The Best Summer Yet - Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE
The next week was pretty quiet until the mail carrier left a note asking Mr. Cummings to get his mailbox up to delivery standards. The next day, I made a call to Benny telling him to get over to the fort a.s.a.p. He showed up within 10 minutes. We took our places on deck.
There he was in boxer shorts and that same old soiled undershirt, sitting on an overturned bucket, reading a newspaper, awaiting the mail carrier.
Three and a half hours later here he came. Mr. C took his bucket and put it directly in his path, right in front of the mailbox. I called Mom and told her that it was gonna go down between him and the mailman.
Mr. Cummings dumped the remainder of his coffee at the mailman’s feet. The mail carrier kept his cool.
“I see you got my notice, Mr. Cummings,” he said. “I’d like to give you a few suggestions as to how you can make my job a bit easier.”
“Well now, sonny boy,” said Mr. Cummings, “Pray tell. How can I make your job easier?”
“This ought to be good,” I said to Benny. But to our surprise and disappointment, nothing happened. Mr. C politely listened while the mail carrier told him that his mailbox was not the standard size or the standard height, it needed painting to make it look more appealing and it needed address numbers and his name on it. He handed him a flier with the official regulations printed on it and Mr. Cummings thanked him for his time and his suggestions, saying he would get right on that.
We went to the woods on our bikes and we returned to find Mr. Cummings taking down his mailbox.
We knew something had to be up, but all he did was take it down.
Four days went by before the mail carrier stopped in front of Mr. C’s house and knocked at his door. No answer. He pushed the doorbell button and got such a shock his knees buckled and he found himself on the door mat, feeling very nauseous and weak.
Mr. C came to the door, smiled sweetly, and asked, “What can I do you for?” Looking down at the mail carrier, he asked, “What’s wrong there sonny boy, ya have a weak spell?”
The mailman held up his blackened fingers like a black bird’s claw and told him that the door bell shocked him.
“Why that’s too bad there sonny,” he said, “I guess I’d better get right on that and see if I can fix it.”
The mailman was able to stand again and he asked Mr. Cummings how long it would be before he would have his mailbox up again. With a straight face, he looked the mailman in the eye and asked what he meant by ‘again’.
“Well, you took the mailbox down and I can’t deliver your mail until you put another one up.”
Looking out where the mailbox should be, he pretended not to know that it was gone and he apologized profusely about it not being there.
The mailman thanked him, gave him his week’s worth of mail and went on his way.
Mr. C went out to his shed, got the mailbox out and put it back up. It was leaning a little towards the house, but otherwise it seemed to be okay. You would think that nothing was wrong with it. But it not only leaned towards the house, it was much lower than it should have been. It caused the mail carrier to have to lean way out of his car to reach it. That was against postal regulations.
A week went by before the carrier once again came to the door to have a talk with the old man. Mr. C seemed genuinely surprised that the box was too low and leaning too much and he vowed to take care of it right away. The mailman thanked him and went on his way.
At the end of another week, the mailbox was so high that the carrier could barely reach it. Then the mailman put the mail in one day and the box tilted towards him and it dumped the mail all over the top of his car and on the ground.
Stopping his car and getting out once more, he went carefully to the door. He knocked several times and then used a hand held bell to get Mr. C’s attention. When he came to the door, Mr. Cummings smiled broadly, offering him some fresh baked brownies and a hot cup of coffee.
Not quite as friendly this time as he had been in the past, he told Mr. Cummings about the problem with the mailbox. He said, “Vandals! This neighborhood is full of ‘em. What’re ya gonna do.”
Benny and I could not figure out why he was being so nice to that mailman. It just wasn’t like him.
That afternoon the twins were back and Benny and I filled them in on what had happened since they were last here.
I got up to let Jack out the next morning and there he was. I called to the boys to get out here to see what he was doing, then called my Dad. We all stood on the porch watching the old man as he put up a new mailbox. It was the funniest looking mailbox we ever saw. As soon as my Dad saw it, he let out such a belly laugh, even the old man heard it. He turned to look our way and we ducked out of sight. Tears were flowing down his face, but Dad called Poppa and told him what the old man was doing. Then we could hear Poppa laughing so hard.
Mr. Cummings made a mailbox the standard size of a long envelope and only one inch deep, with a slot just wide enough to fit one letter at a time through it.
When we realized what it was, we were rolling on the floor! I called my Mom to hurry and bring her camera.
By the time Mom got to the fort with the camera he was putting up a smaller box like the other one and we realized that this one was meant for a standard sized letter. When he was done with that one, he put up another and another and another. We soon realized that he had made a mailbox for any sized letter including small and large manila envelopes, magazines; one box for small ones and another for thicker ones.
Another arm went off to one side and held one of the smallest trash cans I have ever seen, and he had a spring lid on it to receive junk mail. Next came different sized boxes to receive packages of all sizes, five of them in all. He was not only clever, he was sadistic! He arranged them so that the small ones were on the bottom and the largest was way up high!
He had us laughing all afternoon but the kicker came when he came out and finished them off. Beginning with the smallest letter box, he painstakingly painted on his name and the address on each side of the box. They were too tiny to read of course, but they were on there.
He finished by putting the name and addresses on each of the boxes. Some say it’s a work of artistic genius. The mail carrier didn’t see it that way. He reported him and refused to deliver his mail.
The very next week roofing nails were spilled mysteriously in the road, just this side of Mr. C’s driveway, but not on his property. The mailman had 4 flat tires that day. The police were called but no one, not even us, could say for certain that Mr. Cummings had arranged the nails to be in the street when the mailman came by, but what a coincidence.