The Suspicious Package

Writers Challenge - The Suspicious Package

By Roy Rhoades

One Tuesday morning a postman drove up to our house and delivered a package. It was the summer of 1977 and I remember it like it was yesterday. The postman did not come to our house very much. We were on the poor side of town, and we did not get much mail, except for some bills. It was strange that the package that was just delivered was without a stamp. It didn’t even have our address on it. I heard the van pull up. I saw the driver pull away. I went to the door and there it was. It was a package with my name on it, but no address and no stamp. It was a suspicious looking package wrapped in brown paper. Attached to the package were some small berries on top.

Let me back up and give this some context. My name is Jed. I am a farm boy who lives on the wrong side of town. My family lives in a small town in Iowa. Nothing overly exciting happens here. We look forward to the Friday night football games in the fall. A few of the fellows like basketball season in the winter. We have one festival in the fall. It lasts for about five hours. It has to do with spring planting, and we get to eat ice cream and pumpkin pie. We often get there late, if we even go, and we miss all the fun. We go to church and hear concerts around Easter and Christmas. The most exciting thing that I can remember happening was when our neighbors caught their shed on fire by accident. They were experimenting with bottle rockets and accidently let some of the rockets fly into their shed. Their shed happened to contain canisters of gasoline. That was a great fire! People talked about it for weeks all through town. The fire department took five hours to get it under control. It lasted longer than our fall festival. I say all that to say that we don’t really expect bad things or good things to happen in our town. Boring is our middle name. We think boring is underrated. We don’t really care much for excitement, but when it happens it is noteworthy. Maybe this suspicious looking package would bring some excitement to our dull lives.

So how was I to react to a brown paper wrapped package with my name on it. The mystery of its contents and where it came from was growing in me as I decided what I should do. Should I shake the box? Should I open it? Why did it have some berries attached to it? What if it contained a letter from a long-lost love? What if it was a bomb or some virus sent from who knows where? I have a vivid imagination and I was thinking of a lot of things that could be inside that box.

I slowly picked it up and put the package to my ear. I didn’t hear any noises. so, I felt a little safer. I noticed though that it was only about 10 inches long and 8 inches wide and it was very heavy. It almost felt as if a brick was inside the box. I knew I had to open it, or my curiosity would get the best of me.

I slowly took the brown paper off the package and noticed something was inside. The package contained silver coins from an aunt I had not seen in two years. She left a note inside addressed to me. The note said, “These coins are a small token of my gratitude for your love. You sent me food from your garden, and you tended my garden so that it never had weeds. You always made me feel special when no one else remembered me. The holidays were always special because of you. I know I was mean and maybe drove you away, but I want to make up for it. If you receive this package, it means that I have passed on to the other side.”

I was shocked. I loved my aunt and used to spend all my holidays and as much time as I could with her when I was younger. With the busyness of life and change in my circumstances I and my family had lost touch the last few years. What an amazing surprise to see this package and its contents. What were these coins worth? I did not really know much about coins, but I figured at least they would look good on my shelf. So, I let them sit on my shelf for three months. I thought to myself, “Maybe I could keep the coins on a shelf to add some beauty to our barren house”. We were what some would consider poor. My father could barely keep a job. I was trying to finish school. My mother did some odd house cleaning jobs to keep food on the table. We had a garden that kept us all from starving, but regardless of our money situation or lack of it we were happy. We had each other and we had love. One day I decided to check out how much these coins were worth. My curiosity was again getting the best of me. I knew nothing about the value of coins. They did seem rather old. So, I went to a local antiques dealer and showed him the coins. He looked at me with excitement in his eyes. How long have you had these? I said, “just a few months”. He said these are vintage coins and I estimate their worth to be close to $500,000. My ears could not believe what I was hearing. I had been sitting on a large amount of wealth for three months while myself and my family could hardly survive. If only I had known the worth of the coins, I could have acted sooner. I cashed in the coins and put the money in the bank. That day things started to turn around for us financially. Money would never change us, but it certainly helped to pay the bills. My life will never be the same. A suspicious brown paper package came into my life one day. It changed everything for me.