Little Puzzle Box

In 1897, Rokuro Nobutoshi of the Hakone region of Japan built a cute little box. It looked like any other multi-tiled wooden box of the time. But Rokuro’s box was special. It was a puzzle box, himitsu-bako. It had sliding panels and a 35 move combination required to open the box. Whoever figured out the combination could claim the secret to great riches locked within. Rokuro died of natural causes in 1925. On his deathbed, he gave the little box to his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Yumiko. He told her the story behind the box and of the valuable note within.

Yumiko did not believe there was a note inside and she couldn’t figure out how to move the tiles in order to try the combination. She quickly became frustrated and put the little box on a shelf in her basement. When Yumiko went off to college, her father found the box when he and his wife were doing annual cleaning. He paid no attention to it, thought it was ugly, and chucked it on a pile of things going to the trash.

In 1953, the little box showed up at the Jewel Cafe Pawn Shop at Omoromachi Station, a district of chain stores and malls on Okinawa. Yoshio Tatsuo, an antique collector, spotted the box and knew exactly what it was. He quickly took a couple of shots at the combination. His goal was to see if the sliders still worked. Satisfied that it was still functional, he purchased the box and scurried home to try his luck at the combination. He was unsuccessful.

He thought of smashing it open to see what was inside, but opted instead to write up a paper explaining the history behind boxes of the sort and talk up the possibility of something precious inside. Yoshio figured the better his documented lie, the more he could sell it for. He contacted people he knew would jump at the opportunity to get their hands on an authentic, functional puzzle box. The results of an inadvertent bidding war he started surprised Yoshio. He eventually sold the little box to an American investor named Cree Takashi.

Cree knew that Yoshio’s blurb about the origin and value of the box was BS. He was very familiar with the history behind Japanese puzzle boxes. He believed that simply smashing it open to get to its contents would bring dishonor and years of bad luck. To have a fully functional piece of history meant riches beyond what might be inside. He figured he could sell it at an auction for thousands. That plan fizzed quickly, so he tried several attempts at figuring out the combination. He soon got bored and threw the little box on a shelf in a closet.

Cree Takashi died of a heart attack in 2018. He had no family that cared enough to take care of his affairs, so everything fell to the state of North Carolina, Raleigh, where he had lived for most of his life. The little box ultimately ended up in the hands of a man named Ralph Langston.

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Raleigh, North Carolina, 2019

Ralph Langston fancied himself a local tough guy. Ralph operated his junior gangster squad from the back room of a honky-tonk called “The Bass Head Bait Shop and Honky-Tonk.” Ralph sort of took advantage of his friend, Bass Reeves, who owned the joint, by muscling in and taking over a room in the back to use as his headquarters. It was basically a closet, and he didn’t really take it over. Bass willingly gave it to him.

Now, old Ralph wasn’t the sharpest knife in the rack, but he was big, loud, and obnoxious. But so were most of the other farmers in the area. Ralph realized that if he was going to be the top dog, he’d need to hire someone who could back his plays. That meant an outsider. An unknown. Someone who was big enough and mean enough to make the local boys pay more respect to Ralph. He found that in a guy from up north in Virginia, Tator Hackney.

Old Tator had made a name for himself up in Arlington, chasing a local assassin who was wreaking havoc on a gang of misfits. It didn’t turn out well for Tator, but he left that part out of his resume. So Tator came to town loaded for bear and made a grand entrance to the honky-tonk one evening. He really made a scene. Ralph was ecstatic because his investment seemed to have paid off. The locals quieted down and took notice.

Ralph elevated Tator to lead his team of good ol’ boys. They really had no purpose unless Ralph needed to muscle in on deals that he would have otherwise been excluded. One such deal was the delivery of a package to the de facto boss in the area, the rich guy at the top of the hill. Ralph received a package from an old friend named Cree Takashi. He needed to get the box to Steve Bolot, but his health was rapidly deteriorating and he could no longer leave his house. Cree told Ralph that he had placed something valuable in the box and that he needed to hand deliver it to Steve ASAP. Steve was the top of the food chain guy, the guy on top of the hill, and he was expecting the package. Of course, Ralph heard nothing after the word “valuable” and figured he’d keep the package for himself.

Ralph opened the package and found a little wooden box inside. He held it, looked at it, rolled it around in his hands, and noticed the little slider panels on the sides. He determined it was cute, but otherwise a worthless piece of crap, and chucked it up on a shelf in his office. Ralph didn’t realize the value he sought was inside the small box and not the larger shipping box it came in. He then called Steve and told him he wouldn’t be delivering it. It took Steve about 2.5 minutes to explain to Ralph who gave the orders, and that his package had best be in his hands by noon the next day. So Ralph called Tator, gave him the box, and directions to Steve’s place. He figured his involvement was over. It was not.

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Raith Evans was one of the few competitive black farmers in the area. He was getting up in years and liked to dance on weekends at Bass Reeves honky-tonk. He and Bass had been friends since childhood. Even at his age, Raith was a kind of babe magnet, and it seemed the drunker he got, the wider his magnetic field grew. There was nothing inappropriate going on. The ladies just liked Raith’s style and liked to hang around him while their men hee-haw’d and hurled beer bottles at each other.

The problem was that Bass’ place didn’t exactly cater to guys like Raith. Bass kept the peace as best he could, but with the ladies flocking to Raith the way they did, tempers sometimes boiled over. Bass warned Raith that he should tone down his charm and maybe not be so receptive to the ladies’ playful advances. Raith’s answer was he knew he was aging out and intended to enjoy the attention as long as he could.

Tator noticed the ladies getting a little too grabby with Raith one night. It kind of stuck in his craw and he warned Bass to shut it down or he and some good ol’ boys would. Raith wound up leaving before Bass or Tator confronted him. But Tator, already worked up, rounded up some boys and followed Raith out.

They caught up with him as he walked home, beat the crap out of him and left him to bleed out in a field not too far from Bass’ place. During the beat down, Tator dropped the box that he was supposed to deliver to Steve Bolot, and as far as Raith was concerned, the fight was over at that point. Imagining it to be valuable, Raith rolled on top of it to conceal it and waited until the guys punched, kicked, and stomped themselves out.

Later, at home, Raith looked the box over. The craftsmanship was amazing. He was into antique things and thought maybe those slider things on the sides were keys or something. A quick search on the Internet revealed it was a Japanese puzzle box. Another more detailed search revealed that the box he had was very old and that the slider things were supposed to be used to complete the combination required to unlock the box. Raith thought his find was fascinating.

He tried a few of the sliders but got nowhere. He thought maybe the box was valuable, and he didn’t want to smash it, so he went back to the Internet in search of instructions and found that there were some available, but not for his box. Continuing to search, he soon found a picture that looked like his box. He saw it was, in fact, extremely old and that the last owner had registered it with some sort of society for antique crap. And as luck would have it, there were instructions with the combination available. He clicked the link, and it took him to a page requiring a password.

“Crap,” he muttered.

He looked over the box again, and on the bottom he saw a small sticker. The first few times he saw it, he assumed it was a typical made in China label or something like that. He had to get a magnifying glass to read it, but it didn’t say made in China. It just had six numbers. He figured, “What the hey?” and typed them into the password field on the web page and, eureka, he was in and looking at the slider combination. It took him a few tries, as a few of the sliders were sticking, but he finally got in. 

Apparently, whoever had the box before him was local because inside was a key and another code. Together, they provided the info needed to retrieve a gym bag from a locker at a local gym. Inside the gym bag was a jaw-dropping $2,300,000.00 in cash. Raith, of course, couldn’t see the inherit danger in taking the bag, so he did, and spent the next few weeks having the time of his life.

Steve suspected Ralph stole the box. He confronted him and was told one of his guys dropped it during a fight and that Raith Evans likely had it. Steve’s anger was off the charts. So much so, he put a hit out on Ralph for being stupid and another one out on Raith to get the box and/or money back.

When Raith came home from the honky-tonk one evening, a lady was sitting calmly in the dark in his living room. She had the gym bag on the couch beside her, minus what Raith had spent. Her name was Rage. She was an assassin. She asked him calmly if he had the missing $758,401.00.

Raith had the money… and more. But his instinct was to lie. Of all the times in his life not to, this was it, but he just couldn’t help himself. 

“I don’t have it right now, but I can get it,” he said. “No, wait, sorry, that was a lie. Sorry, I can’t help myself sometimes. I, ah,”

“Raith, hon, look. I’m kind of on a time crunch. Do you have the money or not?”

Raith took a couple of steps back, keeping an eye on her as she began fondling her holstered weapon. She didn’t look happy. He carefully reached behind a curio cabinet and grabbed a brown paper bag, bringing it out slowly to show her he had no weapon. He cautiously opened the bag and then tossed it onto the couch beside her. It fell open, revealing the cash. She looked happy again. He made a mental note of how he much preferred that look.

“There’s $800,000.00 in that bag. That should settle us up, plus a little extra for your trouble. Take it and let’s call things even,” he said.

“Wise choice, Raith. I knew I was going to like you,” she smiled.

She slid the bag closer to her, did a quick fan of the bills, and then threw it in the gym bag. She motioned for Raith to take a seat on the couch and then blew him a kiss before leaving. Raith breathed a sigh of relief. He made a mental note of how he’d never been so happy to see a woman so beautiful walk away from him.

That little box turned out to have been a godsend for Raith. He took one million dollars from the gym bag and doubled it at the racetrack. He put most of it back in the bag, but being Raith, kept a little extra for himself. Why? Because that’s how Raith operated. After giving Rage what she needed, he still had plenty left over to enjoy.

Raith decided he’d take his good fortune and pay it forward. He took fifty thousand dollars and stashed it away some place safe. He then scribbled a note on a small piece of paper with instructions on where to get it, placed it inside the box, and then locked it back down. The next day, he sold the little box to a pawnshop. Someone purchased it three months later.

K.R. Eaton - Little Puzzle Box

Short Stories by K.R Eaton