By god, I thought, I’m going to make it! Lunch, and back in on schedule! Life, at last, was bearable.
These people didn’t even own dogs. Nobody stood outside waiting for their mail. I hadn’t heard a human voice in hours. Perhaps I had reached my postal maturity, whatever that was. I strolled along, efficient, almost dedicated.
I remembered one of the older carriers pointing to his heart and telling me, “Chinaski, someday it will get you, it will get you right here!”
“Heart attack?”
“Dedication to service. You’ll see. You’ll be proud of it.”
“Balls!”
But the man had been sincere.
I thought about him as I walked along.
Then I had a registered letter with return attached.
I walked up and rang the doorbell. A little window opened in the door. I couldn’t see the face.
“Registered letter!”
“Stand back!” said a woman’s voice. “Stand back so I can see your face!”
Well, there it was, I thought, another nut.
“Look lady, you don’t have to see my face. I’ll just leave this slip in the mailbox and you can pick your letter up at the station. Bring proper identification.”
I put the slip in the mailbox and began to walk off the porch.
The door opened and she ran out. She had on one of those see-through negligees and no brassiere. Just dark blue panties. Her hair was uncombed and stuck out as if it were trying to run away from her. There seemed to be some type of cream on her face, most of it under the eyes. The skin on her body was white as if it never saw sunlight and her face had an unhealthy look. Her mouth hung open. She had on a touch of lipstick, and she was built all the way …
I caught all this as she rushed at me. I was sliding the registered letter back into the pouch.
She screamed, “Give me my letter!”
I said, “Lady, you’ll have to …”
She grabbed the letter and ran to the door, opened it and ran in.
God damn! You couldn’t come back without either the registered letter or a signature! You even had to sign in and out with the things.
“HEY!”
I went after her and jammed my foot into the door just in time.
“HEY. GOD DAMN YOU!”
“Go away! Go away! You are an evil man!”
“Look, lady! Try to understand! You’ve got to sign for that letter! I can’t let you have it that way! You are robbing the United States mails!”
“Go away, evil man!”
I put all my weight against the door and pushed into the room. It was dark in there. All the shades were down. All the shades in the house were down.
“YOU HAVE NO RIGHT IN MY HOUSE! GET OUT!”
“And you have no right to rob the mails! Either give me the letter back or sign for it. Then I’ll leave.”
“All right! All right! I’ll sign.”
I showed her where to sign and gave her a pen. I looked at her breasts and the rest of her and I thought, what a shame she’s crazy, what a shame, what a shame.
She handed back the pen and her signature—it was just scrawled. She opened the letter, began to read it as I turned to leave.
Then she was in front of the door, arms spread across. The letter was on the floor.
“Evil evil evil man! You came here to rape me!”
“Look lady, let me by.”
“THERE IS EVIL WRITTEN ALL OVER YOUR FACE!”
“Don’t you think I know that? Now let me out of here!”
With one hand I tried to push her aside. She clawed one side of my face, good. I dropped my bag, my cap fell off, and as I held a handkerchief to the blood she came up and raked the other side.
“YOU CUNT! WHAT THE HELL’S WRONG WITH YOU!”
“See there? See there? You’re evil!”
She was right up against me. I grabbed her by the ass and got my mouth on hers. Those breasts were against me, she was all up against me. She pulled her head back, away from me—”
“Rapist! Rapist! Evil rapist!”
I reached down with my mouth, got one of her tits, then switched to the other.
“Rape! Rape! I’m being raped!”
She was right. I got her pants down, unzipped my fly, got it in, then walked her backwards to the couch. We fell down on top of it.
She lifted her legs high.
“RAPE!” she screamed.
I finished her off, zipped my fly, picked up my mail pouch and walked out leaving her staring quietly at the ceiling …
I missed lunch but still couldn’t make the schedule.
“You’re 15 minutes late,” said The Stone.
I didn’t say anything.
The Stone looked at me. “God o mighty, what happened to your face?” he asked.
“What happened to yours?” I asked him.
“Whadda you mean?”
“Forget it.”
—POST OFFICE
a lovely couple
I had to take a shit
but instead I went
into this shop to
have a key made.
the woman was dressed
in gingham and smelled
like a muskrat.
“Ralph,” she hollered
and an old swine in a
flowered shirt and
size 6 shoes, her
husband, came out and
she said, “this man
wants a key.”
he started grinding
as if he really didn’t
want to.
there were slinking
shadows and urine
in the air.
I moved along the
glass counter,
pointed and called
to her,
“here, I want this
one.”
she handed it to
me: a switchblade
in a light purple
case.
$6.50 plus tax.
the key cost
practically
nothing.
I got my change and
walked out on
the street.
sometimes you need
people like that.
After three years I made “regular.” That meant holiday pay (subs didn’t get paid for holidays) and a 40 hour week with two days off. The Stone was also forced to assign me as relief man to five different routes. That’s all I had to carry—five different routes. In time, I would learn the cases well plus the shortcuts and traps on each route. Each day would be easier. I could begin to cultivate that comfortable look.
Somehow, I was not too happy. I was not a man to deliberately seek pain, the job was still different enough, but somehow it lacked the old glamour of my sub days—the not-knowing-what-the-hell was going to happen next.
A few of the regulars came around and shook my hand.
“Congratulations,” they said.
“Yeh,” I said.
Congratulations for what? I hadn’t done anything. Now I was a member of the club. I was one of the boys. I could be there for years, eventually bid for my own route. Get Xmas presents from my people. And when I phoned in sick, they would say to some poor bastard sub, “Where’s the regular man today? You’re late. The regular man is never late.”
So there I was. Then a bulletin came out that no caps or equipment were to be placed on top of the carrier’s case. Most of the boys put their caps up there. It didn’t hurt anything and saved a trip to the locker room. Now after three years of putting my cap up there I was ordered not to do so.
Well, I was still coming in hungover and I didn’t have things like caps on my mind. So my cap was up there, the day after the order came out.
The Stone came running with his write-up. It said that it was against rules and regulations to have any equipment on top of the case. I put the write-up in my pocket and went on sticking letters. The Stone sat swiveled in his chair, watching me. All the ot
her carriers had put their caps in their lockers. Except me and one other—one Marty. And The Stone had gone up to Marty and said, “Now, Marty, you read the order. Your cap isn’t supposed to be on top of the case.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Habit, you know. Sorry.” Marty took his cap off the case and ran upstairs to his locker with it.
The next morning I forgot again. The Stone came with his write-up.
It said that it was against rules and regulations to have any equipment on top of the case.
I put the write-up in my pocket and went on sticking letters.
The next morning, as I walked in, I could see The Stone watching me. He was very deliberate about watching me. He was waiting to see what I would do with the cap. I let him wait awhile. Then I took the cap off my head and placed it on top of the case.
The Stone ran up with his write-up.
I didn’t read it. I threw it in the wastebasket, left my cap up there and went on sticking mail.
I could hear The Stone at his typewriter. There was anger in the sound of the keys.
I wondered how he managed to learn how to type? I thought.
He came again. Handed me a 2nd write-up.
I looked at him.
“I don’t have to read it. I know what it says. It says that I didn’t read the first write-up.”
I threw the 2nd write-up in the wastebasket.
The Stone ran back to his typewriter.
He handed me a 3rd write-up.
“Look,” I said, “I know what all these things say. The first write-up was for having my cap on top of the case. The 2nd was for not reading the first. This 3rd one is for not reading the first or 2nd write-ups.”
I looked at him, and then dropped the write-up into the wastebasket without reading it.
“Now I can throw these away as fast as you can type them. It can go on for hours, and soon one of us is going to begin looking ridiculous. It’s up to you.”
The Stone went back to his chair and sat down. He didn’t type anymore. He just sat looking at me.
I didn’t go in the next day. I slept until noon. I didn’t phone. Then I went down to the Federal Building. I told them my mission. They put me in front of the desk of a thin old woman. Her hair was grey and she had a very thin neck that suddenly bent in the middle. It pushed her head forward and she looked up over the top of her glasses at me.
“Yes?”
“I want to resign.”
“To resign?”
“Yes, resign.”
“And you’re a regular carrier?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk,” she went, making this sound with her dry lips.
She gave me the proper papers and I sat there filling them out.
“How long have you been with the post office?”
“Three and one half years.”
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk,” she went, “tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.”
And so there it was. I drove home to Betty and we uncapped the bottle.
Little did I know that in a couple of years I would be back as a clerk and that I would clerk, all hunched-up on a stool, for nearly 12 years.
—POST OFFICE
The Day I Kicked Away a Bankroll
and, I said, you can take your rich aunts and uncles
and grandfathers and fathers
and all their lousy oil
and their seven lakes
and their wild turkey
and buffalo
and the whole state of Texas,
meaning, your crow-blasts
and your Saturday night boardwalks,
and your 2-bit library
and your crooked councilmen
and your pansy artists—
you can take all these
and your weekly newspaper
and your famous tornadoes,
and your filthy floods
and all your yowling cats
and your subscription to Time,
and shove them, baby,
shove them.
I can handle a pick and ax again (I think)
and I can pick up
25 bucks for a 4-rounder (maybe);
sure, I’m 38
but a little dye can pinch the gray
out of my hair;
and I can still write a poem (sometimes),
don’t forget that, and even if
they don’t pay off,
it’s better than waiting for death and oil,
and shooting wild turkey,
and waiting for the world
to begin.
all right, bum, she said,
get out.
what? I said.
get out. you’ve thrown your
last tantrum.
I’m tired of your damned tantrums:
you’re always acting like a
character in an O’Neill play.
but I’m different, baby,
I can’t help
it.
you’re different, all right!
God, how different!
don’t slam
the door
when you leave.
but, baby, I love your
money!
you never once said
you loved me!
what do you want
a liar or a
lover?
you’re neither! out, bum,
out!
… but baby!
go back to O’Neill!
I went to the door,
softly closed it and walked away,
thinking: all they want
is a wooden Indian
to say yes and no
and stand over the fire and
not raise too much hell;
but you’re getting to be
an old man, kiddo;
next time play it closer
to the
vest.
On Christmas I had Betty over. She baked a turkey and we drank. Betty always liked huge Christmas trees. It must have been seven feet tall, and half as wide, covered with lights, bulbs, tinsel, various crap. We drank from a couple of fifths of whiskey, made love, ate our turkey, drank some more. The nail in the stand was loose and the stand was not big enough to hold the tree. I kept straightening it. Betty stretched out on the bed, passed out. I was drinking on the floor with my shorts on. Then I stretched out. Closed my eyes. Something awakened me. I opened my eyes. Just in time to see the huge tree covered with hot lights, lean slowly toward me, the pointed star coming down like a dagger. I didn’t quite know what it was. It looked like the end of the world. I couldn’t move. The arms of the tree enfolded me. I was under it. The light bulbs were red hot.
“Oh, OH JESUS CHRIST, MERCY! LORD HELP ME! JESUS! JESUS! HELP!”
The bulbs were burning me. I rolled to the left, couldn’t get out, then I rolled to the right.
“YAWK!”
I finally rolled out from under. Betty was up, standing there.
“What happened? What is it?”
“CAN’T YOU SEE? THAT GOD DAMNED TREE TRIED TO MURDER ME!”
“What?”
“YES, LOOK AT ME!”
I had red spots all over my body.
“Oh, poor baby!”
I walked over and pulled the plug from the wall. The lights went out. The thing was dead.
“Oh, my poor tree!”
“Your poor tree?”
“Yes, it was so pretty!”
“I’ll stand it up in the morning. I don’t trust it now. I’m giving it the rest of the night off.”
She didn’t like that. I could see an argument coming, so I stood the thing up behind a chair and turned the lights back on. If the tiling had burned her tits or ass, she would have thrown it out the window. I thought I was being very kind.
Several days after Christmas I stopped in to see Betty. She was sitting in her room, drunk, at 8:45 a.m. in the morning. She didn’t look well but then neither did I. It seemed
that almost every roomer had given her a fifth. There was wine, vodka, whiskey, scotch. The cheapest brands. The bottles filled her room.
“Those damn fools! Don’t they know any better? If you drink all this stuff it will kill you!”
Betty just looked at me. I saw it all in that look.
She had two children who never came to see her, never wrote her. She was a scrubwoman in a cheap hotel. When I had first met her her clothes had been expensive, trim ankles fitting into expensive shoes. She had been firm-fleshed, almost beautiful. Wild-eyed. Laughing. Coming from a rich husband, divorced from him, and he was to die in a car wreck, drunk, burning to death in Connecticut. “You’ll never tame her,” they told me.
There she was. But I’d had some help.
“Listen,” I said, “I ought to take that stuff. I mean, I’ll just give you back a bottle now and then. I won’t drink it.”
“Leave the bottles,” Betty said. She didn’t look at me. Her room was on the top floor and she sat in a chair by the window watching the morning traffic.
I walked over. “Look, I’m beat. I’ve got to leave. But for Christ’s sake, take it easy on that stuff!”
“Sure,” she said.
I leaned over and kissed her goodbye.
About a week and a half later I came by again. There wasn’t any answer to my knock.
“Betty! Betty! Are you all right?”
I turned the knob. The door was open. The bed was turned back. There was a large bloodspot on the sheet.
“Oh shit!” I said. I looked around. All the bottles were gone.
Then I looked around. There was a middle-aged Frenchwoman who owned the place. She stood in the doorway.
“She’s at County General Hospital. She was very sick. I called the ambulance last night.”
“Did she drink all that stuff?”
“She had some help.”
I ran down the stairway and got into my car. Then I was there. I knew the place well. They told me the room number.
There were three or four beds in a tiny room. A woman was sitting up in hers across the way, chewing an apple and laughing with two female visitors. I pulled the drop sheet around Betty’s bed, sat down on the stool and leaned over her.
“Betty! Betty!”
I touched her arm.
“Betty!”