A Protector of the Community

It’s quiet here. I don’t just mean here at my work station, although that’s true, too. I especially don’t want anything but silence while I do my outgoings. Once, there was a fellow here with me, name of Mark, who just could not abide any sort of peacefulness. Always had to be playing his speakers, or worse, running his mouth at me. Expecting a response. But Mark’s long gone now. I cried redundancy at my superior for two years straight till he got relocated to a distribution center up north. Beach town on the Chesapeake. I don’t feel bad about it. Now I’m a one-man band here, so along with my carrier duties, I get to enjoy sorting everything all by myself. Paper on paper can be like cricket legs—ain’t no difference to me.

But it’s quiet in the township, too. Now, what the difference between a township and a town is supposed to be… couldn’t tell you. I figure a town is supposed to be a very small place already. Maybe a township, by definition, is a quiet town. You can see that because the mail is quiet. Outgoings are mostly bills getting paid or birthday cards on their way to people’s grandchildren. Checks for non-profit organizations, that kind of thing. And the ingoings’re the same. Bills that need paying, and in terms of flats, you got AARP, you got Rolling Stone, you got Nat Geo and Hunter’s Housewife. Smithsonian Magazine, because we’re not too-too far from DC. Lotta packages, of course, because that’s easier for people than going to the store. But always very regular packages, in terms of shape and size. I saw how zany they can get back when I worked at the processing center in Waldorf. Lord am I glad to be out in the boonies now. Even the slogans on the junk mail tend to be on the understated side. And no election issues here, not in my township, no sirree. Everyone dots their i’s and crosses their t’s.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m talking out my ass, to a degree. I’m not giving it out straight. I’ve been keeping it all hush-hush for so long, I forget things aren’t how they used to be. But we have to face facts. There is an issue with the outgoings, and it’s a serious one.

It started first with this white lady, Mrs. Rita Dowling, who came in one Saturday afternoon with a reasonable enough-sized package destined for a P.O. box in—well, I’m keeping that to myself. I’ll say it’s out west. I don’t want to give you the impression that just because I know her full name I’m acquainted with Mrs. Dowling in any way—I got to know her name to deliver her mail, right? I’m not that kind of howdy-doody postman that chit-chats with every soul I bump into. I’m polite, but to be frank, I think sometimes my girth combined with my height intimidates people.

Anyways, Mrs. Dowling was sending these packages to the P.O. box—priority express and insured—about once weekly. Now, ain’t any business of mine, naturally. But the thing is—what they’ve been doing, what have they been doing . . . where should I start? Sorry, I sometimes get rusty in my old gear box. It happens with age. What they’ve been doing is one person here, one person there, started mailing their own packages to this same box. These are people who I am highly sure don’t know each other. Sometimes two of them will come into the office at the same time—like the other day, Ms. Eleanor Cortes, who I believe is a night nurse at Carondelet, where I had to stay a spell last year, and Mr. Kevin Boyle, who everybody knows is a partner at Cotter Boyle Erlevin & Cho, both with packages bound for the same recipient in hand, and not acknowledging each other’s existence one bit. These people are simply not part of the same club. I mean, Eleanor came up to me so nervous and asked me for the best stamps I have. Another young person who never sent so much as a postcard before in her life.

I’m telling you all this just so you don’t go all haywire after the confession I’m about to make. I want to emphasize that I didn’t do it willy-nilly. It really is the case that, by my reckoning, a majority of adults in the township have a very direct and, best I can tell, one-way connection to this single P.O. box. So that’s why I started opening up people’s packages. Just to see.

Please believe me. I felt like it was my duty somehow. My ex-wife and me, when we was together, we used to joke that I opened up her mail. And I did open her mail. I won’t say that I found her sharing love letters with her homewrecker and then I went in a-pistol-poppin’ or anything like that. This ain’t that kinda cutesy shit you read about sometimes. But I have discovered some important facts at important junctures. And I still open her mail from time to time, just to keep an eye on her. But besides her—and that is a very personal matter… that’s not about my civic obligations as a mailman at all—I have never even considered opening up somebody’s mail before. I really was not just curious, but I was concerned for people. You hear nowadays about kids being sold in dresser drawers. Who knows what goes on in this sick world.

It turns out people in the township have been sending incredible things. Valuables, I guess, is the word. Jewelry’s a big one, and I’m not talking anything chintzy—this is gold and diamonds and anything else that glitters and sparkles. A lot of it looks like—who knows, they could be family heirlooms. You know, unique pieces. Mrs. Chatterjee gave a gold bracelet covered in swastikas, I still can’t figure that one out. Some other items looked like they could be got at a small antiques auction. Signed sports equipment, super limited editions, rare manuscripts. And, of course, plain old checks. There’s a lot of people in the township who ain’t exactly poor. Some of them own beach houses down in Lewes or Rehoboth, and I don’t mean timeshares. But everybody in town’s giving. People are giving all they got to give and then they give some more. You can believe, once I realized what people were doing, I started inspecting the ingoing, too. Unless some correspondence from the holder of this box in Missoula—God damn it—you didn’t hear that—whatever. Unless this person or persons is hiding secret messages in the junk mail, I can say with confidence that people are not getting any kind of feedback for their troubles. Not through the U.S. Postal Service.

Of course, I don’t tamper with the outflow. People pay good money to get these packages where they’re going—forget about that, now—and I haven’t degraded myself that low down yet. I do try to get a read on people, though, when they drop off a package that I know is worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. They’re particular, they’re anxious, they’re thorough, but they don’t come across as out of their heads. Same thing when I go out on my route—I try to keep my eyes a lot more open than before. When I’m driving out in my car to some of the more out of the way homes, where every other property’s got a KAG flag flying, or when I’m carrying my hand cart behind me around our little postage stamp of a downtown, where people are a little more hippy-dippy, I try to look people in the eyes. These people have never been strange to me before, and they’re not now. They laugh, they play, they bitch each other out. I will say, the ladies of the township do walk around a lot less flashy nowadays, in terms of their earrings and rings and designer purses.

Lately people have been adding notes in their packages. Letters of devotion, of worship, of, of… of I don't know what. I just picture to myself some of the high-and-mighty people of the township getting on their hands and knees, bowing down on the floor while they write out on the backs of summer fun postcards with their tiny golf pencils how they're begging to be spared, and I laugh a little bit. But it's really not funny. A lot of them—I mean, you ever heard a little old lady who never hurt nobody begging to be spared? People ain’t pocket change. Maybe I should tell the FBI—but then maybe I’d have some splainin’ to do.

The volume is increasing as more people give, and the givers give more, and I can’t ask anybody about it. I don’t know how long I can handle it all by myself. I either eat crow and request another hand, or I let the problem get so big that I fuck the delivery up, and then it’s send in the paratroopers anyways. It’s a lot of responsibility—everybody’s problem is my problem, and I don’t even know what the problem is. I may be big, but I am frail.

I figure I’ll cover my bases a little. We can all use some insurance in life. So, the other day, I grabbed an envelope and some stamps and sent out some cash, about a hundred. Then, the next day, I took even more than that out of the ATM and sent that away, too. You can say it’s irrational, that it’s defeating the purpose, but I haven’t been brave enough to put on a return address yet. Maybe they’ll know, anyways. But the more I think about it, the less I’m sure that it’s enough. I’m standing here, culling by hand the letters people have posted today—alright, the past few days—putting everything where it belongs, the packages already taken care of, and my hand goes to my necklace. It’s gold, twenty carats—my dad gave it to me when I was just a kid. He passed away twenty years ago. I never take it off—almost never. I feel it against my chest, through my uniform.

ANKUR RAZDAN

Ankur Razdan grew up and attended college in Arizona, lived for a time in India and Russia, and now writes fiction in Washington, D.C. Follow him on Twitter at @mukkuthani, but follow him into the primeval forest with a lantern and a cursed hatchet.