The Feeder Becomes the Eater

Since my recent victimization by the rural mail thief, I have flashbacks every time I see something just a little bit off around my mailbox. This evening, for instance.

The Pony and I pulled over to the side of the road by the mailbox row. It was just after 5:00, near the time when normal people with normal jobs would be getting home and picking up their mail. We, on the other hand, had spent the day at a science fair, picked up papers for me to grade, and completed the weekly Walmart marketing. I put my Tahoe into park and turned it off. No need to let him guzzle gas while we waited on The Pony to take his own sweet time to climb out and gather the mail from our green metal pipe. The one not big enough to hold two tubes of Clearasil Vanishing Creme. While waiting, I spied a dark blue SUV on our gravel road to the left. Parked there, creekside, for no reason. It's not like they had a kid out peeing in nature, or throwing our homeowners-association-paid-for gravel into the babbling brook. They must have seen us stop. Because the SUV started up. Pulled forward about three feet. Slammed on the brakes. Pulled forward another three feet. And sat there. Idling.

I swear. It was like a horror movie. Like the original Halloween, when Michael Myers drives that creepy stolen mental hospital station wagon down the street and slams on the brakes when Jamie Lee Curtis's whorey friend Annie hollers, "Hey, jerk! Speed kills!" before she is strangled in the garage in a car with fogged-up windows. Or like those dudes in the commercial messin' with Sasquatch, letting him get near the door handle, then gassing the car, then letting him catch up, and doing it again.

When The Pony got out, the blue SUV started up the gravel road. Slowly. In fact, after letting The Pony back in, I caught up to it before it hit the second curve. The driver must not have liked that. He put the pedal to the metal. I told The Pony this dude was either a cut-through or a dweller. Of course, now that I think of it, those are really the only two things a person could be doing up in here. Cutting through, or living on these roads. Unless, of course, they're casing the place for a robbery. But this one was moving at a good clip. Knew when to drive on the wrong side of the road to avoid the Great Chasm worn by days of heavy rainfall runoff. The cloud of dust from his tires billowed around me.

WAIT A MINUTE! That's backwards! I am the one who lets a tailgater eat my dust. But now I was being fed! I was the eater, not the feeder! I might as well have been Elaine walking down the street in the Bizarro World with Kevin, Gene, and Feldman. The forces of the universe were off. But I didn't let that deter me. A little bit of dust never hurt ol' Val. Soon we were in a high-speed chase fueled by gravel-road rage and paranoia. I WOULD find out who this interloper was! I daresay speeds approaching 30 mph were achieved. Nobody runs from vigilante justice like that unless they have something to hide.

Alas. The dark blue SUV went up the road past our homestead. The dead end road. No outlet. A dweller. I stopped short of pursuit with intent to check complexions and medicine cabinets.

SOMEBODY has our Clearasil!