Charles Bukowski - Post Office

A young black girl walked up. She was well-dressed and pleased with her surroundings. I was happy for her. I would have gone mad with the same job.

“Yes?” she asked.

“I’m a postal clerk,” I said, “I want to resign.”

She reached under the counter and came up with a stack of papers. “All these?”

She smiled, “Sure you can do it?”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I can do it.”

You had to fill out more papers to get out than to get in.

The first page they gave you was a personalized mimeo affair from the postmaster of the city.

It began:

“I am sorry you are terminating your position with the post office and… etc., etc., etc., etc.”

How could he be sorry? He didn’t even know me.

There was a list of questions.

“Did you find our supervisors understanding? Were you able to relate to them?”

Yes, I answered.

“Did you find the supervisors in any manner prejudiced toward race, religion, background or any related factor?”

No, I answered.

Then there was one—“Would you advise your friends to seek employment in the post office?” Of course, I answered.

“If you have any grievances or complaints about the post office please list them in detail on the reverse side of this page.”

No grievances, I answered.

Then my black girl was back.

“Finished already?”

“Finished.”

“I’ve never seen anybody fill out their papers that fast.”

“Quickly,” I said.

“Quickly?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what do we do next?”

“Please step in.”

I followed her ass between desks to a place almost to the back.

“Sit down,” the man said.

He took some time reading through the papers. Then he looked at me. “May I ask why you are resigning? Is it because of disciplinary procedures against you?”

“No.”

“Then what is the reason for your resignation?”

“To pursue a career.”

“To pursue a career?”

He looked at me. I was less than 8 months from my 50th birthday. I knew what he was thinking. “May I ask what your ‘career’ will be?”

“Well, sir, I’ll tell you. The trapping season in the bayou only lasts from December through February. I’ve already lost a month.”

“A month? But you’ve been here eleven years.”

“All right, then, I’ve wasted eleven years. I can pick up 10 to 20 grand for 3 months trapping at Bayou La Fourche.”

“What do you do?”

“ Trap I Muskrats, nutria, mink, otter… coon. All I need is a pirogue. I give 20 percent of my take for use of the land. I get paid a buck and a quarter for muskrat skins, 3 bucks for mink, 4 bucks for ‘bo mink,’ a buck and a half for nutria and 25 bucks for otter. I sell the muskrat carcass, which is about a foot long, for 5 cents to a cat food factory. I get 25 cents for the skinned body of the nutria. I raise pigs, chickens and ducks. I catch catfish. There’s nothing to it. I—”

“Never mind, Mr. Chinaski, that will be sufficient.”

He put some papers in his typewriter and typed away.

Then I looked up and there was Parker Anderson my union man, good old gas-station shaving and shitting Parker, giving me his politician’s grin. “You resigning, Hank? I know you been threatenin’ to for eleven years…”

“Yeah, I’m going to Southern Louisiana and catch myself a batch of goodies.”

“They got a racetrack down there?”

“You kidding? The Fair Grounds is one of the oldest tracks in the country!”

Parker had a young white boy with him—one of the neurotic tribe of the lost—and the kid’s eyes were filmed with wet layers of tears. One big tear in each eye. They did not drop out. It was fascinating. I had seen women sit and look at me with those same eyes before they got mad and started screaming about what a son of a bitch I was. Evidently the boy had fallen into one of the many traps, and he had gone running for Parker. Parker would save his job.

The man gave me one more paper to sign and then I got out of there.

Parker said, “Luck, old man,” as I walked by.

“Thanks, baby,” I answered.

I didn’t feel any different. But I knew that soon, like a man lifted quickly out of the deep sea, I would be afflicted—with a particular type of bends. I was like Joyce’s damned parakeets. After living in the cage I had taken the opening and flown out —like a shot into the heavens. Heavens?

I went into the bends. I got drunker and stayed drunker than a shit skunk in Purgatory. I even had the butcher knife against my throat one night in the kitchen and then I thought, easy, old boy, your little girl might want you to take her to the zoo. Ice cream bars, chimpanzees, tigers, green and red birds, and the sun coming down on top of her head, the sun coming down and crawling into the hairs of your arms, easy, old boy.

When I came to I was in the front room of my apartment, spitting into the rug, putting cigarettes out against my wrists, laughing. Mad as a March Hare. I looked up and there sat this pre-med student. A human heart sat in a homey fat jar between us on the coffeetable. All around the human heart—which was labeled after its former owner “Francis”—were half empty fifths of whiskey and scotch, clutters of beerbottles, ashtrays, garbage. I’d pick up a bottle and swallow a hellish mixture of beer and ashes. I hadn’t eaten for 2 weeks. An endless stream of people had come and gone. There had been 7 or 8 wild parties where I had kept demanding—“More to drink! More to drink! More to drink!” I was flying up to heaven; they were just talking—and fingering each other.

“Yeh,” I said to the pre-med student, “what do you want with me?”

“I am going to be your own personal physician.”

“All right, doctor, the first thing I want you to do is to take that god damned human heart out of here!”

“Uh uh.”

“What?”

“The heart stays here.”

“Look, man, I don’t know your name—”

“Wilbert.”

“Well, Wilbert, I don’t know who you are or how you got here but you take ‘Francis’ with you!”

“No, it stays with you.”

Then he got his little playbag and the rubber wrap-around for the arm and he squeezed the ball and the rubber inflated. “You’ve got the blood pressure of a 19 year old,” he told me. “Fuck that. Look, isn’t it against the law to leave human hearts laying around?”

“I’ll be back to get it. Now, breathe in! ”

“I thought the post office was driving me crazy. Now you come along.”

“Quiet! Breathe in! ”

“ I need a good young piece of ass, doctor. That’s what’s wrong with me.”

“Your backbone is put of place in 14 areas, Chinaski. That breeds tension, imbecility, and, often, madness.”

“Balls!” I said…

I don’t remember the gentleman leaving. I awakened on my couch at 1:10 p.m. in the afternoon, death in the afternoon, and it was hot, the sun ripping through my torn shades to rest on the jar in the center of the coffeetable. “Francis” had stayed with me all night, stewing in alcoholic brine, swimming in the mucous extension of the dead diastole. Sitting there in the jar.

It looked like fried chicken. I mean, before you fried it. Exactly.

I picked it up and put it in my closet and covered it with a torn shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and vomited. I finished, stuck my face against the mirror. There were long black hairs sticking out all over my face. Suddenly I had to sit down and shit. It was a good hot one.

The doorbell rang. I finished wiping my ass, got into some old clothes and went to the door.