I Keep Finding Cool Stuff In This Knot-Hole

February 23rd, 2009Blog, Fiction0 comments

Usually I run by the old Radley place as fast I can, not stopping until I reach the safety of our front porch. But one afternoon as I raced by, I saw something that caught my eye in a strange way: From one of the Radleys’ trees, something was glinting in a knot-hole just above my eye level, winking at me in the afternoon sun.

I hastily reached into the knot-hole and withdrew a can of Diet Coke. It was still frozen-cold, its surface dew dropped with condensation.

My first impulse was to drink it as quickly as possible, but I remembered where I was. The old Radley lot was a haunted place, and everything in it and around it was cursed in a poisonous way.

I ran home and examined my loot. I turned the can around looking for pinholes and poisonous injections. I popped it, sniffed the fizz. It smelled all right. I licked it and waited for a while, and when I didn’t die I drank the whole thing in one long, adams apple-bouncing gulp.

The next week I was running past the Radley place as usual when I spotted something else in the knot-hole: A copy of Saints Row 2 for the Xbox 360, still in its shrink-wrap.

Now I began to figure that this was some kid’s hiding place; he was hiding things from the bigger folks. So I went home. But on the second day the game was still there, and on the third day too. So I pocketed it.

A few days later I was trotting by in my orbit when something in the knot-hole stopped me again: Something plastic, bubble-wrapped. Two gigabytes of ram for a Macbook.

This was funny because my Macbook needed a ram upgrade. I had often stared at it by my open window, muttering aloud about how it was fixing for an upgrade. This was too true to be mere dumb luck. The ram was there for a reason. Someone had put it there for me.

Every week the knot-hole yielded a different prize: A box of “This Apple Walks Into a Bar” fruit bars from Trader Joes. A gift card for J. Crew. A slightly-used but almost new pair of Etymotic earbuds.

Now I was beginning to feel pretty guilty. Whoever was leaving me these things clearly knew me pretty well, and I had done nothing in return. So I sat down with a pad and composed a letter:

“Dear Mister, I appreciate the — no, I appreciate everything you have put into the tree for me. Yours very truly, Michael Steven Golamco.”

Next morning I ran ahead and stopped by the tree to stuff my note into the knot-hole… But I went stark white.

Someone had filled my knot-hole with cement.

I waited for hours on our front porch until I saw him walking by: “Mr. Radley,” I said. Mr. Radley turned around. “Mr. Radley, ah… Did you put cement in that tree down yonder?”

“Yes,” he said, “I filled it up.”

“Why’d you do it, sir?”

“Tree’s dying. You plug ‘em with cement when they’re sick. You ought to know that.”

He left me on the porch. I leaned against a pillar, rubbing my shoulder against it. I stood there until nightfall; when I finally went to bed, my face was still dirty in the right places, but anyone could see that I had been crying.