Steven Hunley
01-29-2014, 04:04 PM
We ran to mail our precious package and found out we had to take it to a Tobacco shop first, and this threw us for a loop. At the shop, they re-wrapped it with tough brown paper and bound it with course hemp string. After they tied it in a knot that would make a Boy-scout proud, they clamped a lead seal on it as if it was the entrance to King Tut’s tomb. We mailed it from an enormous, gigantic, ancient, and illustrious post office and wished it good luck on its journey.
“Our future depends on it,” Kristina whispered, as we got back out on the street.
“Funny thing about Rome,” I remarked. “It’s modern in spots but other spots are ancient. It gives you a sense of history, the rise and fall of empires, and the ups and downs of life.”
“The next thing you’ll be doing is quoting Ozymandius,” she laughed, and took my hand.
We were about to cross an intersection, and the Italians were driving the circuit of the roundabout like 24 hours at Le Mans. Suddenly a dude in the back of a small truck threw a handful of papers up in the air. It was election time. He didn’t care if it trashed up the street or obscured your vision. Mine was crystal clear and I was having one of those rare lucid moments.
“I know what you mean, Honey. For better or for worse, our future is tied up in that package.”
Kristina was Catholic and I was convinced she had celestial connections she could invoke.
“Let’s go over there,” I said, and pointed to the Basilica de Santi Giovanni e Paolo across the street.
We ducked in, cut our way through the incense, walked back into history a thousand years or so and lit a few candles. It never hurts to cover your bets, and besides, you can’t have miracles without faith. And I believe in miracles.
The rest of Europe was only a blur. The Sagrada Familia doesn’t count, and if we saw Eric Clapton hanging out there that doesn’t matter either. Chateaux D’if remained a blur, except Kristina took a picture of me as Edmond Dantes hanging on a barred window, I remember that, I've still got the picture. Venice didn’t count any more than Paris or Barcelona, no matter what the Doge said. Heidelberg wasn’t any more memorable than Lucerne. What happens that rang our bell and made us salivate occurred two weeks after we got back when the package arrived. A little yellow slip appeared in the mail.
“There’s a package for me at the North Park post office,” I announced with great pleasure, and before I turned completely around to see if Kristina heard me, a human cyclone, blond, tan, good-lookin', wearing Raybans, wizzed by, touched down outside near the curb, and hopped in the car.
We dashed to North Park, pulled up and parked.
“It’s time to put the freeze on,” she said, set her face, clenched her hands, and then flexed them. “Be as cool as possible.”
I was already dripping sweat, but managed a hearty, “Let’s go.”
Three minutes later we made a U-turn and came home. I put the package up on one of those freezers that could hold a cow. My parents, God rest their souls, got it and bought a ton of meat one time. But since there were only three of us it lasted forever. The tough brown paper was torn in a dozen places, but the stout cord was still intact with the lead seal. When I placed the package down and was about to cut the cord a chunk of something like mud fell out on the white porcelain surface.
It smelled good for mud. It was the Lebanese Red.
I looked at her and she looked at me and both our mouths dropped open like stupid twins…again.
I cut the cord, tore off the tattered paper and handed it to Kristina.
“Look at this!” she said and held up a corner. There was a purple lozenge-shaped stamp. It said Customs.
“Then it’s been checked!”
When I got the box open I was due for another surprise. The white lid had come off and the plastic had popped out and the hash was scattered all over the inside of the box. None of it was secure
.
“They’ve followed us home, and the Federales are gonna hit the house,” she said.
I went to the window and peered out.
Nothing. We waited as silence ate up our imaginations. Still nothing.
“There’s only one explanation,” I surmised. “They inspected it and only later, maybe on the way to the post office in a truck, it bounced down off a pile of packages and came apart.”
Kristina was pacing, then she stopped and flopped down in the easy chair in the living room, lit a Marlboro and curled up.
“We’ll never know,” she said thoughtfully, flicking an ash into the heavy brass antique ashtray that looked like a World War I tank.
I sat next to her on the arm of the chair.
Sunlight streamed through the southern windows, leaving highlights on the porcelain top of the freezer, the box, the lid of the innocent children’s stool, the brown paper with its tell-tale purple Customs stamp, and on pieces of reddish mud scattered across the shining white field. Each piece of mud, each fragment, even the dust, was worth a smile when it went up in smoke. It was a pagan sacrifice of hemp flowers from Lebanon, and in return, we transporters expected the Goddess of Chance to be fruitful to her children and grant us luck.
©Steven Hunley 20131
“Our future depends on it,” Kristina whispered, as we got back out on the street.
“Funny thing about Rome,” I remarked. “It’s modern in spots but other spots are ancient. It gives you a sense of history, the rise and fall of empires, and the ups and downs of life.”
“The next thing you’ll be doing is quoting Ozymandius,” she laughed, and took my hand.
We were about to cross an intersection, and the Italians were driving the circuit of the roundabout like 24 hours at Le Mans. Suddenly a dude in the back of a small truck threw a handful of papers up in the air. It was election time. He didn’t care if it trashed up the street or obscured your vision. Mine was crystal clear and I was having one of those rare lucid moments.
“I know what you mean, Honey. For better or for worse, our future is tied up in that package.”
Kristina was Catholic and I was convinced she had celestial connections she could invoke.
“Let’s go over there,” I said, and pointed to the Basilica de Santi Giovanni e Paolo across the street.
We ducked in, cut our way through the incense, walked back into history a thousand years or so and lit a few candles. It never hurts to cover your bets, and besides, you can’t have miracles without faith. And I believe in miracles.
The rest of Europe was only a blur. The Sagrada Familia doesn’t count, and if we saw Eric Clapton hanging out there that doesn’t matter either. Chateaux D’if remained a blur, except Kristina took a picture of me as Edmond Dantes hanging on a barred window, I remember that, I've still got the picture. Venice didn’t count any more than Paris or Barcelona, no matter what the Doge said. Heidelberg wasn’t any more memorable than Lucerne. What happens that rang our bell and made us salivate occurred two weeks after we got back when the package arrived. A little yellow slip appeared in the mail.
“There’s a package for me at the North Park post office,” I announced with great pleasure, and before I turned completely around to see if Kristina heard me, a human cyclone, blond, tan, good-lookin', wearing Raybans, wizzed by, touched down outside near the curb, and hopped in the car.
We dashed to North Park, pulled up and parked.
“It’s time to put the freeze on,” she said, set her face, clenched her hands, and then flexed them. “Be as cool as possible.”
I was already dripping sweat, but managed a hearty, “Let’s go.”
Three minutes later we made a U-turn and came home. I put the package up on one of those freezers that could hold a cow. My parents, God rest their souls, got it and bought a ton of meat one time. But since there were only three of us it lasted forever. The tough brown paper was torn in a dozen places, but the stout cord was still intact with the lead seal. When I placed the package down and was about to cut the cord a chunk of something like mud fell out on the white porcelain surface.
It smelled good for mud. It was the Lebanese Red.
I looked at her and she looked at me and both our mouths dropped open like stupid twins…again.
I cut the cord, tore off the tattered paper and handed it to Kristina.
“Look at this!” she said and held up a corner. There was a purple lozenge-shaped stamp. It said Customs.
“Then it’s been checked!”
When I got the box open I was due for another surprise. The white lid had come off and the plastic had popped out and the hash was scattered all over the inside of the box. None of it was secure
.
“They’ve followed us home, and the Federales are gonna hit the house,” she said.
I went to the window and peered out.
Nothing. We waited as silence ate up our imaginations. Still nothing.
“There’s only one explanation,” I surmised. “They inspected it and only later, maybe on the way to the post office in a truck, it bounced down off a pile of packages and came apart.”
Kristina was pacing, then she stopped and flopped down in the easy chair in the living room, lit a Marlboro and curled up.
“We’ll never know,” she said thoughtfully, flicking an ash into the heavy brass antique ashtray that looked like a World War I tank.
I sat next to her on the arm of the chair.
Sunlight streamed through the southern windows, leaving highlights on the porcelain top of the freezer, the box, the lid of the innocent children’s stool, the brown paper with its tell-tale purple Customs stamp, and on pieces of reddish mud scattered across the shining white field. Each piece of mud, each fragment, even the dust, was worth a smile when it went up in smoke. It was a pagan sacrifice of hemp flowers from Lebanon, and in return, we transporters expected the Goddess of Chance to be fruitful to her children and grant us luck.
©Steven Hunley 20131