Post Office (17 page)

“Yes?” she asked.

“I’m a postal clerk,” I said, “I want to resign.” She reached under the counter and came up with a stack of papers. “All these?”

She smiled, “Sure you can do it?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I can do it.”

You had to fill out more papers to get out than to get in. The first page they gave you was a personalized mimeo affair from the postmaster of the city. It began:

“I am sorry you are terminating your position with the post office and …” etc., etc., etc., etc.

How could he be sorry? He didn’t even know me. There was a list of questions.

“Did you find our supervisors understanding? Were you able to relate to them?” Yes, I answered.

“Did you find the supervisors in any manner prejudiced toward race, religion, background or any related factor?”

No, I answered.

Then there was one—”Would you advise your friends to seek employment in the post office?” Of course, I answered.

“If you have any grievances or complaints about the post office please list them in detail on the reverse side of this page.”

No grievances, I answered.

Then my black girl was back.

“Finished already?”

“Finished.”

“I’ve never seen anybody fill out their papers that fast.”

“‘Quickly,’” I said.

“‘Quickly’?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do we do next?”

“Please step in.”

I followed her ass between desks to a place almost to the back.

“Sit down,” the man said.

He took some time reading through the papers. Then he looked at me.

“May I ask why you are resigning? Is it because of disciplinary procedures against you?”

“No.”

“Then what is the reason for your resignation?”

“To pursue a career.”

“To pursue a career?”

He looked at me. I was less than eight months from my 50th birthday. I knew what he was thinking.

“May I ask you what your ‘career’ will be?”

“Well, sir, I’ll tell you. The trapping season in the bayou only lasts from December through February. I’ve already lost a month.”

“A month? But you’ve been here 11 years.”

“All right, then, I’ve wasted 11 years. I can pick up 10 to 20 grand for three months trapping at Bayou La Fourche.”

“What do you do?”

“Trap!
Muskrats, nutria, mink, otter … coon. All I need is a pirogue. I give 20 percent of my take for use of the land. I get paid a buck and a quarter for muskrat skins, three bucks for mink, four bucks for ‘bo mink,’ a buck and a half for nutria and twenty-five bucks for otter. I sell the muskrat carcass, which is about a foot long, for five cents to a cat food factory. I get twenty-five cents for the skinned body of the nutria. I raise pigs, chickens and ducks. I catch catfish. There’s nothing to it. I—”

“Never mind, Mr. Chinaski, that will be sufficient.”

He put some papers in his typewriter and typed away.

Then I looked up and there was Parker Anderson my union man, good old gas-station shaving and shitting Parker, giving me his politician’s grin.

“You resigning, Hank? I
know
you been threatenin’ to for eleven years …”

“Yeah, I’m going to Southern Louisiana and catch myself a batch of goodies.”

“They got a racetrack down there?”

“You kidding? The Fair Grounds is one of the oldest tracks in the country!”

Parker had a young white boy with him—one of the neurotic tribe of the lost—and the kid’s eyes were filmed with wet layers of tears. One big tear in each eye. They did not drop out. It was fascinating. I had seen women sit and look at me with those same eyes before they got mad and started screaming about what a son of a bitch I was. Evidently the boy had fallen into one of the many traps, and he had gone running for Parker. Parker would save his job.

The man gave me one more paper to sign and then I got out of there.

Parker said, “Luck, old man,” as I walked by. “Thanks, baby,” I answered.

I didn’t feel any different. But I knew that soon, like a man lifted quickly out of the deep sea, I would be afflicted—with a particular type of bends. I was like Joyce’s damned parakeets. After living in the cage I had taken the opening and flown out—like a shot into the heavens. Heavens?

I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy, old boy, your little girl might want you to take her to the zoo. Ice cream bars, chimpanzees, tigers, green and red birds, and the sun coming down on top of her head, the sun coining down and crawling into the hairs of your arms, easy, old boy.

When I came to I was in the front room of my apartment, spitting into the rug, putting cigarettes out against my wrists, laughing. Mad as a March Hare. I looked up and there sat this pre-med student. A human heart sat in a homey fat jar between us on the coffeetable. All around the human heart—which was labeled after its former owner “Francis”—were half empty fifths of whiskey and scotch, clutters of beerbottles, ashtrays, garbage. I’d pick up a bottle and swallow a hellish mixture of beer and ashes. I hadn’t eaten for two weeks. An endless stream of people had come and gone. There had been seven or eight wild parties where I had kept demanding—”More to drink! More to drink! More to drink!” I was flying up to heaven; they were just talking—and fingering each other.

“Yeh,” I said to the pre-med student, “what do you want with me?”

“I am going to be your own personal physician.”

“All right, doctor, the first thing I want you to do is to take that god damned human heart out of here!”

“Uh uh.”

“What?”

“The heart stays here.”

“Look, man, I don’t know your name—”

“Wilbert.”

“Well, Wilbert, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but you take ‘Francis’ with you!”

“No, it stays with you.”

Then he got his little playbag and the rubber wraparound for the arm and he squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated.

“You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19-year-old,” he told me.

“Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?”

“I’ll be back to get it. Now breathe
in!”

“I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.”

“Quiet! Breathe
in!”

“I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

“Your backbone is out of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.”

“Balls!” I said …

   I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m., death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffeetable. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar.

It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly.

I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one.

The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door. “Hello?”

There was a young guy out there with long blonde hair hanging down around his face and a black girl who just kept smiling as if she were crazy. “Hank?”

“Yeh. Who you two guys?”

“She is a woman. Don’t you remember us? From the party? We brought a flower.”

“Oh balls, come on in.”

They brought in the flower, some kind of red-orange thing on a green stem. It made a lot more sense than many things, except that it had been murdered. I found a bowl, put the flower in, brought out a jug of wine and put it on the coffeetable.

“You don’t remember her?” the kid asked. “You said you wanted to fuck her.”

She laughed.

“Very nice, but not now.”

“Chinaski, how are you going to make it without the post office?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fuck you. Or let you fuck me. Hell, I don’t know.”

“You can sleep on our floor anytime.”

“Can I watch while you fuck?”

“Sure.”

We drank. I had forgotten their names. I showed them the heart. I asked them to take the horrible thing with them. I didn’t dare throw it out in case the pre-med student needed it back for an exam or at the expiration of the med-library loan or whatever.

So we went down and saw a nude floor show, drinking and hollering and laughing. I don’t know who had the money but I think he had most of it, which was nice for a change, and I kept laughing and squeezing the girl’s ass and her thighs and kissing her, but nobody cared. As long as the money lasted, you lasted.

They drove rae back and he left with her. I got into the door, said goodbye, turned on the radio, found a half-pint of scotch, drank that, laughing, feeling good, finally relaxed, free, burning my fingers with short cigar butts, then made it to the bed, made it to the edge, tripped, fell down, fell down across the mattress, slept, slept, slept …

• • •

United States Post Office
Los Angeles, California

Office of Postmaster            January 1, 1970

Memo              742

CODE OF ETHICS

The attention of all employees is directed to the Code of Ethics for postal employees as set forth in Part 742 of the Postal Manual, and Conduct of Employees as outlined in Part 744 of the Postal Manual.

Postal employees have, over the years, established a fine tradition of faithful service to the Nation, unsurpassed by other groups. Each employee should take great pride in this tradition of dedicated service. Each of us must strive to make his contribution worthwhile in the continued movement of the Postal Service toward future progress in the public interest.

All postal personnel must act with unwavering integrity and complete devotion to the public interest. Postal personnel are expected to maintain the highest moral principles, and to uphold the laws of the United States and the regulations and policies of the Post Office Department. Not only is ethical conduct required, but officials and employees must be alert to avoid actions which would appear to prevent fulfillment of postal obligations. Assigned duties must be discharged conscientiously and effectively. The Postal Service has the unique privilege of having daily contact with the majority of the citizens of the Nation, and is, in many instances, their most direct contact with the Federal Government. Thus, there is an especial opportunity and responsibility for each postal employee to act with honor and integrity worthy of the public trust; thereby reflecting credit and distinction on the Postal Service and on the entire Federal Government.

All employees are requested to review Part 742, Postal Manual, Basic Standards of Ethical Conduct, Personal Behavior of Employees, Restrictions on Political Activity, etc.

Officer in Charge

CHARLES BUKOWSKI is one of America’s best-known contemporary writers of poetry and prose, and, many would claim, its most influential and imitated poet. He was born in Andernach, Germany, to an American soldier father and a German mother in 1920, and brought to the United States at the age of three. He was raised in Los Angeles and lived there for fifty years. He published his first story in 1944 when he was twenty-four and began writing poetry at the age of thirty-five. He died in San Pedro, California, on March 9, 1994, at the age of-seventy-three, shortly after completing his last novel,
Pulp
(1994).

During his lifetime he published more than forty-five books of poetry and prose, including the novels
Post Office
(1971),
Factotum
(1975),
Women
(1978),
Ham on Rye
(1982), and
Hollywood
(1989). Among his most recent books are the posthumous editions of
What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
(1999),
Open All Night: New Poems
(2000),
Beerspit Night and Cursing: The Correspondence of Charles Bukowski and Sheri Martinelli 1960-1967
(2001), and
The Night Torn Mad with Footsteps: New Poems
(2001).

All of his books have now been published in translation in over a dozen languages and his worldwide popularity remains undiminished. In the years to come, Ecco will publish additional volumes of previously uncollected poetry and letters.

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