The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

by John Henry Fleming

  Partridge continued to mutter indignantly as he filled Josef’s sack with northbound mail. Josef hadn’t the energy to put forth a word in his defense. He could only think with horror about the awful journey back to Figulus. Defeat whispered loudly in his ear, though he couldn’t collect his wits enough to understand it.

  “These letters on top here have to be dropped off at the port on your way out,” said Partridge. “We have important guests at the hotels and they have to keep in touch with their families and business associates.”

  Josef nodded.

  “Now be on your way and for God’s sake get some coverings for your feet.” Partridge returned to mail-sorting, shaking his head.

  At last Josef dragged himself out of the office and returned to the sunlight.

  Still unsure of what he was going to do or where he might go, with growing doubts about who he was, even, Josef walked back toward the beach, moving his feet without the will to do so. He’d already forgotten about his delivery to the port.

  His first step onto the sand seemed to wake him out of his trance, and he understood fully the extent of his failure. He had failed his wife first of all by dragging her into the nightmare of pioneer life. But that might have been rectified were it not for his carnal frolic with that squaw. He’d been with the squaw before he’d even consummated his marriage, and what kind of man did that?! He’d failed his fellow settlers in Figulus by destroying their letters to family, friends, and loved ones, letters posted in the solemn and unspoken trust that exists between a community and its postal carrier. He’d failed his dear uncle by not locating the fine loafers he’d practically sent from his death bed, and by failing to have the courage and strength of will to conquer the inconveniences of the tropics, and worst of all by denying the love and kindness his uncle had shown in teaching Josef to swim. Then there was his grandest failure of all: he’d failed his vision of Paradise and thus failed God Himself, for what is a man if he can’t do the work of the Lord? He’d been sent a beautiful image of the Paradise to come, and he’d been handed a role in its creation, but he’d taken it upon himself to revise the Lord’s will. There’d been handwriting on the wall, and he’d taken the liberty to edit it for his own selfish whims. He’d proved in the eyes of both God and man that he was nothing more than a fool, a nobody destined for an unremarkable life among all the other nobodies and their visions of personal contentment.

  Such was Josef’s state as he stepped into the quiet Atlantic, mellow with late-afternoon sunlight. He stared at the horizon and was suddenly overwhelmed by a great sense of relief. It was an odd and seemingly inappropriate feeling, so much so that it made him weightless and giddy. He’d recognized himself for an incompetent fool, and as sad as the thought was at first, it now reemerged with a secondary effect: in acknowledging his failure, he had in one fell swoop relieved himself of all obligations to everyone and everything—all the weight of conquering the wilderness, of living up to the memory of his uncle, and of serving the Will of the Lord had been lifted from his shoulders. He trembled at this airy gift of freedom. He felt he could step up and walk on these waves, all the way to Africa if he so desired. He was giddy with foolishness. What a happy, stupid fool he was!

  So he couldn’t help but break out in laughter, and he laughed like never before, loudly and without restraint, for he was now the town fool, of whom nothing was expected and nothing demanded. He was a joker in the deck, the wild card used by anyone for any purpose, and it was nothing to him because he himself was nothing. He laughed so loudly and with such abandon that he seemed to put something of himself in that laugh, and he sent it out across the quiet ocean like a message in a new tongue, a tongue so ambiguous that anyone receiving the message, no matter which language he spoke, would be free to read it in any way he so desired and use it for any purpose he so wished. It was laughter rich and resounding, a thing of pure and absolute beauty, the purest and truest thing Josef had ever made.

  Then he cut it off all at once and lifted his mail sack off his neck and shoulder and raised it above his head, and with a shot-putter’s shout and a determination greater than any he’d known in his young life, he heaved the mail sack far out into the glassy water, where it disappeared with a ripple beneath a floating bed of seaweed.

  Finally, in the first hints of darkness, he made his way to the docks at the Port of Biscayne, and up the ramp to the lone steamer anchored there. He spoke to the bursar who was ready to close up for the night until Josef asked to book passage. The man began to complete the forms for a ticket until he learned Josef’s name and he put his pen down and opened up a little drawer in his desk.

  “Your wife was on our line just last week, sir,” he said. “She already booked your passage.”

  The color went out of Josef’s face. He took the ticket and smiled faintly. She’d known all along. She knew him better than he knew himself. He went up on deck and located the first-class cabin Lena had reserved for him, inserted the key, closed the door behind him, and collapsed on the oversized bed in complete exhaustion and utter contentment.

  PART III

  The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

  Chapter 13

  HAVING SPENT THE last of his expense account at the Biscayne Grand Hotel’s lavish bar, John Thomas boarded the same steamer for New York as Josef Steinmetz. He had plenty of firsthand information to write his assigned story for the Times, but as he’d sipped his eighth gin and tonic the night before, he’d come to a certain conclusion about what to do with his pages and pages of notes on the Florida transportation industry and the progress it had made toward linking the last of the Eastern wilds with the rest of the United States.

  John Thomas was sick of his grind as a Times reporter. Though just thirty years old, he’d risen to be one of the star traveling reporters for the newspaper. He was being groomed for a high editorial position. Still, it was unsatisfying for him. He knew he was a brilliant writer. He’d read the work of all the great reporters of his day and could identify their styles even without their bylines. In terms of sheer reporting, he was on a par with the best of them. He’d said as much to his editor and his fellow reporters, because John Thomas was an ambitious man and not prone to attacks of self-effacement. Secretly, though, he knew he was better. What prevented him from saying that much was the inkling of modesty he could display when it was prudent. His writing, as he saw it, was qualitatively different from the other great reporters of his day. He had a certain flair for finding the story where others failed. He had more than just the power of the pen; he had that rare and delicate touch that could transform the mundane, insignificant events of this world into the most wondrous of dramas. And that is the mark of the great ones, he thought. To see what the others do not, and by the genius of my pen, to convey the secrets of the world. I’m a guide, a prophet, and—who’s to argue?—a creator.

  Operating with this knowledge, it was difficult for him to put up with deadlines, fussy editors, and jealous colleagues. He’d paid his dues for ten years and enough was enough. He had the talent and the confidence to make his run to the top, and now he saw an opportunity to use the Times the way he’d always thought it should he used—as a stepping stone to greatness.

  John Thomas boarded the steamer that morning and took the cabin paid for by his paper, a nice cabin, but not first class. When the ship left port and sailed through the inlet and out into the open sea, when it had settled into a comfortable rumble northward, he went up on deck with his pages and pages of notes and tore them one by one out of his notebook, letting them fly into the warm, green waters of the Gulf Stream.

  Although they were passengers together on that same ship, Josef Steinmetz and John Thomas never met during the voyage. The ship’s doctor treated Josef for overexposure and ordered him to remain in bed for the duration of the voyage and perhaps for weeks longer—so he reclined by himself in his first-class cabin. But there was little chance he’d leave there anyway. His feet were beyond hope. The doctor could only shake his h
ead in pity, rub the feet with aloe, prop them up with pillows, and order Josef to keep them out of the light.

  John Thomas also closed himself in his cabin after he let fly his notes, but for different reasons. He pushed himself with his writing, working more intensely than ever before. Rather than a dry, factual story suitable for the business pages, he would write a dramatic piece with a theme of the perseverance and triumph of the human spirit. This would be his career piece, his ticket to the Ball of the Immortals.

  He worked long hours to complete this piece before the ship docked in New York. Once there, he collected his papers—he’d revised the story four times, keeping the drafts for the future scholars of his work—and made his way straight to Times Square and the offices of The New York Times.

  He marched into the office of Nile Lesterton, his editor, and was greeted warmly with a cigar and a slap on the back. Lesterton thought of Thomas as his star pupil, and took no small credit tor Thomas’s accomplishments. Thomas had detected this attitude long ago, and it made him laugh inwardly, though on one level he found it a refreshing change from the professional jealousy of his other colleagues.

  Thomas brushed aside Lesterton’s questions about the Florida transportation business and moved right into his pitch for the story he’d worked up on the boat. He gave it his all, knowing he had nothing to fall back on, that the notes for his assignment were at that very moment drifting in the Gulf Stream, dissolving in the action of the waves and the nibbles of fish and the natural entropy of things left unattended.

  Of course the editor was taken aback at first, criticizing the piece for its “literariness.” But the reporter delivered the eloquent and inspired speech he’d also written and rehearsed on the ship, touching on the value of human-interest stories and the importance of legends as a binding influence on this vast and sometimes fractured nation of ours—legends as the roux in the great melting pot—and in the end, the editor consented to print it.

  The story was published in five parts, made an immediate sensation in New York, and was soon reprinted in some of the major newspapers throughout the Northeast. It outlined the true and sensational tale of a man known only as “The Barefoot Mailman,” who, as a boy, had been shipwrecked in Florida and raised by Seminole Indians. When he reached puberty, he wasn’t allowed to enter the rites of passage and become a brave, but was sent off to rejoin his own people. He fell in with a group of settlers in the town of Figulus who ostracized him because of his mysterious background and his familiarity with the heathens. But once the town of Figulus was incorporated, they found a use for him—he had a native’s knowledge of the land, something valuable, possibly lifesaving, on the long, arduous routes of Florida postal carriers. So they took a chance and hired him to deliver and retrieve their mail from the post office in Biscayne, a full sixty miles to the south. Proud to serve his country, he made the strenuous journey up and down the Florida coast, delivering the mail under the harshest of conditions, and all in his bare feet, for, despite his ease in relearning the language and customs of the white man, he kept the memory of his Seminole upbringing alive by retaining this single Indian custom. It was in the white man’s honor that he served his country so, and it was in the red man’s honor that he did it in his bare feet.

  The story was punctuated with words from the Mailman himself, whom John Thomas claimed to have followed and interviewed at length, braving the forbidding jungles and the violent weather until a tropical fever finally forced the reporter to cooler climes, leaving the Mailman to continue his brave and solitary duties.

  The Barefoot Mailman became an instant legend, striking a chord with the public’s thirst for adventure and for positive, hard-working role models. For the down-and-out he became a symbol of perseverance. For new immigrants, he became a symbol of the American Dream, of finding a niche in a strange new world. The legend made its way into several children’s books, and kids listened, wide-eyed and drooling, as their mamas read them the great adventure tale. They were enraptured by the mystery of the strange land and learned a valuable moral lesson about courage and strength. A popular song made the rounds in those days, too:

  Barefoot Man

  Oh barefoot man, oh barefoot man,

  post me a note with your tom-tom band.

  Make it to my uncle, in Kalamazoo,

  make it to my aunt, in Katmandu.

  Tell ’em that I love ’em, and tell ’em I’m blessed.

  Knock it out in tom-tom, and send ’em my best.

  Oh barefoot man, oh barefoot man,

  send me up a signal to my best girl, Nan.

  Address it to Milwaukee, Route Number Two,

  the little pink house where the love-birds roost.

  Ain’t no need for walkin’, just send it with smoke,

  so cover up your feet and let my love note float.

  Finally, as if the legend needed further acknowledgment to solidify its influence, it was alluded to in numerous literary works of the period as a symbol of the evolutionary adaptability of man.

  For John Thomas, it was all a confirmation of what he already knew about his talents and the lifelong feeling he’d had that he’d been destined for greatness. At the first hint of the legend’s creating a stir, he quit his job at the Times and began to put together a book on the subject. The quick popularity of the legend had made him anxious—people were capitalizing on his baby. But a book would secure his position as minister of the legend and once and for all eternity bind his name together with the Legend of the Barefoot Mailman.

  PART IV

  The Legend of Josef Steinmetz

  Chapter 14

  EARL SHANK WAITED twenty-two days for his mail carrier to bring the mail up from Biscayne. After nine days, he’d thought he noticed the first stirrings of anxiety in Mely’s face. She didn’t say anything, but the silence was loaded. At first, they avoided the issue by avoiding any reference to the mail. Gradually, though, the gaps in their daily banter grew like a hole in a sock that eventually makes it more hole than sock. They avoided references to the post office, to the restaurant, to grapefruits and oranges, to Yankees, and to foreigners, so that by the morning of the twenty-second day, they woke up with almost nothing they could say to each other. Earl thought how odd it was that the little man had worked himself into their thoughts so thoroughly in such a short time. They barely knew the man, and yet they acted like the parents of a child lost at sea.

  As they sat at the table trying to choke down their grapefruit and avoid each other’s eyes, Mely finally broke the silence.

  “Earl, folks’ll be expecting their mail soon. And Martha Oglesby’s got a birthday package she wants to get to her mother in Savannah.”

  “I know, Mely. She’s been tellin ever’one in town at the top of her blasted voice.”

  “It’s time to face up to it.”

  Earl chewed on his lip and sighed. “The chain’s been broke,” he said, knowing that this had far greater implications than the delivery of Martha Oglesby’s package of hand-carved coconut-husk figurines. He had clung to that little foreigner like his last hope. Now everything seemed lost—the events of his life had lost their divine, up-reaching structure and crumbled into random and microscopic insignificance. The denouement had proved nothing but a cheap shot, the playwright a cruel and undertalented jokester.

  “I took the shoes out of the box,” said Earl. “l durn near put ’em on his feet. He jes wouldn’t have nothin to do with ’em.”

  “You’re being silly, Earl.”

  “He wouldn’t take the job wearin shoes. I had pressure comin down on me all the way from Washington. My name was about to be logged into the problem folder on the president’s desk.”

  “It ain’t yer fault, Earl.”

  “You don’t understand the pressures of a government job, Mely. I got the weight of a nation on my shoulders. When the chain breaks, the whole system collapses. Commerce grinds to a halt. Hearts get broke. Friends turn against one another. The rule of law is overthr
own. The president gets out of touch. National security is endangered—”

  Mely slapped him across the face. “Ya can’t take responsibility for the entire world, Earl. I know ya’d like to, but ya can’t, because yer nothin but a reg’lar fella. Maybe ya got a bigger heart than most and that’s why I put up with ya, but yer also a bigger fool than most, and yer gettin older and foolisher by the minute.”

  Earl sighed, rubbing his cheek, knowing she was all wrong. But it was okay, because he knew that, if nothing else, he was living for the chance to prove it to her.

  “Now I ain’t gone ta mention what you oughtta and oughtn’t ta done with that poor man,” said Mely, “and the world ain’t gone ta collapse if the mail’s a few days late. But ya’d better get busy and find that carrier or get us a new one soon or Martha Oglesby’s liable to collapse yer head in with one of her coconuts.”

  Earl kissed her hand and got up from the table.

  “Where you going?”

  “I reckon I’m headed down the beach.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Earl. You wouldn’t make it two miles afore you died of exhaustion.”