Friday was regular mail day. Mail was delivered once a week by Pan American—once a week, that is, when the weather was clear and the field wasn’t closed-in with fog. Outgoing mail was picked up the following day when the plane made its return trip from Scotland to the states.
Steve had been on duty at post number seven all day Friday. Post number seven was a newly created post in an ancient quonset hut on the edge of the airport which housed a couple of inches of water in addition to three old airplane engines. It had been one of those days when the seconds lingered, and the box lunch which had been sent over to him by the hotel kitchen had tasted like K rations soaked in brine. The sandwiches had been stained brown from the upset coffee container and the pickle juice had gotten into everything, including the jelly roll. Steve had thrown the thing away, climbed back up on one of the engines and continued to sit there waiting for four o’clock and his relief. The relief did not come, however, but a bus on its way through Reeks Area—where the hospital was located—and which was going through Hassey Area stopped and picked him up. He had thought once during the afternoon about inquiring about his mail, but had realized, a little painfully, that there was no one to write. The seconds had seemed even longer after that.
He found Charlie in the hut, busily scrubbing some socks in the bathroom sink. The hut held the strong odor of clorox and the cigarette which Steve was smoking took on a peculiar taste. He threw the cigarette in an ash tray and took off his parka.
“I wonder who figures out the posts for the guards?” he said to Charlie.
“What’s the gripe?”
“Only that I spent all afternoon over in an old warehouse guarding two broken-down airplane engines.”
Charlie paused in his washing.
“Anybody try to steal them?”
Steve grinned.
“Don’t be bitter,” Charlie said. He poured some more Ivory Snow into the water. “You get any mail?”
“I didn’t ask,” Steve said.
“Everybody looks for letters up here,” Charlie said. “There isn’t a guy who’ll do a lick on Friday, until after he’s read his mail.”
“Maybe I’m different,” Steve said.
“Doesn’t your ex-wife write you?”
“She doesn’t know where I am.”
“Well, then, she can’t bother you.”
“That suits me.”
“I wished my old lady didn’t know where I was.” Charlie made a face as he wrung out a sock; the water dripped down on the floor. “She drives me nuts about wanting me to pick up souvenirs for her up here. She wants a rug, a couple of blankets and some of that handmade glass stuff that looks like junk. I wrote and told her I’d bring it when I came home. I can always pick up the stuff at Gimbels on the way through the city.”
Charlie started wringing out some more socks and an additional amount of water poured down on the floor. Steve wondered if Charlie would mop up after he was finished. He doubted it.
Steve went over and sat down on the davenport, sinking almost to the floor. He picked up a copy of Holiday magazine off the round table and idly turned the pages. There was a nice spread in the front about Atlanta and the pretty southern girls, only they didn’t look so pretty in the pictures. There was also an article about some small island where a man could live on a hundred dollars a year, eight-room house and servant included. Maybe he should have gone some place like that, where the fishing was good and the beaches were sandy, where he wouldn’t have to stand guard over some ancient airplane engines or mop up the floor after Charlie.
Charlie came out of the bathroom and hung his socks on a line stretched at an angle above the stove. The water dripped regularly, hitting the floor in little splashes. The cat came from the direction of the bedrooms, lazily investigated the water spots and then went behind the oil stove and flopped down.
“Butch looks like she’s going to have kittens,” Steve said.
“Jesus!” Charlie said. “This place is alive with cats. Did you hear them last night, under the hut?”
“No. I was dreaming about Miami. I couldn’t be bothered.”
“They must’ve had a square dance. And you’d have been shocked at the language they used. After a while they went up and down the length of the hut, bumping on the cross pieces. I think that old gray we see around here once in a while is the whoremaster.”
Steve laughed.
“There’s a hut down the road where the cats have a hotel,” Charlie insisted. “I lived in that hut one time, but I had to move. You should have heard the racket when a couple of dogs would try to get put up for the night in there.”
Steve threw the magazine onto the table.
“I still think that old cat’s going to have kittens,” Steve said. Charlie leaned over and inspected the cat.
“You have cats,” he said, “and I’ll kill you, you old bastard.”
Steve got up and went over and adjusted the oil stove. It was much too warm in the hut. However, if the wind shifted during the night, the place would feel like one of the walls had collapsed and everybody would be sore at him. It was one of the risks that went with living in a hut. The temperature inside was never right, anyway.
“Almost time for chow,” Steve said.
“I’m not eating tonight,” Charlie said. “Scrounged a steak up at the hotel this afternoon. Anyway, I want to write a letter to my wife and tell her to send me a cable that I’m needed at home for a few days. I’m going to get myself an emergency leave and look something over. There’s an ad in last week’s paper for cooks on a job down in Chile. I’ve always wanted to get back to Chile.”
“You’ve been there?”
“For a couple of years, back in the thirties. And Australia. I didn’t like it in Australia. They don’t give you a break over there.”
“I suppose you had to marry the girl?”
“Like hell I did! But I send her money for the kid, regular.”
Charlie went into the bathroom and came out and put some water in the pan on top of the stove. After he finished pouring the water he stood there for a moment looking at the cat.
“You better not be knocked up,” he said.
The damper started clanging in the stovepipe and Steve knew that the wind was rising. He should have left the stove alone. He looked at the window and saw a few drops of rain strike the glass. The outside door banged open and someone came in through the vestibule.
Mark entered, slamming the door, tracking mud all over the floor. Mark never had time to stop and clean off his shoes on the scraper outside. The damp smell of the night came in with him. He seldom wore his complete parka, just the inside section which was white and which he seemed to think looked distinctive.
“Catch that herring factory down at Keflazik!” he said, making a wry face. “Either one of you smell it when you came in? That finishes me on herring. Never another one as long as I live!”
“It couldn’t smell any worse than the cod they hang out to dry,” Steve said. “First time I saw that stuff, down at Keflazik, I thought it was some old shoes hanging on a line. But when I got real close and the wind shifted, I knew that even shoes couldn’t be that bad.”
“I’ve got a letter for you,” Mark said, reaching in his pocket. “I saw Shad, the mailman, and he was wanting to know if I knew Steve Cannon. There wasn’t any department number on it, so I guess it was too deep for Shad to figure out.”
“I shouldn’t be getting a letter,” Steve said.
“Aw, don’t be so modest,” Mark said. “Some babe just couldn’t resist. Maybe she misses it.”
It was a small pink envelope and the address had been written in green ink. Without opening it, or reading it, he knew who it was from.
Just holding that letter made him think of a country road dark with autumn leaves, with the frost in the air and Janey there beside him in the convertible. It made him think of Miami and the hot sand under his bare feet and he could hear her gay laughter as he’d picked up some of the sand and tossed it onto her wet back. It caused him to think, too, of other days when it had not been so much fun, when her laughter had been replaced by quivering lips and the tears in her eyes had asked him to forgive. He recalled the employment agency and the company’s personnel man back in New York and the last two days’ drunk he’d gone on, quietly and alone, celebrating the fact that he’d just dropped out of her life, completely and forever. Or had it been the other way around? Hadn’t it been Janey who had done the choosing?
Slowly, cautiously, he tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter. The green ink loomed up at him, forming the letters, the letters creating words and the words making sentences which he did not care to read.
My Dearest Steve,
I never thought I would write you this letter, because I never thought I would find out where you had gone. There was no need for that, you know; you are a grown man and I am a grown woman. I think you could have been big enough to accept the fact that you did not love me, that you would not forgive me. You did not have to go any place at all to get that point across to me.
I know you are wondering, My Darling, just how I learned where you had gone. Am I proud of my detective work! As a matter of fact, I had called all of your friends, plus the office, but if they knew where you were they wouldn’t tell me. I was ready to give up—ready to sit down and wait for you to write to me—when I decided to clean the house. I found that newspaper section with the classified ads. You had torn out one of the ads and I went to the newspaper and tracked that empty space down to the employment agency the next morning. After that it was easy for me to call the company—the man was so nice to me on the phone—and I had your address almost before you got to where you were going.
I still love you, you big lug!
I know that I’ve made a mistake, but my mistake was not in what I did, Steve—it was in getting caught at it. I know I was wrong—I’ve told you that so many times. I want to make it right, I want to try to make something real for us. Steve, how do you know that isn’t what you want? I know that there must be something more for us. Please, Steve, don’t you think so, too? Won’t you try to think like that?
I’m still at the same address and I do want you to write. You don’t have to write me a love letter—I’m not expecting that, although I’d love to get one from you—but I do want to hear from you, have you tell me how you are and what you’re doing.
Please, Darling, won’t you write?
All my love forever,
Janey
P. S. In case you’re interested, you are now a free man. The divorce—God help us—was granted last week. And I definitely didn’t like Reno. I missed my husband.
For a brief moment that seemed like a large part of eternity Steve sat there squinting his eyes at the letter, trying to grasp and discard, all at the same time, the meaning behind the words which Janey had written. Why couldn’t she let it stay dead?
“I got a letter from a girl back home,” Mark said. “When I was back there on my vacation last year she asked me to let her know when there were any jobs open up here. About a month ago I wrote her about some typing jobs down in the material department. She writes me that she put in an application and that it looks like she’s going to make it.”
“Mark’s a boy scout,” Charlie said. “Mark likes to help people.”
Mark leered.
“She’s a good piece,” he said. “I can’t do anything about it when she’s in the states.”
“You’ve got enough to keep you busy up here,” Charlie said.
“I’m the kind of a guy who can stand a lot of that kind of work,” Mark said, as he went into his room.
“Well,” Steve said, putting Janey’s letter in his pocket, “I think I’ll head for chow.”
“Your letter good news?” Mark called out from his room.
“Yeah,” Steve said. “Sure.”
“Everything’s all right at home?”
“Fine.”
Sure, everything was fine. It couldn’t be better. He was thirty-six years old and he was a free man—and he didn’t have a God damned thing.
“That Benny must be crazy,” Charlie said. “He calls me at the hotel and tells me that he’s going to be late tonight, that he’s going to work. Without getting any overtime, too. The way that guy works you’d think every damn plane in the world depended on the parts he keeps in stock.”
“Benny’s bucking,” Mark said. “It won’t get him the right time of the day in this outfit.”
“He should be like Shorty, the storekeeper up at the hotel,” Charlie said. “That guy’s always goofing off.”
“The old man doesn’t think so,” Mark said. “He works like hell when the old man’s around the kitchen. You ever see how he runs around, looking the menu over and poking in the corners like he knows what it’s all about?”
They kept on talking about the storekeeper at the hotel, but Steve shut his mind off from their conversation and tried to think about what he could write Janey. He supposed that he ought to write something. Something that would tell her again just how it was between them. Only a few lines that would cut it off good and clean.
Maybe something in the form of an epitaph.