Dead Letter Office [fragment]

I started this a while back for Jolene Rice’s story prompts and never got around to finishing it. This particular list included: a key that nobody else has, a bumper sticker offers excellent advice, a slow poke, and an oddities collector.

This time, I was going to eschew my normal fantasy/noir/horror inclinations and lean fairly straight, non-genre storytelling. I do that on occasion. When I do, chances are there are still hints of some kinds of odd in the tale, but the world’s chocked full of odd kinds of tales.

Anyway, it seemed a shame to let a not-terrible beginning to a story molder in a draft folder, so I decided to share it in the story’s unfinished state.

All apologies offered in advance.

Bonus points if you can figure out the inspiration which informs the tone of the planned story.

There was a traffic jam on the kudzu-lined gravel road leading into Gideon. There were already at least three cars lined up behind whatever was obstructing the road around the canopy of vines hanging down from telephone wires and what-all the greenery could find for support to cling to.

That there were three cars behind the obstruction at all was a notable feat, considering the population of the hamlet numbered in the hundreds, if one could credit the sign just around that bend. Jasper reckoned that number might represent a census taken some twenty-odd years past and should be adjusted downward. But who had money for such things as that?

There might have been ten cars total in-town on a given day — not accounting for Sheriff Riley and his deputy’s ancient Ford LTDs — and here were four, including his own, just beyond the hamlet’s boundaries and not getting closer.

Jasper sighed, got out of his car, wondering if Old Kensey’s sheep had gotten out of their pen again. They had a habit of managing that now and again. Apparently, the kudzu lining the other side of the road from their yard had a sweeter taste to it.

The red stones crunched under his feet as he walked up to the bend, and Jasper took especial care to avoid the pockmarked areas of the road where last night’s rain had collected. He made a mental note to ask how much Albert Finch would charge this year to regrade the road. It was several seasons overdue for a good scraping, and the county was in no hurry to remedy that. Again, who had money for such things?

Miss Landry rolled down the window of her sedan and gave Jasper a visual once-over before she spoke.

“I’m going to be late for my shampoo and set, Jasper. I expect you to get to the bottom of why that monstrosity ain’t moving soon.”

Jasper nodded and smiled, made affirmative sounds and looked up from the puddles and potholes to see what Miss Landry was on about.

Kensey’s sheep were in their proper place, but had gathered at the edge of their pen to watch all the excitement. For what excitement there was to watch, which was not much at all. Just an odd wagon like those of the nomadic folk that pass through on occasion, painted in what had once been garish colors in their tradition, but age and weathering had beat to flaking dull hues — those hues still visible through the tin plates of various shapes, sizes and colors attached with two-penny nails, that was.

Some of those plates were tin replica miniplates for a number of states, not all of them neighbors, but enough that Jasper thought the driver probably ranged less than otherwise implied. Others were the kind you might find in one of them antique stores in the city originally meant as advertisements for beverages or gasoline. Still others had odd advices: “Don’t polish a working rust” or “Dirt keeps the shine safe”. Or “Always keep money in your shoe”.

Ahead of the vardo pulled hauled along in the bed of a sun-bleached and rust-pocked blue pickup of uncertain make was a shallow puddle stretching out several car lengths, pooled in the depression of red clay that made up the bulk of the road’s surface.

The pickup door was open and a middle-age man was resting his feet outside the window while he smoked what looked to be a hand-rolled cigarette.