, but the idea of the little shit breaking an arm in the process gave Eric a small sense of satisfaction. But really in long terms it wouldn’t do. They really need to catch these guys red-handed.
Roger really didn’t care for Coors Light, but it was better than that microbrew. To really nab these guys, they’d need evidence: A license plate would be perfect. The game camera already proved it wasn’t up for the task. They needed to bait these little bastards and catch them in the act, which was going to require boots on the ground. They both looked at each other, obviously reaching the same conclusion.
“I’ll get the drill and go mount the new box,” Eric said.
“I’ll go home and feed my dog and be back.”
Three hours later, they loaded up into Roger’s Blazer with a bag of potato chips and the remnants of a twelve pack of beer. The sky was turning pink to black as Roger parked along the driveway between the house and mailbox. The summer humidity rushed in as he rolled down the windows and shut off the car. They both began to sweat. Eric leaned his seat back, and Roger cracked open a beer.
“So, dude, how long do you think this will take?”
“As long as it takes.”
“That’s a real macho answer. You do a lot of these with the CIA?”
“No.”
“But you did some kind of work for them.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s cool; I know how this stuff works.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sure, you got shot on the job and they relocated you to the Midwest: the last place some Russian hitman would be able to find you. Either that or the limp is a hoax to throw off the hitman when he comes to kill you, making him think you are weak before you karate chop his neck. Or maybe that cane pulls apart to reveal a knife hidden inside.”
“Like I said earlier, I can’t talk about it.”
“So you did work for them?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“So just tell me. Who am I going to tell?”
“OK, fine. You want to know so badly. It’s all history anyways, but I’m telling you this in confidence,” Roger said, taking a long drink of his beer. Eric turned sideways in his seat to face Roger, cocking one leg up into the seat as he did.
“I grew up back east and was recruited out of high school by the CIA. They sent me to college at Yale. I was on their polo team; that’s where I learned to shoe horses. I went to officer training school in the Army, then Army Ranger School. I was in Grenada. Killed some people or as we call it in the CIA, got my nose bloodied. Afterwards, I worked in espionage until the fall of the Berlin wall. Then I came back stateside and worked a desk job, mostly overseeing the tracking of offshore accounts. All was going good, when I got called back into the field. Bosnia had broken into full-out war, and I was called to help investigate supposed ethnic cleansing. One night, during a short visit in Paris, a colleague and I were coming back from dinner when a man tried to mug us. I had a pistol in an ankle holster. I pretended to fumble my wallet to the ground; as I did, my colleague went for his pistol hidden at the small of his back. The thug obvious didn’t have much to lose and shot him in the chest. As he swung to turn the gun on me, I pulled my pistol from my holster and fired two shots into his waist, but not before he got one in my leg. I passed out from the blood lost and woke up the next morning in the hospital. The bullet shattered my femur. Nowadays I would have recovered without a limp. Back then, it forced my retirement. I moved here for the cheap cost of living and a girl I once knew that was a professor at SMSU.”
“Holy shit, are you for real?”
“No, I fell off a dock at IWX trucking when some knucklehead lost control of a forklift. I sued, and because the knucklehead was the owner’s nephew, they settled out of court. Part of my settlement states I can’t talk about it. Christ, Easy-money.”
“So you weren’t in Grenada?”
“I was in Grenada. I was an Army Ranger.”
“But you weren’t in the CIA.”
“Where’s those potato chips?” Roger said, cracking open another beer. “Damn, this stuff is tastin’ pretty good.”
Eric reseated himself correctly and grabbed the chip bag from between his feet. He pulled the bag open, thinking both stories were probably a lie. He heard Roger be windy before. They sat there eating chips, watching the occasional car cruise by. Finally, when Eric’s butt had gone totally numb, he asked Roger how long he wanted to stay.
“Until they show up.”
Eric’s patience lasted another twenty minutes.
“It’s only eleven-thirty,” Roger said as Eric got out of the truck, preparing to walk back to his house.
“They’re probably home in…”
Eric’s statement was cut short by a pair of headlights bouncing down the road from a high rate of speed. Roger turned to look at the oncoming lights.
As the vehicle approached, heavy bass music could be heard drifting across the pasture.
“That’s them.”
“How do you know?” Roger asked.
“I just know,” Eric said, climbing back in his seat. Roger put his hand on the key ready to start the chase. The truck flew by, leaving dust in the air, and the mailbox in place. Eric waited another ten minutes, thinking they might circle back, before climbing out of the truck.
“I’m going home,” he said.
“Me too,” Roger answered.
The next morning the box was gone. Eric found it in the ditch, smashed. When the post office opened at nine, Eric was in line to request a PO Box.
John Brook IV
The mailbox lay in the ditch. Eric gingerly stepped one of his flip-flop-covered feet down into the ditch and picked it up; turning the mailbox over in his hands, he inspected it for damage. The box was virtually unblemished, and Eric looked up naively expecting someone to be watching.
But there was no one. Only the hot August sun beating down on the white gravel road that made Eric squint as he thought whose shit list am I on.
A few, Eric could think of as he climbed out of the ditch. His most recent lover affair didn’t seem smart enough to mess with him this way. He hadn’t pissed off any neighbor’s. He stopped having loud parties at his home, opting to entertain his rowdy fraternity brothers at his lake house.
Being a loan officer at the bank hadn’t won him a lot of friends. The housing bubble burst peeved some customers, but they knew the risk they took with the loan.
This didn’t look like vandalism. Most likely something hooked the box, twisting it off. A farm implement, maybe. Eric placed the box in the bed of his truck, returning shortly with his cordless drill. Remounting the mailbox to the post he considered the ordeal a fluke.
But the next morning, as he was leaving for work, he saw the mailbox in the ditch again. This time obviously dented.
An image floated into his head: teenagers, bored from the monotony of their summer vacation, cursing back roads while smoking cigarettes they’d bought off an upperclassmen. The radio blasting, as one of the teenagers said, “Watch this,” while leaning out the car window, bat in hand, and smacking the mailbox like Ken Griffey Jr. The punks’ friends, oohing as wood and metal connected.
He would get more pissed if he wasn’t guilty of the same small-town shenanigans. A silly rite of passage for teenagers once the novelty of just driving wore off.
Eric was already going to be late for work. He didn’t have time to return to the house for the drill. After digging a minute under the backseat of the truck, he found a roll of black electrical tape and he jerry-rigged the box back on top of the post, using most of the roll of tape. As he went to put what was left of the roll back, he spotted a lone Band-Aid that had somehow come to reside behind the seat. Taking it out of its sterile wrapper, he placed it on the mailbox, before tearing off to work.
When he arrived home from work, the mailbox was still in place, faithfully holding his mail. He decided to leave the box as-is for a few days, allowing the culprit a chance to see their destruction was nothing compared to his perseverance. He figured an old target wasn’t as fun as a fresh one.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge as he went to change clothes. Then, went out to the horse lot and hollered for the girls who raced up to the barn. He stood there petting the horses in between sips of his beer, waiting for Rogers’s arrival.
Roger shoed Eric’s horses. Eric knew Roger had been in the armed service by a Cold War Veteran hat he wore like an order, but didn’t know which branch. By his age, Eric figured he had been in Vietnam, but had never asked. Eric had also heard wild rumors he’d worked for the CIA. Roger carried a cane most of the time. That “most of the time” meant that when he was in town, Roger’s hobbled leg deterred him from any work. But for cash money, in the right company, the limp became lubricated enough, he didn’t need his cane. Most people knew he didn’t use the cane around home, so it was suspected to be a gimmick.
“Hey, Easy-money.” Roger said through the rolled-down window after pulling up to the barn.
“Hey.”
“Band-Aid on the mailbox. Nice touch.”
“Thanks for noticing.”
“Which former concubine was it?”
“Hell if I know.”
Roger’s knowledge of Eric’s conquests didn’t derive from Eric but other means, like the coffee shop. Roger loved fact-checking rumors about Eric’s love life, hearsay that was often sprinkled with facts.
“You want a beer?”
“Is it some of the microbrew bullshit?”
“Yes.”
“Then, no.” He said, opening the door to get out. “Well, let’s see, Racheal ended three months ago, after your buddy’s bachelor party got out of hand in KC. But I don’t think she’d know which end of the bat to hold. Yes, to me, this looks like the work of Brianna.”
“You would know better than me.”
Eric reiterated the happenings as Roger labored on the horses’ hooves. Roger shook his head every now and then, while mumbling a few curse words that were directed at Eric’s story or the horse Roger was working on.
“What you need is one of those game cameras,” Roger said through a gap made by two nails in his mouth, when Eric had finished.
“Great idea, except I don’t have one. You know I don’t hunt.” Eric didn’t hunt. The fact is, he had used hunting seasons to his advantage several times, swooping in on a lonesome damsel left alone to ponder where her boyfriend’s priorities stood.
“You hunt. Just not in the woods,” Roger said. It was comments like these that bonded their relationship. Light teasing thrown into conversation that paralleled his frat brothers’ conversations.
“When’s the last time you got laid, gimpy?”
“Spring of ’99,” Roger said. “You call the post office yet?”
“No.”
“It is a federal offense but pretty hard to prove. I tell you what: I got one of those game cameras. After I leave here, I’ll come back and hide it, looking at your box.”
“Cool.”
Eric fed a little grain to the horse as Roger gathered his tools back into his blazer. Rekindling with his cane, Roger’s limp was back as Eric paid him in cash before watching him leave.
Eric spent the rest of the evening on the porch, texting two different girls while drinking beer. One, he’d met in party cove. She had fake tits, lived in KC, and loved horses.
All girls seemed to love horses, which was a big part of his reason for having them. Of course he rode and enjoyed them, but girls’ faces lit up when he showed them a picture of his “girls” on his phone. The other girl he’d met on Match.com, and sometimes liked to have phone sex, but didn’t seem interested at the moment. So he had just kept up bland conversations with them in forlorn hope, while doing his best not to get them confused as he got drunker. Hungover the next morning, his head was throbbing when he came up the drive to what was left of his mailbox.
Are you kidding me? He thought, putting the truck in park. He immediately looked around for Roger’s camera, but couldn’t see it. He found the box in the ditch. Instead of crushed, it was shredded into shards mixed with electric tape, making it look like some huge smashed spider.
“What the…?” he said, stepping and then bending down to retrieve it, carefully holding his tie with one hand and clutching the remains of the box. It was blown apart at the rivets, the back nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t vandalism; this was sabotage. He suddenly really hoped Roger had returned with the camera. He looked around hard this time, trying to find it. But his eyes, feeling dry from his hangover, ached and he gave up.
“That old fart. He’d better not have let me down,” Eric said, dropping the box back into the ditch.
~ ~ ~
“They did what?” Roger asked a few minutes later on the phone.
“They blew up my mailbox.”
“Like Hiroshima?”
“Like what?”
“Jeez, really? You don’t know…never mind. They blew it up, huh?”
“Fuck yes. Did you put your camera out? I couldn’t see it.”
“Of course you couldn’t see it. Think I wanted someone to steal it?”
“Well.”
“I’ll come get if after a bit and look at what we got. Christ, Easy-money, I hope it was some good tail.”
~ ~ ~
Eric spent most of the work day Googling mailbox-related searches: fines and jail time possible, prevention, priced steel mailboxes, even a do-it-yourself mailbox that promised to break the juvenile delinquent’s arm when he vandalized your mailbox. But he read nothing about blowing up mailboxes.
During his lunch break, he stopped at the hardware store, purchasing a new mailbox and the ingredients for the DIY mailbox that promised to make regretful vandals.
When he got home, Roger was waiting on the porch. He showed Roger the items to make the vandal-proof box.
“You’re telling me you cut that three-inch PVC to fit the length of the box and then pour Quikrete in around it?” Roger asked.
“Then once it sets, you put it on the post. And when the punk slugs it with his bat, he’ll wish he hadn’t.”
“I don’t think that little ole post will hold a box full of concrete, slick. And more likely his mom and dad will sue you for medical compensation.”
“Whatever, dude. Where’s your photos?”
“I’ve got the SD card in my regular camera. Don’t get too excited.” Roger said, pulling the camera from his pocket and handing it to Eric. Eric flipped on the camera and started scrolling through the pictures. The first were of deer from last season that Roger hadn’t erased. Then, pictures of Roger walking away from the camera, Eric’s mailbox in the background, followed by quick flashes of cars zooming past with a couple showing only the rear-end.
“I think the cars were moving too fast for the camera’s speed. Keep going,” Roger added.
The pictures go noticeably darker, and soon headlights added such a glare that only the lights of the vehicles could be seen. Roger, looking over Eric’s shoulder, cleared his throat:
“Whoa, slow down. I think the next three you’ll want to see.”
Eric kept going until he noticed that in one picture, a vehicle was stopped, its headlights hampering any chance of telling the make or model. He scrolled some more and there was a picture with a flash. Evidently, of the mailbox blowing up.
“Son bitch. You can’t tell shit.”
“I told you not to get excited. I just wonder what they used to blow it up.”
Eric suddenly envisioned the teens again, gathered this time in one of their parents’ garage, unwrapping and taping gray sticks together as tightly as they could. The usually fun sparkler turning into a hillbilly explosive meant for the mailbox on Farm Road 156.
“A sparkler bomb.”
“As in fireworks?”
“Only you tape them together. I’ve made one before.”
“Isn’t that fortuitous?”
“I never blew up a mailbox.”
“You still made one. What’d you blow up?”
“A dead cow carcass.”
“What?” Roger asked.
Eric nodded his head. It was true.
“One summer me and my friend were working on his grandpa’s farm. When one of the cows died calving. We heard about sparkler bombs somewhere. We made it but decided that having a bomb was no fun if you didn’t blow anything up and decided to blow up the dead cow. We tried cutting her stomach to insert it in her belly. In our minds we pictured it being easy, like when Han Solo cut open that Tauntaun to keep Luke Skywalker alive. That bitch’s hide was so tough, our pocket knives wouldn’t cut it. We ended up digging a small hole kind of under its back. We light the fuse and ran. The cow didn’t really move much, but blew a big hole out its side, revealing its guts.”
“What the hell is a Tauntaun?” Roger asked.
“It’s this furry thing they ride around, scouting. You have seen Star Wars, right?”
“Nope.”
“Really? It’s a classic.”
“Casablanca is a classic. So what makes you think they used a sparkler bomb on your mailbox?”
“Teenagers with no payments and bad spending habits love things that go boom.” Eric said, handing the camera back to Roger. Roger tapped his cane on the ground a few times, then limped to a patio chair to sit.
“You realize you’re pretty much screwed, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Most likely it is teenagers, bent from boredom. If you put up a new box, they’ll just destroy it again, even your DIY anti-vandalism box. If it’s not vandalism, then it’s someone out for revenge, someone you humped and dumped, possibly. Or it could be…”
“Could be what?”
Roger sat in the chair with a knowing stare that made Eric wonder if perhaps his friend had more experience than just trooping around the jungles of Nam.
“Were you in Vietnam?” Eric asked.
“No, Grenada.”
“Then why don’t you wear a hat that says Grenada?”
“They don’t make them.”
Roger continued to stare at Eric.
“How’d you get your limp?”
“Can’t disclose that.”
Eric would bet on it now, Roger was some former government operative wounded on the job and placed in a relocation program in the rural Ozarks.
“You’ve been in more than just the military, haven’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? Stop talking, Easy-money, and think.”
“Think about what?”
Roger cocked his head slightly and continued staring.
“Do I really have to spell it out? Who would be the most pissed that you live here?”
Eric’s mind swirled through his mental Rolodex of potential antagonists. He couldn’t think of any teenagers he had peeved. The neighbors seemed cool. If it was an ex-girlfriend, he would limit the possibility to three women. Brianna would be on the top of that list. Anyone foolish enough to break into his house to recover the things she’d left was crazy enough to blow-up a mailbox.
“Brianna?” Eric asked.
“You educated idiot. You can’t see the forest for all the trees. How’d you get this place?”
“Foreclosure, but so what?”
“So what? Your bank was the one who loaned Mr. Howard the money.”
“Bro, it wasn’t my fault he lost the place.”
“He might not see it that way.”
“So he beats the shit out of my mailbox, seems a little ridiculous, besides, Mr. Howard moved to Bolivar, I think. He wouldn’t waste his time driving over here just to destroy my mailbox.”
“Never underestimate a retired vet.” Roger said.
“Oh, yeah. You two are American Legion buddies. Call him up.”
“We haven’t talked in a while. And if it was him, I don’t approve of this behavior. The real question is how to catch the guy. The strikes are random.”
“I need a drink,” Eric said, leaving the porch briefly and returning with two Coors Lights that even Roger would drink. They both sat on the patio, sipping and thinking.
Eric still wanted to try his DIY anti-punk mailbox. Sure, they’d only destroy it again, but the idea of the little shit breaking an arm in the process gave Eric a small sense of satisfaction. But really in long terms it wouldn’t do. They really need to catch these guys red-handed.
Roger really didn’t care for Coors Light, but it was better than that microbrew. To really nab these guys, they’d need evidence: A license plate would be perfect. The game camera already proved it wasn’t up for the task. They needed to bait these little bastards and catch them in the act, which was going to require boots on the ground. They both looked at each other, obviously reaching the same conclusion.
“I’ll get the drill and go mount the new box,” Eric said.
“I’ll go home and feed my dog and be back.”
Three hours later, they loaded up into Roger’s Blazer with a bag of potato chips and the remnants of a twelve pack of beer. The sky was turning pink to black as Roger parked along the driveway between the house and mailbox. The summer humidity rushed in as he rolled down the windows and shut off the car. They both began to sweat. Eric leaned his seat back, and Roger cracked open a beer.
“So, dude, how long do you think this will take?”
“As long as it takes.”
“That’s a real macho answer. You do a lot of these with the CIA?”
“No.”
“But you did some kind of work for them.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s cool; I know how this stuff works.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sure, you got shot on the job and they relocated you to the Midwest: the last place some Russian hitman would be able to find you. Either that or the limp is a hoax to throw off the hitman when he comes to kill you, making him think you are weak before you karate chop his neck. Or maybe that cane pulls apart to reveal a knife hidden inside.”
“Like I said earlier, I can’t talk about it.”
“So you did work for them?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“So just tell me. Who am I going to tell?”
“OK, fine. You want to know so badly. It’s all history anyways, but I’m telling you this in confidence,” Roger said, taking a long drink of his beer. Eric turned sideways in his seat to face Roger, cocking one leg up into the seat as he did.
“I grew up back east and was recruited out of high school by the CIA. They sent me to college at Yale. I was on their polo team; that’s where I learned to shoe horses. I went to officer training school in the Army, then Army Ranger School. I was in Grenada. Killed some people or as we call it in the CIA, got my nose bloodied. Afterwards, I worked in espionage until the fall of the Berlin wall. Then I came back stateside and worked a desk job, mostly overseeing the tracking of offshore accounts. All was going good, when I got called back into the field. Bosnia had broken into full-out war, and I was called to help investigate supposed ethnic cleansing. One night, during a short visit in Paris, a colleague and I were coming back from dinner when a man tried to mug us. I had a pistol in an ankle holster. I pretended to fumble my wallet to the ground; as I did, my colleague went for his pistol hidden at the small of his back. The thug obvious didn’t have much to lose and shot him in the chest. As he swung to turn the gun on me, I pulled my pistol from my holster and fired two shots into his waist, but not before he got one in my leg. I passed out from the blood lost and woke up the next morning in the hospital. The bullet shattered my femur. Nowadays I would have recovered without a limp. Back then, it forced my retirement. I moved here for the cheap cost of living and a girl I once knew that was a professor at SMSU.”
“Holy shit, are you for real?”
“No, I fell off a dock at IWX trucking when some knucklehead lost control of a forklift. I sued, and because the knucklehead was the owner’s nephew, they settled out of court. Part of my settlement states I can’t talk about it. Christ, Easy-money.”
“So you weren’t in Grenada?”
“I was in Grenada. I was an Army Ranger.”
“But you weren’t in the CIA.”
“Where’s those potato chips?” Roger said, cracking open another beer. “Damn, this stuff is tastin’ pretty good.”
Eric reseated himself correctly and grabbed the chip bag from between his feet. He pulled the bag open, thinking both stories were probably a lie. He heard Roger be windy before. They sat there eating chips, watching the occasional car cruise by. Finally, when Eric’s butt had gone totally numb, he asked Roger how long he wanted to stay.
“Until they show up.”
Eric’s patience lasted another twenty minutes.
“It’s only eleven-thirty,” Roger said as Eric got out of the truck, preparing to walk back to his house.
“They’re probably home in…”
Eric’s statement was cut short by a pair of headlights bouncing down the road from a high rate of speed. Roger turned to look at the oncoming lights.
As the vehicle approached, heavy bass music could be heard drifting across the pasture.
“That’s them.”
“How do you know?” Roger asked.
“I just know,” Eric said, climbing back in his seat. Roger put his hand on the key ready to start the chase. The truck flew by, leaving dust in the air, and the mailbox in place. Eric waited another ten minutes, thinking they might circle back, before climbing out of the truck.
“I’m going home,” he said.
“Me too,” Roger answered.
The next morning the box was gone. Eric found it in the ditch, smashed. When the post office opened at nine, Eric was in line to request a PO Box.
