Corn Flake Caper

Competition Parameters:

2000 word max

Genre:  Crime Caper

Action:  House Rule(s)

Character:  A recycler

Results:  Round 1 -  1st Place Qualifier

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Corn Flake Caper

My phone buzzed on the nightstand.  I clawed at it, the display beaming as my eyes struggled to adjust in the dark. A text. Noah.  

Mickey’s dead.  Cancer.  Funeral back home Friday.

I was surprised Noah bothered to tell me.  Things hadn’t ended well between us, but I guess 4 years of sobriety earns me a message.  

Thx buddy, I texted back.  I really appreciate it.

Whatever man.  Thought you’d want to know.

Maybe Noah wasn’t ready to reconcile.  I waddled into the kitchen, opened the freezer and snagged a frostbitten burrito.  The microwave read 3:16am as I popped the door, chucked in the frozen brick of meat and cheese, and set it spinning for 2 minutes.  I knelt down and dug into the recesses of the cabinet behind some dusty pans, procuring a ¼ bottle of Red Label.  I sat it in front of me on the kitchen table.

“Is today the day?”  

The microwave dinged.  

……………………………………

I slipped into the rear pew of the church as the funeral mass begun, arriving in Philly just an hour earlier. So surreal to be back in Woodbury after 35 years.  The town had grown, but the church aroma of wood polish and incense was unmistakable familiar. I scanned the gathering of mourners, hoping to glimpse a familiar face as the priest delivered opening remarks. 

“We gather today to mourn the loss and celebrate the life of James Edward MacDonald.”

I chuckled, prompting a judgmental glare from a couple further down the row. 

James MacDonald?  I forget that was full name.

He’d been Mickey to everyone else, a name infamously recognizable throughout the neighborhood. He wasn’t a bad kid.  He just marched to his own beat, and Noah and I usually marched right behind him.  I hadn’t seen Mickey in almost 40 years.  I really had no idea what kind of life he led but when Noah reached out, I felt compelled to come back. My eyes wandered to the stained glass ceiling, images a large white cross, the color muted on this dreary September morning.  I remembered counting the tiles of each piece of glass, anything to stave off the boredom of sitting through a Sunday mass.  Mickey’s family and mine came every week to this church, his mother, the overachiever she was, made sure the whole family sat in the front couple rows, solidifying their standing in the hierarchy within the church.  And no way would they let Mickey and I hang together during a mass for fear that boys would be boys. 

The priest continued, “And now a reading from the Gospel of John.  And Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live, even when they die.’”  

“Jesus Christ,” I cackled.

The couple shot daggers down the pew in my direction.  I shrugged dismissively, prompting a harumpf as they turned their attention back to the mass.  I slipped out from the row and walked back into the foyer, second guessing my decision to come.  A took a set of stairs leading down to church basement. I hadn’t ventured down there since childhood.  The same red and gold diamond-patterned carpet that opened up to a large social room.  Carpet transitioned to a weathered linoleum floor, with tables and racked rows of folding chairs lined on either side. At the far end, a long chrome bar with swinging doors led to the kitchen.  I pushed open the door and stepped in back, entering a pantry stocked with pancake batter, syrup, and other sundries. A neatly lined wall of Corn Flakes boxes filled a metal shelving rack.  Nothing had changed in four decades, probably longer.  Every church in town participated in pancake breakfasts, vying for parishioner participation. I burst out laughing, instantly transported in memory to the spring of 1981. That May, Corn Flakes advertised a campaign for the chance to win a limited edition Mike Schmidt – Silver Slugger baseball card. All you had to do was mail in the box tab for a chance to win. “Schmitty” was Mickey’s favorite ballplayer, so he immediately set his sights to winning that card.   

Mickey’s mom was the first to volunteer her son to help with the set up and tear down of the post-service pancake breakfasts. She figured that if she kept him busy and presented the look of a Norman Rockwell family, people might forget what a little hellion he could be. She was unaware that this assignment allowed Mickey the perfect opportunity to conveniently raid the stockpile of cereal to collect box tops. He asked me to volunteer as well and a plan was born. I went along because it was Mickey. That’s just the way he was. 

On the first Sunday in May, between clearing dishes and bringing parishioners refills of coffee, we took turns with a cheap pair of craft scissors poking and cutting into the unopened stash of Corn Flakes boxes. It was surprisingly difficult work and a true struggle to cleanly recover the tabs without alerting church staff milling about as to why we were taking so long in the back pantry every couple minutes. By the time we were done with our first shift, we’d managed to cut out only seven tabs, battering the boxes along the way. 

That afternoon we regrouped over at our buddy Noah’s house. Noah didn’t attend our church. His family was Jewish, his father the Rabbi for the only Jewish synagogue in town, meaning that Noah spent a great deal of time around services. Coincidentally, the synagogue also ran community events and a pancake breakfast, complete with a Corn Flakes cereal option. Mickey saw an opportunity, but Noah took convincing. Between the stash of cereal at our church and Noah’s synagogue, we estimated there might be 50 boxes for the taking. I figured that would be more than enough to give us a great chance to win the coveted “Schmitty” card. I mean, how much more could we need? 10-year old minds are simple, and I saw the plan as foolproof. Mickey wanted more. He spent the next couple days rounding up friends at school that attended different churches in the hopes of securing more outlets to box-top supremacy. He even toyed with the idea of hitting the local supermarket and conducting a daring public fleecing of the cereal. Fortunately, I talked him out of that idea and we focused on the church stashes. 

We had established that the scissors were too slow and clumsy to effectively cut out the tabs, so we managed to acquire a few box-cutter blades by raiding our fathers’ tool chests. In a cleverly coordinated effort by a group of young idiots on the first weekend in June 1981, 137 boxes of Corn Flakes had their box-tops removed. I have no idea what promises Mickey made to his army of cereal thieves, but when classes convened Monday morning of the last week of school before summer break, Mickey collected his haul of Corn Flakes currency, stuffing every folder of his Trapper Keeper full of cardboard optimism. The velcro barely held. 

Word spread around our town as gab turned to coincidence and exploded into gossip and suspicion. As stealthy as we envisioned ourselves to be, the reality painted a different picture. Young boys with razors are far from impeccable and messes of spilled Corn Flakes where we accidentally cut into the bags revealed our ineptness. In such a small community, eyes would have pointed at Mickey immediately, but the widespread cereal carnage had adults baffled. Mickey had outdone himself. 

Mickey invited me and Noah over for a sleepover the following Friday. We had serious business to discuss. We had all the box tops in the world with no plan as to how we were going to get them mailed to Kellogg’s. We thought maybe we could ride our bikes to drop them off, but ruled that out upon discovery that their headquarters was in Battle Creek, MI, some 650 miles away. The brains of 10-year old boys had failed us again. We ignored the conundrum for the moment and turned on Mickey’s Atari 2600, engaging in round robin tank combat. From downstairs, we heard Mickey’s mother bark for his attention. Her distinctive stomp signaled approach down the hallway. She knocked on his bedroom door while simultaneously opening it up. 

“Young man. You still have chores to do.”

Mickey began to protest, but his mother raised a finger hushing him instantly.

“You know the rules. Chores first. Unload the dish washer and take out the trash. I don’t ask much of you, Mickey. Your friends can wait or they can help you out.” 

Noah turned his attention back to the video games, while Mickey sighed and got up from his beanbag chair, moping. His mom spotted Mickey’s Trapper Keeper laying on the floor and reached over to pick it up. Mickey pounced, snatching it up before she could get her hands on it. 

“What is wrong with you?” she exclaimed. Mickey searched for a logical response. “Hand me that.” Mickey hugged the folder. “What is in there, young man?” 

Mickey turned to us, trying to hide panic. He looked back at his mom. “Just all the end of year school papers,” he replied vaguely. 

“Well, hand it over, then.” He froze. “Mickey, we recycle in this household. You need to do your part in this word. It’s time you learned that.”

Mickey refused to hand over the evidence. Instead, he sprang up and said, “Fine. I’ll do it.”

With that, he sprinted downstairs and dumped all the box tabs into a blue bin, covering them with empty pop cans in the hopes of retrieving the stash the moment his mom looked away. He finished his chores, and we rendezvoused in his bedroom when tragedy struck. We heard the recycling truck rumble down his street. All three of us bolted to Mickey’s bedroom window to catch site of his mom hurrying out with the blue bin in hand. We watched in horror as she handed off the receptacle and the garbage man dumped the bin into the back of his truck. Mickey just stared out the window in disbelief. He didn’t say a word for the rest of the night. A week later, the MLB Player’s Union voted to strike. Stoppage lasted 51 days, wiping out a third of the baseball season. And even though play resumed and Mike Schmidt hammered his way to a second consecutive MVP, we couldn’t have cared less. Our box-top dream was gone. 

………………………………………

I snapped back from my stroll down memory lane and walked back upstairs, re-entering the rear of the church as a woman stepped to the podium. Once she spoke, I understood her to be Mickey’s wife. She delivered a warm eulogy about how wonderful he was as a husband and father, remaining elegantly composed. 

She closed with a final thought, “James was my everything,” before returning to her seat. 

The priest stepped forward, inviting anyone that wished to share a memory of James. I hadn’t even noticed the salty tears streamed down my face while I stood there in the back of the church. I didn’t know this man. James was a stranger to me. Everything that he was, everything he became was a lifetime removed from 10-year old Mickey. This memory, this core moment that laid dormant in the recesses of my brain until I stepped into this church wouldn’t offer any support to this group of grieving people. I wiped a combination of snot and tears from my face, turned, and walked out of the church.