A Piedmont Porchlight Story

There are two kinds of mysteries. The kind the sheriff worries about, and the kind old folks discuss over pie. This here one belongs to the pie category.

For as long as anybody could remember, somebody left fresh flowers on the old wooden bench outside Piedmont’s railroad depot. Never an expensive bouquet. Never anything fancy. Just a handful of whatever happened to be blooming.

Jonquils in the spring. Black-eyed Susans in the summer. Goldenrod come September. Sometimes just a Mason jar with three or four wildflowers gathered from a roadside ditch.

Every Monday mornin’. Without fail. Nobody ever saw who did it. Now, you’d think in a town the size of Piedmont somebody would’ve figured it out. We notice when somebody buys a new truck. We notice when Mrs. Landry changes brands of mayonnaise. We even notice when Curtis Pope trims his own eyebrows.

But those flowers? They remained a mystery. Naturally, theories bloomed faster than the flowers themselves. Earl Simmons insisted it was an old railroad man honorin’ the depot. Mrs. Landry was certain it had to be somebody rememberin’ a sweetheart. Sheriff Booker claimed he could solve it in an afternoon if folks would quit “helping.” Nobody believed that, either.

Then Addison Lee from The Piedmont Journal got interested. Now Addison was a fine newspaper man, but he possessed one unfortunate quality. He believed every unanswered question deserved an answer. He announced right there in the Coffee Cup that he intended to solve the mystery once and for all.

Curtis Pope looked up from his coffee. “Why?”

“Because people are curious.”

Curtis shrugged. “So let ’em be.”

That only encouraged Addison. The next Monday he hid behind the freight warehouse before daylight. Didn’t see a soul. The Monday after that he borrowed binoculars. All he observed was two squirrels arguin’ over an acorn and Miss Beulah Mae chasin’ a chicken through the depot parkin’ lot. He wrote neither story.

On the third Monday he arrived at four-thirty in the mornin’ with a thermos of coffee and enough determination to invade France. At seven o’clock, the flowers were there.

Nobody knew how. For the next two weeks, Addison interviewed half the town. The florist. The garden club. The stationmaster’s widow. Three railroad retirees. One preacher. Two children. And a man who claimed he’d once ridden the Piedmont Limited all the way to New Orleans but couldn’t remember why.

The mystery remained. One rainy afternoon I happened to find Addison sittin’ on that depot bench, notebook closed, looking more thoughtful than disappointed. “I reckon some stories don’t want tellin’,” he said.

I eased myself down beside him. “Maybe.”

He looked at the little jar of daisies sitting between us. “You know who leaves these?”

I smiled. “I’ve got an idea.”

He straightened up. “Well?”

“I don’t reckon it matters.”

He frowned the way newspaper men do when somebody refuses to cooperate. “But wouldn’t people like to know?”

I looked down the tracks where they disappeared into the distance. “Maybe.”

A freight train rumbled through a few minutes later. The engineer gave two short blasts on the whistle. Folks on Main Street hardly looked up. We’d all heard trains our whole lives. When the last boxcar disappeared around the bend, Addison finally spoke again. “My grandmother used to meet my granddaddy here.”

I nodded. “So did mine.”

He smiled. “They’d sit on this very bench.”

“So would mine.”

For a little while we just sat there. Two old fellows. One little jar of flowers between us. Watchin’ empty tracks. Then it hit him.

I could see it happen. He wasn’t thinking about the flowers anymore. He was thinkin’ about his grandparents. The mystery had already done exactly what it was supposed to do.

A week later, Addison wrote a column. Not about who left the flowers. About the people who’d once waited at that depot for soldiers comin’ home, newlyweds headin’ north, college boys leavin’ for Birmingham and Tuscaloosa, and daughters returnin’ with babies for Christmas.

He never mentioned the mystery again. As far as I know, nobody ever solved it. Or maybe somebody did and wisely kept quiet. Either way, every Monday mornin’ there was another little Mason jar waitin’ on that old bench. Goldenrod. Daisies. Queen Anne’s lace. Whatever the season offered.

I’ve walked by there more times than I can count. Sometimes I stop. Sometimes I don’t. But I always smile. Because I’ve come to believe not every mystery exists to be solved. Some exist simply to remind us that kindness doesn’t always need a signature.

And somewhere in Piedmont, somebody still thinks an empty bench deserves fresh flowers.

Truth be told…

I hope we never find out who it is.