A/N: Sometimes things just fall into your lap, whether it's good fortune or hot coffee. This story takes place sometime in season three.

Windfall

Archie Bunker sat back in his chair, in an agitated state brought on by an unexpected plumber's bill. The house in Queens should have been perfectly capable of taking care of the sanitation needs of four adults; in his day they built commodes that could take care of an Army unit. Now he was going to have to put some time in Bert Munson's cab to make up the money he was out.

A knock on the front door interrupted his fugue, and he pulled himself up, calling out "Hold your horses!" while he made his way across the room. He opened the door and had to look up to talk to his tall workmate down on the docks at the Pendergast Tool and Die Company, Jerome "Stretch" Cunningham. "Hey ya, Stretch. Watcha doing out in this part of town?" he asked.

"Hi Arch." He looked around outside and then asked, "Mind if I come in?"

"Go ahead, help yourself in," Archie said as he went back towards the living room. Stretch closed the door behind himself and followed.

"Hey, Edith isn't here, is she?" she asked.

"Edith? Nah, she's down at Ferguson's for a sale on cling peaches." He winced a little after mentioning the fruit but went on. "Why, you wanna talk to her?" he asked incredulously.

"No! It's just, ah, I wanted to talk to you alone."

"You ain't gonna say nuthin' about no man talk, are you?"

Stretch stared at him for a moment. "What? No, of course not. Listen, it seems there was a little mix-up on the dock two nights ago."

"Two nights ago? I didn't have nothin' to do with it, I was right here!" Archie insisted.

"That's not it. You see Arch, we got a truck in where the stuff in the back didn't exactly match the manifest. There were some extra items, if you know what I mean."

Clueless, Archie said "I don't follow. I didn't hear nothin' about it."

Stretch slapped his arms on his sides. "I'm talking extra cargo. Somebody, somehow, loaded some extra stuff into the shipment by accident and we ended up with it. No paperwork. No invoices. No, ah, owners."

"Whadda you mean, no owners. Somebody owns the stuff."

"Well, right now we got it stuck down in a corner of the warehouse on a pallet and when they called the shipper nobody knew anything about it."

Archie scowled. "What was it?"

Stretch grinned. "A whole pallet of electric mixers."

"Maybe they're, you know, defective or somethin'."

"I'll be right back." He opened the door and ran outside for about a minute, returning with a box. "Here's one right here." It certainly looked like a mixer box. "Let's take a look."

They opened it up and took out the components. "Let's go into the kitchen, eh?" Archie suggested and they took the appliance in and put in the mixing whisks, plugged it in and switched it on. It whirred perfectly.

"There's even some other attachments," Stretch noted as he looked down into the box. "Looks like it works to me."

"Edith has been at me to buy one of these things," Archie said as he played with the speeds. "For the money, she can keep using a spoon."

"Don't you see Arch, now she doesn't have to. Give her this one. They're orphans – they need a good home."

"Orphan, eh?" he said as he set it down on the counter. "I guess she could make a cake faster with this. It might even get rid of some of the mashed potato lumps. "

"Yeah, and there's a whole pallet of them down in the warehouse. Just waiting for new homes. I was thinking, what if you were to take a few home and then sell them for, I don't know, half price? You'd be making a lot of housewives happy, and put a little money in your pocket too."

"Now just how am I going to go around selling these things? I'd have to have a car with a big trunk. Then I'd have to meet people and talk to them and I'm no sales guy." Archie was still mesmerized by the mixer as he stared at it. It was pretty nice, he had to admit.

"Too bad. I was thinking maybe next time you're driving the cab, you could, you know, just casually mention to your passenger that you got some bargains in the trunk. I guess not, though."

"Now just wait a minute…" Archie said as his eyes lit up.

~oOo~

Edith came through the door with a bag of groceries in her hand. "Oh, there you are Archie."

"Where else would I be?" he asked. He had been pacing for the last ten minutes waiting for his wife to come home. She certainly couldn't have known that he and Stretch had gone down to the warehouse to pick up some of the mixers.

Edith knit her brow in concentration. "I suppose you could have caught a bus and be in New Jersey by now."

Archie slapped his hand on his forehead. "No, I didn't go to New Jersey."

"Oh, okay," she said, accepting the fact. "Sybil down at Ferguson's has been to New Jersey. Except I think she drove."

"That's nice. I did get you something though. It's in the kitchen." He went and grabbed the bag from her hand. "Follow me." He led her into the kitchen and put the bag on the table, then proudly took the mixer box and gave it to her.

She took the box gingerly. "An electric mixer? Oh Archie, you shouldn't have!" she gushed as she put the box down beside the groceries and gave her husband a big hug. "How can I ever thank you?"

"You can start by making a cake," Archie said with a grin as he turned and went back into the living room.

An hour and a half later, Edith brought out a three-layer cake and placed it on the dining table. "Now this has to cool before I can frost it," she said. "That mixer worked so well! It was like a whole bunch of little spoons working at the same time."

"Just like some of them cake elves."

Edith looked at him quizzically for a moment, and then broke into laughter. "That's right! Just like elves. But I need to cover it while it cools. Now I put that over here because it reminds me so much of a hat," she said as she went to the coat closet.

Archie's smile froze as he jumped up. "No, no, you don't…" he started toward the closet, but Edith had already opened the door. There was a stack of a dozen mixer boxes on the floor of the closet.

"Archie, where did these come from?" Edith asked, forgetting about the cake cover on the top shelf.

"I got 'em from work."

"Why?"

"They were, ah, kind of a bonus. I knew you'd like one."

"Yes, but so many?" She looked at the stack. "I don't have enough hands to use all of them."

"They're not ALL for you. You get one, and I'm going to sell the others next week when I drive Bert's cab."

"I don't know," she said. "What if they're…" she said before whispering "…stolen? You know what Reverend Felcher said about stealing."

"Stolen? Not these, Edith! They were giving these away down at the dock. You don't have to worry about Reverend Fletcher, but don't tell him – he might get jealous, and we're not supposed to covenant people's things."

"Well…" she hesitated.

"It'll be alright. Now go beat some frosting and these things will be gone before you know it." He made a waving motion with his hands and she went back into the kitchen, still a little concerned.

~oOo~

Archie kept stealing glances over at the cake, now nicely frosted, sitting on the table. His mouth watered at the thought of eating it, and only slightly soured when he thought of his meathead son-in-law also enjoying it. The telephone rang and he got up. "I'll get it!" he called out to Edith in the kitchen, then very carefully got a taste of the frosting with his finger while on his way to the base of the stairs and the phone sitting there.

"Hello?" he answered. "Oh, hi Stretch. Yeah, I still got 'em. What? Whadda ya mean?!" he said before lowering his voice and crouching over the receiver. "I thought you said nobody was missin' 'em. Uh huh. What? Door to door? This ain't the Brinks job! Uh huh. Geez. Okay, thanks for the tip. I'll get rid of them somehow." Archie slammed down the phone onto the cradle.

"Get rid of what?" Edith asked as she came out of the kitchen with a frown on her face.

"The mixers," Archie said before he slapped his hand over his mouth. He hadn't planned on saying that.

"They ARE stolen, aren't they?" she asked, starting to look horrified.

"Stolen? No! They're…ah…defective. Yeah, they're a hazard. Might burn down the whole house if we keep using it. Good thing Stretch warned me in time."

"Oh, I could have been killed! What about the other ones?"

"Oh yeah, the other ones…let me think for a moment, just stifle…oh Geez…wait, I got it. Let me make a call. Go ahead with dinner like normal. Go ahead." While she headed back into the kitchen, he looked through a small book for a number and dialed it.

"Yeah, whole-ah to you too. This is Archie Bunker. Can I speak with Diego please?" He paced while waiting. "Yeah, Diego? Yeah, it's your neighbor Archie Bunker. Listen, I got a problem and I need some help. I got me a dozen electric mixers that I need to disappear. What? Now don't get all insulted now, everyone knows that … well … you know, your people deal in things. Yeah. You know, it means you got connections. Just say that these fell off the truck while you were driving from Porter Rico. No, I don't want anything for 'em, you can fence 'em if you want. Just give 'em away, I just want 'em gone. Yeah. As soon as possible. I'll even help you load 'em into your trunk. Graces, Diego. Bye." He hung up the phone and then, after glancing at the kitchen door, quietly hurried to peek out the front curtain.

After taking the last of the boxes outside and putting them in Diego's trunk when he pulled up, Archie talked just long enough to make it look like he wasn't too worried and then beat it back into the house. After washing up, he came downstairs to find Mike and Gloria already at the table. What was conspicuously missing was the cake at the center of the table. He slipped into the kitchen. "Edith, what happened to the cake?" he asked quietly.

"Oh Archie, it broke my heart to throw that cake out. It looked so good, too."

"Throw the cake out? Why, Edith?" he cried.

"You said the mixer was defective. I didn't want the cake to explode while we were eating at the table so I threw it away with the mixer." He looked over in the garbage can and saw the mangled cake along with parts from the mixer and other trash. With a sigh, he closed his eyes for a moment and then returned to the dinner table. It was going to be cling peaches for dessert.

Meanwhile, across town, Stretch was on the phone with Pinky Peterson, practical joker and Archie's fellow Kings of Queens lodge mate.

"Did you do it exactly like I said?" Pinky asked. "Tell him they were stolen and the cops were hot on the trail?"

"Exactly. I could just about hear his jaw hit the floor," Stretch said as he laughed. "And then the panic set it. You were right, he bought it hook, line and sinker."

"I wish I could have seen it. Do you think he'll bring it up?"

"Are you kidding? He's so scared, he probably won't even be able to say the word 'mixer' for years to come. He won't even ask how the other ones disappeared, and he'll never find out that they were just discontinued and the company traded 'em to Pendergast for a lathe."

~oOo~

Archie settled back into his chair after dinner and grabbed the newspaper to read. That was a close one, but apart from a ruined cake no harm was done. Odd that the police never showed up at his door, but he passed that off as quick thinking on his part. He sighed and congratulated himself under his breath. "Well, you know what it says, ah, in the Bible – good neighbors make good fences."

The End

A/N: I've had that last line written down for some time without any fandom attached. I just knew that I wanted it to be about trying to get rid of questionable merchandise before getting caught. Somehow, I thought about Archie and his job working on a loading dock and things just fell into place.

Apologies to Robert Frost for the pun.