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It’s getting too hard to find a normal biro in this house, and Stan knows exactly who is to blame. He wouldn’t mind so much, except for the fact that sometimes he does genuinely need to write things down – and Stan thinks that writing in his own blood would probably be more palatable than trying to use the carcasses that pens become after Dipper’s done with them.
He finds a pen abandoned in a desk drawer, emblazoned with the logo of some long-forgotten bank, and swipes a sheet of paper off the printer. No point making it fancy, not when all he’s doing is writing the same question he’s been asking for the past thirty years.
He doesn’t do it every day, nor every week. In truth he probably does average out asking it about once a month – although his longest record is about half a year of not feeling the need to ask. He usually does it around his birthday, but June came and went this year, and he managed to keep the faith. He’s definitely not thinking about the time back in ‘97 when he worked himself up into such a panic that he asked the same question nineteen times in one day.
It’s not a regular thing. It just happens to be that every so often, when doubt and fear strike at Stan’s heart, he writes down his question and takes it into the woods. There’s no denying that if he hadn’t kept up the habit, he’d probably have given up on the portal long ago. Hope only takes you so far – it took Stan right up until he discovered something in the woods that could prove that he didn’t need hope anymore, that he could live off grim determination and absolute resolution.
Stan’s paper, in his thick, choppy handwriting, reads “Is Stanford Pines alive?”, underneath where he’s folded it neatly in half. It’s late afternoon, the kids are probably off on some adventure, and the only one who notes his leaving is Gompers. Stan tosses the goat a mocking salute as he walks past – for once, he’s eating grass, rather than trash. That’s gotta be some kind of improvement, surely?
The path is a well-trod one, and his feet know it without his mind having to get involved. He’s walked this way many times before, and though he’s well-known to the various denizens of the forest, they have an agreement. Stan lets the gnomes rifle through his trash, and in return, they don't bother him. He’s made a successful living out of looking the other way, and the principle applies to supernatural creatures just as well as it applies to dirty deals. Took a while to convince some of them that he wasn’t going to steal them for experimentation – to which he often found himself thinking, thanks a lot, Sixer! – but there’s a decent kind of peace between the Mystery Shack and the backwoods. Enough so that when he walks this way, whatever creatures ought to be there keep a respectful distance.
He’s walked this way a hundred times before. He knows these woods like the back of his hand. And yet, when Stan reaches the clearing, the milky fog doesn’t reveal the familiar clearing, with its muddy ring around an island of grass. Instead it looks like a bomb has gone off – the ground is scorched and there’s a crater burnt into the dirt.
The paper slips out of Stan’s hand, fluttering weakly to the ground. The mailbox is gone.
Stan knows what it’s like to have to live on hope, when that’s the only thing in the box. He’s had to subsist on hope before, and it doesn’t fill your stomach, doesn’t keep you warm on cold nights. It’s a terrible way to live. Right now, he’s got a roof over his head, a steady source of income, a real bed to sleep on at night – but it’s looking like he’s still going to have to live on hope.
That damn mailbox was his only way of knowing if Ford was still alive, that he hadn’t killed his brother. If he can’t check – if he can’t know – there’s every chance that he’s too late. That he might get the portal working, and he’s almost got the portal working, he’s got all three journals worth of notes and now it’s just a matter of time – but he might get the portal working only to find that it’s all been for nothing. That he took too long, and the only thing left to rescue is his brother’s remains.
What he would give for a piece of that ratty parchment! Every time he asked his question, every single time, there was always the heart-stopping fear that the answer would be no – but not knowing is worse. Stan has to trust his own heart, has to trust the rusty, dilapidated part of him that still knows how to hope. Has to pin all his work on a fleeting, ephemeral resolution.
Stan can guess what happened to the mailbox easily enough. There are any number of supernatural forces of destruction in this forest, and none more destructive than the creatures known as children. Dipper’s had his detective hat on for the entire summer, scribbling in Ford’s old journal at every opportunity, and Stan has no doubt that this is his handiwork. The anger that starts bubbling up is born entirely from fear, and Stan has to put a hand against a tree and stop himself, trying to breathe evenly.
It’s not the kid’s fault. Hell, for all Stan knows, it’s going to turn out that Mabel was testing out fireworks and Dipper was never here at all – although somehow he finds it unlikely. Whatever Dipper was doing, whatever accidental or purposeful destruction he managed to carry out, it’s not worth Stan screaming in his face. The kid had no clue that the mailbox was Stan’s lifeline to his brother. Probably he had no clue that Stan even knew about it, given the skeptic act Stan had to put on for the first half of the summer.
Stan refuses to be anything like Filbrick about this. His muscle memory is telling him to go find the kid and shake him, give him a good whack, make sure he never does anything so stupid again – and Stan is clutching at his rational mind with his fingertips, trying to calm himself down from doing something he’ll regret. It’s not on Dipper. What the kid needs is logical explanations for why he shouldn’t be doing crap like bombing mailboxes, not intimidation. That’s something Stan’s come to learn, after weeks of messing up with him.
He makes his way back to the Shack in a daze. This trip back is usually made with a lighter heart, a newfound resolve, but not this time. Stan’s heart is as heavy as ever, and he knows that from now until he manages to fix the portal, he’s flying blind. It’s scary to think about. Everything around him seems scarier, too, without that glowing hope.
Sweet Moses, that’s the problem with magic. There’s always some catch. He’s developed a dependency on a damn mailbox, and now he doesn’t know how to live without it.
As he approaches the Shack, running an absent-minded hand over Gompers’ back, he sees the attic window fly open. The kids are waving at him, sporting identical bright grins. Dipper doesn’t often look that happy to see him, and Stan’s heart clenches. The kid’s opened Stan’s own personal Pandora’s box – probably, there’s still a chance that someone else blew it up, he has to remind himself – and he doesn’t even know what he’s done. Stan manages to smile back, shading his eyes against the blazing afternoon sun.
“I’m comin’ up,” he yells. “Gotta talk to you both about something.”
Mabel and Dipper trade looks, and slam the window closed, though not before they start whispering to themselves. Stan abandons all hope of trying to hear them and heads inside instead, making straight for the attic stairs. Sometimes he rues the day he decided the kids could sleep upstairs.
When he opens their bedroom door, Dipper and Mabel are sitting cross-legged on their own beds, faces the very picture of angelic innocence. Stan snorts, leaning against the doorframe. “Relax, you’re not in trouble.”
“Oh, great,” Dipper says, his shoulders dropping immediately. “‘Cause it definitely sounded like we were in trouble.”
“You’re not in trouble,” Stan says again, deliberately making eye contact with Dipper, then Mabel. He doesn’t want this getting misinterpreted, doesn’t want the twins to think he’s cross with them. “But I gotta ask about something. Down in the woods, there, eh… used to be a mailbox. Real creepy thing, dirty as anything, not attached to any house. You kids know what I’m talking about?”
Dipper and Mabel nod, shamefaced. Stan nods with them. The guilty looks are confirmation enough that the kids were involved, like he thought, but there’s no sense of accompanying vindication, no pleasure in being right. He can’t stay mad at the kids, although part of him keeps trying to summon up that anger.
“Thing was real useful,” Stan says, “and I know I used the heck out of it. Either of you wanna tell me what happened to it?”
The twins look at each other, and Stan can see the guilt and panic. Unsurprisingly, it’s Mabel that caves, her hands twisting in her lap. “Sorry, Grunkle Stan. Dipper and Soos were messing about with it –”
“We were doing scientific research,” Dipper fires back hotly.
“– and I thought it was just a normal mailbox,” Mabel continues, talking over her brother. “I wanted to mail Mom a video of me sticking gummy worms up my nose!”
Stan raises an eyebrow. “Your mom actually likes having evidence of that kinda thing?”
Mabel shrugs. “Anyway, I don’t think she ever got it. The mailbox… didn’t like it. It kinda blew up.”
Dipper opens the journal, flipping through the pages until he gets to a spread with a letter taped to one of the pages. The handwriting isn’t Dipper’s usual scrawl, and when Stan walks over to read it, he recognises it immediately. He’s actually grudgingly impressed with Mabel – not many kids can say that they’ve “disturbed and insulted” some kind of omniscient mailbox. She really is one of a kind.
“I didn’t know you knew about it,” Dipper says, feet swinging over the edge of the bed. “Or that you were using it. I didn’t get to ask it my big question, so… I kinda know how you feel?”
Stan sighs, passing the journal back to Dipper and squeezing the nape of his neck. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Thanks for telling me the truth or whatever.”
They nod like the bobbleheads downstairs. Stan believes that they are really sorry – Dipper’s not a good enough actor to feign that level of contrition, even if Mabel might be – and he tries his best to accept that that’s the end of it, to draw a line under the whole situation. The kids have apologised, the mailbox isn’t coming back… there’s nothing else that can be done. Stan’s just got to keep on hoping.
He turns away from the twins, planning on going down into the basement while he knows the kids are occupying themselves upstairs, when Mabel’s little voice stops him. “What kind of thing did you ask the mailbox, Grunkle Stan?”
Is Stanford Pines still alive?
“Ah, boring stuff, sweetie,” Stan says, twisting back around to give her a grin. “What kind of attraction should I put up next, things like that.”
“And what kind of attraction should you put up next?” Mabel asks. Bless her heart, she looks genuinely curious, like she cares about what sorts of things Stan ends up making for the Shack. With her arts and crafts skills, maybe he’ll end up roping her into making new attractions one of these days – but that day is definitely not today.
Stan shrugs, gives her a wink. “Guess we’ll never know.”