Post Office (5 page)

Well, I was still coming in hungover and I didn’t have things like caps on my mind. So my cap was up there, the day after the order came out.

The Stone came running with his write-up. It said that it was against rules and regulations to have any equipment on top of the case. I put the write-up in my pocket and went on sticking letters. The Stone sat swiveled in his chair, watching me. All the other carriers had put their caps in their lockers. Except me and one other—one Marty. And The Stone had gone up to Marty and said, “Now, Marty, you read the order. Your cap isn’t supposed to be on top of the case.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Habit, you know. Sorry.” Marty took his cap off the case and ran upstairs to his locker with it.

The next morning I forgot again. The Stone came with his write-up.

It said that it was against rules and regulations to have any equipment on top of the case.

I put the write-up in my pocket and went on sticking letters.

   The next morning, as I walked in, I could see The Stone watching me. He was very deliberate about watching me. He was waiting to see what I would do with the cap. I let him wait awhile. Then I took the cap off my head and placed it on top of the case.

The Stone ran up with his write-up.

I didn’t read it. I threw it in the wastebasket, left my cap up there and went on sticking mail.

I could hear The Stone at his typewriter. There was anger in the sound of the keys.

I wondered how he managed to learn how to type? I thought.

He came again. Handed me a second write-up. I looked at him.

“I don’t have to read it. I know what it says. It says that I didn’t read the first write-up.”

I threw the second write-up in the wastebasket.

The Stone ran back to his typewriter.

He handed me a third write-up.

“Look,” I said, “I know what all these things say. The first write-up was for having my cap on top of the case. The second was for not reading the first. This third one is for not reading the first or second write-ups.”

I looked at him, and then dropped the write-up into the wastebasket without reading it.

“Now I can throw these away as fast as you can type them. It can go on for hours and soon one of us is going to begin looking ridiculous. It’s up to you.”

The Stone went back to his chair and sat down. He didn’t type anymore. He just sat looking at me.

   I didn’t go in the next day. I slept until noon. I didn’t phone. Then I went down to the Federal Building. I told them my mission. They put me in front of the desk of a thin old woman. Her hair was grey and she had a very thin neck that suddenly bent in the middle. It pushed her head forward and she looked up over the top of her glasses at me.

“Yes?”

“I want to resign.”

“To
resign?”
“Yes, resign.”

“And you’re a regular carrier?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk,” she went, making this sound with her dry lips.

She gave me the proper papers and I sat there filling them out.

“How long have you been with the post office?”

“Three and one half years.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk,” she went, “tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk.”

And so there it was. I drove home to Betty and we uncapped the bottle.

Little did I know that in a couple of years I would be back as a clerk and that I would clerk, all hunched-up on a stool, for nearly 12 years.

Meanwhile, things went on. I had a long run of luck at the racetrack. I began to feel confident out there. You went for a certain profit each day, somewhere between fifteen and forty bucks. You didn’t ask too much. If you didn’t hit early, you bet a little more, enough so that if the horse came in, you had your profit margin. I kept coming back, day after day, winners, giving Betty the thumb-up as I drove in the driveway.

Then Betty got a job as a typist, and when one of those shack-jobs gets a job, you notice the difference right away. We kept drinking each night and she left before I did in the morning, all hungover. Now she’d know what it was like. I got up around 10:30 a.m., had a leisurely cup of coffee and a couple of eggs, played with the dog, flirted with the young wife of a mechanic who lived in the back, got friendly with a stripteaser who lived in the front. I’d be at the track by 1:00 p.m., then back with my profit, and out with the dog at the bus stop to wait for Betty to come home. It was a good life.

Then, one night, Betty, my love, let me have it, over the first drink:

“Hank, I can’t stand it!”

“You can’t stand what, baby?”

“The situation.”

“What situation, babe?”

“Me working and you laying around. All the neighbors think I am supporting you.”

“Hell, I worked and
you
laid around.”

“That’s different. You’re a man, I’m a woman.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. I thought you bitches were always screaming for equal rights?”

“I know what’s going on with little butterball in back, walking around in front of you with her tits hanging out …”

“Her
tits
hanging out?”

“Yes, her TITS! Those big white cow-tits!”

“Hmmm … They are big at that.”

“There! You see!”

“Now what the hell?”

“I’ve got friends around here. They see what’s going on!”

“Those aren’t friends. Those are just mealy-mouthed gossips.”

“And that whore up front who poses as a dancer.”

“She’s a whore?”

“She’ll screw anything with a cock.”

“You’ve gone crazy.”

“I just don’t want all these people thinking I am supporting you. All the neighbors …”

“God damn the neighbors! What do we care what they think? We never did before. Besides,
I’m
paying the rent.
I’m
buying the food! I’m making it at the track. Your money is yours. You never had it so good.”

“No, Hank, it’s over. I can’t stand it!”

I got up and walked over to her.

“Now, come on, baby, you’re just a little upset tonight.”

I tried to grab her. She pushed me away.

“All right, god damn it!” I said.

I walked back to my chair, finished my drink, had another.

“It’s over,” she said, “I’m not sleeping with you another night.”

“All right. Keep your pussy. It’s not that great.”

“Do you want to keep the house or do you want to move out?” she asked.

“You keep the house.”

“How about the dog?”

“You keep the dog,” I said.

“He’s going to miss you.”

“I’m glad somebody is going to miss me.”

I got up, walked to the car and I rented the first place I saw with a sign. I moved in that night.

I had just lost three women and a dog.

The next thing I knew, I had a young girl from Texas on my lap. I won’t go into details of how I met her. Anyway, there it was. She was 23. I was 36.

She had long blonde hair and was good solid meat. I didn’t know, at the time, that she also had plenty of money. She didn’t drink but I did. We laughed a lot at first. And went to the racetrack together. She was a looker, and everytime I got back to my seat there would be some jerkoff sliding closer and closer to her. There were dozens of them. They just kept moving closer and closer. Joyce would just sit. I had to handle them all one of two ways. Either take Joyce and move off or tell the guy:

“Look, buddy, this one’s taken! Now move off!”

But fighting the wolves and the horses at the same time was too much for me. I kept losing. A pro goes to the track alone. I knew that. But I thought maybe I was exceptional. I found out that I wasn’t exceptional at all I could lose my money as fast as anybody.

Then Joyce demanded that we get married.

What the hell? I thought, I’m cooked anyhow.

I drove her to Vegas for a cheap wedding, then drove her right back.

I sold the car for ten dollars and the next thing I knew we were on a bus to Texas and when we landed I had seventy-five cents in my pocket. It was a very small town, the population, I believe, was under 2,000. The town had been picked by experts, in a national article, as the last town in the USA any enemy would attack with an atomic bomb. I could see why.

All this time, without knowing it, I was working my way back toward the post office. That mother.

Joyce had a little house in town and we laid around and screwed and ate. She fed me well, fattened me up and weakened me at the same time. She couldn’t get enough. Joyce, my wife, was a nymph.

I took little walks through the town, alone, to get away from her, teethmarks all over my chest, neck and shoulders, and somewhere else that worried me more and was quite painful. She was eating me alive.

I limped through the town and they stared at me, knowing about Joyce, her sex drive, and also that her father and grandfather had more money, land, lakes, hunting preserves than all of them. They pitied and hated me at the same time.

A midget was sent to get me out of bed one morning and he drove me all over, pointing out this and that, Mr.

so and so, Joyce’s father owns that, and Mr. so and so, Joyce’s grandfather owns that …

We drove all morning. Somebody was trying to scare me. I was bored. I sat in the back seat and the midget thought I was an operator, that I had worked my way into millions. He didn’t know it was an accident, and that I was an ex-mail carrier with seventy-five cents in my pocket.

The midget, poor fellow, had a nervous disease and drove very fast, and every so often he’d shake all over and lose control of the car. It went from one side of the road to the other and once scraped along a fence for 100 yards before the midget got control of himself.

“HEY! EASY THERE, BUSTER!” I yelled at him from the back seat.

That was it. They were trying to knock me off. It was obvious. The midget was married to a very beautiful girl. When she was in her teens she got a coke bottle trapped in her pussy and had to go to a doctor to get it out, and, like in all small towns, the word got around about the coke bottle, the poor girl was shunned, and the midget was the only taker. He’d ended up with the best piece of ass in town.

I lit up a cigar Joyce had given me and I told the midget, “That’ll be all, buster. Now see that I get back. And drive slowly. I don’t want to blow this game now.”

I played the operator to please him.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Chinaski. Yes, sir!”

He admired me. He thought I was a son of a bitch.

When I got in, Joyce asked, “Well, did you see everything?”

“I saw enough,” I said. Meaning, that they were trying to knock me off. I didn’t know if Joyce was in on it or not.

Then she started peeling my clothes off and pushing me toward the bed.

“Now wait a minute, baby! We’ve already gone twice and it’s not even 2 p.m. yet!”

She just giggled and kept on pushing.

Her father really hated me. He thought I was after his money. I didn’t want his god damned money. And I didn’t even want his god damned precious daughter.

The only time I ever saw him was when he walked into the bedroom one morning about 10:00. Joyce and I were in bed, resting up. Luckily we had just finished.

I peered at him from under the edge of the cover. Then I couldn’t help myself. I smiled at him and gave him a big wink.

He ran out of the house growling and cursing.

If I could be removed, he’d certainly see to it.

Gramps was cooler. We’d go to his place and I’d drink whiskey with him and listen to his cowboy records. His old lady was simply indifferent. She neither liked nor hated me. She fought with Joyce a lot and I sided with the old lady once or twice. That kind of won her over. But gramps was cool. I think he was in on the conspiracy.

We had been at this cafe and eaten, with everybody fawning over us and staring. There was gramps, grandma, Joyce, and I.

Then we got in the car and drove along.

“Ever seen any buffalo, Hank?” gramps asked me.

“No, Wally, I haven’t.”

I called him “Wally.” Old whiskey buddies. Like hell. “We have them here.”

“I thought they were just about extinct?”

“Oh, no, we got dozens of ‘em.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Show him, Daddy Wally,” said Joyce. Silly bitch. She called him “Daddy Wally.” He wasn’t her daddy. “All right.”

We drove on a way until we came to this empty fenced-in field. The ground sloped and you couldn’t see the other end of the field. It was miles long and wide. There was nothing but short green grass.

“I don’t see any buffalo,” I said.

“The wind’s right, “said Wally. “Just climb in there and walk a ways. You’ve got to walk a ways to see them.”

There was nothing in the field. They thought they were being very funny, conning a city-slicker. I climbed the fence and walked on in.

“Well, where are the buffalo?” I called back.

“They’re there. Go on in.”

Oh hell, they were going to play the old drive-away joke. Damned farmers. They’d wait until I got in there and then drive off laughing. Well, let them. I could walk back. It’d give me a rest from Joyce.

I walked very quickly into the field, waiting for them to drive off. I didn’t hear them leaving. I walked further in, then turned, cupped my hands and yelled back at them: “WELL, WHERE’S THE BUFFALO?”

My answer came from behind me. I could hear their feet on the ground. There were three of them, big ones, just like in the movies, and they were running, they were coming FAST! One had a bit of a lead on the others. There was little doubt who they were headed for.

“Oh shit!” I said.

I turned and began running. That fence looked a long way away. It looked impossible. I couldn’t spare the time to look back. That might make the difference. I was flying, wide-eyed. I really moved! But they gained steadily! I could feel the ground shaking around me as they beat up the earth getting right down on me. I could hear them slobbering, I could hear them breathing. With the last of my strength I dug in and leaped the fence. I didn’t climb it. I sailed over it. And landed on my back in a ditch with one of those things poking his head over the fence and looking down at me.