Get Into James Shorts - 47. Mr. Sunshine

Mr. Sunshine

No one in town knew who bought the old house on Jefferson Street. Their only tip-off that it had been sold was the abrupt disappearance of the five-year-old for-sale sign. The two-story colonial was on a beautiful lot with gardens in the front and back shaded by ancient oaks garlanded in Spanish moss. It had seen better days and needed attention because several hurricanes had done it no favors.

No one in the neighborhood was surprised when work crews arrived and began working on the house and grounds. Repairs were made to the woodwork, and a new roof was installed. A landscape crew came in, trimmed trees and bushes, and tamed the wild yard.

Restoring the old place to its former glory took a couple of weeks. By the time it was finished, the old house stood tall and proud, reborn with fresh paint surrounded by an immaculate yard.

Excitement grew in the neighborhood. Whoever the new house belonged to was obviously well-heeled. Kids in the neighborhood wondered if the new kids would be cool or stuck-up.

Finally, a moving van rolled in, and a crew began unloading furniture and putting it in place.

The next morning, a big, well-appointed GMC truck appeared in the front driveway. The new neighbor had arrived and was frenetically involved in the business of moving in.

Lisa Baker, who lived across the street, got a look at her wiry forty-ish new neighbor and was intrigued by the big pet carrier he took inside with obvious effort.

The new neighbor was busy. His big GMC truck came and went throughout the day with its bed full of Home Depot and Walmart stuff. At one o'clock, a big van from a local furniture store pulled up and spent most of the afternoon installing beds, chairs, and tables.

As soon as the van left, Lisa and her mother made the hike across the street and up to the front door with a pitcher of lemonade, some turkey sandwiches, and cookies on a platter. They rang the bell, and their new neighbor answered, followed by a huge orange tabby.

"Hello, new neighbor! I'm Carol Baker, and this is my daughter, Lisa. Welcome to Jefferson Street."

The man's face beamed, and he said, "Thank you. I'm Jeff Mallett. I'm from Baton Rouge."

Lisa said, "Is that a cat?"

Mallett smiled and said, "He's a Maine Coon Cat. He's not happy with me because I took him to the vet to get his booster shots. When the doc saw he weighed 37.8 pounds, she put him on a diet."

Carol laughed, "Oh, poor guy."

Max strolled up to the Baker ladies and introduced himself, purring loudly and rubbing their shins.

Lisa said, "Can I pet him?"

Mallett said, "I think you have to — now. He's decided he likes you."

The big cat stood on his back paws like a meerkat as Lisa petted the top of his head.

"Carol, I have to travel sometimes. It looks like Max and Lisa are hitting it off. Would it be OK to hire her to feed him while I'm gone?"

"That's an outstanding idea for a first job," she replied, stroking the big cat's fur.

"He has to be brushed every day, but he loves it," Mallett said as he watched Max charm his visitors. "You can tell he's a big, goofy ham."

Lisa asked, "Do you have any kids?"

Carol noticed the reaction. Mr. Mallett paled noticeably and didn't reply instantly. It took a beat before he said, "No. It's just me and Max now."

Before Lisa could delve any deeper into what was obviously a sore subject for the man, she put a light restraining hand on Lisa's shoulder.

Carol and Jeff Mallett exchanged cell phone numbers, and the mother and daughter departed to let him and Max continue the work of getting moved in.

That night at the supper table with the family, Carol said, "We met our new neighbor today. His name is Jeff Mallett, and he's from Baton Rouge."

Craig, her oldest son, said, "I saw him at Arby's today. He got a bunch of sandwiches for the crew he had working this afternoon. He must be a pervert or something."

Carol said, "Craig, I'm ashamed of you! Why would you say such a thing."

"Nobody is that nice," Craig replied smugly.

Lisa said, "No. He's all right. Nobody wrong could have a cat like that."

Their father said, "Well, I'll do a search on his name, just to make sure we know who is living across the street.

After dinner, Mr. Baker retired to his office and ran a search: Jeff Mallett Baton Rouge, LA.

A long string of results appeared on the screen from the Baton Rouge Advocate, WBRZ, WAFB, and other news outlets in the Baton Rouge area.

He pulled up the latest article, dated last fall, and was shocked. Lone Star Trucking Reaches Undisclosed Settlement In Wrongful Death Lawsuit.

From Tiger Talk: It's a shame Jeff won't be returning.

The article that explained it all was from two and a half years ago: Twelve Were Killed, and Scores Injured In a Chain Reaction Accident on I-10. He remembered the accident from the news, and it had been simply horrifying. It had been blamed on a February sleet and a trucker on meth. There had been pictures on the television news of scores of charred, burned-out husks of vehicles

Mr. Baker read the articles and found that the man across the street had lost his wife and three children. Mallett had been a professor of Botany at LSU and a popular one, according to Tiger Talk.

As he was contemplating the sheer horror of losing your whole family in a firestorm created by an erupting tanker truck, Carol entered his office and asked, "What did you find out?"

The impact of the magnitude of the tragedy weighed on Joseph Baker, and he said, "Carol, that poor man has been through hell."

She also remembered the horrific accident on the news and gasped.

He clicked on an article with a picture of the Mallett family, and Carol said, "That's him, but he's lost so much weight."

Joseph said, "Our neighbor is starting over. Call Craig down. I want him to see just how big an ass you can make of yourself when you make snap judgments."

Jeff Mallett turned out to be an ideal neighbor. All of his neighbors liked him for buying and fixing up the old house that had been well on its way to becoming an eyesore. The Mathis, Kent, Rogers, and Henderson families all liked him. He soon became a fixture at weekend barbecues.

He had a home office he used to write. His Botany of South Louisiana was known far and wide as the authoritative academic text on the subject. He set himself to a book aimed at the popular market on the same subject. After moving in, he busied himself building a large greenhouse and restoring the long-disused vegetable garden space. By the first of May, the garden was well on its way.

His yard looked like it might have been Eden when his Louisiana Iris bloomed.

That summer, he took a vacation in Pensacola, and Lisa dutifully fed Max twice a day and played with the furry monster. She would brush him every visit. When Mallett returned, Lisa was rewarded with a hundred dollars and a half-dozen softball-sized tomatoes.

Mallett became very popular in town. He was unfailingly cheerful, upbeat, and polite, earning him the nickname Mr. Sunshine. There wasn't a waiter, waitress, grocery store cashier, bag boy, or delivery boy he crossed paths with who was likely to forget him.

Bus Boys were astonished to find that Mallett had neatly stacked his dishes to make it easy to clean up and wiped the table with his napkin. When one of them said he didn't have to do that, he replied that his mother's ghost would haunt him by smacking his knuckles with a ruler for leaving a mess.

In a chance meeting at Piggly Wiggly, a bag boy named Scott Ard was bemoaning the high costs of college. When they got to Mallett's truck, he pulled out his cell phone, called, and spoke to the person on the other end. He handed the phone to Ard and said, talk to these guys.

As he spoke, the boys eyes got wider and wider. He gave them his name, address, and phone number.

He hung up the phone, handed it to Mallett, and said, "I'm going to college. How?"

Mallett said, "I just knew who to call," like he did it every day.

Because he did something like that every day. When the Missionary Baptist Church on the edge of town needed a new roof, a crew who had been paid in advance arrived and did the job in a day. When the local high school biology teacher asked him to speak on local plants, he was delighted and did an outstanding job. When the Ladies Garden Club requested, he gave them a similar lecture, and came with enough Louisiana Iris roots to go around.

Mr. Sunshine became something of a local legend.

Every February, he took a trip and was gone for a week. He discussed it with no one, and Lisa got to feed and play with Max.

Years passed, and Mr. Sunshine busied himself with his work. In his greenhouse, he developed two entirely new hybrids of tomatoes and developed three unique cultivars of Louisiana Iris.

Max's default cat sitter became Lisa's little sister, Maggie. Things changed. People lived and died, and Jeff Mallett was there for it all. He wasn't just there in spirit. He was there on the ground. He was at the hospital, the nursing home, and the funeral home. He made of himself a blessing.

It took seven years for Mallett to wind down. Every year, after his mysterious February trip, he seemed to return older.

On a windy March morning, Mallett's lawyer, Tyler Beaudreau, arrived at the police station in a near panic. He had received an email from Mallett stating his intention to kill himself.

They arrived at Mallett's house a little after eight, and Beaudreau produced a key and let the police in. The police found him in his office. Max had been sitting in front of the closed door.

Mr. Sunshine had nothing left to give. He took a poison derived from an obscure herb and went to sleep. Mallett had been dead for a long time. The person the townspeople had known had been an angel waiting for his flight home.

Max lived out his long life in the Baker household. It wasn't his first change. He had once belonged to a little girl named Anna. The big, friendly cat who was always ready to play shared his name with Mallett's son.