The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Page 5
Chapter 5
Right Under Our Noses
The weekend was rather uneventful. After sleeping in until almost 10 a.m. Saturday morning, I moseyed on over to Scooter’s house and found AJ and Scooter were already tearing down our jingle bell trap. Apparently, Mrs. Parks was a little irritated at Scooter for having disassembled her Christmas wreath. It was a good thing she wasn’t upset about the yarn too, because it was definitely not reusable by the time we had it untangled from the trees.
Like most projects that Scooter takes on, it took us massively more time to put the wreath back together than it took to take it apart. We spent the majority of Saturday afternoon in his garage trying to wire all the jingle bells back together in a big circle. I went home that night with a “ringing” headache.
Sunday, I didn’t see Scooter or AJ, since I was busy with church for the majority of the day.
Monday was pretty uneventful, too. Scooter had to go with his family after school to his little brother’s swimming lessons. So I hung out with AJ at his house and wasted the afternoon playing his new flight simulator video game and speculating how Mr. Mathisen could have disappeared into thin air like he did Friday night.
Well, I had a real hard time sleeping Monday night. I had played video games way too long—every time I closed my eyes I saw jet planes zipping around. And I kept thinking about where that old man could have disappeared to in the woods. Pretty soon, I was seeing jet planes flying through the woods with Mathisen in the cockpit of each one!
I tossed and turned in my bed like I was on the junior-high wrestling team, and despite the fact that I had my ceiling fan on, I was sweating like crazy. Somewhere in the dark, I heard jingle bells start ringing, and I saw from across the lawn the old man tangled up in the yarn, just like he had been on Friday night. The bells started getting louder and louder, and a fog was settling into the woods so that the man was becoming blurrier and blurrier. The bells kept getting louder and louder and more in rhythm, and the woods were becoming more and more of a blur until with a simple click, the ringing stopped. A sharp pain shot through my right foot. I awoke with a jump to find my mom squeezing my toes—really hard.
She smiled as I jerked my foot away from her grasp. “You know, Tyler, if you’re so tired that your alarm won’t even wake you up, then maybe you shouldn’t stay out so late with your friends.”
I tried to shake off the morning mumbles and give her a coherent answer. “The alarm must not have gone off, Mom. I must have set it for p.m. again.”
My mom just laughed. “Oh, no, it went off for a good five minutes. I finally had to come in here and turn it off myself.”
“Really? I was dreaming about bells ringing in the woods, but I thought it was just a dream.”
“No, Sir, the alarm was going off right next to your head, and you didn’t even stir. I think we may have to have a talk with your dad regarding curfew. I don’t think you are getting enough sleep.”
I knew if Dad had his way, my curfew would be sometime shortly after supper, and he would also find it a good idea for me to get up at the crack of dawn, when he began work, and start studying then.
“After all, that’s when the mind works at its best,” he’d say. I had heard it all before, and I did not want him to have a justifiable reason for implementing either of those crazy ideas. So I jumped up and out of bed to try and fake that I was well-rested.
“No, Mom, that won’t be necessary. I’m getting enough sleep; it was just a dream that seemed a little too real. If anything, I now know I can’t eat chocolate before I go to bed.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “You had chocolate before bed? Well, did you at least brush your teeth, Son?”
I’m glad I had my back to her as I headed out of the room towards the shower; she would have really had a cow if she’d seen me rolling my eyes at her. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another.
“Mom, I am going to be just fine. And so are my teeth.” I shut the door to the bathroom and the conversation and started the water for my shower.
Although I was tired, the day still seemed to fly by pretty quickly, mainly because it was Tuesday. Tuesdays are always great days for me because we get to play tackle football after school. At the beginning of the school year, there were quite a few of us kids who wanted to try out for the football team, but our parents wouldn’t let us. Each one of us was given the same lame excuse that football is too violent and our parents were scared that we might get hurt. So pretty soon, all of us football rejects started a weekly Tuesday game of two-hand-touch football in Scooter’s nicely manicured backyard.
Well, if you have ever played “touch” football before, you know it doesn’t stay that way for long. Pretty soon someone “touches” someone else a little hard, and then every play becomes a harder “two-handed touch” than the one before until everyone is essentially playing tackle football. Somehow, the word got out to our parents that we were playing tackle football every Tuesday. (I am guessing it was Joel Mezick who ratted us out, but only because he couldn’t explain why he came home with a black eye.) To our surprise, our parents agreed that it would be OK to continue playing tackle football on Tuesdays as long as we did it under the watchful eye of Scooter’s mom. So that’s what we do. I find it funny that my mother won’t let me go and get in a dogpile with a bunch of boys with pads and helmets on, but she will let me knock heads with a bunch of rowdy boys with no protection. Go figure.
Well, this Tuesday we didn’t have a very good turnout. The junior-high band had their big spring concert coming up, so a lot of kids were still at practice. Eight of us sat on the back porch and talked while we waited to see if anyone else would show up late.
After about fifteen minutes, Sammy Cordova spoke up, “It looks like no one else is going to show up, so let’s pick teams and play.” We quickly chose sides and proceeded to dogpile, scramble, and victory dance the afternoon away.
At about 5 p.m., the team that Scooter and me were on was beating AJ’s team by a score of 77 to 63. (Normally, AJ’s too busy with real sports to play, but he was here because our school’s track team didn’t make it to the district competition, so their season was over.) We had a good two-touchdown lead, but they had the ball and were quickly moving down the field. I think we were all pretty tired—I know I was; it takes a lot of effort to beat AJ.
AJ was the quarterback (of course), and I could see it in his eyes that he was thinking end zone all the way. Joel hiked the ball. Sammy sprinted for the end zone over near the blackberries. I was playing Safety and inched my way towards Sammy in the corner of the end zone. You see, the secret to the Safety position is to stay just far enough away from the receiver that the quarterback thinks he can throw the ball fast enough that it will reach the receiver before you get there, but you need to be close enough that you can prove him wrong and break up the pass.
My strategy worked: AJ threw to Sammy. I took off. He threw a high Hail Mary towards the corner of the end zone. Sammy, taller than anyone on my team, could out-jump us all to catch the high pass. I had one chance.
The ball came down. I jumped up to meet it, arms flailing, hoping to distract Sammy. Some part of Sammy—I’m not sure what—crashed into my shoulder, and we both fell to the ground in a twisted mess.
I soon found out that my plan paid off. When I waved my arms, I distracted Sammy just long enough for him to lose sight of the ball. The ball bounced off his head and landed deep in the blackberry bushes. Sammy then came down on top of me, and we both hit the ground. Very hard, I might add.
Once the Keller twins saw that the ball was stuck in the blackberries, they decided to call it a game. Sammy, with his hurt pride and bruised buttocks, decided to call it quits, too. Soon everyone except Joel, AJ, Scooter, and me had gone home. The only reason Joel stuck around is because it was his football.
Scooter ran into the house and came back shortly, wearing long pants and carrying a baseball bat. AJ and me laughed as Scooter started swinging at the black
berry vines. For those of you who have never had to fight with blackberries, let me explain the best way to retrieve anything that gets “misplaced” in those prickly bushes. You take a stick (or bat in this case) and chop straight down at the mass of blackberries. You don’t try and chop them in half or anything, you are simply trying to beat them down low enough so you can step on them (wearing thick shoes, of course) to hold them down. Then you start chopping at the next section. You keep doing this until you have blazed yourself a nice little path straight to whatever got thrown or kicked or batted into the thorny bushes in the first place. You know, blackberries make the best shakes and pies and cobblers, but they sure can be a big pain in the… well, anywhere not covered by two layers of thick clothes.
After a while, Scooter had a fifteen-foot trail blazed into the blackberry patch to the football. He stretched out and grabbed the football and threw it backward over his head into the waiting arms of its owner, Joel Mezick. As Joel looked over his ball for any hitchhiker thorns, Scooter let out a loud screech and began high-stepping his way back towards us on the trail he had just made. Once he hit the safety of the grass, he just kept on running past us without a word and disappeared through the back door of his house. AJ, Joel, and me just looked at each other with puzzled expressions.
“What got into him?” AJ asked.
“I don’t know, but I don’t feel like tromping through those thorns just to find out,” I said with a chuckle. “My curiosity is not that strong.”
“Well, you guys can stick around, but I am through for the day. I’ll catch you guys tomorrow at school.” Joel turned toward the side of the house.
“Alright, Joel, we’ll catch you up on the latest Scooter freak-out session once we find out ourselves,” I said.
“Yeah, we’ll see ya, Joel,” AJ laughed.
I waved as Joel disappeared around the corner, headed toward the front yard. AJ and me started strolling toward the back door.
As we reached the back porch, Scooter opened the back door. Apparently, he had been watching us walk up. “So is he gone?” he asked.
“Is who gone?” I replied. “Did you see a ghost or something?”
“No, you dolt. Is Joel gone?”
“Yes, he went home. Why? What was all the screaming for?” I asked, still puzzled.
“Oh, nothing. And me sprinting inside was nothing, too. I just had to make Joel decide to go home without me flat-out asking him to.”
“Why did you want Joel to go home? What did he do?” AJ asked, as confused as I was.
“He didn’t do anything, guys. I just didn’t want him to see what I am about to show you.”
With that, Scooter headed toward his blazed trail through the blackberry bushes, picking up the bat again to beat down the vines that were already starting to lift back up. AJ and me followed blindly behind, still confused. Scooter walked in and stopped after about twelve feet and pointed to our left. A few feet off the beaten path—but clearly seen underneath the thorny vines—was a big metal plate. The plate was very similar to a sewer plate you would find in the middle of the street. It was about three feet in diameter, and it had a big metal handle sticking up on one side.
We were still a few feet away from the metal plate, but even from there I could see that the dirt surrounding the plate was compacted. But as I looked a little closer, a chill suddenly ran up my spine. There were large footprints in the dirt around the plate!