The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

by John Henry Fleming

  A drop of sweat fell into the carrier’s eye, blinding him for a moment and finally sending him over the edge. He flew into an animal rage, leapt to his feet, cursing and holding the package above his head like some frenzied gorilla about to break the skull of its keeper. Then he ran down the beach and into the hot, slow surf, yelling something primal, and tossed the box as far as he could out into the mirrored waters, where it plunked below the surface, bobbed for a moment, and then began its drift out to sea.

  “Goddamn Yankee rats,” he said.

  For one brief, beautiful moment he felt a sense of power and relief.

  Then the moment faded, and he continued in his agony, dragging himself slowly up the beach toward nightfall and the faceless little town of Figulus.

  PART I

  Serendipity

  Chapter 1

  THE FIRST SIGN came when Earl Shank pulled his face out of the shallows of Lake Worth and felt a sudden breeze brush across his salted lips. He’d begun the morning as he always did, waking up well after his wife and slipping out of the house while she fed the chickens. It was best for him to get over to the post office before she could invent something for him to do. He could check on whether his undependable mail carrier had shown up in the night with a new bag of mail. If not, he could always re-sort some mail, or re-check the figures in his accounts receivable ledger, or just wait around for someone to post a letter—at least until Mely showed up and told him there were better things he could be doing around the house. And then he’d say to her, “Mely, you jest don’t understand. I got a responsibility to the nation. I got to guard against snags in the system.” Then she’d give him that look, like his idleness was a sin against God and nature. And when he’d finally return to the house, she’d work all the harder just to punctuate her quiet argument. But by the time he felt the first pangs of guilt it’d surely be almost noon, and she’d have most of the chores out of the way.

  Expecting the morning to run just like that, he’d started down the path that ran along the shore, where the strong morning sun had already made things quiet. The water moccasins had curled up in the weeds for the day. The gators had quit their yawning and moved off the banks to cool themselves in deeper waters. But there was something there—maybe even the hand of fate itself, he’d think later—that tripped him up and made him fall face first into the murky shallows, where he tasted the salty water and remembered his very first day here.

  Twenty-two years ago, he’d clung to the side of a lifeboat whose oars smacked the ocean waves into his gasping mouth. There hadn’t been room for him in that lifeboat, just as there hadn’t been room for him in his family—he’d decided that just a few weeks earlier, when he’d left them to take a job on a trader. As the waves had pressed in on him and the ocean reached out to make him one of her own, he resolved that his young life was a cursed failure and it would probably be for the best if he let loose his grip and give himself freely to the depths. The moments in which he worked up the courage to do so were the most difficult of his life.

  He finally threw his hands out and fell backward, closing his eyes, expecting the mildly annoyed face of his captain to be his last sight on this earth.

  Instead, when his rear end hit the sandy bottom, he’d opened his eyes again and seen the first mate yelling at him to get off his lazy ass and help them beach the boat. He was just a few feet from shore.

  Cheated of even the brief solemn glory he’d expected in death, he no longer had the courage to try it again. He obeyed the first mate’s command and helped drag the boat across the strip of ocean beach. Then he clung to the boat again as the shipwrecked crew crossed Lake Worth to the little town the captain had heard of called Figulus.

  They’d found then exactly what there was today: little overgrown paths branching away from the shoreline, so little used that one might easily mistake them for gator trails, and not a single house that could be seen by its closest neighbor through the trees. They walked those little paths and found no sign of human life—only houses that appeared to be deserted and a few hogs and chickens ambling around in the shade of the thick stands of cabbage palms. When they pushed in the door of one house, they found a husband and wife in a cluttered and dusty room, moving almost imperceptibly in a pair of rocking chairs. The man looked up from the fish he’d been whittling out of a piece of driftwood, the woman from the Confederate flag she’d been crocheting to hang on their wall. The entrance of sixteen men—some, like Earl, dripping wet—did not seem to disturb them in any way. That very fact had an instant and profound effect on Earl, who stood in the back, poking his head through the door. Those expressionless and ageless faces of indeterminate color struck him as a couple of perfectly blank slates, the kind of clean, smooth paper on which he’d only recently printed the publicity notices for his family’s variety show. He smiled at them involuntarily, forgetting already his recent desire to end it all.

  “What’ll we do fer ya?” asked the man.

  “We are shipwreck survivors of the SS Seaworthy,” stated the captain, a hint of annoyace already showing in his voice, “and we would like some assistance in returning to our home port.”

  The man thought about this and rocked in his chair for a minute.

  His wife said, “You ought to try ol’ Jake. He’s good at gettin around.”

  Her husband nodded in agreement.

  “Down the path a stretch.”

  The captain breathed an exasperated sigh, dumbfounded by the insignificance assigned to his shipwreck.

  When the men filed out after their captain, Earl stayed behind. He smiled again at those beautiful empty vessels smiling back at him from their rocking chairs. His job as ship’s accountant for the Seaworthy had splintered itself on the reef offshore. His destiny lay elsewhere, and those faces and the raw and unexploited land had a curious effect on him.

  He stepped outside and looked around, breathing in the ocean air and the fruits of the trees and the warm sunlight that bathed the land even in winter, and it all smelled to him like solid potential. He imagined a challenge for his natural publicity talents. He spied his limitless future. He embraced Florida for its inevitable becoming. So he stuck his big foot in the door of opportunity, determined to squeeze himself through to the other side, to the champagne and dainties he could practically taste when that warm breeze brushed across his salty lips.

  AND THAT WAS the taste he remembered this morning, when a little breeze came out of nowhere and mixed with the salt water he was still spitting out of his mouth. It was the first sign that things were going to change, though he didn’t recognize it yet. It wasn’t until much later that he’d piece it all together. Then he’d think, It was almost like somebody kicked me in the butt, jes so I could fall in an taste that water again, jes so I could wake up an smell my destiny.

  Because he’d forgotten it. And that was on purpose. Just as his neighbors tried to hide their houses in the trees, Earl had tried to hide the memory of his failures from himself. He’d given up on his fate, letting his life live itself. He didn’t consider himself a lazy man, at least in his thoughts. His problem, he once told himself, was that his thoughts were too big for his body to know what to do with, though his body was by no measure small. But Florida had a history as a haven for good-for-nothing laggards who used laziness to their advantage—pirates and treasure seekers, wealthy retirees, pale convalescents, idlers rich and poor, con men and carpetbaggers, exploiters of people and ravagers of the land, entrepreneurs with big visions and flexible morals, anybody looking for a free lunch and a day in the sun. And though he wasn’t schooled in the names and dates of history, Earl was sensitive to the attitudes and ideals of that long lineage, as though he were part of some old and venerated aristocracy whose values, the usefulness of which was now long forgotten, would perpetuate themselves anyway, solely on the strength of history. Not that Earl fancied himself a prince, not even a prince of laggards. He was a man mediocre in every way. This he knew, and yet he’d always held his medioc
rity itself in high regard. He’d counted it among his blessings. He’d used to believe that mediocrity, idleness, and a faith in the value of the imperfect were all a man needed for success. He’d used to think that that would be the moral of his autobiography, should the public demand he write one.

  But for years now, he seemed to have lost his connection to the glory of that mediocrity. There’d been no easy success, no instant triumph for a wink in the right direction. He’d developed instead a personal history of failure and maybe a little too much effort for the tastes of his spiritual kin. That had beaten his confidence and his oversized scheming into a small, wistful pebble lost in the tired folds of his brain.

  His first taste of failure came early in life, his real kin trying unsuccessfully to shape him in their own image. They were known as . . .

  THE SHANK FAMILY

  VARIETY, DRAMA, AND ENTERTAINMENT REVIEW

  Featuring Caleb and Cassandra Shank

  —of noted Shakespearean fame—

  AND INTRODUCING…

  Those Adorable Shank Children,

  Young Performers of Extraordinary Talent.

  As Earl grew up on the stages of the small-town South, he performed his simple magic tricks, danced the little numbers choreographed by his mother, sang the adorable childish songs well into his teens, and juggled a few apples and oranges when one of his brothers was taken ill. But his magic tricks failed more often than not, his dancing was flat-footed and stumbling, and he hated singing and could never smooth the twang nor the adolescent cracks out of his voice. While his brothers and sisters developed bigger and bigger stage presences and joined their parents in more serious drama, Earl shied away, and his parents stopped encouraging him. The whole family understood that he simply did not have the talent to make it in theater.

  At nineteen, he fell into the role of company bookkeeper and publicity manager. This he came to enjoy. He designed elaborate publicity notices, contacted the prominent citizens of each town, and generally got the word out while the rest of the family rehearsed. Then, with the show under way, he tallied the daily receipts, the bottom line of which he attributed solely to his hard work in the publicity department. He took great pride in this. He knew he had a natural talent. With publicity, he thought, he could provide great opportunities for himself and his family.

  He worked up grand schemes for highly publicized world tours and hitherto unheard of variety stunts, like “Shakespeare Performed atop Camels—Those Odd and Mysterious Ships of the Desert,” or “Bring-Your-Own Snake Wrasslin.” When he brought his ideas to the attention of his family, they could only laugh. They treated them as childish fancies and saw his role in the family business as inartistic drudgery, which they were only too happy to leave to the less talented. In their eyes, Earl would always be the failed artist.

  It wasn’t long before he felt this and knew that he was underappreciated, and would be as long as he remained with his family. One night, concluding sadly that his destiny lay elsewhere, he packed a small bag of clothes, leaving all his childhood costumes behind, and stole away with only a brief note of explanation:

  Family,

  Leaving to seek my fortune. The books and money (less my wages) are in trunk by my bed →

  Y’alls acting talents never rubbed off on me, but I think I got a talent for publicity. So there’s my future for you. Sorry for the trouble I’ll cause.

  Great Adoration,

  Your Lone Stray Son Earl

  It was 1861, and with the war between the states fast approaching, Earl walked to Savannah and took that fateful job on the SS Seaworthy, a Caribbean trader, hoping eventually to work his way off the ship and into the main office up in Charleston, where he could make his publicity skills pay off. When the Seaworthy foundered on the reef just a few days later, he was certain his young life was cursed. But those beautiful empty faces and that salty breeze awakened something boundless and exhilarating within him. The crew finally found a guide to walk them the day and a half north to the new Jupiter lighthouse, where they could signal a passing ship. “Y’all go on ahead,” Earl said, martyr-like. “I sorter like it here.”

  The decision was easy. The only satisfying moments of his life had come when he’d seen those crowds pour in for his family’s variety shows and he could sit back in the door of his family’s tent and total the receipts, knowing it was all his doing, thanks to his publicity skills. Of course those moments were tinged with pain, too, because his family had already branded him a loser. Now he had a chance to renew his satisfaction on the grandest of scales. He would create fame and fortune where none had existed before. He would create a thing of beauty from the ground up. Then he could watch those crowds pour in and those receipts pile up bigger than his family would ever have imagined possible. And in a town like this, the credit would have nowhere to fall but on him.

  In the early years, Earl’s big ideas made the town a little fidgety. They were a collection of loners and stragglers, all hiding from something—the law, or civilization, or conscription in the Confederate Army. Since they’d all come here to get away from people in the first place, these boatloads of tourists and new settlers Earl talked about would bring the risk of the pasts they’d left behind. But the settlers of Figulus had two traits in common, if nothing more: they were not disposed to dwell on the future, and they avoided trouble and conflict at all costs. These were exactly the qualities that had brought them here, after all. The idea that the area could ever become a tourist haven sounded so preposterous to them, and this newcomer came across as such a wide-eyed goof, that in the end they chuckled the whole thing away and let Earl go about his business without interference.

  After the war, Earl’s first great idea was to get the town incorporated and make himself postmaster. That would put him in touch with a vast network of cheap publicity. Since the town had no governing body, he’d be its only official and could act by default as its representative. He’d be the conduit between Figulus and the outside world, and the destiny of the town would lie in his hands.

  When he sent a letter to the Postmaster General’s office up in Washington, he was told in reply (some four months later) that the town would have to have a minimum of fifty residents to qualify for a post office. So began Earl’s first publicity campaign. He spent his last ten dollars at the print shop in Fort Pierce, making flyers and sending them to post offices in all the major Florida settlements:

  SETTLERS WANTED

  To Incorporate the Beautiful, Bounteous

  TOWN OF FIGULUS

  Located on the peaceful shore of Lake Worth,

  Along Major Trade Routes,

  With Plans in the Works for

  A MAJOR SHIPPING PORT

  and UNTOLD NATURAL RICHES

  Available to all Residents

  —FAMILIES, LONERS, NATURE-LOVERS, AND ALL HONEST, HARD-WORKING MEN AND WOMEN

  WANTED IMMEDIATELY.

  Paid for by Earl K. Shank,

  POSTMASTER-ELECT.

  The settlers came, mostly of the loner variety. Some left immediately when Earl could not produce the plans for a shipping port. The ones who stayed made the original settlers uneasy again, and they were uneasier still about Earl, whose ridiculous plans were beginning to work, and who seemed to want eventually to make their sleepy town into a home away from home for rich old Yankees. Eventually, the town’s cowardly nature shone through. No one could complain when they got approval for their post office. “I reckon that’s what he’s really after,” they said as they hammered together the driftwood walls of the new post office building. “A good job with the government.” Because they all were downtrodden or in hiding, they could appreciate a young man’s efforts to get ahead. So they simply withdrew into their homes and stayed away from the newcomers.

  The success of this first action filled Earl with great confidence, and he began to implement the next phase of his plan—to attract major business interests to build a small port and trade with the locals. The shipping and tradin
g companies would provide an astronomical boost to the local economy, and then he could begin to prepare the town for tourists by building hotels, restaurants, and theaters; such a setup would interest the up-and-coming pleasure-cruise industry, and then Figulus and Earl Shank would be well on their way.

  He encouraged the local small farmers to begin planting their citrus crops in huge quantities, and the local fishermen to gear up their boats for a commercial fishing industry, and the local trappers to stock up on alligator hides, because they were all going to get rich when the trading companies opened for business.

  And nothing happened. The trading companies did not want to invest in an unproven area and its evasive local population. Few companies bothered even to respond to Earl’s inquiries, and several trips north to Fort Pierce and south to Biscayne netted him nothing but sore feet and closed doors. Things began to go terribly wrong. Slowly, the settlers he’d attracted began to slip away. Some made excuses at first, but eventually they told Earl right to his face, “You done us wrong, Shank. There ain’t nothing here but a jungle full of skeeters, and there ain’t likely to ever be anything else.” They shook their heads. They spat on the ground. Then they packed their few belongings and left, most of them back up the coast, looking for any small town with a street and a few horses, maybe some single women. The town soon dwindled from fifty-three to the twenty-two original residents.

  These events took their toll on Earl. He tried bigger and bigger schemes and made bigger and bigger claims about the town, as though each failure necessitated an even bigger success to undo the injury. The Fountain of Youth Spa attracted some interest for a while, until he was caught filling the little waterhole with decidedly unhealthful and unrestorative swamp water. He never got more than a few cypress trees cut for the five-hundred-room Lazy Palms Resort. The president never turned up at the Presidential Vacation Retreat, despite Earl’s repeated invitations. And the organizers of the World’s Fair declined even to respond to his letters, despite the sketches he sent them of the “nearly complete” Exposition Center.