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Wynona Folsom, known as Nonny to those that called her friend or family, stood in front of a sorting case wedged in the back corner of the McAlester post office. She paused as she removed the last two pieces of mail, a postcard and an oversized envelope bearing a State of Oklahoma return address. Reading the name on the postcard, she turned to Claude Riley, a bandy-legged man working to her left.
“What do you make of this?” She handed the card to Claude, who was finishing up his sort.
“Grace Anderson,” he said, reading aloud. “Now, there’s a name I hadn’t heard in a while.”
“I didn’t know she was from Marietta, Georgia. Did you?”
“Nope . . .” Claude handed the card back to Nonny. “But guess she could be, seeing this here’s a high-school reunion notice.”
“They need to update their alumni records.” Nonny looked at the card again. “She’s been dead a long time.”
“Dead?” Claude contemplated this. “Well, I suppose she could be. Old man Anderson’s way up in his eighties. Grace lit out so many years ago, couldn’t say for sure. People figured she’d gone back home.” He nodded at the card. “Most likely, that’d be Marietta.”
“Isn’t that funny,” Nonny murmured. “I’ve known that family all my life and never heard a word about her running off. I just assumed she was dead.” She hesitated, frowned, then turned toward Claude again. “Wouldn’t they have her current address on record if she’d gone back to Marietta . . .?”
Looking around, Nonny realized she was talking to herself. Claude had finished packing up his mail and left, as had the other rural route carriers. Which she needed to do, too.
Hurriedly, she placed the manila envelope and postcard inside a faded cloth bag embroidered with the name BARLOW. Like a candle’s flame, a memory flickered of Mack Barlow. A feeling, actually, the kind that causes internal organs to heat up. She snuffed it quickly and fitted the bag in a long, plastic tray loaded with similar bags. En route to the back door, she passed the postmaster.
The man was new to the job, having transferred from Oklahoma City three weeks before, and made it known on his first day that he believed in following the letter of the law. The law, that is, as laid out in the United States Postal Regulations. His pigeon-shaped body camouflaged a time when he had been military muscular, but that was before a Postal Service appointment had replaced his former rigorous regimen with a cushioned chair on rollers. He followed Nonny into the brisk, early-November air, his mouth running full out.
“Nowhere in the Regulations does it say mail needs to be put in bags,” he said, watching Nonny load trays into an old postal jeep she had picked up at a government auction.
“Keeps the kids and old people from losing their mail,” she said, talking over her shoulder.
“Never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, now you have.”
“City carriers don’t put mail in bags,” he said.
“City people don’t walk a half mile to get their mail either. Besides which, I’m a contractor, not government.”
The postmaster paused. “Slows you down—it’s got to slow you down. That’s costing more money.”
She turned to face him. “How you figure that?”
“You’re taking more time to case and deliver, that’s how.”
“Am I asking for more money because it takes me longer?” she asked, climbing into the driver’s seat.
“Well no, but—”
“Then it’s not costing the government more money, is it?”
He paused again. “Never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, now you have.” Nonny swung the door shut and revved the engine so hard, the jeep rocked on its wheels. As the postmaster retreated, she pulled out of the employee parking lot and aimed the jeep in the direction of the Walmart.
Locking the doors and trunk hatch at the Walmart, she made her way inside to the food aisles. Within ten minutes, she was checking out in the express lane with two gallon jars each of Welch’s grape and strawberry jelly, two dozen pint canning jars, complete with lids, and a box of paraffin. Back at the jeep, she tucked her purchases under a blue poly tarp behind the front seat and took County Road 113 north, wending her way through hills crested with grass the color of spun gold and skirted with pin oak, pine, and scrub.
She made another detour along the way, stopping at a creek where she had spotted persimmons growing. A hard freeze ten days before would have made the fruit ripen, ready for picking. When she saw the persimmons glowing like ripe oranges in the crisp fall air, she smiled, knowing they would be soft and sweet and tart on the tongue. She gave a quick look in either direction to see if one of the Turners, the owners of most of the land in the area, was on the prowl. Like old-time vigilantes, they showed no mercy to those found trespassing on their property, even if the trespasser was one of their neighbors. The Turners were the only people on the route who didn’t trust the post office to deliver their mail safely.
What’s that tell you? she thought, then answered her own question. “Says they’re not trustworthy themselves,” she muttered.
Seeing no one, she pulled on rubber Wellingtons, waded through knee-high grass still wet with dew, and picked all the persimmons within reach. Back at the road, she packaged the fruit in a dozen or so recycled plastic bags and placed them in the front floorboard, on top of a box of jellies in pint jars.
Pausing to catch her breath, she climbed into the driver’s seat and poured a cup of herbal tea from a quart-sized thermos. The liquid burned her tongue when she pulled the first draft, just the way she liked it. She closed her eyes, allowing the steam coming off the cup to moisten her face, and inhaled deeply. The aroma was healing, but her hands ached. The glycerin she used on her fingertips to sort the mail was drying, and the newsprint and sales flyers sucked the oil from her skin like a blotter.
Reaching into the glove box, she removed a jar wrapped with a blue label on which was the picture of a black-and-white cow and the words Udder Balm. She rubbed the thick unguent into her hands slowly, giving special attention to cracked and chapped knuckles. Finishing, she stowed the medicinal and started the jeep.
At long last, she was ready to begin the Friday mail run. Except this wasn’t just any Friday mail run. It was the first-Friday-of-the-month mail run. She caught a glimpse of her image in the rearview mirror, noticed the sparkle in her yellow-brown eyes—“cat eyes” the kids at school had called them when she was growing up—and felt thankful she had something to look forward to. Right then, she wondered if the preachers who gave communion on the first Sunday derived as much pleasure from that act as she did from this one. She let out a snort, reflecting on the irony of her comparing the two acts, then set the thought aside and put her mind on her job.
She worked steadily, placing a bag with mail inside each mailbox, even if it was recycled junk mail, and retrieving the empty cloth bag inside to be used for the next day’s delivery. Along with the mail, she left a treat. In some boxes, a jar of grape jelly. In others, a jar of strawberry. And for those that liked their fruit fresh, a bag of persimmons.
Just kids, she thought at one point. Old kids with a sweet tooth.
More than half of her patrons were waiting at their boxes, mostly elderly people bent over with stiff joints, many walking with the use of canes. She let those that were waiting select the treat of their choice and chatted a minute or two before moving on. Finally, she was down to her last few customers.
She smiled as she caught sight of the figure up the road, for the rust-skinned man wasn’t just another patron. He stood leaning against the mailbox, his mouth spread so broad his toothless gums showed. Spying the brown-paper bag he’d carried with him, she winced.
“What’ll it be today, Uncle George?” she said, pulling up beside him.
“Got any grape?” he asked, eyes twinkling. “Got a yen for a grape jelly sandwich, maybe a smear of peanut butter with it.”
“Got you covered.” She retrieved a pint jar of grape jelly from the box on the floor.
“You make the best jelly I ever ate, Nonny.” He pulled the brown paper sack closer.
Eying the bag, she put a smile on her face. “What you got there, Uncle?”
“Swap you even!” Flashing his toothless grin again, he handed her the bag. “Jar of my special recipe for a jar of homemade jelly. I got a good bite on this batch.”
George’s “special recipe” translated to his version of moonshine. Raising the jar of homebrew to the light, she murmured, “I’ve never seen anything so pretty in all my life.” She turned, giving the old man a cautious look. “Better make sure the law doesn’t catch you making this hooch, Uncle George.” She carefully tucked the quart jar out of sight. “Don’t forget, we have our own slammer right outside town—a big one.”
The old man returned the grin. “I’d like it you’d come in for a spell, Nonny.”
“I’d like to, Uncle, but I’m running late.” Reading the disappointment on his face, she quickly proposed they attend a dinner-on-the-grounds the next weekend. “I’ll make a mac-‘n-cheese casserole and we’ll catch up on the latest gossip. How’s that sound?”
The toothless grin made another show. “I’ll be looking for you. Not many friends left, family neither.” The smile faded quickly as his eyes turned liquid. “Sure miss that daddy of yours. I’m the last of the line, you know.”
“I know,” she murmured.
“Guess you do, girl. You’re the last of your daddy’s line, too.”
She exhaled slowly. “Sure looks that way.”
“Your daddy was real proud when you went and got that college job, but to tell the truth, I’m right glad you come home, left those city ways behind to take over his route. He drove it better than forty years. It’s been in the family a long time.”
Dad was proud of me, Nonny thought. Mama, too. Lord, if they knew what had become of me, they’d turn over in their graves.
Forcing a smile, she said, “Coming home was the right thing to do. See you soon.”
Nonny left the old man holding his jar of grape jelly, pulling away slowly so as not to stir up the powder-dry dust. As soon as he was out of sight, she edged the jeep off the road. Reaching behind the front seat, she retrieved the quart jar of homemade brew, pushed open the door, and walked to the barrow ditch. Wading through a patch of wild marigold, she dislodged sun-yellow pollen and its bitter scent. The odor brought back a memory of something else: the warm and soothing feel of a liquid with “good bite” to it.
Noticing the tremble in her hands, Nonny dumped the contents of the jar with one quick movement. The amber liquid spattered onto the red clay dirt, and as she caught a whiff, she was hit with a paralyzing ache in her cheekbones. Her head began to throb next, so hard she felt certain her eyeballs would pop from her head.
“Crap,” she mumbled and bent her head low between her knees. As she got the heaves under control, she stared at the puke on the ground. A minute later, she smelled the odor of urine and became aware of dampness in her crotch.
“Well, hell,” she mumbled, wondering if a dry hangover and weak sphincter muscles were fit-enough punishment for the sins of her youth.
Pulling upright, she mused on the way she’d taken to deconstructing her life in the same way she used to deconstruct language. What a profession she had chosen, picking apart words and the meaning behind those words to get at the truth of things long dead.
Like my life now? She sighed, wishing just once she could live in the moment, not focus on things past. Then something clicked in her head.
“Sins of my youth . . .?” She began to wonder when she had changed her terminology from errors in judgment to sins of my youth. Debating the difference between the two terms, she decided it had something to do with whether your shirt collar was white, or blue.
Wiping the spittle from her mouth on her sleeve, she studied the wet spot on the blue chambray. “There you go,” she said. “I am now blue collar, and blue collars do not deconstruct their lives.”
And with that, she was able to crawl back into the jeep, feeling enough recovered to finish her route. Somewhere along the way, without knowledge as to why, the Beatles song “Let It Be” came to mind, and she let it play.
