Christmas in Culm: Three Stories by Vincent C. Martinez
Every day, he pulled handfuls of mail from the mailbox. Every day, he’d drop off a few envelopes addressed to a P. Simmons in the mailbox, and sometimes he’d deliver parcels from stationery companies or food delivery companies. He’d walk up the creaking front porch steps, place the packages by the door, then knock loudly and wait for the sounds of stirring behind the windows and doors, but instead was usually met with silence, and he’d walk back to his truck or walk back up the street, the last part of his mail delivery duty completed until he got back to the Pittston post office where he’d drop off the outgoing mail, the certified and registered mail receipts, and the mail trays, then head to his car and drive home.
Sometimes he ran address searches on Lemontree Lane on his computer, often coming up with little more than the name P. Simmons on the county tax assessor records. When he ran searches on the name P. Simmons, he’d find nothing of any use. The cottage on Lemontree Lane hid its secrets well with thick curtains on its windows and anonymity on the computer networks and county records. Eddie spent his quiet evenings thinking about the letters he carried from the Lemontree cottage, the different envelopes, the different styles of writing, the same wax seal. He wondered if the cottage was a mail forwarding service, but if it was he couldn’t find any notice of it in the postal service records. He wondered if a family lived there, or if several lived there, but found no evidence of any significant movement in and around the cottage, save for the strange shadows that seemed to dart behind the tree trunks.
At night, he’d dream of the cottage in his sleep, the twisting road, the wavering trees, the vaporous shadows, and then he’d fall into darkness.
***
During his first week of post-Thanksgiving Day delivery runs to Lemontree Lane, he’d find the mailbox jammed with envelopes for mailing, sometimes wedged in so tightly that Eddie would have to remove his gloves and slip the envelopes out one at a time, muttering curses under his breath as he dropped the mail into his satchel and carried any parcels to the front door, where he’d rap his knuckles on the door, then walk back to the truck and return to the main route. Every day of the holiday the mailbox would be packed with outgoing mail, and every day Eddie would curse to himself and guide the truck or—even worse—walk up the icy road, surrounded by dead-silent air and strange shadows.
A week before Christmas, he arrived at the red cottage and again walked to the large mailbox, lowered the metal flag, and opened the door.
Inside was only a small box, a bit bigger than a matchbox, and tightly wrapped in brown paper and twine. The precision of the folds in the paper and the tightness of the twine impressed Eddie, and the small card attached to the double knot on the box was addressed in expertly scripted calligraphic handwriting: To the Mail Carrier—Merry Christmas.
Eddie smiled and waved to the cottage, unsure if anyone was home or if anyone was watching behind the heavy curtains. He walked back to the truck and returned to the Pittston post office for once without a large load of mail from Lemontree Lane.
***
That night, Eddie sat at the kitchen table and drank coffee with a turkey sandwich and potato chip dinner. He was tired from the long day, and his eyelids were already getting heavy, drooping as he sat in silence. As he closed his eyes, he thought of Mom and Dad, thought about the last time someone else had been in his apartment, a black-haired girl named Nicole who decided she wanted to be with a banker instead of a postal worker, leaving behind only a note on the refrigerator and an empty space that Eddie didn’t know how to fill.
He thought about going back to college, maybe brushing up on his mathematics and getting a degree in computer science. He thought about how much money he had in the bank and if he could stretch it another two weeks. He thought about how he came home to silence, how his mailbox would be empty save for some utility bills, how each day seemed more empty than the previous day.
And he thought about the small twine-wrapped box he’d left at the center of the table.
Eddie opened his eyes, pushed aside his empty plate, then grabbed the box. He cut the twine with a steak knife and carefully pulled off the paper with his frayed fingernails. Wrapped in the paper was a small glossy-black paper box, thin with sharp corners and unblemished surface. He gripped the bottom section of the box, then pulled away the lid.
Inside, a thick gold double eagle coin rested on a bed of white cotton.
"Jesus," Eddie whispered as he picked up the coin, its skin reflecting the dim kitchen light into his eyes. On the obverse, the figure of Liberty carried a torch and an olive branch, on the inverse, a flying eagle passed above a shining sun. The coin's date was 1930.
He dropped the coin back in the box. Eddie wasn’t a coin expert, but he knew the coin could be worth thousands, maybe even a lot more. He placed the box on the table then stared at it for most of the night, wondering what to do next.
***
The following day, Eddie pulled up to the Lemontree cottage, emptied its mailbox, left two parcels on its porch, knocked, then waited. In his left hand, he held the small black box. He took a few quick glances at it, the thought of keeping it running through his mind more than once the previous night and all morning. He’d run a search on his computer as to how much the coin could be worth. The amount staggered him. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. All night he thought what he could do with the money, how he could take those trips to those places that he used to mark on his map as a boy or how he could buy a cottage and move out of his cramped apartment. But then he knew the law. He couldn’t accept it or risk jail. Small gift cards were acceptable, anything under twenty dollars, and that was it, but rare gold coins worth hundreds of thousands were not.
He knocked again, this time harder, and he called out "Hello?"
No response.
He knocked one last time, waited, then placed the box in between the other two that he’d left on the porch and slipped a small note under it:
Thank you for the gift, but I cannot accept gifts over $20. Merry Christmas.
He knocked one last time, then backed off the porch and returned to his truck.
On the drive up Lemontree Lane, he was lost in thoughts about the coin, about how another day was coming to an end, and about how he only had a quiet apartment and a quiet night waiting for him . . . and nothing else.
***
Eddie stared at the Spencerian-scripted letter that he held with his gloved hands:
One with a duty as important as yours should not be limited to silly regulations intended for bureaucrats with no morals. Your service is valued. Your service is crucial. However, in keeping with your request and with inane governmental rules and restrictions, I have enclosed a gift that is intended with true appreciation of your profession.
Kind regards,
P. Simmons
Attached to the letter was another tightly wrapped and twined box, this one several inches long. Eddie wasn’t sure if he should open it in front of the cottage, or if he should wait when he got home. After a minute, he decided to take it home and open it there. He waved to the cottage again, made his way back to the Pittston post office, hurried home, pulled a few items from his mailbox, then jogged up the squeaking stairs to his apartment where he unwrapped the package and removed a long, thin cherry wood box. He slid the lid off the box and peered inside where he espied a shining black simple Waterman fountain pen and a small bottle of black ink.
Eddie lifted the pen and held it in his hand where it felt heavy and sure. He unscrewed the cap, examined the shimmering nib, and pretended to write large loops on the tablecloth. He replaced the cap, placed the pen back in the box, and mulled over how much the set cost. Most likely, it was a bit more than the twenty dollar limit, maybe by fifty or sixty dollars. But he stared at the box for a few minutes, slid the lid back in place, and set the box to the side.
He decided to keep it.
***
For five years, Lemontree Lane was the last stop on Eddie’
The house was silent whenever he made his mail runs. Even when he sat outside and pretended to organize his mail trays in his truck while keeping his ears trained on the house, he heard almost nothing. Sometimes there were the odd whispers behind the doors and windows, and sometimes he’d hear the soft clacking of typebars striking paper, but nothing else. During one mail run, something clanged in the backyard, something metal on metal. Eddie walked around the back and saw nothing, just the rusting windmill, the rusting basin, and a segment of an abandoned railroad line, which wasn’t surprising. The entire region was criss-crossed with abandoned rail lines. He’d stumbled over a few in the woods when he was a kid, and the one behind the cottage was pretty much the same: overgrown with weeds and covered with decaying leaves. After seeing nothing he returned to his truck and drove back to Pittston.
Each Christmas a new gift was left for him: one year a fine linen stationery set, another year a small leather-bound address book with gold-edged pages. He kept each gift on his writing desk in his apartment, and at night he’d hold them in his hands, run his fingers over them, and remember that he had no one to whom he could write letters, no addresses or phone numbers he could place in the address book, no one close except the neighbors in the apartment building.
And the resident of Lemontree Lane.
***
One Sunday just after one in the morning, Eddie lay awake. A mid-March rainstorm was clearing the valley, and he listened to the rain pelt the windows and to the tires of cars whooshing down the street. He lay on his side, thought about how Nicole used to fill the space next to him, and thought about where she was, if she was happy, if she ever thought about him. As the rainstorm faded to a trickle, Eddie got up and got dressed. He put on his shoes and his coat, walked to his rain-beaded car, and decided to go for a drive. To anywhere.
The streets were mostly empty, save for traffic signals flashing yellow or red, shadows, and rain-mirrored roads. After a few moments he realized that he was driving the same route that he did every day, up the same roads, down the same streets. He had his radio on, and scratchy, staticky oldies music filled the car, a song from the forties here, a song from the fifties there. It was white noise to Eddie, who drove in circles looking at streets and houses that never changed in his years as a mail carrier.
Eventually he slowed when he came to Lemontree Lane. At the road's entrance, budding tree branches dripped rainwater onto the street and swayed in the black morning breeze. He stopped for a few seconds, turned the radio off, then turned the car down Lemontree Lane.
The road glistened in the headlights, and the roadside trees took on the appearance of disfigured skeletons peeking through the earth. The branches swayed gently, carving shapes from the shadows. Eddie rolled down his window to let in fresh air, and his breath came out in clouds. At the end of the road sat the red cottage, quiet and lonely, like the orchard surrounding it. He turned off the headlights and looked at the cottage.
"You’re being creepy," Eddie said to himself. "Just damned creepy." He put the car in gear, then took one last look at the house. Something moved in the front windows. He squinted, focusing his eyes, noticing that the curtains had been opened wide. In the windows, dark shapes, heads, shoulders, torsos merged into one another then separated, and peered outside with eyes that glowed a dim white, flickering like candlelight.
White, flickering eyes that stared directly at Eddie.
"Jesus!" he shouted, pushing the accelerator to the floor and blasting the car back up Lemontree Lane, roadwater hissing under the tires as his heart thumped heavily, and, hands shaking, he finally switched the headlights back on, narrowly avoiding a roadside tree.
He hurtled the car through the street’s entrance, then whipped the car onto the main road, speeding through stop lights on the road back to Avoca.
***
For two days, Eddie avoided Lemontree Lane and even put in a request for a route change, but he knew he was stuck with the route until the next round of consolidations, which could be months or years away. He decided to slightly modify his route, arriving at Lemontree Lane midday and not in the late afternoon hours. He kept his hand-held cell phone with him and made sure it was completely charged before resuming the route.
Carefully, slowly, he guided the mail truck down the twisting lane, doing his best to ignore the bony-branched trees and the odd silence all around. There were two boxes to be delivered to the house, and he kept them close as he pulled up to the cottage. He got close to the walkway leading to the porch, grabbed the boxes, took in a deep breath, and ran to the porch, where he dropped them next to the door, knocked once, then bounded off the porch steps before he ran to the mailbox, flipped down the red flag, opened it . . . and saw only one envelope.
He grabbed the envelope, jumped back into the truck, and sped back up the hill, trying not to look at the house in his rearview mirrors, the envelope still in his lap.
By the time he got to the main road, he pulled onto the shoulder and finally let out a gasp of air. He ran his hands through his hair before he picked up the envelope and examined it.
No postage.
No seal.
Addressed only to: Postal Carrier. The lettering was typed, each letter somewhat misaligned.
Eddie opened the unsealed envelope and removed a small piece of white linen stationery.
Loneliness leaves our nights empty and our days meaningless. May you fill your empty nights and give meaning to your days however you see fit, whether in the pages of a book, in letters to long-lost friends, or on endless roads that take you everywhere and nowhere.
—P. Simmons
He sat on the roadside shoulder, the truck engine idling, the road traffic passing, the weight in his chest heavy and unrelenting.
III. Ms. Simmons
Eddie thought about the diminishing holiday mail, the days of mailed catalogs and cards, the days when one could touch the ink on paper and feel the miles under one’s fingers. He looked at the mail trays in his truck, the parcels stacked in the back, and remembered when the parcels filled the truck. In those long-gone days, he cursed the parcels, the need to trudge them up to porches and ring doorbells or knock on doors. He cursed how the end of every holiday route left his back with pain and his legs with aches. But as the years grew, the parcel piles shrank, and the roads would be filled with trucks and vans from private shipping companies, and eventually no one left Thank You cards or small gifts in the mailboxes for the mail carriers anymore. He began to miss the day-end aches and pains, the small notes or gifts of appreciation, and he began to miss Nicole, and his mother, and his father even more.
Driving the snow-slush streets in his mail truck, he found himself pulling over onto the shoulders or into parking lots and sitting in silence, or sitting in coffee shops longer during his lunch breaks nursing one cup of coffee. His birthday came and went without notice, and December wore on, his fifteenth year overall, his fifth year delivering to Lemontree Lane. As he drove, he fell into trances, calculating years to retirement, amounts of money in his savings and checking accounts, desperately flipping around numbers and columns in his head to see if he could somehow create money from nothing and inevitably failing.
He even drove down Lemontree Lane in trances, not caring much about the shadows in the treeline or the figures he’d seen in the windows. Sometimes he felt tears in his eyes and not know why, or he’d only think about driving home where he could sit on his couch and watch something on television, lulled to sleep by the sound of passing traffic on the streets below.
He’d drop the packages on the Lemontree cottage porch, knock o
Until one day. December twenty-first. Saturday.
***
Eddie brewed his late-afternoon coffee that day and sat at the kitchen table. Outside, the day was cold, short, and darkening. Inside, the electric heaters were pinging to life, and the light over the table pulsed as the heaters kicked on and off. He was thinking about dinner, the limited choices running through his head, as he reached for the pile of mail on his table and flipped through it. Advertisements for oil changes. Advertisements for clothing stores. Electric bill. Water bill. White linen paper envelope with typed address and no return address.
He dropped the rest of the mail and held the white envelope with both hands. As the coffee maker gurgled and groaned, he flipped the envelope over and saw the red wax seal with the cursive L pressed into it.
A sensation like electricity ran through him, and his hands shook. Whoever was in the Lemontree cottage knew his name and his address. He asked himself how they could have gotten the information. Public records of some sort? Loose lips at the post office? Eddie inserted a knife under the flap, then sliced through the seal and the paper. He pulled out a couple of small sheets of neatly folded white stationery and opened them to read the typed note:
Dear Eddie,
We hope this letter finds you well. We have tried for so long to reach you for so many years, and it’s been more difficult than we thought.