The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

by John Henry Fleming

  Well that’s that, then, thought Earl, and he picked up the loafers and headed out to the beach. Though it was nearly dusk, the sun was still hot out there—the last rays of the day seemed to cut right through the jungle of palms and sea grapes to keep the beach heated. Still, the eastern horizon was beginning to darken and seemed to march toward him, swallowing up everything in its cool, deep blue. Soon, it would swallow him, too, and he’d be cool at last—his brow would no longer sweat and his eyes would no longer squint and his lungs would no longer feel the weight of the air. He’d be cool and light as ice.

  First things first, though: Earl held the shoes up and looked at them one last time. No longer afraid to touch them, he rubbed them clean with his palm and looked at his soft brown reflection. Then he took a step toward the surf and threw them out into the thick green swells. He watched them as if he were watching his own fate. The waves pushed them down and smothered them, pulled them back up, and dragged them slowly out to sea with the tide. He watched until they were out of sight.

  Earl felt a strange sense of relief, then. He knew the shoes had some sort of power over him, but he didn’t know how much until he was finally rid of them. He laughed out loud at these superstitions. But the more he thought of it, the more he realized the feeling wasn’t so crazy after all. He hadn’t just convinced himself of the magical powers of the shoes, he’d convinced the whole town, save Mely. They’d all believed, just like he did, that the good fortune of the town was in some indescribable, almost unspeakable way connected to Earl’s found pair of loafers. He could see that, now, when he remembered the way they’d always asked him about his shoes, the way they’d looked down at those shoes with awe and wonderment in their eyes, and maybe a little fear, too. But above all, faith. They’d never have said anything. It wasn’t the kind of thing folks talk about. It was a feeling, though, passed from one to another without anybody ever having to speak. The shoes had a power beyond words.

  Earl filled himself with the exhilaration of these thoughts, until he remembered he’d just tossed the shoes into the ocean.

  Then he had to laugh again, to let the hot air out. He had to laugh at the way his thoughts lagged so fatally behind his actions.

  He stepped into the lip of the surf and felt the water cooling his feet. He stepped deeper and deeper until the waves broke against his waist. His whole body was getting cool. It made him feel good, and he thought how funny it was that he was leaving here just the way he’d come almost a quarter century ago. He’d flung his hands away from the side of the SS Seaworthy’s lifeboat, trying to do then what he was going to do today. In that respect he’d be a success, at least. His tragic biography would show only how his continual failures served to provide him with the courage to finish what he should have finished on his very first day in Figulus. He’d been so full of energy and ideas then, and he’d tried so hard to make something for himself and for the town. He’d just lacked what it took. He wasn’t destined for greatness after all, it looked like. He was another mediocre fella who’d tried and failed. If only he’d had something more unique, something that could bring people in from all over the country. The tropical wilderness and the beautiful beaches had not been enough. Nor had Mely’s home cooking and the quaint little restaurant. If only he’d come up with something awe-inspiring, something that filled people with wonderment the way those shoes had affected the townsfolk. Or the way that Barefoot Mailman story had affected Elias Rathmartin.

  It was then, with his shirt ballooning around his neck, and the water up to his dry and cracked lips, about to silence him forever, that Earl got an idea.

  Chapter 21

  WHEN HE TIED his boat up at the dock, Earl leapt out and began shouting.

  “I seen ’im! I seen ’im! I seen the ghost!”

  He ran up and down the little paths, past the post office, past the restaurant, past every little house in the community, throwing up his arms and shouting like some snake-kissing Baptist minister.

  “I seen ’im! I been to the beach and I seen ’im!”

  Slowly, the citizens emerged from their houses and from their goat- and pigpens, and from their little gardens, curious at any commotion outside of what they expected once a week from the Yankees.

  Earl poked his head in his own house, too.

  “I seen the ghost, Mely! You got to come and hear me out.”

  “What ghost, Earl?”

  “The ghost that saved my life, Mely!”

  She rose reluctantly from the rocker, pleased to see him in better spirits but not sure she was in the mood for one of Earl’s tall tales. She followed him outside, and Earl lit the torches as people began to gather near the restaurant.

  “What’s wrong, Mayor Earl?”

  “What’s all yer fuss about?”

  Earl stepped into their midst and began his testimony about the ghost.

  “Listen now, ya don’t have ta believe me, but ya ought to because it’s the truth. Today, the mail come in and with it come my shoes, back from New York and polished finer’n I ever seen ’em. They did somethin to loosen ’em up, too, so they fit better’n ever. They fit so good, I thought I’d take ’em out to the beach for a little stroll, and Josh McCready was kind enough to loan me his boat for jes that purpose. Ain’t that right, Josh?”

  “It’s so, Mayor Earl.”

  “An Mely, she seen me leave the house with them shoes. Weren’t they lookin all shiny, Mely? An didn’t ya ask me where I was goin, but I was too pleased and comf’table in my shoes ta pay ya any mind? Warn’t that so, Mely? It was like my feet was bein massaged by the Hand of the Lord Hisself. Warn’t that so, Mely?”

  “Well I seen ya, Earl, sure enough. Ya floated right by without a word to me. But I don’t know about no holy massage.”

  “See, you hear her. ‘Floated right by.’ I tell ya, I felt joy risin up from my feet, and I shoulda known somethin was gone ta happen. I shoulda known it right then.”

  “Well what in the darn hell happened, Earl?”

  “I’ll tell ya. I went out to the beach, taking Josh’s skiff, just like he said, passin by the old Steinmetz place, you know, which is all broke down and burnt out and kinda spooky now. I got the creepiest feelin passin through there, and lookin back on it now, I shoulda known right then somethin was gone ta happen. But he caught me unawares, I tell ya. Completely unawares.”

  “Who caught ya, Mayor Earl? Tell us.”

  “It was a man all of ya know. Least, ya heard of ’im. An ya ain’t likely ta b’lieve me when I tells ya, but ya ought to because it’s the truth. I was walkin that beach, feelin comf’table as a pig in a poke—in m’shoes, ya know—when all at once I see this feller comin up from the south, comin up the beach straight for me. Ya don’t expect ta see no one on the beach, perticularly at sunset, and I reckon that shoulda told me somethin there, but I was blind, I tell ya, blind with comfort! Well, when he came up near on me, I saw what he looked like, and I begin to get a little scared.”

  “What’d he look like, Earl? Ya got to tell us, now!”

  “He was all hunched over, like he had chains around his neck, or like he was some kind a ogre. He had a big purple nose, broken in three places, looked like. An two black, glowin eyes that seemed to look out at ya from another world—a world beyond this one!”

  The crowd gasped. They’d all heard the ghost stories by now and immediately recognized a description of the Ghost of the Barefoot Mailman.

  “Fact, his whole body seemed to glow. I noticed it then, but I didn’t think nothin of it, because I was blind!”

  “You was blind, Earl.”

  “I’d a known who that was straight off.”

  “Yer right, who wouldn’t, and it’s m’own fault that I didn’t run. Fact is, he came right up to me, and I reached out my hand ta innerduce myself. That’s when I first noticed his feet—they was all blistered up and bloody, like he’d been walkin for days and days out on that beach without nothin to cover his toes.”

  “That’s him al
l right. That’s the one!”

  “I still warn’t scared enough fer my own good, ’cause all at once I begin to feel sorry for ’im, he was in sech bad shape. So I said, ‘Hey, feller, you need these shoes more’n I do,’ and like the fool I am, and the fool y’all know I am, I took them fancy loafers right off my feet and handed them to ’im.”

  The crowd gasped again at Earl’s foolishness, but also at his selflessness and bravery.

  “His whole expression changed then. He looked at me real grateful, like it was the first thing anybody’d ever given ’im in his whole durned life. Then he took my hand and looked at me with them deep, black, glowin eyes, and said, in a hoarse, sorta whispery voice, ‘You have saved me from eternal purgatory.’”

  The small crowd began to mutter among themselves, clarifying to each other exactly what this meant.

  “He left me then, headin north up the beach and wearin my best shoes, which I’d thought was gone ta be too big, but instead seemed to shrink around his feet and fit ’im perfeckly, like they was meant for ’im all along. It was only after he was out of sight did I realize what I’d done. Now, ya know I don’t take no stock in ghost stories, and ya can ask our mail carrier if ya think I do—he’s been tryin to fill me with ghost stories ever since he took the job, and I turn ’im a deaf ear ever time. But folks, it was jes that deaf ear that made me blind to what was happenin to me out there on the beach. ’Cause sure enough, this man fit the ticket, and I suddenly realized I’d given my shoes TO THE GHOST OF THE BAREFOOT MAILMAN!!”

  Now the whole crowd (except for Mely) oohed and aahed and closed in to shake Earl’s hand, the same hand that had touched a ghost. And after they’d shook it, they inspected their own hands to see if something had rubbed off. They asked each other, “Did you feel that, too?” and agreed that there was some kind of slippery spark that passed off him, that the postmaster must have received some small bit of otherworldly power from touching the ghost.

  Several folks took him aside and asked him to repeat the story, which he did happily. Then several more took him into their homes, poured him some whiskey, and prodded him for more details, which he was all too happy to give, embellishing here and there, and eventually giving them the impression he’d held a regular interview with the ghost concerning such subjects as God and the afterlife and a few of the acquaintances the ghost had met since he’d died, which happened to include deceased relatives of some of the townsfolk.

  The whole town was abuzz with Earl’s news, and the people who didn’t get a chance to quiz Earl quizzed each other about Earl’s story, themselves embellishing and extrapolating a little, which they figured was okay as long as they maintained the spirit of the story, though some of them objected to this liberty-taking and began to argue over a few of the minor details—

  “. . . and like the devil hisself, his eyes were glowin bright red—”

  “Yella, I tell ya! Yella! He warn’t from hell, he was from purgatory, and everbody knows the color of purgatory is yella!”

  “It’s his skin was yella. A ghost’s eyes always glow red, no matter he’s in purgatory or hell. I know, cause I seen ’em before.”

  “Well I seen this one, jes last week, and I tell ya his eyes was yella!”

  “You done no sech thing, and them’s fightin words—!”

  But all in all, people were pretty pleased with the event and agreed it was a sign that great things were in store for their little town, that from now on the place was blessed by a guardian angel, that now they had a friend in a high place who was eternally grateful for Earl’s small gesture of kindness. They praised Earl for this kindness and for his bravery, and they praised themselves for putting up with Earl’s big talk all these years.

  Earl spent a splendid evening basking in the limelight. Somebody tuned up a fiddle, and Earl grabbed his wife and danced like he was nineteen again. Mely had shaken her head at Earl’s story, but his energy and his youthfulness were affecting and got her right in her soft spot. They both were drunk with vitality, hope, and alcohol, and they danced until late in the night.

  When it was finally over, though, Earl wasn’t too drunk to light a candle at his desk and tell his story once more, this time in writing. He told the complete and unabridged version, with every embellishment he could remember from the whole beautiful evening, at least the embellishments that didn’t conflict with other embellishments. And when he’d finished, he folded up the letter and stuck it in an envelope he addressed to John Thomas, reporter for The New York Times. Then he felt a hand on his shoulder and turned in his chair to face his wife.

  “Earl,” she said. “Come ta bed now.” She wasn’t too drunk, either.

  Chapter 22

  WHEN JOHN THOMAS received the letter from the postmaster of Figulus, he was putting the finishing touches on his book tentatively titled: Barefoot Mailman: The Life and Times of an American Legend. He had expanded his five-part Times piece into five hundred manuscript pages, giving finer and finer detail about both the history of the Mailman himself and Thomas’s travels with him. As the book evolved, Thomas also found it necessary to shape the story’s meaning for a public that seemed curiously attracted to the shoeless figure. He found himself digressing into long discursive passages that commented on the man as a symbolic figure for a hero-starved American public, and then digressing even further into an analysis of the public’s need for legends and myths. Thus the book became not just a biography but also a diagnostic summary of the American psyche, its unfulfilled needs and displaced desires, where it was going and where it had been. The total effect was an indictment of the bourgeois status quo that had stagnated the great American Dream: it took a figure like the Barefoot Mailman, rising from the lowest rungs of society, to show Americans that their fate was still in their own hands.

  In the afternoon haze of his woody mid-town apartment, John Thomas read Earl Shank’s letter with great interest. He had no way of determining the ghost story’s validity, of course, but it intrigued him nonetheless because it solved a nagging problem in his book, a problem that had caused him to overflow his wastebasket with crumpled paper, cover his desktop with scribbled notes of not-quite-adequate ideas, and make an unprecedented number of trips to the tobacco shop to keep his pipe filled as he thought. As it stood, his final chapter concluded with the Mailman’s reported disappearance (a report brought back by Southwind cruise passengers), and this raised the destructive possibility that the man had either given up or been fired by some postmaster too embarrassed to admit it now. These possibilities were interesting in an ironical sort of way, Thomas had to admit, but they would spell doom for the legend and thus for Thomas’s chances to parlay it into everlasting acknowledgment of his genius.

  He couldn’t let that happen; this was his baby, and it had to be nurtured. Now comes this ghost story providing some evidence, no matter how flimsy, that the man had, in fact, died, and that the torment and alienation that drove him through life had continued to drive him even after death, until one man—this cracker postmaster—finally showed him a little compassion. John Thomas recognized this as the best possible conclusion for his book. Even if it was a bit far-fetched, he could just stick it in there and let the readers decide for themselves. He knew which way they’d decide, because he knew how much they wanted this legend to survive, and he knew also that the best security for any legend is the death of the man who fostered it.

  A few months later, when the book was published, the final chapter created a stir since the author and the publisher had kept it secret right up until the publication date. The legend, of course, was well known by now, but this ghost story seemed to add a different texture, providing a mysterious yet satisfactory closure to the mailman’s tragic tale. And the book as a whole stirred up the American people, who ceased to be jaded and cynical when they thought of the plight of the Barefoot Mailman, and who felt, at least for a while, they could make a difference after all. Many politicians lost their jobs that year, and the American people again s
eized the reigns of destiny.

  IN FIGULUS, TIME seemed to grind to a halt without the weekly visitation of Yankees. People had been so used to the excitement of Tuesdays, and the quick and easy money, that when the ships stopped coming, they didn’t know what to do with themselves. Earl’s ghost story created some excitement for them and gave them a rich topic for conversation, but when Tuesday came and went without one sale of an embroidered wallhanging saying “Bless This House” or a whittled and painted figure of a pink curlew or a Florida panther, and without a single guest for Earl’s restaurant, people got pretty bored and depressed. They made an effort to recreate their former lives; after all, they’d already made more money than they’d ever need in Figulus. But as they went through the motions, something was missing. They’d tasted the fruit of the Yankee dollar, and that was a taste they could not forget.

  They sweated through the summer. The air was heavy, and no matter how little they ate, their bodies seemed to weigh too much for this earth. They didn’t speak much, and when they worked, they didn’t get much done. Everyone prayed for a change of weather, or another ghost story, something to shake things up and take their minds off what now seemed inevitable—that they’d never see another boatload of slumming Yankees again.

  For Earl, the air was heavy, too, but with expectation. He was certain that something was astir up north that would have great repercussions in their little town. He was happy and hopeful, and no one could figure out why. He hadn’t told anyone of the letter from the Rathmartin boys, not even Mely, and he hadn’t told anyone of his letter to John Thomas. When people asked him why he was in such a good mood all the time, seeing as how he wasn’t getting any business these days, he’d reply that it was just the off-season, and he was going to relax and enjoy his off-season, because when the boats came in again in the fall, it was going to be nothing but work.