“What?”
“A fat woman wouldn’t take my dollar.”
Mr. Wright’s brow bunched down. “Come again?”
“She wanted something else instead,” Jay said.
Mr. Wright closed the file and leaned forward. “What?”
Twenty Seven
Hit
“Exact change, please.”
Jay Grady looked up and saw that it wasn’t Doris working the counter at Plainview, Missouri’s small and sweltering post office, and that was how it began, this change, with a strange woman’s refusal of the dollar he’d put down for his purchase.
“Sir, exact change,” the woman repeated when Jay didn’t respond, seeming annoyed though there was no line behind him. No customers in the place at all, in fact, but then there were only nine hundred and seventy three people left in Plainview, hardly enough to support the mini-mart on Carson Street, or the gas station at the intersection of Traction and Wells, and surely so few people that, in the hundred or so times Jay had come in to buy his stamps and pick up his mail, he had seen less than a dozen other people. Other than Doris, of course, and this fiendishly hot August morning her familiar face was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Doris?” Jay asked, scanning the woman’s non-regulation floral blouse for a name tag like Doris wore, which was how he’d learned her name. Not that he’d spoken more to her than his usual ‘One stamp’, and then a meek and proper ‘Thank you’ once the little square of gummed paper was passed over. Still, it was somehow comforting to know her name, and equally disconcerting to not find some identifier on this new lady who was not supposed to be here.
“What?”
“Doris is here on—”
“She’s out today, okay,” the woman said sharply. She was thirtyish and thick and as bitter looking as a dying tree, withering in barren soil and unable to do much about it. Likely she had worked at the Air Force base outside of Plainview, and that would explain it, her sour countenance and manner. One day a good government job unpacking thousand dollar toilet seats for the transport planes that used to come and go, or maybe sweeping and swabbing the halls of the base hospital, and the next thing you know there’s no more evil empire, and then you’re a second string postal clerk stuck in a dying town because of family or finances or whatever her damnable anchor to this place was. In any event, regardless of reason, this woman was here and not happy and was glaring at Jay as sweat glistened on her pale and pink face. “And I ain’t got no change, so if you want just
one stamp
you better cough up thirty two cents.”
Jay looked to the counter, to where his fingers still rested upon the one dollar bill he’d put there when voicing his request (and expecting Doris to hear it and fill it, as usual), and he knew what the strange woman was asking him to do. His gaze rose to her once again and he said gravely, “But...I just need one stamp.”
She gave him a look like he was some sort of dumbshit and said, “Look, mister, I ain’t got no change, okay? Your pal Queen Doris had to tootle off last night because her
poor dear brother
got hurt, or so she says. And whether that’s the gospel or not, whether she’s playing blackjack on the river boats, I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is that she is not here and wherever she is the key to the damn safe is with her, so I can’t get you or no one any change.”
Jay could only stare back at her for a moment, his heart throttling up. “But...”
“Jesus Criminy, mister, it’s only thirty two damn cents. Ain’t
you
got any change?”
Change? Hell, yes, he had change. A pocket full of it. He’d just fed three sacks of cans into the aluminum recycling machine out front of the Super Suds Laundromat, and was planning, like usual, to stop by the Rev M Up mini mart to dump his take blindly into the change sorter they had next to the ATM machine right inside the door. The sorter would take it, chewing and eating the rounds of metal like some favorite meal, and dutifully spit back what bills he was due, and what change there was that didn’t quite take the total to the next multiple of one hundred. He could scoop that change up without a look, like he could here most days when Doris would slide his sixty-eight cents across. But
exact change
? Did this woman know what that
meant
? That he would have to reach into the hidden depths of his pocket and pull out some change, and that he would have to count out thirty two cents, and that to do so he would have to
look
at the change, and very possibly stare death in the eyes yet again? And weren’t there enough (no, too many, too, too many) times when he could not avoid having to look. Like at the truck stop up off the once thriving business loop (which served now no more a purpose than a stubborn vein feeding blood to a gangrenous appendage) where the cashier insisted on counting out one by one into his palm what change he had coming from the occasional burger he purchased there, the collection of which he would often close his fist quickly around, but not before glimpsing what was there. Before knowing what was coming. Death again.
The Plainview Grill was another difficult arena in which to tread. There he might see the tails on the lunch counter, a tip left by another or change just returned by Chloe the waitress. An errant glance there could do it. Could bring the damning vision on. And though he tried not to look, try was all he could do, because the dull glint of an old penny, or the bright spark of a newly minted dime caught his eye, there was no point in not looking, because if they were tails (and, God, so many times they were) there was no turning back. The die had been cast.
But here, in this box of a place where he came for his stamp, where he often came to buy that stamp and mail his letter and retrieve his mail, where he came to make the record which had to be made, here he had been free of the worry of dying that plagued him most every other place, and had for eight years. Here Doris would serve him, holding her hand out and he his, making the return blindly, and he would be safe. As safe as one could be with death waiting at every place where money changed hands.
But not this day.
“Hey, do you want a damn stamp or not?” the woman asked brusquely, her hands planted on her side of the counter, fingers drumming impatiently on the old wood.
Yes, he did want it. He had to have it. To make the record. To continue making the record. But...
“In about three seconds I’m gonna turn my back on you and you can go
wish
yourself a stamp.” Her lips pursed tight now, and the drumming grew louder on the counter. “One.”
Jay eased the dollar bill off the counter and pushed it into his back pocket. He could feel the envelope there, all ready to go but for the stamp. His hand came forward and slipped into the front pocket of his jeans, slithering down deep to where a bulge of change lay thick against his thigh.
“Two,” the woman counted, fingers thumping all together now, eight fleshy drumsticks beating at once upon the counter.
Jay’s own fingers worked together in his pocket, gathering several coins and pulling them into his palm before folding down around them, a fist coming out. A fist he stared at while the woman glared at him.
“You waitin’ for your hand to rot away, mister?” she berated him.
One finger, two fingers, a quarter, a nickel, three fingers, a penny, four fingers, a penny.
“Well howdy damn doody,” the woman said, seeing what she’d been waiting for. “Why that was so hard, mister, I don’t know.”
She held her hand out, but Jay only stared at the coins in his hand. Four coins. Thirty two cents. Exact change. And all...
...
heads?
Heads
again
? Yes, heads. Heads and...
...more.
It came that clear, that defined. A number. A vision of a number. Not death, but a number. More than the sum value of what lay in his palm. Not the count of cents gathered there. More. A number.
And...and still more from the heads, more that was not a dread wave of death rushing at him. Another number.
The quarter.
The nickel.
A penny.
The other penny.
But not four numbers. Not the parts in sequence. No.
Parts of
one
number.
A large number.
And still the other one.
Two numbers. Numbers he saw, numbers he knew, and from heads this time, from old heads that were telling new tales, and a breath left his chest, one that felt as if it had been there an eternity, because the tale being told right then was not death. Was
not
death.
Something had changed. Something was different. Heads like the ones that had shown him riches were speaking to him, but they were not the ones that had brought him wealth. These were speaking a language he did not understand. A language of numbers. Their song right then two numbers.
32
“Oh, what the hell is it now, mister?” the woman demanded, exasperated. Her open hand turned and planted itself loudly on the counter.
An old habit bubbled up, and Jay tipped his hand to the side and spilled the coins to the counter, one, two, three, and four, and it was no shock when they finally settled that the test had been passed. All were still heads. And all were still telling him 32, and 25,511. Two numbers that meant nothing to him, but that must mean something. That he knew would mean something.
“It’s about friggin’ time,” the woman said, and swept her pudgy hand across the counter and pulled the coins into the empty cash drawer, her first sale for that day. Now she had change, and boy was she going to give Doris hell for taking the damn safe key. Boy, was she ever, she thought as she ripped a single stamp from its parent roll and slapped it on the counter right before her very strange customer. One she remembered a bit now, having seen him scrounging for cans and bottles out by the truck stop, and sometimes down where the school bus picked up the kids to take them to Drucker (where there was a school still open), shoving the discards into a gunny sack that he’d sling over his shoulder like some down and out version of Santa Claus. Yeah, well, he wasn’t that, she knew. He was nothing but a bum, and she would be glad when he had his shiftless ass away from her counter and out of the damn post office. “Is there anything else you need, mister, ‘cause I got mail to sort.”
Jay picked the stamp up and closed his eyes nervously, waiting. Waiting for it to come, for echoes of death to come, but nothing of the sort came. Just the numbers floated around in his consciousness. The two numbers, 32 and 25,511.
Chewing on them, on thoughts of what the numbers were, of what they could mean, Jay left the service counter and went the few steps to another counter, one meant for customers to address their letters, and affix their stamps, but he suspected he had given it the bulk of its use in his time in Plainview. How many times had he bellied up to it? he wondered. More than 32 and less than 25,511, to be certain. That number plus one for right now as from his back pocket he took the unsealed envelope, and briefly removed the letter within to give it one last look, folding back just the top third where he’d put the date, that morning, Wednesday August 6, 1997, and the time, 7:12 a.m. (Not a 32 or a 25,511 in there, no), the exact moment when he’d taken his pants from the chair in his room, unintentionally by the leg, and had spilled a few coins left in his pocket from his previous day’s collecting, and had watched them fall to the floor by his bare feet, spinning and rolling and wobbling until all came to rest, all tails. All tails, and death came soon from that.
But not before he scrawled on the paper now in his hand, and marked it with the time, and put it in an envelope before the agony gripped him. An envelope he now returned the letter to, and sealed, and laid flat on the high counter as he took the old pen in hand, dragging its flimsy chain across the surface as he put the address in its place. No return address, because what did that matter? Just ‘who to mattered’. And the who was:
Occupant
PO Box 12
Plainview , Missouri 65600
That done, Jay put the stamp to his tongue (a 32 on it, yes, but that was not the meaning, no, not the meaning at all) and then pressed it onto the upper right corner of the envelope and dropped it through the slot cut in the wall nearby. And at that moment, as he always did, he flashed back to the bum and his can, and the slitted lid through which people had blindly pushed hundred dollar bills. Every time (more than 32, less than 25,511) he mailed a letter, those scenes would come to him. Those scenes that were giving and taking in one.
And then he would think of that time no more. Would force it down in his memory like he was right then, and go to the wall of small metal boxes, as he did right then, and take the small silvery key from his shirt pocket and slip it into the lock to open his box.
And like all the other times there was something inside. Some
things
inside. Two letters, each addressed to Occupant, PO Box 12, Plainview Missouri, 65600. Two because Sunday had been a bad day. Change at the Plainview Grill, and later some spied where it had been accidentally dropped in the dusty gutter by some poorer soul, shining pretty and sinister beneath the afternoon sun. An observation tower at a fair in Kansas, gone, dropped to the ground when a motor home carrying a family of ten plowed into it, and a glass bottomed boat in the Florida Keys, thirty people aboard mesmerized by a school of sharks that were far less interesting and far more terrifying when the boat strayed to close to the shoals and settled into the drink under a blue and sunny sky.
A bad day, yes. He’d fallen before, too many times to recall, but the sharks were a first. One had grabbed him and pulled him down within sight of a tangle of floating debris that one might have clamored onto. Might have, but never would, because hundreds of vicious little daggers had torn into his calf and shook him violently as he was dragged away from the light, from the air, until the burning in his chest and the wild stinging in his leg faded to that nothingness that was no reprieve.