Jack O'Connell - Box Nine

WILSON: Oh yeah, let’s have a few, Billy, huh?

ROURKE: What’s the word, shithead, you going to the Bach Room? Maybe taking the bitch with you?

[ Silence ]

THOMAS: What’s she ever done to you, Rourke, huh?

ROURKE: Do you hear this? Did you hear this? This is unbelievable. I’m screwing around and he is all hot for the bitch. Do you believe this? Jacobi, did you hear this guy?

[ Whistle, general catcalls ]

THOMAS: No, I’m just asking, what did she ever do to you? Really, answer me. And while you’re at it, what did I ever do to you?

[ Much laughter ]

THOMAS: What’s wrong, Billy, can’t you speak? Is there something wrong with your goddamn mouth?

[ Laughter ends ]

ROURKE: What a ballsy little bastard, defending the bitch like this. Listen, schmuckhead, it’s nothing you or she did , okay? All right? It’s what you are. All right, what you are. You see the difference there. You are a shithead. She is a bitch.

[ Laughter

[ Door swings open, closed. I assume Thomas leaves ]

Eva puts her pencil back into her cup. Without reviewing her shorthand, she pulls all the forms back down over the yellow sheet. She pushes back from her desk and stares up at a glossy poster of a recent stamp issue, the William Faulkner stamp. She stares at the face depicted in a green line drawing. The man looks so wise, distinguished, the small features, the pipe in the mouth. Eva wishes she could consult with him, ask some advice on what he’d do about the infighting among her people. When the stamp was issued, she’d looked Faulkner up in her old Britannica at home and was pleased and surprised to see he’d worked in a post office in Mississippi. Now she wishes he worked here and was out in the front lobby, reloading the self-serve stamp machines, or maybe tacking up new Wanted posters. She’d ask him what to do about all the hostility in the locker room. And she’d ask him what he thought about Ike Thomas, and if he was really defending the bitch, hot for the bitch.

Eva gets up out of her chair and straightens her skirt. She’s wearing her navy-blue suit with a white blouse, and she wishes she’d worn something else, something a little less plain. It’s difficult. When she went from carrier to supervisor she had to stop wearing a uniform. She liked the uniform. It identified her. Anywhere in the country, people just taking a quick look at her would know she worked for the U.S. Postal Service. But there’s a statute that says supervisors aren’t to wear the uniform. Eva guesses they want the supervisors set apart, differentiated from the carriers and clerks so that they’re seen clearly as the boss, the authority figure. But there are other ways of signifying their increased status without sacrificing the uniform. There are always other options. Now every morning means a decision about what to wear, about how to look professional and serious without looking boring or dowdy or masculine.

She hears a last locker slam shut next door and knows they’re all at their cages. She starts to write quickly on her scheduling forms and walks out into the workroom. Jacobi is the only one talking, and he’s just muttering to no one in particular. She walks into the center of the room, equidistant from each of them seated atop their metal stools, stacks of banded mail in their hands.

“Okay,” she says, trying instantly to find the right modulation for her voice. “As you probably guessed by now, Stephenson and Ogden are both out sick …”

“Yeah, right,” says Rourke. He didn’t shave the past two days and Eva thinks she’s going to have to mention it. He looks more like a Bangkok derelict than a carrier.

“I’m waiting for the word from the main office on my request for two subs. I think we can only count on one, and I’m not giving the towers to a sub. They’ll never finish and we’ll hear about it all day tomorrow.”

She sees them all tense up, waiting to see who’ll get hung with Stephenson’s awful route.

She hugs the clipboard up to her chest and drums on the back of it with her fingers.

“Thomas,” she says, “you do Stephenson’s. Wilson and Jacobi, you split up Ike’s route between you.”

She pauses, looks around, then says, “Okay, let’s hit it,” and turns to head back to her office. She hears Rourke say something under his breath that sounds like “heartbreaker,” and she surprises herself by stopping and wheeling back around to face them.

It’s like a vacuum has rushed into the space between all the cages and sucked the air and noise away. Eva fills it with the question, “What was that, Rourke?”

He hesitates, then says, “Nothing, I was talking to Ike …”

She cuts him off, saying, “Did we lose our razor, Rourke?”

He starts to say, “What, you mean …”

And she cuts him off again, saying, “Okay, there’s a change in scheduling. You’ve got Stephenson’s route, Rourke. Thomas, you’re here for the day. At the window and sorting. I’ll get the second sub from downtown.”

Rourke is stunned, shaking his head, stammering, saying, “Oh, c’mon, what the hell, I didn’t say a thing …”

But Eva has already started walking back to her office. When her door closes, everyone stays still, like a jumpy terrorist has a gun swaying over their heads. Finally Rourke turns to Wilson and says, “What the fuck was that all about?”

No one answers.

• • •

If someone were to ask Ike which he liked better, being out on the route, delivering, or being inside at the cage, sorting, he’d have trouble giving a definitive answer. The truth is he enjoys both activities and he’d have a real problem trying to elevate one above the other. They’re different. On the route, you’re outside, meeting people, saying hello, getting some exercise. Inside, sorting the mail, you don’t move or talk, your brain listens to the radio and kind of goes on remote control, sliding envelopes into the appropriate slots, tossing packages into the right baskets. But both activities have a definite procedure to follow, an order, a schedule, a continuous line of behavior. And though Ike wouldn’t admit it to anyone, that’s really what he likes about his job. So either way he can’t lose. Inside or out, it’s all the same to him.

For instance, in the manual they even have illustrations for how you should position yourself on the sorting stool. Ike follows the official example. Your feet, in regulation steel-toed work boots, are flat on the work floor, taking sixty percent of the weight of your body. Your buttocks are to rest not more than two inches on the edge or lip of the work stool, so that you’re actually in more of a modified-leaning, rather than sitting, position. Though it isn’t explained in the manual, Ike has guessed that some engineer may have figured out the most efficient way of going through an average-sized sorting load, coming up with the illustrated position that probably finds a perfect balance between speed and conservation of energy.

A day inside, like this, is a nice break every now and then. Ike thinks of it like the sick days he’d sometimes take in grammar school, a rare treat, a change of pace. He knows he’ll appreciate the route even more tomorrow, approach it with renewed effort. Besides, there are no pit bulls inside the Sapir Street Station. He’s never been attacked by Mrs. Vachek’s pet, but there have been a couple of close calls. Last November, he was sliding her Social Security check through the slot in her front door and Milos, silent, waiting, cocked, tore the check from his hand in an explosion of noise and saliva and snapping fangs. Ike actually felt the wet, rubbery flap of the dog’s mouth as he wrenched back and pulled his hand to safety. There was a pain in his chest for the balance of the day.