“Pleasure to have you,” he said, shaking Josef’s hand. He turned to Lena. “This must be the little lady.” He kissed her hand and Lena smiled, inwardly recoiling at his gross appearance and the coarse feel of his chapped lips on the back of her hand.
Josef knew right then that things weren’t going to be all that Lena expected. Still, he put his hands behind his back and tried to maintain an air of refinement, despite the inadequacy of the surroundings. He said, ceremonially, “We thank you, postmaster, for your kind invitation. We are certain to dine on the finest foods the region has to offer.”
“I reckon my wife’s the finest cook south of Atlanta,” said Earl. “And I ain’t the only one who says it.”
He led them inside and to a corner table by the only window. A candle had already been lit and placed on the patched-together piece of tablecloth.
There were eight tables in the place, yet Josef and Lena were the only guests. They settled themselves into the homemade chairs and looked around the dark room. There was nothing on the walls or any of the other tables. The window, glazed by the salty air, looked out on an impenetrable forest of cabbage palms and palmetto shrubs, which blocked out the few remaining minutes of twilight. The tree frogs had begun to chatter.
Josef looked at his wife, who couldn’t quite muster a complete smile for him. Already he knew the evening was doomed.
When they were seated, Earl excused himself and disappeared out the back door, which was the quickest route to the kitchen next door. He was going to check how Mely was coming along. But his mind had drifted to a time in the near future when his place would be full of rich Yankees, and he’d be passing from table to table hearing them talk:
“Oh, we must tell the Vanderbilts!”
“I’ve been thinking about building a railway line down here from Savannah, and now I—”
“You think this fellow Shank would like a few investors?”
“I think I could make it worth his while.”
“The man’s a financial genius, I say. Imagine parlaying a postal error into a thriving restaurant!”
“A gold mine!”
“Handsome devil, too!”
IN HIS RENEWED preoccupation with the restaurant, Earl had neglected his post office duties all week. He hadn’t stepped foot in the place since the day he invited Josef for dinner. In the meantime, townspeople had come to drop off outgoing mail, and the outgoing mailbox was stuffed with a dozen letters and small packages. Earl hadn’t been there to collect postage when they were dropped off, and he hadn’t been there to catch up by registering the postage in his accounts receivable ledger. So of course he hadn’t placed the outgoing mail in the mail sack and hung it on the nail in back of the post office.
Normally, this was of no concern to his mail carrier. It had happened before, owing to the carrier’s erratic service and Earl’s inability to predict when he’d show up. The carrier would simply drop off the mail he had and head south, thankful for the lightness of his load. But it had never happened on the first day of the month, and this concerned the mail carrier greatly. Because at the beginning of the month the carrier received his salary, a cash sum tucked into an envelope addressed to Andrew Jackson—another detail he’d worked out when he took the job. He received thirty dollars total, fifteen from the postmaster in Biscayne and fifteen from the postmaster in Figulus. This money was paid directly out of the postmasters’ revenues, and he was now due his cash from postmaster Earl Shank, this being the first day of the month of September.
So this night, when he’d shown up early, anxious to get the cash so he could trade it for a pint of whiskey and make a night of it, he was greatly disturbed when he slinked around the back of the post office and found only a pair of rusty nails. He hadn’t imagined that such a thing could occur. He’d imagined ripping open that envelope and the feel of the cash in his hand, and he’d imagined a speedy boat ride across Lake Worth and a brisk walk about twelve miles south, where he’d meet a middle-aged Indian woman on the shore of a little inlet as he did every month, and that Indian, in exchange for those fifteen dollars the carrier had no use for, would hand him a bottle of whiskey, one that had no label, yet was surprisingly smooth, as if the Indian herself were a connoisseur, had purchased it by the barrel and had blessed the carrier by parting with a precious portion of it. He’d imagined nursing that bottle as he leaned against a dune, far enough back from the beach to avoid the shipwreck scavengers or anyone else who might come along. Lulled by the sound of the waves and mesmerized by the brilliant night sky, he’d drink until the potion took effect, and for the first time in a month he’d cease to feel the throbbing, grinding pain in his feet, and would instead feel a peacefulness and a bliss that few men ever know as he mumbled aloud and sang himself to sleep.
That moment of paradise denied, he could not have been more angry. He squeezed his empty fists until his overgrown fingernails drew blood from his palms. Then, overcoming his reclusive bent, he stormed along the path at lake’s edge, not knowing what this postmaster looked like, but in any case seeking someone to blame, until he stumbled and hobbled up to the first building he came to and pushed open the door to Earl Shank s restaurant.
JOSEF AND LENA were sniffing their wine when the man entered the room. They were trying to overcome the pungent smell and put the glasses to their lips, but now a new smell overpowered the wine. It was the smell of salty sweat and dried seaweed and clothes unwashed for months. The man was dirty and unshaven and carried a sack over one shoulder—he hadn’t bothered to drop off the incoming mail.
Lena gave Josef a frightened look and he whispered for her to look away. He could think of no words to comfort her, and his brow beaded with sweat from the heat and from his growing anxiety.
The postal carrier looked around the room and realized he was in some sort of restaurant. He decided he’d demand to be served in exchange for his troubles, and then would threaten the proprietor, whoever that might be, unless his fifteen dollars was coughed up on the spot. He lurched his way over to a table and slammed his canvas bag on it, spilling the contents, acknowledging Josef and Lena with a sneer. Then he sat and waited for some table service.
As he did so, he began to shuffle through the letters and packages he’d spilled on the table. He grabbed a few of the letters, slit them open with his dirty and sunburnt finger, and began to read them, resting his thick hairy arms on the table, mumbling and grunting to himself and laughing scornfully at what he read of the intimate workings of families, friends, and lovers.
Josef worried about Lena. She was pale and trembling. He hadn’t expected a fancy New York restaurant, but neither had he expected such filthy clientele. She stared out the window trying to collect herself, until a palmetto bug the size of her hand alighted on the glass. She shrieked loudly, pushing back her chair and covering her face. “Oh, Josef! Josef!” she cried.
Josef leapt up and flicked the glass for her until the monster disappeared. He patted his wife’s shoulder. She took quick breaths, on the verge of tears. Josef felt trapped. That filthy man sat between them and the door. But even if they were to leave, then what? There were millions of bugs out there, all of them, as Lena said, like tiny vampires. There was a whole subtropical jungle of swarming, malevolent creatures. He knew it would drive Lena mad to go out there now in her condition. He and Lena were caged animals who understood that the safest thing was to stay in the cage.
The stranger across the room had turned in his chair when Lena shrieked. Now Josef became conscious of his stare. The stranger looked them up and down, taking in their dress, their neatly groomed appearance, the unshakable polish of citified Yankees. Then, with a sneer, he turned back to another letter he was in the process of opening and, shaking his head, grumbled, “Damn Yankee pigeons.” Then, louder, “Yankee rats! Carpetbaggers!” He slammed his knuckles on the table, glowering.
Lena covered her face and began to cry now. Josef was still standing, wondering now what he ought to say to the unkempt stranger,
wondering if this was grounds for something more serious than words.
The postmaster interrupted his thoughts, returning from the kitchen with their dinner. He stopped short when he saw the stranger, mystified and then pleased.
“Are you here to dine with us, sir?”
“Well, I sure as hell ain’t here for the company.”
Earl brought the platter to Josef and Lena’s table. Lena made a half-hearted effort to pull herself together as Josef returned to his seat.
“Here you are,” said Earl, lowering the tray to the table. “Fresh gatortail in wine sauce.”
Lena took one look at the footlong hunk of steaming reptilian flesh, with its warty skin and dragon-like ridges, and ran from the restaurant holding her mouth.
Josef called after her, “Lena! Lena, come back!” He pushed aside the postmaster and made for the door, but he stopped short when he heard the stranger laughing mockingly. Josef felt it was his duty to say something. He had his wife’s honor to uphold. If he was ever going to prove himself a man to her he ought to challenge this blackguard here and now. And he’d do it as they did in the Old World, with pistols and steps. He’d show this ruffian whom he was dealing with. He remembered a story his Uncle Mordy had told him about a great grandfather of his who had once fought a duel and got his ear shot off. Josef could think of no better honor than to lose an ear for Lena.
With all the courage of his Old-World lineage behind him, then, Josef stepped up to the stranger’s table and slapped his bristly face.
The man stopped laughing, startled. Earl remained in the shadows, hoping for one of those good old-fashioned barroom brawls that would win his restaurant great renown.
“Now that’s a place with some real action!”
“Like the Wild West—only with a beach!”
“Sir,” said Josef, “you have offended my wife with your impolite remarks and your brutish smell. I demand satisfaction for her honor.”
The stranger rose, looked him in the eye, and drove his fist into Josef’s face.
Chapter 7
JOSEF AWOKE IN the Shanks’ kitchen, gasping in pain as Mrs. Shank tended to his broken nose. Morning light poured in through the open window.
“Keep still,” said Mely, “or you’ll start bleeding again.”
Earl came into the room carrying another damp rag. He wasn’t convinced that things had gone well last night. The Steinmetzes weren’t going to write home about the food because they’d never tasted it. But there was that Wild West angle, which had a certain undeniable attraction. Most rich Yankees wanted some form of thrill these days, especially the idle rich, and why risk real danger when they could come to:
Earl Shank’s
Wild West Steakhouse
Barroom Brawls and Shoot-’em-up Shows Nightly.
Of course, there were logistical headaches. He’d have to breed cattle, and for that he’d need to clear some grazing land. He’d have to think about this. In the meantime, he’d have to play the whole event like it was natural and expected.
“Well, if it ain’t Sleeping Beauty,” he said.
“It ain’t,” said Mely. “Not with a nose like this.”
Josef’s nose was purple and swollen grotesquely, and his eyes drooped under the weight of the puffy black bags beneath them.
“You was out good, I’d say,” said Earl. “You ought to see yerself. That feller gave you a fine pair a shiners and a crooked nose in the bargain. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he mighta put you away for good, and now you’re rose up just ta haunt us. Don’t he look like a ghost, hon? You better check his pulse, jes ta be certain.”
“Don’t be ribbin the man when he’s injured,” said Mely.
Josef had slowly regained his faculties, and remembered the night before in brief, nightmarish flashes.
“Yessir, you’ll be writin home about this, and ’fore you know it, all yer friends up in New York’ll want ta come down for a souvenir like you got.”
“Where’s Lena?” said Josef.
“I expect she’s back home, worried about you. She don’t know you been decked.”
Josef forced himself to his feet despite Mely’s protests. He ran out the door, and Earl called after him, “Hey, Mr. Steinmetz! Funny thing about that feller who hit you! Turns out he was the mail carrier! Same feller who lost your package! Looks like he done you double dirty! He’uz just lookin for his salary, that’s all, but I fed ’im yer gatortail an’ he calmed down nicely! Said it was delicious! Hey, take my skiff there, by the dock! It’s okay, you can take it! Come back and try that gatortail sometime, all right, Mr. Steinmetz?!!”
Josef paddled the postmaster’s skiff across the lake, then ran along the edge of the grove to his home, where he expected to find Lena, worried half sick about him, overjoyed that he was safe. She’d tend his wounds, and all would be forgiven.
Instead, he found a note:
Dearest Josef,
I am not as brave as I once thought. This place frightens me, like a storybook tale of the dark jungles of Africa. I can no longer sleep for fear of the flying beasts, and this heat is too much for my frail constitution. I am weak, Josef. I have failed you.
This morning, an Indian woman came to the door. She frightened me at first, but she was refined for a savage and spoke perfect English. I was desperate, Josef, and my desperation was stronger than my fear, so I asked the woman to take me to Biscayne so I could catch a steamer back to Brooklyn. I paid her our last twenty dollars. Can you ever forgive me? No, don’t try, I am not worth it. I am the worst wife a man could have, I am a traitor to you.
Don’t follow me, Josef. I know how much this life means to you. It is your dream, and the dream of your fathers. Do not give it up on my account. I will always be yours in spirit, and will remain true, despite my failure as a wife. Goodbye, my love.
Your Lena
Josef slumped beside a chair in the center of the small house he’d built for his marriage. He felt the coldness and the emptiness of the room, empty of Lena’s clothes, Lena’s perfumes, empty of Lena, eating her soup behind her veil of mosquito netting.
He crumpled the note, then uncrumpled it, smoothing it out on the chair and reading it again and again, hoping to find a word or phrase he’d missed before, something to give him hope, or something to tell him she’d only played him a cruel joke, one he well deserved for his cowardly hesitation in defending her honor.
Then his grief turned to anger. What a foolish and stupid idea to think he could bring his wife here to this hellish jungle and expect her to be happy! How stupid to think himself as brave and industrious as his forefathers, to think he could conquer this wilderness with his two soft, small hands! He was glad those loafers had never reached their destination; he was not worthy to wear them, and he was not worthy of any gifts from a man as great as his uncle. It was God’s will that they were lost. It was a sign, but he’d been too thickheaded to see it. He was weak and stubborn, and now, as punishment, the Lord had taken his wife from him.
He kicked over the dining-table chair. Then his eye fell on the bottle of kerosene in the kitchen, and he grabbed it and ran out into his citrus grove. With tears streaming from his blackened eyes, he doused a dozen of his best trees, ones that were nearly ready to bear their first fruit.
This is what my dream amounts to, he thought. This is how weak and stupid I am!
He set the trees aflame. As if that weren’t enough, when the fire took hold he shook the trees and kicked them, trying to break their trunks, burning his palms and tearing them on the splinters, until he could no longer breathe through the smoke, and he stumbled back to his house, collapsing on the front porch. A feverish mixture of sweat and tears stung his cheeks, and he watched his orchard burn in the bright, terrible sunlight.
WHEN HE FINALLY collected himself enough to think again it was nearly sunset, and the air had grown quiet in the brief lull between the last singing of birds and the first chirping of insects.
He walked out into his or
chard. There was nothing now but rows and rows of black, leafless trees. Their last embers still hung in the air, winking out, and the ground was gray with ash. He reached just above his head and pulled from a smoldering limb what would have been the first fruit of his grove. It was small and immature, and he couldn’t tell whether it would have been a grapefruit or an orange. Now it was coated with ash, and when he squeezed it in his fingers, it crumbled dryly to his feet.
There was nothing here for him now, and his first thought was that perhaps he should follow Lena. He worried about her when he recalled the Indian woman she’d mentioned in her note. Josef had not seen any Indians in the area, though since he had never seen one in his life, he wondered whether he’d know one if he saw one. Why would an Indian approach their house? What business would she have? But worse, it troubled him greatly that Lena would be in such a state of mind that she would travel alone with a savage. For all she knew, this squaw might take her directly to the chief, who’d imprison or enslave her on the spot.
He shook his head, sadly. Lena, Lena, he thought, how could you? His impulse was to follow her down to Biscayne in the hope that she’d actually made it there. If so, he could surprise her on the steamer, beg her forgiveness, and then renew their marriage back in the city, where they belonged. Maybe it took something like this to make that comfortable little life possible again, he thought. The memory of these difficult days could only serve to draw them closer together. Nothing binds more tightly than a shared disaster. One day they’d gather their children together and tell them the whole tragicomic tale of their brief days as pioneers. It would be hard for the children ever to believe that their parents had been pioneers, but they’d retell the story anyway, simply because it made such a good story, and the story would perpetuate itself like that—a story told out of habit, for the sake of the telling, even though the teller did not fully believe his own words.
The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman Page 7
