A Package on Her Special Day

There were only two buildings in what was considered the town of Cedar Hills, each simple wood structures painted white with an evergreen trim. The one with the steeple was the Presbyterian Church that according to the Appalachian Trail guide had the distinction of once being a stop on the Underground Railroad. The other building was a United States Post Office.

Chris released the hip belt and eased the frame pack off of his shoulders, propping it up against the Post Office very gently so as not to scratch the paint.

He never knew how he would be received when he showed up in what the locals thought of as civilization, but more often than not the older people who had lived out in these little towns their whole lives would be more welcoming to a dirt-caked guy with long hair and a beard carrying the odor of the trail into the confined spaces of a public building than would the rich wiseass young refugees from Wall Street who bought up a piece of the country with no sense of how to live in it. So Chris relaxed a little when he saw the plump fifty-something lady with the sun-red face and the light blonde hair of a little girl peering over crooked glasses behind the counter at the single window of the Cedar Hills Post Office. She was clutching a newspaper folded in half; Ronald Reagan was standing on his head just above the upside-down headline.

“Good morning,” he called brightly before she had looked up to acknowledge him and at once he could tell that his instincts were correct.

“Well, how are you?” she asked as if they were already acquainted with one another. “Did you just come off of the A.T.?”

“Sure did. This is my first stop.” He flashed a smile at her that she shot right back.

“Can I take a wild guess, then, and ask if you’re here for a general delivery package?”

“You are clairvoyant, madam!”

She snickered out loud. She had fat little hands with lots of rings on them, and she pounded the counter lightly in time with her laughter.

“I get better with age,” she said, her shoulders shaking with humor, “Like wine or cheese, I’m told.”

“After a couple of hundred Lipton Noodle Meals, Oodles-of-Noodles, and an occasional Tuna Helper, wine and cheese sound pretty damn good, though a roast beef on rye and a cold beer would be pretty welcome, too!”

“You’re getting me hungry. Let’s get your package before I become unable to perform my proper job functions . . . What’s your name, young man?”

Chris told her and she disappeared for a few minutes, then emerged with a good size cardboard box that beyond a couple of hit corners looked a lot like it did when he had posted it a couple of months earlier.

“Anything good in there?” she asked him when he had it under his arm.

“A pound of cocaine, a bottle of bourbon and fifty million dollars,” Chris said with a straight face.

There was a pause and then her face lit up. “Well let me get the mirror and the blade and we’ll do us up a few lines today ‘cause blow don’t show up in this town too often no more . . . or are you just bullshittin’ me?”

“Yeah, just bullshit, plain and simple. But there should be a bottle in there anyway.”

“What kind?”

“Turkey 101.”

She smiled wide into a grin. “My old man loves that shit. Hey, this ain’t much of a town and there’s no place for you to grab a shower, which I’m sure you would welcome, but there’s a hose out back so can fill your canteen and maybe rinse your hair down if you like … You’re also welcome to get out of the sun and rest up for a bit in what’s left of that barn out back. Despite appearances, I don’t think it’s quite ready to collapse in on itself yet, so you’ll be safe, but don’t freak out if you sense that you got company: we got an old barn owl that roosts out there during the day and she can get noisy and put up quite a fuss if she thinks someone’s encroaching on her territory!”

Chris doffed his cap and proffered a mock bow. “Thank you for your kindness … you are indeed a fine human being.”

She watched him take his parcel out and smiled fondly after him. Perhaps she’d ask him to sign her book. With his trail name, of course, not his real one. She must have more than two hundred signatures in there by now, she considered, most of them from section-hikers but a good quantity of thru-hikers also who did the whole trail, Georgia to Maine, in one trip. She often day-dreamed about what that would be like and she was deep in those kinds of fantasies when she heard the popping sound that at first sounded like a firecracker, then put a worried look on her face and sent her out the back door.

He was laid out on his back on the lawn, just as if he was acting it out for the school play, but the grass was a deep red color all around his head and the sun glinted off the barrel of the revolver in his hand. She wanted to scream but somehow she found that she couldn’t do anything but stand there and look at him, frozen. His eyes were open, the long stare at nothing.

It made her angry.

Today was their anniversary. Twenty-five years. Randy was going to pick her up on his bike and they planned to drive out to Collier for dinner and a party afterward. This would spoil it. This man she never saw before who chose the lawn in back of where she worked to blow his brains out would spoil it today, maybe forever. She looked at the pack leaning up against the white shingles and the body on the grass. People would wonder why a backpacker would mail himself a gun and blow his head off behind her Post Office. But she wouldn’t wonder. She didn’t give a shit. It was her anniversary, and he had gone and spoiled it.

She gave his corpse a little kick as she walked back inside to call the sheriff.