There is a bench outside the hardware store in Snowman Falls where things get left: a glove, a receipt, once an entire ladder. On Tuesday it was a gift card. Nobody saw who left it. Everyone has a theory.
The man who found it has not opened it. He says that would be presumptuous, and he says it to anyone who slows down. He has also moved the bench four inches to keep the card out of the sun, which he considers unrelated.
The neighbor who runs the Saturday league took a different approach. By Wednesday there was a bracket. Sixteen residents, single elimination, the card to the winner. The seeding has been disputed in writing. Two of the seeds are the same man.
The one who was out on the lake at six this morning has not heard about any of it. When he comes back he will have a view, and the view will be that the bracket is illegitimate, and he will be right, and it will not matter.
The hardware store has stayed open through all of this, because nothing in Snowman Falls closes over a disagreement, and a gift card was not going to be the first.
Here is the part nobody on the bench will say. The card was never for any of them. It was for the one who has had the same tee open on his phone since April, who puts it down when someone walks past, who knows exactly which one he wants and will tell you he is still thinking about it. You know him. Somebody is going to end the whole debate by handing it to him, and he is going to say he could have picked it himself, and then he is going to wear it to the next thing and say nothing at all.
A Snowman Dayz gift card comes in four sizes, works on everything in the shop, and never goes on sale, because it is already exactly what it says it is. Snowman Falls has been notified.
Written by Snowman Dayz. Thanks for reading.