by Sonja Hakala

“So Gram, I understand you’re taking a class via Zoom,” Faye said as they ate breakfast together. Faye loved her grandmother’s “stuffed” oatmeal with its raisins, apples, walnuts, and cranberries. “What do you think about the world of online education?”

“Oh, in some respects, it’s better than in person. I don’t have to drive in bad weather,” Edie said.

“How’s the teacher?” Faye asked as she poured maple syrup over her breakfast.

Edie’s face puckered a little. “Oh, Madeline Dodge is doing all right. I’ve taken an in-person class with her before, and she really knows her stuff.”

“But………?” Faye prompted.

Her grandmother’s cheeks rosied-up a little. “Faye, do you suppose that people my age don’t realize that when you’re on something like Zoom, everyone can see everyone else?”

Faye laughed. “Gram, I’ve seen people my age forget they are on-screen and that the world can see them do stuff they aren’t going to live down for the rest of their lives. What have you been seeing?”

“Well, there’s this woman called Margaret who’s lounging around on her bed in this very provocative negligee.”

“Anything important hanging out?”

Now it was Edie’s turn to laugh. “Not yet but Ruth, Agnes, and I have a bet on how soon it’s going to happen. And then there’s this other woman who carries her phone as she walks around her house. She’s taken it into her bathroom, out on her deck, and yesterday, into her kitchen where she propped it up next to her toaster and then smeared peanut butter all over her screen and we had to watch her wipe it off.”

Faye’s giggles were now out of control. “Doesn’t your teacher notice?”

“Well, Madeline’s too well-mannered to embarrass anyone but she did stop talking while the woman with the peanut butter was cleaning up her mess. Maybe she got the message. Who knows?” She stopped for a moment. “But the one who bothers me the most is Frank Dixon.”

“Mr. Dixon, the man who was the postmaster?”

“Yes, him.”

“What’s so strange about the way he looks on Zoom?”

“Well, it’s what’s going on behind him, in the background.” Edie sighed. As you get older, the right to drive becomes more sacred with every passing birthday so she was very reluctant to share her suspicions with her granddaughter. “I’m think he’s driving while he’s taking the class.”

“What?”

Edie nodded. “I had to stare at the screen for a long time before I figured it out but you can see trees sliding by behind him, and then all of sudden everything stops and he sort of disappears out of the frame but then he comes back and then the background moves again.” She sighed. “And sometimes there’s this awful banging noise.”

The two women stared at one another, one older, the other younger, each of them puzzled.

“What time does your class start?” Faye asked.

“It’s early, 7:00 a.m. But Madeline records it so you can watch later on in the day if you like. Why?”

“Where does Mr. Dixon live?”

“He and his wife built the first house on Jefferson Road. It’s grown up so much around there, it’s hard to believe it was just sheep fields once upon a time.”

Now it was Faye’s face that puckered. Frank Dixon lived two doors down from her once-and-maybe-not-now boyfriend, Dave Muzzy. Surely Dave wouldn’t use the retired postmaster to deliver his newspapers? She stood up so suddenly, her chair crashed to the floor.

“What’s wrong Faye?”

“I could be totally wrong about this, Gram, so could you just trust me and drive us out to Mr. Dixon’s?”

“Now?” 

Faye glanced at the clock. It was almost nine. “Yeah, I think now would be a good time.”

All the way across town, Faye kept hoping she was wrong. But she knew she wasn’t. Of course she knew.

They pulled into Frank Dixon’s driveway as he was struggling to get out of his truck. The two women rushed to help him, and that’s when Edie noticed the deep scratches and dents etched into the passenger side of his pickup.

“Mr. Dixon, are you all right?” Faye asked. “How did you bruise the side of your head?”

“Hit something,” the former postmaster muttered. “Don’t know…”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Dave Muzzy loped down the street and started to push his way closer to Frank. But he stopped when he saw Faye and her grandmother. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s him, right? You got Mr. Dixon to deliver your newspapers, didn’t you?” Faye demanded.

“Yeah. So?”

Edie’s hand trailed across the damaged side of Frank’s truck, noting the dark green paint left on the gray door. “This is the same color as the metal poles that the newspaper uses for its delivery boxes. Is it you, Frank? Are you the one who knocked down Agnes Findley’s newspaper box?”

The former postmaster looked down at the ground. “I was driving slow, Edie, so I thought it would be all right to watch Madeline’s class along with the rest of you. I thought it would be fun. But the route—I had no idea it was so long.”

Faye crossed her arms over her chest. “How many houses were you supposed to deliver newspapers to, Mr. Dixon?”

Frank looked over at Dave. “Twenty, you know, the homes of friends, folks I could wave to.” He gave Edie a sorrowful look. “I’m supposed to be done by eight o’clock so I had to speed things up a bit. That was probably not a good idea.”

Faye’s eyes blazed at her now-definitely-former boyfriend. “And how many houses are really on Mr. Dixon’s route?” she asked.

“That’s none of your…”

Edie now had Frank’s arm firmly in her own, and the two of them turned toward the older man’s front door. “Shame on you, Dave Muzzy,” Edie growled as she helped her friend into his house. “Shame on you.”

Faye shut the door of Frank’s truck, and started to follow her grandmother. What a fool I was, she said to herself. What a fool.

“Faye, wait. I…uh…” Dave’s mouth floundered to a close.

She stopped, keeping her eyes turned away from him because she was too angry to trust herself. “Put them back, all of the newspaper boxes that Mr. Dixon knocked down. And do it yourself so everyone can see who’s responsible for the damage. And then fix his truck.”

“Fix his truck? No way.”

Faye finally turned, and in that moment, she saw the path she’d almost taken with the young man. Dave was fun. He was friendly and polite and smart. And that had been enough for her to ignore the rest, his glib answers, his willingness to take advantage of other people.

I let myself be taken in, she realized. I went along to get along. Shame on me. 

“You will fix what you have broken and I’m going to check to make sure you do,” she said quietly.

Then she opened Frank Dixon’s front door with a lighter heart than she had had when she woke up that morning. Strange how sometimes a problem and its solution can show up at the same time, isn’t it?

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The Carding Chronicles are short stories written by author Sonja Hakala about the Vermont town that no one can quite find on a map. They feature the characters in her four Carding novels.

The Carding books are available from Amazon and the Chronicles appear here, on this website, every Monday. Hope to see you next week.