The Case of the Old Man in the Mailbox Page 8

  Chapter 8

  Roll Film!

  Well, I must have slept really well that night because I woke up five minutes before my alarm clock went off, and I felt great. Energized by the thought of what the day might hold regarding Mr. Mathisen, I practically ran through the shower and jumped into my clothes and headed downstairs. I had plenty of time to eat breakfast before I needed to run out and catch the bus at the bus stop just down the street.

  Since I wasn’t running late for the bus like usual, I got to enjoy a bowl of cereal “the right way.” I start with a big bowl of milk and then add my Lucky Charms. Once I’ve eaten all of the cereal, I add more cereal to the leftover milk. I usually have about three bowls of cereal for one bowl of milk. Then comes the best part: I get to drink the sugary milk still in the bowl, which is now a rainbow of color instead of the boring white stuff.

  I tossed my empty bowl and spoon into the sink, grabbed my backpack off the chair next to me, and headed out the door to the bus stop. That morning, something incredibly rare happened at the bus stop. In fact, I don’t know if it had ever happened before. AJ and me were early, and Scooter was late.

  Since the bus went past AJ’s house, he rarely actually made it to the bus stop at all. He was always running out the front door, waving and begging the bus driver to stop. She usually would, even though it wasn’t a scheduled stop. Today was different, however, because last night’s excitement had apparently woken him up early and refreshed, just like me.

  As amazing as AJ’s timeliness was, the more amazing thing was that Scooter was late. The bus stop was at an intersection in our neighborhood, and AJ and me sat silently, watching the two roads, waiting for Scooter to appear on his street, running towards us from one direction and for the school bus rounding the corner and heading towards us from the other.

  The school bus and Scooter came into sight at about the same time. This was bad news for Scooter since the school bus was three blocks away—and so was he.

  As the bus arrived, AJ and me took as long as we reasonably could to get on the bus. Scooter was still a good block away. The bus driver sensed our concern and chimed in. “Oh, don’t worry, boys. I’ll wait for Scooter. He’s on time every day; it’s you two lollygaggers who are always late! I swear, one day you two are going to be walking to school.”

  Embarrassed, we quickly sat down and waited for Scooter to get on the bus. Scooter was out of breath as he got on the bus and jumped in the seat across from AJ. Seeing the astonished looks on our faces, he must have felt the need to explain himself.

  “I overslept! After you guys left, I decided to set up a camcorder on my window sill and film the blackberries while I was asleep, just in case our friend decided to leave early this morning. But when I went to turn it on, I realized the battery was drained. It took me forever to find the power cord. I didn’t get to sleep until almost midnight!”

  Now, midnight is not too crazy of a bedtime for AJ or me. In fact, I probably went to sleep after midnight at least once a week. But Scooter was a different story. He rarely stayed up past 11 p.m.—and only then by the assistance of his little pal, the energy drink. When he did stay up that late, it was not a pretty sight. Scooter inevitably got really silly.

  One time when the three of us went hiking and camping in the Olympic Mountains, we stayed up really late around the campfire, and then we went to our tent and told ghost stories for a few more hours. It was 1:30 when AJ and me decided to pack it in for the night. Scooter, however, wasn’t ready to go to sleep yet. So he tried to talk us into a midnight polar bear swim in the nearby lake. I was not about to get out of my warm sleeping bag, but Scoot somehow conned AJ into joining him and both of them went swimming in the dark. Fifteen minutes later, they were back at the tent, shivering and covered with leeches!

  The “leeches” turned out to be just wet leaves, but when you are cold, wet, and can’t see very well, it is easy to convince yourself that you are going to die from blood-sucking parasites stuck all over your body.

  Needless to say, that experience taught Scooter not to stay up late unless he had to, and it taught AJ and me not to listen to anything Scooter suggested once it was past his bedtime.

  Remembering the camping adventure, I wondered if Scooter was even coherent enough at that time of night to actually turn the video camera on. I didn’t want to insult him by asking if he remembered, so I asked a roundabout question. “So what did you see on the videotape when you reviewed it this morning?”

  “I haven’t reviewed it yet. Like I said, I woke up late and only had time to throw some clothes on and grab the camera on the way out.”

  He pulled the camera out of his backpack and turned it on. “We can just watch it play backward, since if there is going to be anything or anyone on the tape it will be near the end. I never let the camera rewind, so it’s at the end of the tape right now.”

  As he pressed the play button and then pressed the rewind button, we could see the blackberry bushes as well as the entrance to the tunnel we’d found and a little of the woods outside the “blackberry door.” The tape quickly rewound, and the morning played backward toward sunrise. The sky grew darker, but the picture was still pretty clear.

  Suddenly, Mr. Mathisen appeared, wearing a blue jacket. He was at the right edge of the screen in the woods and quickly backed up into the blackberry bushes. Because the bushes were so thick, you could see that something was in the bushes but nothing much more than a blue blob. After a few moments, the blue blob was gone. I assumed it was because Mathisen had disappeared into the shelter. Scooter stopped the tape. AJ was the first to speak.

  “Hot dog, Scoot, it worked! Let’s watch that going forward.”

  Scooter pressed play, and we waited the few anxious seconds for the moment we knew Mr. Mathisen would pop out of the hole.

  Scooter chimed in, “Look at the time in the corner—5:30 a.m. That’s about fifteen minutes after sunrise and shortly after my dad usually leaves for work each morning. He probably has my family’s schedule down pretty well in order to be able to come and go undetected.”

  Then, as expected, the blue blob appeared. AJ started in with the play-by-play. “Look, there’s Mathisen! I bet right now he just found our note! Do you think he’s reading it?”

  After a stern “Ahem” from Scooter and dirty looks from both of us, AJ shut up. We turned back to the small video camera screen.

  On the videotape, Mr. Mathisen slowly headed down the tunnel and then must have taken the right tunnel when they split, because a couple seconds later the blackberries moved and he appeared to the right of them. Then we could see him reclosing the door to the tunnel. Smart, I thought to myself, the door swings open towards the house to give him just a little added camouflage.

  He then moved through the woods about ten feet to his right and stood behind a tree. The tree he stood behind was at the far right edge of the screen, and I found myself wishing the film director would pan over to the right a little bit. (It is amazing how much you take for granted when watching movies.) Of course, since the camera had just been sitting on Scooter’s window sill all night, that was not going to happen.

  So we watched the half of Mr. Mathisen that we could see as it lingered behind the tree for about thirty seconds. Then, he moved on from the tree to the right and disappeared from the camera’s view completely.

  Scooter was the first to notice. “Hey, that tree—the one he was standing behind! That was the same tree that he went to when we caught him in the jingle-bell trap. He lingered at that tree for… what, thirty seconds? What was he doing?”

  “Maybe that’s his… uh… restroom,” AJ suggested. “I mean, when a man’s gotta go, a man’s gotta go!”

  “So when he was caught in the middle of our trap the other night, he couldn’t think of anything more important than to do his business right then and there?” I argued. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, the other day I thought he was just trying to hide behind the tree because
it was the only one remotely big enough to hide behind,” Scooter said. “But this morning he had no reason to be hiding.”

  The bus was now turning into the U-shaped driveway in front of our Junior High. “So do you think he plans on answering your letter, Scoot?” AJ asked as we ushered ourselves off the bus.

  “I don’t know, Aidge,” Scooter answered. (“Aidge” was our nickname for AJ, where we basically ran the A and the J together into a one-syllable word.) “But I have a feeling it is going to be a long day in class before we get the chance to find out.”

  If Scooter only knew how true that statement would be. I thought the school day would never end! Gym class wasn’t too bad because we played basketball the whole period. Geometry also flew by because our teacher realized we were a couple lessons behind the other geometry class, so after a brief lecture over two sections in our book, she gave us two homework assignments. I dove in and finished the second assignment right before the dismissal bell rang.

  I always try and get my homework done in class if possible. My parents think it’s great—they think I am finally living up to my potential to be a great student. The truth is that it has nothing to do with trying to be a good student. I just figure I have two choices while I am in class—waste time talking and goofing off or work on my homework. I choose the second option. That way, when I get home, I can go play with my friends, Scooter and AJ, because I have no homework to do.

  My dad is always saying, “Work hard. Then you can play harder.” I guess this is one way to apply it. Sometimes I wish the Keller twins would follow my example. Then we would have two more football players on a regular basis. Instead, their mom is always calling over to Scooter’s house and telling them they need to come home and get their homework done before suppertime. How embarrassing: to have your mommy call you out of a football game! Anyway, enough preaching.

  Where was I? Oh yeah, as I was saying, Gym and Math class actually went by pretty quickly, but the other classes seemed to go on forever—especially Biology.

  Mr. Newell is an older man who probably could have retired five years ago, but he loves kids, loves biology, and loves his nature films. Mr. Newell has a quirky sense of humor and tells at least five or six stale jokes every class period. It’s a well-known fact that for the past twenty years, he’s just recycled his jokes again every school year. The jokes always keep my attention, though, because I know every so often one of his jokes will stand the test of time and still be funny.

  Well, at least two, if not three, times a week, he makes us watch what we students like to call his “flap-flap” films. These nature documentaries are twice as old as I am. They’re the kind of film that is shown on a reel-to-reel projector. The projector has a full reel with a long strip of film spooled on it in the front and an empty reel in the back, and in between, the film snakes its way through the projector in order to be displayed on the screen in front of the classroom.

  We call these movies “flap-flap” films because as the movie ends and the credits roll, Mr. Newell stands up and points out what he thinks we need to remember about the movie. All the while, the projector keeps running. Soon the film completely unrolls from the front reel, makes its way through the projector, and then finishes rolling up onto the back reel. Except that the loose end keeps flap-flap-flapping as the reel continues to spin, until someone gets up and turns the projector off.

  Well, today was a flap-flap day—some documentary about the complexity of single-celled organisms narrated by a guy who was obviously pretty old back when the film was made, and if he were alive today (which is highly unlikely), even he would tell the school to buy an updated film. The temptation was—and always is—to put your head down on your desk, enjoy the dark room and the calming drone of the narration, and just fall asleep. But if you fall asleep in Newell’s class, he sneaks up behind you and slaps a yardstick down on your desk right next to your head to wake you up. I’ve seen him do it several times, and even from across the room, it’s pretty loud. I can’t imagine waking up from a good nap that way! Needless to say, I’ve never fallen asleep in Newell’s class (although I have come close), and I never intend to.

  So that left me with nothing but my thoughts for forty-five miserable minutes.

  I stared blankly at the dancing paramecium on the screen in front of me as my thoughts wandered to the video footage Scooter had showed us on the bus. Was Mr. Mathisen going to respond to Scooter’s note? Would he let us meet him? If so, would he be a cranky old man? A lonely old man? If he didn’t want to meet us, what should we do now? Perhaps the biggest question: what was so special about that tree that Mr. Mathisen would risk spending time out in the open? Did he really think he was hiding by standing behind it? Or was that just his designated toilet? Did he need an outdoor toilet? Did he have some makeshift toilet in his shelter down in that hole? If that tree was not a toilet, what other explanation could there be for spending time there?

  Did he drop something? No, he could not have dropped something twice in the exact same spot, could he? Or maybe he was picking something up? Yes. When he was going into the shelter, he left something behind the tree, and when he came back out, he picked it up again. But what could he possibly have that he didn’t want to bring down into that hole with him? Probably something that smells. Well, it appeared that all theories led back to bad odors of one sort or another.

  On the bus ride home from school, AJ, Scooter, and me began comparing our ideas about the video we’d seen on the morning bus ride. Scooter was thinking almost the same thing I was. (Great minds do think alike!) We both figured Mr. Mathisen must be leaving something at that tree before he descended into his shelter every evening—something he could not afford to bring down there with him.

  I was thinking it must be something with a strong smell; with what I figured was no ventilation down there, he would gag on the smell by taking it into a confined space like that. Scooter was figuring Mr. Mathisen had something too big to fit down the hole or too bulky to haul up and down the ladder all the time. Both theories sounded possible to me.

  We decided we would check the tree out when we got home. If we detected a lingering smell or an impression left in the dirt by something big, then perhaps one of our theories was correct. If there was nothing, then we were back to scratching our heads.