Faith Works 12-7-19

Faith Works 12-7-19

Jeff Gill

 

The Package – a story

___

 

[This is a piece of fiction, in four parts, for the Christmas season]

 

On the doorstep Jerry reached down to pick up a wrapped package.

 

The red wrapping paper with green accents was neatly, even meticulously folded on the sides, smooth and pretty across the top. He set it down on the bench by the door inside his house.

 

After closing the door, and slipping off his ratty old work boots he'd gone to the mailbox in, Jerry picked up the wrapped package and slowly turned it around, finding no label, no tag, no markings at all.

 

Inside, something heavy thudded about softly as he upended the box, not quite packed in tightly. Too late, he thought about a prank or even a bomb, but the package seemed quite festive, inoffensive, ordinary in a holiday sort of way.

 

He set it back down, then picked it up and carried it into the living room. Since his wife's passing years ago, he'd lived much of his life in this room. It was small but large enough; her recliner still sat to one side of his, and the TV was a newer one the kids had gotten him, but most of the pictures and oddments on the shelves were what she'd put in place. There was an ottoman he usually left in front of her chair that he pulled over in front of his seat, and set the package down on it.

 

What should he do with it? He didn't have a tree up yet; he normally had a small artificial one he put on the side table, after ceremoniously pulling it out a ways farther from the wall and laying down the extra large doily that was in the bottom of the china cupboard. Lights he'd stopped putting up after the youngest got married, and he added a string or two around the tree if they came back, but if he went to one of their houses he usually didn't bother.

 

The package could sit at the foot of the table until Christmas, but it would really be in the way for weeks then. He usually got a few packages in the mail from the kids, and his brother in Idaho, and just opened them as they came and set the gifts unwrapped on the counter until Christmas day, when he'd put them away that evening as he would the little tree. There hadn't been a wrapped package in the house for some time.

 

Or, he thought, fingering the little penknife in his pocket, the one he almost lost at the airport and cost him twenty bucks to mail to himself a couple of years ago, twenty times what it had cost him forty years ago, he could open it.

 

Slice the tape, undo the wrapping paper, and see what was inside. It was for him, right? Or was it?

 

The fact that there was no name unnerved Jerry. Could it be a mis-delivered present? The houses on either side of him might be the actual destination, but one was a currently empty rental, and the other full of kids and toys on the porch and hard to mistake for his spare and simple front stoop. Across the street was a commercial building now empty but for storage, and a couple of houses farther down towards the corner whose occupants he hadn't met yet, not that he'd tried that hard.

 

Of course, if it's someone else's present, it would be a shame for him to find out on Christmas morning. It made more sense to open it now, see what it was or even for whom it was intended, and take care of it. The decision made, the paper came off with the knife easily, and revealed… a box.

 

The box was plain cardboard, marked for mailing, and looked like it had been used for just that. A careful line had been drawn, though, through the bar code stickers, and the address label lines; Jerry could still read the name and street perfectly clearly. It wasn't anyone he knew.

 

It was taped shut all around, and at this new obstacle he paused, and put away his knife. The mystery continued; it wasn't clearly for him, but it might be, even though there was no indication who would be sending such a package to him. The address was in town, not nearby but barely a mile away.

 

He decided he'd go to that house, and just ask: hey, did you drop off a package for me, and if so, thanks and why?

 

[to be continued]

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him what you think is in the package at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.