HAVING SPENT THE last of his expense account at the Biscayne Grand Hotel’s lavish bar, John Thomas boarded the same steamer for New York as Josef Steinmetz. He had plenty of firsthand information to write his assigned story for the Times, but as he’d sipped his eighth gin and tonic the night before, he’d come to a certain conclusion about what to do with his pages and pages of notes on the Florida transportation industry and the progress it had made toward linking the last of the Eastern wilds with the rest of the United States.
John Thomas was sick of his grind as a Times reporter. Though just thirty years old, he’d risen to be one of the star traveling reporters for the newspaper. He was being groomed for a high editorial position. Still, it was unsatisfying for him. He knew he was a brilliant writer. He’d read the work of all the great reporters of his day and could identify their styles even without their bylines. In terms of sheer reporting, he was on a par with the best of them. He’d said as much to his editor and his fellow reporters, because John Thomas was an ambitious man and not prone to attacks of self-effacement. Secretly, though, he knew he was better. What prevented him from saying that much was the inkling of modesty he could display when it was prudent. His writing, as he saw it, was qualitatively different from the other great reporters of his day. He had a certain flair for finding the story where others failed. He had more than just the power of the pen; he had that rare and delicate touch that could transform the mundane, insignificant events of this world into the most wondrous of dramas. And that is the mark of the great ones, he thought. To see what the others do not, and by the genius of my pen, to convey the secrets of the world. I’m a guide, a prophet, and—who’s to argue?—a creator.
Operating with this knowledge, it was difficult for him to put up with deadlines, fussy editors, and jealous colleagues. He’d paid his dues for ten years and enough was enough. He had the talent and the confidence to make his run to the top, and now he saw an opportunity to use the Times the way he’d always thought it should he used—as a stepping stone to greatness.
John Thomas boarded the steamer that morning and took the cabin paid for by his paper, a nice cabin, but not first class. When the ship left port and sailed through the inlet and out into the open sea, when it had settled into a comfortable rumble northward, he went up on deck with his pages and pages of notes and tore them one by one out of his notebook, letting them fly into the warm, green waters of the Gulf Stream.
Although they were passengers together on that same ship, Josef Steinmetz and John Thomas never met during the voyage. The ship’s doctor treated Josef for overexposure and ordered him to remain in bed for the duration of the voyage and perhaps for weeks longer—so he reclined by himself in his first-class cabin. But there was little chance he’d leave there anyway. His feet were beyond hope. The doctor could only shake his head in pity, rub the feet with aloe, prop them up with pillows, and order Josef to keep them out of the light.
John Thomas also closed himself in his cabin after he let fly his notes, but for different reasons. He pushed himself with his writing, working more intensely than ever before. Rather than a dry, factual story suitable for the business pages, he would write a dramatic piece with a theme of the perseverance and triumph of the human spirit. This would be his career piece, his ticket to the Ball of the Immortals.
He worked long hours to complete this piece before the ship docked in New York. Once there, he collected his papers—he’d revised the story four times, keeping the drafts for the future scholars of his work—and made his way straight to Times Square and the offices of The New York Times.
He marched into the office of Nile Lesterton, his editor, and was greeted warmly with a cigar and a slap on the back. Lesterton thought of Thomas as his star pupil, and took no small credit tor Thomas’s accomplishments. Thomas had detected this attitude long ago, and it made him laugh inwardly, though on one level he found it a refreshing change from the professional jealousy of his other colleagues.
Thomas brushed aside Lesterton’s questions about the Florida transportation business and moved right into his pitch for the story he’d worked up on the boat. He gave it his all, knowing he had nothing to fall back on, that the notes for his assignment were at that very moment drifting in the Gulf Stream, dissolving in the action of the waves and the nibbles of fish and the natural entropy of things left unattended.
Of course the editor was taken aback at first, criticizing the piece for its “literariness.” But the reporter delivered the eloquent and inspired speech he’d also written and rehearsed on the ship, touching on the value of human-interest stories and the importance of legends as a binding influence on this vast and sometimes fractured nation of ours—legends as the roux in the great melting pot—and in the end, the editor consented to print it.
The story was published in five parts, made an immediate sensation in New York, and was soon reprinted in some of the major newspapers throughout the Northeast. It outlined the true and sensational tale of a man known only as “The Barefoot Mailman,” who, as a boy, had been shipwrecked in Florida and raised by Seminole Indians. When he reached puberty, he wasn’t allowed to enter the rites of passage and become a brave, but was sent off to rejoin his own people. He fell in with a group of settlers in the town of Figulus who ostracized him because of his mysterious background and his familiarity with the heathens. But once the town of Figulus was incorporated, they found a use for him—he had a native’s knowledge of the land, something valuable, possibly lifesaving, on the long, arduous routes of Florida postal carriers. So they took a chance and hired him to deliver and retrieve their mail from the post office in Biscayne, a full sixty miles to the south. Proud to serve his country, he made the strenuous journey up and down the Florida coast, delivering the mail under the harshest of conditions, and all in his bare feet, for, despite his ease in relearning the language and customs of the white man, he kept the memory of his Seminole upbringing alive by retaining this single Indian custom. It was in the white man’s honor that he served his country so, and it was in the red man’s honor that he did it in his bare feet.
The story was punctuated with words from the Mailman himself, whom John Thomas claimed to have followed and interviewed at length, braving the forbidding jungles and the violent weather until a tropical fever finally forced the reporter to cooler climes, leaving the Mailman to continue his brave and solitary duties.
The Barefoot Mailman became an instant legend, striking a chord with the public’s thirst for adventure and for positive, hard-working role models. For the down-and-out he became a symbol of perseverance. For new immigrants, he became a symbol of the American Dream, of finding a niche in a strange new world. The legend made its way into several children’s books, and kids listened, wide-eyed and drooling, as their mamas read them the great adventure tale. They were enraptured by the mystery of the strange land and learned a valuable moral lesson about courage and strength. A popular song made the rounds in those days, too:
Barefoot Man
Oh barefoot man, oh barefoot man,
post me a note with your tom-tom band.
Make it to my uncle, in Kalamazoo,
make it to my aunt, in Katmandu.
Tell ’em that I love ’em, and tell ’em I’m blessed.
Knock it out in tom-tom, and send ’em my best.
Oh barefoot man, oh barefoot man,
send me up a signal to my best girl, Nan.
Address it to Milwaukee, Route Number Two,
the little pink house where the love-birds roost.
Ain’t no need for walkin’, just send it with smoke,
so cover up your feet and let my love note float.
Finally, as if the legend needed further acknowledgment to solidify its influence, it was alluded to in numerous literary works of the period as a symbol of the evolutionary adaptability of man.
For John Thomas, it was all a confirmation of what he already knew about his talents and the lifelong feeling he’d had that he’d been destined for greatness. At the first hint of the legend’s creating a stir, he quit his job at the Times and began to put together a book on the subject. The quick popularity of the legend had made him anxious—people were capitalizing on his baby. But a book would secure his position as minister of the legend and once and for all eternity bind his name together with the Legend of the Barefoot Mailman.