Charles Bukowski - Post Office

I closed the door and walked up one more flight. Then I opened my door. There was nobody in there. The furniture was old and ripped, the rug almost colorless. Empty beercans on the floor. I was in the right place.

I took off my clothes, climbed into bed alone and cracked another beer.

While working Dorsey station I heard some of the old timers needling Big Daddy Greystone about how he’d had to buy a tape recorder in order to learn his schemes. Big Daddy had read the scheme sheet breaks onto the tape and listened to it as it played back. Big Daddy was called Big Daddy for obvious reasons. He’d put 3 women in the hospital with that thing. Now he’d found some roundeye. A fag named Carter. He’d even ripped Carter up. Carter had gone to a hospital in Boston. The joke was that Carter had to go all the way to Boston because there wasn’t enough string on the West Coast to sew him up after Big Daddy finished with him. True or not, I decided to try the tape recorder. My worries were over. I could leave it on while I was sleeping. I had read somewhere that you could learn with your subconscious while sleeping. That seemed the easiest way out. I bought a machine and some tape.

I read the scheme sheet onto the tape, got into bed with my beer and listened:

“NOW, HIGGINS BREAKS 42 HUNTER, 67 MARKLEY, 71 HUDSON, 84 EVERGLADES! AND NOW, LISTEN, LISTEN, CHINASKI, PITTSFIELD BREAKS 21 ASHGROVE, 33 SIMMONS, 46 NEEDLES! LISTEN, CHINASKI, LISTEN, WESTHAVEN BREAKS 11 EVERGREEN, 24 MARKHAM, 55 WOODTREE! CHINASKI, ATTENTION, CHINASKI! PARCHBLEAK BREAKS…”

It didn’t work. My voice put me to sleep. I couldn’t get past the 3rd beer.

After a while I didn’t play the recorder or study the scheme sheet. I just drank my 6 tall cans of beer and went to sleep. I couldn’t understand it. I even thought about going to see a psychiatrist. I envisioned the thing in my mind:

“Yes, my boy?”

“Well, it’s like this.”

“Go ahead. You need the couch?”

“No, thanks. I’d fall asleep.”

“Go ahead, please.”

“Well, I need my job.”

“That’s rational.”

“But I have to study and pass 3 more schemes in order to keep it.”

“Schemes? What are these ‘schemes’?”

“That’s when people don’t put down zone numbers. Somebody has to stick that letter. So we have to study these scheme sheets after working 12 hours a night.”

“And?”

“I can’t pick the sheet up. If I do, it falls from my hand.”

“You can’t study these schemes?”

“No. And I have to throw 100 cards in a glass cage in 8 minutes to at least an accuracy of 95 percent or I’m out. And I need the job.”

“Why can’t you study these schemes?”

“That’s why I’m here. To ask you. I must be crazy. But there are all these streets and they all break in different ways. Here look.” And I would hand him the 6 page scheme, stapled together at the top, small print on both sides.

He would flip through the pages.

“And you are supposed to memorize all this?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Well, my boy,” handing the sheets back, “you’re not crazy for not wanting to study this. I’d be more apt to say that you were crazy if you wanted to study this. That’ll be $25.”

So I analyzed myself and kept the money.

But something had to be done.

Then I had it. It was about 9:10 a.m. I phoned the Federal Building, Personnel Department, “Miss Graves. I’d like to speak to Miss Graves, please.”

“Hello?” There she was. The bitch. I fondled myself as I spoke to her. “Miss Graves. This is Chinaski. I filed an answer to your charge that I had a bad record. I don’t know if you remember me?”

“We remember you, Mr. Chinaski.”

“Has any decision been rendered?”

“Not yet. We’ll let you know.”

“All right, then. But I have a problem.”

“Yes, Mr. Chinaski?”

“I am now studying the CP1.” I paused.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I find it very difficult, I find it almost impossible to study this scheme, to put in all that extra time when it might be of no avail. I mean, I may be removed from the postal service at any moment. It is not fair to ask me to study the scheme under these conditions.”

“All right, Mr. Chinaski. I’ll phone the scheme room and instruct them to take you off the scheme until we have reached a decision.”

“Thank you, Miss Graves.”

“Good day,” she said, and hung up.

It was a good day. And after fondling myself while on the phone I almost decided to go downstairs to 309. But I played it safe. I put on some bacon and eggs and celebrated with an extra quart of beer.

Then there were only 6 or 7 of us. The CP1 was simply too much for the rest.

“How you doing on your scheme, Chinaski?” they asked me.

“No trouble at all,” I said.

“O.K., break Woodburn Ave.”

“Woodburn?”

“Yes, Woodburn.”

“Listen, I don’t like to be bothered with that stuff while I’m working. It bores me. One job at a time.”

On Christmas I had Betty over. She baked a turkey and we drank. Betty always liked huge Christmas trees. It must have been 7 feet tall, and 1/2 as wide, covered with lights, bulbs, tinsel, various crap. We drank from a couple of fifths of whiskey, made love, ate our turkey, drank some more. The nail in the stand was loose and the stand was not big enough to hold the tree. I kept straightening it. Betty stretched out on the bed, passed out. I was drinking on the floor with my shorts on. Then I stretched out. Closed my eyes. Something awakened me. I opened my eyes. Just in time to see the huge tree covered with hot lights, lean slowly toward me, the pointed star coming down like a dagger. I didn’t quite know what it was. It looked like the end of the world. I couldn’t move. The arms of the tree enfolded me. I was under it. The light bulbs were red hot.

“Oh, OH JESUS CHRIST, MERCY! LORD HELP ME! JESUS! JESUS! HELP!” The bulbs were burning me. I rolled to the left, couldn’t get out, then I rolled to the right.

“YAWK!”

I finally rolled out from under. Betty was up, standing there.

“What happened? What is it?”

“CAN’T YOU SEE? THAT GOD DAMNED TREE TRIED TO MURDER ME!”

“What?”

“YES, LOOK AT ME!” I had red spots all over my body. “Oh, poor, baby!” I walked over and pulled the plug from the wall. The lights went out. The thing was dead.

“Oh, my poor tree!”

“Your poor tree?”

“Yes, it was so pretty!”

“I’ll stand it up in the morning. I don’t trust it now. I’m giving it the rest of the night off.”

She didn’t like that. I could see an argument coming, so I stood the thing up behind a chair and turned the lights back on. If the thing had burned her tits or ass, she would have thrown it out the window. I thought I was being very kind.

Several days after Christmas I stopped in to see Betty. She was sitting in her room, drunk, at 8:45 a.m. in the morning. She didn’t look well but then neither did I. It seemed that almost every roomer had given her a fifth. There was wine, vodka, whiskey, scotch. The cheapest brands. The bottles filled her room.

“Those damn fools! Don’t they know any better? If you drink all this stuff it will kill you!”

Betty just looked at me. I saw it all in that look.

She had two children who never came to see her, never wrote her. She was a scrubwoman in a cheap hotel. When I had first met her her clothes had been expensive, trim ankles fitting into expensive shoes. She had been firm-fleshed, almost beautiful. Wild-eyed. Laughing. Coming from a rich husband, divorced from him, and he was to die in a car wreck, drunk, burning to death in Connecticut. “You’ll never tame her,” they told me.