23. Message
On the final stretch of her walk home from work, it started to rain.
Maggie ducks into her building’s entryway in the nick of time as Melbourne’s temperamental spring rains bucket down outside. She tiredly unlocks her mailbox and pulls out the assortment of bills and junk mail.
She smiles at one of her neighbours who passes by her in the foyer of the building, but he doesn’t look up from his phone. As she tiredly starts her hike up to the fifth floor, she sorts through the mail.
A bill from her electricity company, a maintenance reminder from the body corporate that owns her building, and three separate supermarket catalogues. When she makes it to the landing of her floor she notices another envelope wedged inside the Coles catalogue. It’s a letter, neatly addressed in cursive to someone called Jethro Cummings.
Maggie walks toward her apartment, inspecting the return address. She’s surprised to see that it’s come all the way from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The heavy door of her apartment slams behind her and gives her a fright when she makes it inside. She’s transfixed by the envelope, desperate to know how a man named Jethro came to receive a letter from a woman named Dottie Lewis.
She inspects the address. Her apartment number is nowhere to be seen, but the building address itself is right there. Why had it been shoved into her mailbox?
That’s Australia Post for you, Maggie thinks to herself as she chucks her boring mail on the kitchen table.
Who was Dottie to Jethro? Friends, family, something more? Maggie muses as she flicks the kettle on. She sticks the letter to her fridge, its contents become an alluring secret message.
The sunlight in her apartment is soft, the day's end seeps in through the bedroom window and leaves a yellow light streaming down the blank, hallway, wall. Maggie watches the shadows of some birds stream across the hall as the kettle hits a rolling boil and the familiar click of the button pulls her back into the kitchen. Maybe she can find someone in the building who knows something about Jethro Cummings.
Maggie dives head first into research that very evening. To her dismay, the name Jethro Cummings seems to only belong to a character in The Fighting Man, a movie from the fifties. Her search results yield no real people with that name. As for Dottie Lewis, it seemed America was full of them. Over 120 of them lived specifically in Louisiana.
Her resolution is to find Jethro. Surely, in a suburb as old as Preston, someone would have to know him.
✽
The next morning, Maggie slipped Dottie’s letter into her bag before she left the apartment. Hoping that having it with her would remind her to try and solve the mystery, she went off to work as normal.
In her little cubicle on High Street, Maggie tugged at every tangent she could think of.
Why had Dottie addressed the letter to her building? What had been there before?
She furiously searched council websites for plans, permits, and anything else that could tell her about the previous owners of her address.
A short article summarising the acquisition of a parcel that was set to be demolished to make way for her current apartment building was all she could find. The property owners had chosen to remain anonymous.
Looking at the street view images of what her address had looked like before the ugly apartment building was built made her sad. Jethro could be anywhere after the body corporate paid to destroy what looked like his lovely, albeit slightly rundown, weatherboard house.
As the workday draws to a close, so does Maggie’s investigation for the day. She walks home disappointed, no closer to finding out where to send Dottie’s letter or who on earth Jethro Cummings is.
When she makes it back to the apartment building, she passes the same unfriendly stranger in the foyer but sees the elevator doors are open.
“Can you hold it?” she calls out, and to her surprise, someone does.
When she steps inside, she sees the arm holding the elevator door belongs to an older man. He smiles at her.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Oh no problem,” he says, “Gotta look out for a neighbour.”
She smiles and hits the button for the fifth floor. As the doors close, she wonders if this man happens to know anything about the building.
She turns to him, he smiles at her politely.
“Do you happen to know anyone named Jethro Cummings? I got a letter of his and I was just wondering-”
“I’m Jethro Cummings,” he says, surprised.
Maggie blinks in shock, “...I’m sorry?”
The man smiles, “I’m Jethro, you have my letter?” he asks.
“Oh!” Maggie digs into her bag and pulls it out.
When she hands it to him, she can see that Dottie's name has sparked something in the old man. His face twists into a delighted smile. Just as Maggie thinks to ask about who Dottie is or what kind of message is inside the letter, they reach her floor. The elevator dings, but Maggie can’t move. She’s too invested in the old man in the elevator that is now crying.
“Thank you,” he sniffs.
Maggie smiles tenderly, feeling herself welling up, “Gotta look out for a neighbour.” she repeats and steps out. Jethro Cummings smiles at her as the doors close and goes up to the top floor.
