After Gifts, Mystery

Gifts sometimes are accompanied by mystery--who really left the excellent sausage on our kitchen counter top? That mystery eventually solved itself--our neighbor Joe Wilkes had dropped it by.

But some mysteries remain--well, mysterious.

Last Sunday, Martha called from our driveway, blocked by a large construction truck. Trotting down there in the sloppy snow, we found, indeed, a truck from a Pegram company, not so carefully backed into our driveway and leaning against the fence. There were three post-hole diggers, a wet box of wrenches and bolts, a coil of wavy silver wire, an almost-new generator, an armload of crowbars, a drill, the drill charger, and a rumpled fluorescent vest.

What there was not was a driver, either in or around the truck or up or down the road, or a note. Interestingly, there were also no coffee cups, beer cans, or the usual detritus found inside a work truck--gloves, notebooks, lunch bags.

The police informed us that since the vehicle had been abandoned on our property, this was entirely our problem. Several of our neighbors generously offered to adopt the stray, and Kabir, arms crossed as he rocked back on his work boots, said this was a fifty-thousand dollar truck.

Over the next few days Tom played phone tag with the company whose logo was painted on the truck, and eventually someone came and drove it, presumably, home. It had not been missed, no one knows who drove it out here or where he went, and whoever retrieved it didn't stop to talk to Tom or to pick up the box of wrenches.

The Bermuda Triangle has its mysteries. So does Scottsboro. Though ours are ranged more in a skinny rectangle up and down both sides of Old Hickory Boulevard.