Country Mailman: Chapter 1

Another hot day. I surveyed the cotton fields and noted Jim Drury plowing his home place. It looked weedy. He wasn’t much of a farmer but his daddy had left him two sections which had four oil wells, so he didn’t have to please anyone but himself. If he didn’t mind those patches of Johnson grass and Devil’s claw in the middle of his field, I sure didn’t either. Jim didn’t have much use for me but I didn’t take it personal. It all went back to the accident that killed his daddy. I heard about it on the news just like everybody else, only the news didn’t tell it all. I knew Ace Drury and my substitute carrier had been slipping around for several years, but it wasn’t any of my business and when they both were decapitated after Ace ran up on the back of an eighteen wheeler trailer in the middle of the night down near Sweetwater, all I could do was express my sympathy to Ace’s widow. A mailman has responsibilities and one of them is to keep his mouth shut about all the happenings inside the Post Office.

After putting Ms. Edna Smith’s two checks from the oil company in her mailbox, I drove ten feet and stopped at Mr. Elliott Smith’s mailbox. He rarely got mail, therefore he rarely retrieved it from the mailbox. While surveying the pile, I figured he had about two more weeks of free space inside that metal container. After twenty years of delivering mail, I’d known him to go three months without removing anything from the dusty green box and if he didn’t hurry up, he’d beat his record in the next week.

       Elliott and Edna were brother and sister, neither one had married and something long ago must have triggered the quarrel between them. I only got into it once with them, but that was enough to remember never to mistakenly put a letter addressed to Elliott Smith in Edna Smith’s mailbox. She lit into me like I’d done some dastardly deed, called the postmaster, and complained for a week. But, since Luke Henry was in charge at the time, he just said, “yes ma’am” and went on selling stamps. I didn’t think anything else about it until the new postmaster asked me about a note Luke had written beside Edna Smith’s name on the route sheet. “Beware of the dog – she bites.”  Since Edna Smith never had a dog, I figured it was Luke’s way of relieving his stress. There were quite a few notes in the margins of that notebook, all understandable to Luke and me, but not to anyone else.  A smart postmaster might take heed of them, but usually new people coming in have their own agenda. I’ve gone through eight bosses and a slew of trainees and so far, Luke Henry is the only one who left me alone to do my job.

I glanced at the pile in the back. There were nine parcels - all different sizes, all from different locations, but all headed to Darla Gibbons. She’d be a happy lady tonight. When I saw her at Edna’s café, she was bubbling over like a broken sprinkler head with the news. Winning a ribbon lottery might be exciting to some, but what in the heck would she do with nine boxes of ribbon? And that was just this month. Nine boxes of ribbons every month for the next year could drive a person crazy. Either that, or open a bow shop. Perfect. Gibbons Ribbons.

It wasn’t such an odd idea. Marcy Simmons opened a décor shop with all the paraphernalia she’d accumulated over the years. Not once in the twenty years of delivering mail had I returned a parcel, not even the ones that looked damaged. And now I took at least ten a week to the new business. If she sold half as much as she bought, she was making money but Starz, Texas wasn’t a bustling metropolis. It supported a bakery, a gas station, small grocery store, an accountant’s office, a mortuary, a bank, and Edna’s café. And Edna’s did a booming business since Brenda Yager started waitressing, but I didn’t see many people walking into Marcy’s new store. 

As I shoved Kai Driver’s mail into his mailbox, I knocked a growing wasp nest off the red metal flag with my long mail gripper. It was that time of year. Early summer. When I heard his kids laughing, I smiled. Some people were more innovative than others. Hot weather meant swimming, or at least playing in water. Kai had put railroad cross ties under the frame of his old pickup for bracing, spread a tarp in the bed, and filled it with water for his kids to have a swimming hole, of sorts. Country kids don’t need a big swimming pool to have a good time. And they don’t need sunscreen to keep from getting burned. Four large umbrellas stood high in each corner of the pickup bed. It might look like a carnival set-up to some, but from the sound of those kids, that old pickup was serving a mighty good purpose.

When my cell phone rang, I listened to the postmaster’s question. “No, we’re holding Anna Martinez’s mail for a week. We’re holding Pete Martinez’s mail until he comes and gets it and we’re holding Luis Martinez’s mail until his grandson, Marty gets back from vacationing in the Bahamas. I have the date written on the list by my case.” I nodded. “Yes, it’s summer. Lot’s of people are on vacation.” I shook my head at the next question. “No. Don’t turn in the forwarding address request for Lisa Hammonds until Friday. She’s expecting her last paycheck from the school this week and she needs it to pay her babysitter. But you can turn in the one from Dicy Knowles. She’s already gone and wasn’t expecting anything important. Her divorce is final and she’s done with this part of the country. Said it’s dry, depressing, and dangerous – I think she meant the rattlesnake I found coiled on her front porch.” I shrugged, remembering the letters from the state prison. “Maybe she meant her brother-in-law.” I nodded again and answered the remaining questions before turning out into the dirt road. Another hour and I’d have coffee with Annie Oakley. Maybe this afternoon she’d have coconut pie to go with it. Cheese crackers and a diet soda for lunch didn’t hold me long.