Going Postal

Arthur wanted Ed to like the story. Sure, he’d asked for honest feedback. But he hoped it would be positive, maybe even effusive. He nodded toward the gray-haired man sitting in a La-Z-Boy recliner and holding the seven-page manuscript. “Are you a drinking man, Ed?”

Ed chuckled. “Well, that depends on what you’re pouring, my friend.”

Arthur turned to his kitchen sink, grabbed a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, and held it up. “This suit you?”

Ed looked around the drab surroundings of what passed for Arthur’s living room, then whistled. “Jee-sus. That’s some fancy whisky for a trailer park in Desert Hot Springs. You rob a bank?”

“Birthday present from my son,” Arthur said, grinning. He removed the foil seal, uncorked the bottle, and took two short glasses from the cupboard. He poured a generous two fingers into each, and brought one glass to Ed. “Here you go. Enjoy.”

Ed set aside the manuscript, stuck his nose into the glass and breathed deeply. “Nice,” he said. He took a healthy sip. “So, how long you been a writer?”

Arthur shrugged. “Well, I suppose you could say since I retired a couple years ago from the Post Office. I hadn’t really done much writing since I worked on my college literary magazine. But I started cranking out some short stories after I retired.”

Ed indulged in another slurp of the whisky. “Published?”

“No.” Arthur looked down. The rejections he kept getting from literary magazines rained down on his consciousness like a barrage of arrows. He worried that his lack of success might prejudice Ed against the story.

But Ed didn’t seem to care. He was swirling the whisky, staring into the glass. “Post Office, huh? Bukowski worked for the Post Office, you know.”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t a clerk or a carrier like he was. I was in administration. Forty years.”

Ed whistled again. “That would’ve driven me nuts.” He looked around the interior of the doublewide. “And I guess those government pensions don’t go as far as they used to.” He shook his head slowly. Then again, he drank.

Arthur’s jaw tightened. He’d only taken a sip from his glass. Now he regretted sharing the whisky because it seemed to have distracted Ed from the manuscript. “Two wives, two divorces,” Arthur said. “Number Two was so young and pretty, I should’ve known better. A real ace at spending money. After a couple of years, she disappeared with the mutual fund I’d been putting my savings in. And none of that keeps me from having to pay alimony to Number One.” He looked around, shrugged. “I’m lucky to afford this place.”

“My condolences,” Ed said, as he took another sip of the Scotch and paused to savor it. “What do you write about?”

“So far, the stories pretty much have been about the Post Office,” Arthur said. “Write what you know. Isn’t that what they say?” He looked away.

Ed didn’t respond. His attention remained on his drink.

Arthur gestured toward the manuscript. “Hey, are you gonna …”

Ed shrugged. “Yeah, okay.” He stared at the story’s first page, nodding. “Hey, I like the title.” Then he downed the rest of the Blue Label and held the glass up toward Arthur.

Arthur folded his arms across his chest. “And? How about the opening sentence?”

Ed sighed, looked down. “Seems fine.” He shrugged, held up the empty glass again.

“Uh, Ed, can you at least read some of the story while you drink?”

Ed stiffened, riffled through the pages, looked up. “Your transitions between paragraphs could be a helluva lot tighter.”

“All of them? Care to be more specific?” Arthur walked over with the bottle, poured no more than half of what he’d first shared.

Ed stared at the glass and frowned. “What? Are you a conservationist now?”

“I told you, it was a special gift from my son. We’re not gonna polish off the whole damned thing in one sitting.” He walked back to the kitchen with the bottle. “And,” he said over his shoulder, “I thought you came here to give me notes on my writing, not to suck up my birthday Scotch.”

Ed frowned. “Fine. Do you have a pen?”

“Sure.” Arthur grabbed the red pen he used for marking up drafts, and brought it to Ed.

Ed rudely snatched the pen. “You want notes? Here,” he blurted, slashing at a page, scarring it with red. “You know what Hemingway said? ‘Write the true sentence.’ You ever heard of that, Arthur? You know what that means?” Ed held up the page. He’d crudely circled three lines in red. “See that?”

Arthur nodded. “Yeah.”

“Is that the true sentence, Arthur? Is it? More like the moo sentence. It’s fat as a cow, and it stinks.”

Arthur’s jaw slackened.

Ed stabbed at the paper, targeting words with the pen as if to slay them. “Look at that. On. The. Nose. Worst kind of writing there is, Arthur. For Christ’s sake, give the reader some credit. Assume he has a brain.”

Arthur staggered backward.

“And another thing,” Ed barked, pointing the pen at Arthur. “You can’t tell a story worth shit.” He wielded the pen with theatrical flourish, emphatically crossing out two entire pages. Then he gulped the second helping of the Blue Label and held up the glass. “Dry well. Fill ’er up.”

Arthur’s shoulders sagged as he grabbed Ed’s glass. He turned his back, shuffled into the kitchen. But rather than reaching for the bottle, he opened a drawer, slammed the glass down on the sink, and whirled around to face Ed.

Ed’s eyebrows shot skyward and his jaw dropped. “Wha—what the hell?”

“Shut up,” Arthur growled, pointing a silver snub-nosed .38 revolver at Ed.

“Is that thing real? Are you fucking crazy?”

“I said,” Arthur yelled, “shut the hell up.” He gripped the gun, his arm trembling. “I can’t tell a story, huh?” He snickered. “But you believed the crap about me being an old, retired Post Office stiff, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

Ed swallowed hard, blinking. “Okay, yeah. But I thought we were talking about your writing. I thought you wanted my honest reaction.”

“Yeah, just a has-been stiff, unlucky in love. Broke. Down on his luck. No threat, no problem. Well, let me ask you this, Eddie, would you have crapped all over my writing if you’d known I’d done twenty-five years in San Quentin? Twenty-five years hard time for second degree murder with a firearm? Would you have violated my words with your goddamned red pen if you’d known that? Huh?”

“It was your red pen,” Ed said, avoiding eye contact.

“Don’t get wise with me, you hear?” Arthur took two strong steps toward Ed, still pointing the gun. Then he began nodding, breaking into a crooked grin. “You remind me of the guy I offed. I was a cabbie in San Francisco. I was doing my damnedest to get the asshole to his appointment during rush hour. And you know what he says? That I don’t know how to drive, that I’m not taking the right streets. You know what I did? I pulled the cab to the curb. Then I reached into the glove compartment, and you know what I pulled out?” Arthur waived the gun in the air, his eyes burning, his breathing rapid. “That’s right, my friend. And then, pow! I let that son of a bitch have it.”

Ed eyes fixed on the gun. He swallowed again. “Je-Jesus Christ, Arthur.”

“You think I’m crazy? Big overreaction? Let me tell you something, Ed. You know what a cabbie’s pride, his soul, was back then? Knowing the goddamned streets. Knowing the shortcuts, especially at rush hour. There was none of this GPS crap. None of these Uber scabs. That asshole might as well have stabbed me in the heart with a knife. He deserved what he got.”

Ed’s bloodshot blue eyes widened.

“Does that surprise you, Ed? Well, let me tell you something, buddy. I did my time and I’m a writer now. And I put my beating heart into that story you’re holding. I put my goddamned soul into those words. You might as well have stabbed me in the heart with that fucking red pen.”

Ed drew a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling, avoiding Arthur’s glare. “So, you’re going to kill me, Arthur? Spend the rest of your life in prison because … because, what? I gave you a bad review?”

Arthur snorted. “Kill you? I don’t know.” His upper lip curled. “But you know what I am gonna to do, Ed? I’m gonna stand here with this gun while you eat that story you defiled. The whole goddamned thing.”

Ed’s mouth opened. “What? You can’t be serious, Arthur. You can’t—”

Arthur gave the gun a quick wave, then aimed the barrel right between Ed’s eyes. “Page one. Start munching, you drunken bastard.”

Ed’s wrinkled face sagged. Seven pages? How was he to swallow all that paper and ink without choking to death? His eyes watered. He grabbed the first page, began crumpling it in his hand, raising it slowly toward his mouth. He reluctantly pushed the wad past his parted lips, which felt as parched as the desert outside.

Ed suppressed a strong urge to gag as he struggled to contain Arthur’s bitter-tasting literary endeavor in his mouth. He hoped that Arthur might be satisfied with the humiliation he’d already caused, and that he’d now relent, show mercy. But that hope darted away as quickly as a hummingbird.

“Chew,” Arthur barked, waiving the gun.

Ed’s jaws began to move, his molars grinding on the horribly dry paper. Then suddenly, the silence was broken by a calypso tune: Arthur’s mobile was ringing right when Ed’s mouth was stuffed with the first helping of short fiction.

Arthur, scowling, reached a hand into his pants pocket and glanced down at the name on the phone’s screen: Danny, his son. He swiped the green answer icon. “What’s up, Dan-O?” he said, being careful not to slur his words.

“Mom said you were staying down south for another week. Too bad. I was hoping Karen, the kids and I could take you two for a drive over the Golden Gate this Sunday. Maybe lunch in Sausalito.”

“Your mother couldn’t take any more of the desert heat. But I get sick of that ocean fog up there in the early summer. It makes me feel like I’m in prison. I never became a real San Franciscan like her.”

Danny laughed. “Good story, Pop. Good excuse to get some alone time in retirement, huh?”

“No comment, Dan-O. But hey, I tried the Blue Label. Beautiful. Thanks.”

“I figured a writer needs a good whisky to spur the creative juices.” Danny laughed again.

“Ha! Well, I am writing. I don’t know if that makes me a writer. But I do have a draft of a new short story. Thought I’d finish it before I button this place up and head back north.”

“Another one about the Post Office?”

Arthur paused. “Uh, not really.”

“Okay, Pop. Good luck. I’ll see you when I see you.”

“Right, Danny. Say hi to Karen and the kids. Bye-bye.”

Arthur slid the phone back into his pocket. He slowly raised his right arm, his index finger pointing at the La-Z-Boy, his thumb cocked perpendicularly toward the ceiling. Then he turned around, plopped into the recliner, and smiled. He liked the gun; the gun would stay in the story. But making Ed eat the pages? Too much? Was it just too much? He turned to the end table next to the recliner, poured himself another splash of Scotch, then picked up the manuscript and his red pen.