Box Nine Read online

  It was Ike’s only dog incident in eight years with the service, twelve years if you counted the summers he worked while squeaking through Jones University as a day student. If any of his current co-workers ever found out that he had a degree, it would be all over. They’d manage to be as blindly vicious as Milos Vachek and no whistle in the world could call them from his throat.

  Now Ike wonders why nothing in college came as easily to him as everything here at the station. Like the zip codes, for instance. Ike knows every zip code in the state, and most of them in the bordering states. You could line him up on some quiz program and just start zinging them his way and he wouldn’t flinch. They’d flow out of his mouth as automatically as meter stickers from the dispenser. He doesn’t think about it. It’s like there’s a direct path from some pure center of his memory straight to his mouth, and no thinking is ever involved. A location is stated and a zip code is kicked out.

  This is one of the reasons that Ike is probably the fastest sorter in the place. He can empty a full tray in half the time it takes Rourke. There’s no contest. And if someone were to do a check on accuracy, Ike is confident he’d win that category as well. He doesn’t see any reason for mistakes in this area. To him, a mistake in sorting means only one thing: you were talking to someone instead of looking at the envelope. Not that he’s got anything against socializing. It’s just there’s a time for it. Can’t they wait until the end of their shift and take it over to that stupid bar they all love so much? What the hell is so special about that place?

  Does Ike regret not being a part of the gang? Never being asked to go along when they change back into their street clothes? Never heading across the street and filing into the bar, all loose and ready for some fun? Not really. Not usually. There have been some rare occasions—he could probably number them on his fingers—when he found himself longing for this vague idea of friendship that he labels “camaraderie.” He’s imagined, at those times, what it might be like inside the back room at the Bach Room, seated in a chair at a fat, well-worn round table, pouring beer from a pitcher into the half-filled mugs around him, actually laughing at something Rourke has said, whispering into Bromberg’s small ear.

  But most of the time he has no desire to be part of their group. He feels set apart from his co-workers, and he swears to himself that this gap has nothing to do with a sense of superiority. It’s just a separateness, pure and simple. If he worked at the main post office downtown, instead of here at a much smaller neighborhood branch, the separateness wouldn’t be as noticeable. He could get lost in the crowd. There are hundreds of people who work at the main station. But here there are usually just six or eight people and there’s just no way to disappear. So his separateness has to be glaringly apparent day in and day out.

  There have been a lot of moments, most often at night, like three or four in the morning, when Ike couldn’t sleep, but stayed in bed and stared straight up into the darkness and admitted to himself, filled up with a vague sense of guilt, that he cherished his separateness. He doesn’t think this is normal or wholesome. He has an unspoken theory that most animals, and he stubbornly includes humans in that category, have a primal need for community, a deep well of yearning to be part of a larger social group. He thinks that even outcasts, abnormals, discontents, rebels, nonconformists, whether they admit it or not, secretly long for other outcasts. He thinks that a true hermit is a tremendously rare entity. And that he has all the makings of a true hermit.

  He enjoys being alone with his own mind and running it through a series of weird systems. He likes filling up on what would be considered the most trivial of information, because he thinks that there can be no standard for measurement of informational importance, that it’s absolutely subjective. That it’s entirely possible that for him, knowing the zip code of the smallest hamlet in the state is every bit as important as the President knowing the correct code sequence for unleashing a nuclear barrage.

  Ike has a hunch that this trait has emerged straight from the Thomas genes, that it’s a shared family legacy. He’d bet that Lenore is engulfed in separateness down at the police station and that she puts a very high value on it. He thinks both of their parents thought of themselves as cut apart from the groupings they moved within, in the neighborhood, at work, at church. He’s decided this based on a collection of memories that he analyzes over and over again while walking the route, or eating a silent lunch, or giving in to the insomnia that plagues him every now and then. He imagines he knows how his parents felt, as if they were living an illusion, bringing off a ridiculously elaborate deception—the deception that people are connected, that they share history, biology, a common tongue.

  One of the systems that Ike has spent a lot of time investigating is the post office. His interest began simply as a by-product of his daily routine, his urge to know a little more about an environment he spent most of his time in. But the irony of where he works soon hit him full force. The very idea of a post office is stunning to him. It’s like this national, no, international, planetwide, series of shrines dedicated to an idea of connection, to the notion of real communication. Now Ike sees every post office he passes as a temple, a concrete symbol of insistence that we are not alone, that we can talk to anyone, anywhere, at any time, all for the price of a stamp.

  A few years ago, Ike began delving into any and all aspects of the postal service. He’d done a hell of a lot of research, read most of the texts out there on the subject—the classic William Smith volume, the Walter Lang, the Ormsby and the Fallopian. What he loves most, though, is the fact that no one, not his co-workers, not the people on his route, not even Lenore knows about his interest or his knowledge. It’s locked up, hermetically sealed within the vault of his skull. He values all this knowledge, oddly because he knows how useless it is, what a vain display the history of mail service is, what an exhibition of pointless ego. He can’t understand why no one else he’s aware of sees it in this manner. In every book he’s ever read, the mail is a story of progress and practicality.

  Just once, Ike would like to come across a book, maybe an old, dilapidated volume, crusted with dust, forgotten, wedged unseen on a rarely visited library shelf, the stamped date on the return card pasted in the back of it showing a day that went by decades ago. He’d like to open that book and find the one shunned author who was willing to tell the truth, like in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” He’d like to find the voice brave enough to say: I’m sorry, people, you can make the mail system as efficient and elaborate and well connected as you want, but it won’t change a thing. It won’t make you any less isolated, any less separate, any less alone. You can mail an unlimited number of bulging envelopes, filled to bursting with words of every meaning and message, but that can’t change the nature of things. We are alone. And all our post offices are but temples of illusion, intricate attempts to tell ourselves otherwise.

  • • •

  Ike becomes aware of a presence and looks up startled and there’s Supervisor Barnes, right next to him, smiling at his surprise.

  “I’m sorry, Ike,” she says. “I didn’t mean to startle you like that. You’ve got quite the powers of concentration.”

  “I enjoy sorting,” Ike says.

  Eva shakes her head. “See now, I never liked sorting. Sorting for me was like torture. Loved to be out on the route. Walking the route.”

  “I like the route too. I like them both. Sorting and the route.”

  “Renaissance man,” Eva says. “I was wondering if you’d like a coffee. It’s break time. I wouldn’t want to be reported to the union for denying you your break time.”

  “I’d never do something like that,” Ike says.

  “Lighten up, Ike,” Eva says. “I was joking. The float from the main station came in and I’ve got her on the counter. So how ’bout the coffee?”

  Ike smiles, slides his behind off the lip of the work stool, and follows Eva to the small room at the back of the station. It’s the regulation
break room and it’s filled with three uncomfortable, bright orange, molded-plastic chairs, and a shaky wooden table covered with an ancient coffee machine, two jars of Cremora, a Styrofoam cup filled with Sweet ’N Low packets, and a cardboard box in which everyone stores their own coffee mug. There’s also a poster of the moon landing commemorative tacked to the wall. Ike has always found it an unusually depressing place. And he doesn’t think there’s any need for it to be that way. A little effort could do wonders, a little paint on the walls, some new chairs you could sit in without a backache, replace the moon landing with something a little more recent. But there’s no money in the budget for anything as unnecessary as redoing a branch break room, and when Ike suggested to his co-workers that they take it upon themselves, he didn’t hear the end of it for three weeks.

  Eva picks up her mug. It’s basic black, with no pictures or funny slogans or institutional logos. Normally she keeps it in her office and carries it into the break room when she wants some coffee. Ike has always thought this was because she was afraid Rourke or Wilson would put something in it if she left it with the other mugs. Spit in the bottom or something. She must have left the black mug in the room yesterday. Maybe it was an accident. But, more likely to Ike’s mind, she’s just gaining confidence. She knows they know who’s the boss.

  Ike’s work mug is identical to the home mug that Lenore gave him, the Neither Wind, Nor Sleet mug. He liked the one from Lenore so much that he searched around until he found the second one at one of those strobe and incense teen boutiques in the mall. Sometimes he wonders if this purchase shows a lack of imagination or independence on his part, but usually he thinks it’s just a tribute to Lenore’s taste and intuitiveness.

  Like Lenore, Eva drinks her coffee straight and black. He’s always amazed that people can do this, straight from the pot, without burning their tongue and throat. Ike fills his mug a good forty percent with tap water and Cremora before he adds a drop of coffee. Otherwise his stomach is shot for the rest of the day. He stopped using sugar back in college and thinks it might be wise to cut out coffee altogether. He can imagine the problems caffeine can cause.

  “How long have you been with the post office?” Eva asks, settling into a chair, her mug held out oddly in one hand as if it were the control stick of an old airplane.

  “Eight years,” Ike says with just a trace of pride sliding out with his words. “And four summers before I started full-time.”

  “Oh, you were a sub,” Eva says, sounding genuinely interested.

  Ike nods, sips at his mug. “Uh-huh. My father put in forty years. He had my summer job lined up every May. I swear, that guy knew every route in the city.”

  “One of those veterans,” Eva says. “Saw all the changes. Was carrying before the first zip codes …”

  “Oh, God,” Ike says. “He was out there in those days when people would, you know, write a name on the envelope, and ‘City’ underneath it, and the letter would get delivered, no problem.”

  “Lot of ingenuity in the office back in those days,” Eva says.

  “Don’t tell me,” Ike says. “Was your dad in the service too?”

  Eva shakes her head no and crosses her legs. Ike tries to stay focused on her eyes.

  “No, though he did work for the government. And he was a special courier for a time. State Department. We lived all over the place when I was growing up. Spent a lot of time in South America. Brazil and Paraguay. I speak Spanish fluently.”

  Ike is impressed. In an instant, he can picture Eva as a young girl, dressed in slightly foreign clothes, rattling off answers, in Spanish, to some old, dark teacher.

  “You’re kidding,” he says.

  “Not at all,” Eva says matter-of-factly. “We were south of the border from the time I was five until I turned seventeen.”

  “Jees,” Ike says, intrigued and excited by the story. “Then what happened? Your father get transferred back or something?”

  Eva shakes her head again in that slightly clipped way. “My father died. Massive coronary. Forty-eight years old.”

  “Oh, God,” Ike says. “I’m sorry.”

  “A long time ago,” Eva says. “I’ve never understood it. The man was the picture of health. Not a pound overweight. Good eating habits. Plenty of exercise. And to the best of my knowledge there was no history of it in his family.”

  There’s a pause that they both fill by sipping their coffee.

  Ike says, “So how’d you end up in Quinsigamond?”

  Eva smiles and Ike looks down to the floor.

  “My mother’s family was originally from here. So it was the only place to come, really. We moved in with this bachelor uncle of mine, my mother’s brother Kurt. Now, he was a character. But Mother, she was never the same after Father died. I kept telling myself that she’d come together with each passing year. Isn’t that what you’d think? That the pain and the confusion would sort of ease away slowly, a little bit at a time?”

  Eva shakes her head no for a while, staring at Ike until he’s so nervous and uncomfortable he’s ready to run from the room.

  Finally, she continues. “Mother drank. She had a problem. Quite a problem. I mean, this was twenty-some-odd years ago and you didn’t confront this type of thing in the way people do today. I’m saying help just wasn’t as available back then. This was something you kept hidden from the rest of the world. It took place inside, deep in your house.”

  Ike wishes she’d stop telling him this. He didn’t expect it of her and he doesn’t want to have to change his image of her, the picture he’s imagined of what she would be like if they ever sat down alone somewhere and had a conversation. He wonders how much longer the break can last.

  When Eva speaks again, it’s like her voice has come back to earth, regained a lot of strength and composure on reentry.

  “It’s funny, Ike,” she says. “I don’t know you well. I mean, I’m not sure if we’ve ever sat and spoken like this. But I’ve noticed you. Your routine, your work habits. I’m a very good supervisor, Ike. I know how all my people operate. You’re on the ball. You’re probably the best in here as far as taking the job seriously goes. You know, supervisor is not a position a lot of people would want. It’ll cost you friends. I don’t care who you are. You take off the uniform and put on the suit, they look at you differently. And that’s fine with me, because first of all, I’ve never been very close to anyone at work, and secondly, the job comes first. The job is number one.”

  “I’d agree with that,” Ike says, his voice a little higher than usual.

  “So I was saying it’s funny because, though I don’t know you, I always thought it was funny that you weren’t this family man. Married and a dozen kids and co-managing the Little League and all. You just seemed very, well, I don’t know”—she smiles, raises her eyebrows—“sort of purposeful and clean-cut …”

  “Clean-cut,” Ike says, surprised, unsure of her meaning.

  “Sure. True-blue. You know what I’m saying.”

  “Yeah,” Ike says, “I guess so,” though he has no clue as to what she’s talking about.

  “God knows,” Eva says, draining the last of her mug, “not like the rest of the crew we’ve got in here.”

  Ike thinks he might be on shaky ground. He wants to watch what he says here.

  “I think everyone works to the best of their abilities.”

  Eva lets out a deprecating laugh that’s little more than a gust of air.

  “You do?” she says, and it’s less a genuine question than a mocking disagreement.

  “Yeah,” Ike says, “I think so.”

  “Ike, please,” Eva says. “Wilson? Rourke?”

  “I’m just saying I’m not sure everyone has the same capacity.”

  “Oh, I get it. ‘If you can’t say something nice …’”

  “No,” Ike says, “not at all. It’s just, how do I know their situations?”

  “And how do they know yours? Their ‘situations’ have nothing to do with it. H
ere’s a job. How are you going to perform it? That’s it. That’s the only question to be debated. I’ll tell you what I think is going on here, Ike. I’m management and they’re labor and no matter how awful they treat you, you feel this loyalty to them just because they’re on your side of the fence. Right? Does this come down from your father?”

  Ike doesn’t know what to say. He feels like he’s been hauled out of bed in the middle of the night and questioned by some police force.

  “Oh no,” he says. “No, no, not at all. That’s just not true, Ms. Barnes …”

  Before he can bite his tongue, Eva bursts out with a single laugh and chokes out, “Ms. Barnes? Ms. Barnes? For God sake, Ike.”

  “What?” is all he can come up with.

  Eva collects herself, puts her hand up to her forehead for a second, like it will help her think, then lets it fall into her lap and says, “How old are you, Ike?”

  He hesitates, then answers, “Thirty.”

  “All right, then. I’m thirty-seven, Ike. I’m not exactly your grade school teacher. All right?”

  “So, what,” Ike stammers, “I should call you Eva?”

  She smiles, seems pleased. “Yes, Ike. Call me Eva.”

  “Okay,” he says, forced cheerful, starting to move to get up out of the chair. Eva stays in place and says, “So why do you put up with it?”

  Ike freezes and repeats, “Put up with it?”

  “The rest of them. Your co-workers. I’m telling you, I’ve worked at different branches, and I’ve worked down the main station. There are always a couple of people, okay, but this group. They’re the worst bunch of bastards I’ve come across.”

  Ike doesn’t like her talking like this. He especially doesn’t like being the one to hear it. He stays silent and Eva pushes.