Maybe It's For You

“Damn drone! It missed the porch again! I’ve seen paper boys with better aim!”

“Calm down Grandpa. I’ll go out and get it.” Dusty went out and watched the drone drift away before retrieving the box from the lawn. It was about big enough to hold your average sized cat.

“What company is it from?” barked Grandpa Barry.

Dusty spun the box around. “It doesn’t say.”

“Of course it does. Gimme that!” Barry grabbed the box and then slowly and methodically examined every side of it. Twice. “Huh. It doesn’t say.”

Dusty raised his eyes to the ceiling and twiddled his thumbs. Quietly.

“Legally, the name of the drone company is required to be on the box you know.”

“Yes I do,” replied Dusty.

“Huh,” said Barry again. Where’s your grandma?”

“Maybe she’s in the box.”

Grandpa Barry gave him ‘the look’. Dusty went to find her.

When they returned she was wiping floury hands on her apron, clearly annoyed.

Barry held up the box like it was ‘Exhibit A’. “What have you ordered?” he demanded.

He should have known better.

Grandma Nadine folded her hands and put them under her chin. “Well, Your Honor,” she said sweetly, “I ordered a dead cat.”

Dusty dropped to the floor laughing.

Then the hammer came down.

“I order lots of stuff, mostly to make your easy damn life even easier! If you’re so interested in what's in that particular box, go ahead and open it because really, I have no idea.” With that she stepped over Dusty and stormed out of the room.

Barry pondered a moment. “Too light to be a dead cat,” he announced.

For Dusty’s part he was happy he hadn’t gotten up because he was pretty sure he would have fallen right back down laughing. One thing about Grandma Nadine and Grandpa Barry, they weren’t boring.

Once Dusty was on his feet Barry said, “Dusty, go find me a goddam scissors so I can open this.”

Dusty already knew that a goddam scissors would be much better than a regular scissors for opening the box so he went to find a goddam scissors.

Once he handed Grandpa Barry the goddam scissors he carefully placed the box firmly on his knees and with extreme exactitude sliced through the tape. Dusty had seen this episode before, so for him it was a lengthy and tedious rerun.

But once Barry opened the lid, if Dusty would have been asked he would have said, “Well, I didn’t see that coming!”

So after he and Grandpa Barry stood with their mouth’s agape for the appropriate amount of time, Dusty knew exactly what would come next.

“Go get your Grandma.” And though he didn’t want to go and get his grandma again so soon after the previous eruption, he also knew it was the only thing that made sense.

So a floury, aproned, annoyed Grandma Nadine followed Dusty into the room, glanced into the box and stood with mouth agape until Grandpa Barry demanded, “Did you order that?”

To which Grandma Nadine replied, “Well Barry, before I can answer your question you’re going to have to tell me what THAT is.”

This silenced the assembled crowd of three normally very opinionated human beings, for quite some time.

Finally Grandpa Barry said, “Can we agree that it’s a book?” Nadine and Dusty looked at each other and nodded tentatively, uncertainly.

“It looks like a book,” ventured Dusty, “but it’s, you know…” he trailed off.

“It’s deep,” said Nadine, “like the ocean.”

“Yeah,” agreed Dusty, “like the ocean”.

The other two nodded.

“And I see things in it.”

They nodded again. Nobody seemed ready to say what they saw.

“Dusty, go out and look around on the lawn,” said Barry, scratching his chin. “Maybe you missed something.”

Dusty sighed. He knew he hadn’t missed anything, but he did as he was told. The midday sun beat down on the brown lawn, but there was nothing else there. He heard the hiss of Mrs. Emerson’s sprinkler trying with grand futility to beat back the drought. He looked skyward for the drone he knew wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. But he felt something. At least he felt like he felt something. Maybe a tingling of his skin, no, his whole self seemed to be pulsing with energy. Maybe it was always there and he just didn’t notice it. He was sure though, that somehow his world had just changed.

A cat on the street walked by, stopped and stared at him for a moment, and then walked on.

When he got back in Barry was grandfathersplaining to Grandma Nadine how it was a felony for a drone company not to put it’s seal and a qr code on all packages since the Valencia Bombings, and she said she hoped this wasn’t a bomb and they both turned and stared at it.

Dusty was about to ask them if they felt what he felt, but he couldn’t think of good words to say it so then he felt stupid and said nothing. “I hope it’s not a bomb too,” he contributed, feeling even more stupid. Then he said, “Isn’t the question who sent in and why?”

“That’s the million dollar question,” agreed Grandma Nadine.

“Unless you adjust for inflation,” muttered Grandpa Barry.

Then they all gazed into the box for a moment, but when they looked up it was pitch black outside. “What the hell time is it?” gasped Barry. Just as they turned to look at the crazy clock that made different bird sounds (on the hour) the caw of a crow sounded 12 times for midnight.

Dusty didn’t need to ask. It was clear that they all understood their world had shifted. It was chilling, and thrilling, and exceedingly strange all at the same time. But changed world or not a person gets hungry so they retired to the kitchen for something to eat. The kitchen was Grandma Nadine’s domain but she told them she wasn’t going to make anything so they all ate cold cereal with milk, in silence, while standing around the island counter. Finally Dusty braved the question. “What did you see?”

“What makes you think we didn’t all see the same thing?” said Grandpa Barry, rather sharply.

Dusty ate a final spoonful of soggy cereal. “Did you see a baseball in mint condition signed by Mickey Mantle?” he asked.

“I certainly didn’t!” replied Grandma Nadine.

“Then we didn’t see the same thing,” he said flatly. “Cause that’s what I saw, and a lot more.”

He got no argument. Everyone agreed they’d seen a lot more.

“OK” said Nadine. “I saw myself as a little girl, playing night games with my friends, and we stopped and watched when the fireflies came out. Hmmm…” she mused. “I’d forgotten all about that since the moment it happened.” She paused. “I saw my wedding dress in the window of the store where I bought it.” She smiled. “I saw your grandpa when he was nice.”

“I’m always nice!” barked Barry.

Dusty’s eyes opened wide. “Do I need to get a dictionary?

“What would I need a dictionary for?”

“Well, I’d say to look up either ‘always’ or ‘nice’,” Dusty replied dryly which made his grandma giggle.

“What did you see Dusty?” she asked.

“Lots of things. The baseball like I said. I saw, felt like, really, yeah, felt like I was at the ocean beach where you took me when I was 5. I could even feel the wind. So awesome. Other stuff too. I was visiting a grave, but I’ve never even done that. How about you Grandpa? What did you see?”

“Oh, that must have been you I saw at my grave.”

“What!!”

“No, that couldn’t have been my grave, cause I’m going to be cremated, and you’ll be in charge of spreading my ashes on the Menard’s parking lot.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I forgot.”

“Cut it out you two,” Nadine interjected. “What else did you see Barry?”

He scratched his chin a moment. “I relived this lightning storm that lasted all night out over Lake Erie. That was before I met you, probably the summer of 69. I was with this other guy I worked with. I think his name was Al.” He scratched his chin again. “I saw a pretty girl. Might have been you. Can’t be sure, I didn’t have my glasses on.”

“You don’t wear glasses grandpa.”

“Oh, he didn’t need glasses honey. He couldn’t keep his hands off of me!” she laughed.

“Ewwww, Grandma!”

They all agreed there was a lot more they’d seen and a lot more to say, but the experience had exhausted them.

“Brush your teeth before you go to bed,” said Nadine. “Your mother is going to pick you up in the morning at 9 so sleep fast.” She threw out the cookie dough that had been sitting out all day and headed off to bed thinking about what they should have for breakfast.

Grandpa Barry gazed out the window into the darkness for a moment thinking of some things he had seen, things that must have happened long before he was born. He shook his head in wonder.

As Dusty came out of the bathroom he bumped into Grandpa. “Nice job pretending to brush your teeth pal.” Dusty winked. Grandpa Barry leaned over and whispered, “I saw a baseball too. Mint condition. Kriby Puckett signature and dated 10/26/91.” Dusty gave a thumbs up and patted off to bed. He lay on his back and thought for a moment. “Seems like some sort of supercharged combo of VR and youtube plus it knows you, whatever it is,” he thought in the instant before sleep snatched him.

The instant of waking was the sound of a half-hearted electronic clock rooster which seemed more like it might be a frog.. He wasn’t sure how many times it had croaked but at least the sun was up. He thought of the box and what was in it. A feeling of a little fear combined with excitement rose in him.

He came with bare feet around the corner to see that it wasn’t there. It wasn’t anywhere. He looked. Then he stared into space trying to make sense of it all. His eyes drifted down to the kitchen table. There was a note, printed in very small and careful script. It said, “Sorry, wrong address.”