The Satsuma Boxes at the Road Are Not Free. I Checked.
free, it says. read the small print.
Every November the satsumas come in at once, faster than any family can eat them, and the boxes show up at the end of the driveways. FREE, the signs say. The parish paper ran them this week as a nice little item. I have driven these roads for twenty years, and I am here to tell you that the satsuma box is the most sophisticated economy in the basin.
I logged eleven boxes over three evenings. Here is what the signs say, word for word, minus the roads:
FREE. FREE (ONE BAG). FREE (ONE BAG) (WE CAN SEE YOU). FREE BUT BRING THE BOX BACK. TAKE SOME. PLEASE. WE ARE BEGGING.
And one, the one that started all this, that says FREE and sits next to a coffee can.
A reader who lives near that one, and who asked to be called "the neighbor", sent this:
"Nobody asks for money. There is a can. People put money in it anyway. The family empties it on Sundays and does not count it in front of anybody. Last year they bought a deep freeze."
Here is my read. The FREE box is a free box. The FREE box with a can is a store with very good manners. Nobody is lying. Everybody is paying. It's always money, friends, even when it is the nicest money in the world.
One thing bothers me. The neighbor says the can is never short. Some weeks it is over. More is going into that can than anybody would pay for what is coming out of the box, and I have no theory for that yet, except that people around here are not good at being given things.
Take one bag. Bring the box back.
I relay. You decide.
In Truth and Terror.
— Beau
