The swell of hope and excitement suffocated my small flat above the shoe cobbler, and vulgar childishness fluttered in my stomach ready to unleash. I was, in personified form, a flourish, and I could not be contained by the four walls around me, so my only option to prevent the universe from bursting with me at the center was to spill out onto the streets. When I did, the sun and I battled wits, and I won and I, with vibrant colors flowing from my being, smiled in the embrace of unadulterated delight.
“You sure are energetic today, Alfie,” said the shoe cobbler Conrad from the porch of his shop next to the door I had erupted from.
“It’s a good day sir, yes sir, a good day,” I said to him. I tipped my hat. And then in a frenzy, a panic to a less sincere man, I grabbed a broom and swept his front porch to perfection.
“My word, Alfie, you are a pleasure, my son.”
“Pass the deed on, dear Conrad,” I said to him. “Pass the deed on.” I blitzed out into the street and sidestepped a horse and carriage.
“Oi Alfie!” exclaimed the driver and my ever tipping hat resumed its profession. I walked to the river and stared into my reflection. It was impossible to alter the fixed smile on the man I saw before me. It was the perfect day. For that day was the first day where I could feasibly have received correspondence from my love Katherine in response to my most recent, passionate letter. To hear from her, to further confirm our striking love, and to plan when I can find my place within her arms were all that existed in the world.
When I thought of Katherine, I found that the river and Conrad and the bustling streets faded away, and only abstract passion and love remained. This was the world as I chose to examine it, and the meaning of anything else became academic and pedantic.
I pictured Katherine’s beautiful face, her pure green eyes, the way with which she played the piano, her feminine and elegant gait as she wandered the countryside and would one day wander our homestead. It was too much wonder for a man to hold; life was so full of joy that I became nauseous with desire.
I picked a perfect skipping rock, and thought to myself, lucky seven skips and the letter will have arrived. I tossed it with perfect form, but counted only six skips. “Nice skipping, Alfie,” said the passing shopkeeper.
I muttered, “none so good, none so good,” but waved amicably to the old man. I walked past Crenshaw fishing in the river. He was a permanent fixture in his floppy fisherman’s hat, painted into the embroidery of the river. He had a habit of saying what he saw.
“Water and fish and log,” he said as I passed. He would have said it whether I passed or not. I navigated through the neighborhood kids playing baseball with a broken broom and a wadded up newspaper for a ball. “Allow me a turn at the bat,” I yelled out.
“No fair!” said the pitcher as he gripped the ball.
“Ah, next time, next time,” I said, rubbing the catcher’s hair and continuing my journey.
I got to the post office with my head filled only with thoughts of Katherine. In her, the image of her that existed in my mind, I found every aspect that made life beautiful. How infatuated and lost in the moment I felt when I looked into her smile mirrored the profundity of trying to understand my place among the cosmos. The way her hair flowed down her back mirrored the enamoring perfection of nature, the river, the trees, the hills. I would be the luckiest man in the universe to receive a letter from her.
The postman was just, by my design, finishing up placing each letter into each corresponding box. “Anything for me today, Quincy?” I asked, with a flutter in my stomach and an arrhythmic beat in my heart. And suddenly, like the flip of a switch, a cloud smothered the sun entirely.
“Nothing today, Alfie.” The day as I knew it was over.
But clouds in front of the sun are temporary. They burn off in the face of the new day.
I woke up the next morning, with a jitter that was congruent to the prior day’s excitement. I pictured Katherine sitting at her desk with a quill, writing the feelings that drew the smile on her face. My vision of her rose through my bedroom like steam off a most delicious stew, in the waning moments of preparation, waiting to be tasted by a doting husband, one who lived in the most picaresque of homes.
In my vision, she sealed up the letter and held it to her breast, thinking nothing but of the wonder of the world. What she saw in the annals of the distance between us that my letter adventured through was perfection, and only perfection could she return. And thus, it took an extra day to convey the strength of her feelings, to match the passion I had given onto her. In this perfectionism, it was that day that I was to receive the correspondence.
I dressed myself with utter excitement. I missed a button, but left it, for the swift rush of joy made a frivolity of minor errors. But then I corrected it, because if Katherine had taken her time to ensure perfection in her letter, then I shall look the perfect part to receive it. I walked outside and Conrad said, “looking sharp, Alfie!” I gave him a nickel just for being him. He brightened my day, and money should be used for nothing if not to purchase or reward brightness. He smiled and thanked me and I tipped my hat to him.
The day was even more vibrant than the one prior. Because what were the odds that I would receive the letter on precisely the first possible day? Surely the same as skipping a stone exactly seven times, even for an expert skipper such as myself. But on the second day, that was the most likely of all, the top of the bell curve. It is a true marvel to experience a day knowing that something truly majestic was an inevitability.
A horse and carriage passed as I skipped into the street. “Good day, Alfie!” said the driver. “Does it look like rain today?”
“Not today,” I said, tipping my hat. “Today, sir, it will hold off.” We both looked at the sky. I saw the clouds both as they did exist and as they could exist. They were small and insignificant in the face of love and vigor. We think that the universe is massive and indifferent towards us, but it is nothing in the face of passion. Love transcends theories of scale. It shall not rain, not on the day of the letter from my love, and that I knew in my heart in some adjacency to religion.
I picked up a rock and stared out over the river. I saw Katherine’s face in the trees on the other side of the river. The trees, in my lifetime at least, were permanent. The love conveyed in them was unconditional. I did not need to skip the rock a certain number of times or execute a plan or actualize a goal to earn her favor. She was mine and I was hers wholly. I let myself go in the warmth of that thought, and the rock slid slowly from my hand back to whence it came.
“Rock,” said Crenshaw. “Picked up and dropped.”
I walked along the river and peered into the street to see a balled up newspaper catch the very outside of the strike zone into the hands of the Frederickson boy, the son of the innkeeper. “Strike Three!” I exclaimed to raucous support from the children. They relished having an arbitrator save their game from the drudgery of inconclusive squabbling. I pictured a boy of my own, with Katherine’s eyes, hitting the ball high into the air. Oh, what joy he could bring his father!
I got to the post office and traced the letters, the flying pieces of communication that truly imprinted humanity onto the world, with my eyes. There was so much happiness and importance in each word written from one to another. Part of me wanted to rip each one open and experience every life there was to live. But my life had enough wonder to last me a single eternity. “Quincy!” I exclaimed with a smile to the postman. He knew what I wanted.
He looked me over, smiled gently, and then shuffled through his remaining stack of uncategorized envelopes. The moment he reached the final letter, a loud crack of thunder hit my ears and the sky opened up with a forceful display of tears. “How dare you think yourself bigger than me,” said the clouds. Quincy shook his head in the negative, and the world turned drab. If the rest of the day existed, it was only in the minds of others.
Rain, alone, falling from the sky, a curtain for drama, a vessel for emotion, is beautiful. But the aftermath on the ground, the puddles, the mud on the road, indiscriminate from horse feces, the dirty footprints on Conrad’s porch, a porch I did not sweep, provides a unique ugliness. And there I was, on the ground.
I was groggy and the sky was gray. The world was devoid, and I simmered on that fragmented sentence looking for a finish that either did not exist, or frightened me too much to venture into. Perhaps Katherine’s letter would come and all would be well, but I couldn’t help but fall into a pool of nervous pessimism. I saw her, briefly and blurry, in the arms of another, with my letter balled up in the trash.
Oh well, I can move on. There are others out there. I’m young. Who cares, anyway?
Then Katherine’s face rendered in my mind and I knew, in absurd totality, who cared. It was I, a man who barely existed without the passion I felt for her. I did not know if it was possible to live without the happiness she gave me. I had slept in. The post had already been delivered. The day’s answer to my strifeful question was final, either a glowing wonder among the letters or a void in the post office and in my heart. I passed a horse and carriage, but I did not tip my hat.
I looked at myself in the river. I hated what I saw. He let this happen. What was Katherine’s problem anyway, taking so long to respond? She owed me nothing, but why not? Why torment me so? Leftover mist from yesterday’s despair graced the river and pierced my reflection as painfully as the stabbings they mimicked. Zero skips and a letter shall arrive I thought as I lazily dropped a rock into the river. I chuckled softly. That was the wit Katherine was missing out on. And the thought of her brought me back down to the pit of desolation that characterized my day.
“Dread,” said Crenshaw. I walked on past him. There were no kids playing ball. I noticed an old newspaper that had come undone from its crumple sitting in the mud. It told of war, pain, poverty. I arrived at the post office.
Do you think you know suffering? Have you envisioned the picaresque perfection of a life well lived waiting for you in the future only for it to be ripped from you and burned before your eyes? Katherine, the love of my life, reduced me to nothing. She made it to where I did not exist. She was cackling at the thought of me desperately flipping through meaningless letters, wetting them with my tears, or worse, she did not think about me at all. I ripped a stranger's letter in two out of anger, hoping to transfer an ounce of my suffering, but I only compounded the negativity in the world. Negativity introduced by Katherine. But to hate her was to bring pain onto me. I knew not how to proceed. I could not live like that, alone, unable to understand what happened that created the chasm between me and the beacon of light that made the world worth existing within. I did not know if I’d wake up the next morning.
But I did. Of course I did. If I was nothing, despite perhaps unlovable, yes, perhaps miniscule, I was certainly cowardly. So I woke up in the morning. It could have been sunny or rainy, but it didn’t matter to me. You know what, I thought, I won’t even go to the post office. That day began the rest of my life. The life grounded in reality, forever skeptical of any majesty.
By not going, the Gods of luck will shine on me. Positivity festers, grows, when you look away. I shall focus on me for a day and then tomorrow, as I nonchalantly stroll on past the post office, maybe I stop by, and a letter would be a bonus in a day well seized.
Katherine has only fallen ill, that is all. But she’s better now and able to write. And she will profusely apologize, but I will tell her no need. And the warmth in her one letter will get me through a lifetime of winters.
If it was a change of health rather than a change of heart, I began to worry, then, what if it was drastic? There she might be, in a hospital, calling out for her one true love, but unable to write. Or worse. How selfish I felt for worrying for my own sake and not for her. I did not deserve her, my dying princess!
I did not get out of bed. Conrad could see to the day without me, for Conrad be damned. The carriage, the playing kids, Crenshaw, these were nothing. They were distractions, particles of my life astray, wandering in the vast emptiness apart from the core of what it means to live, passion, love, Katherine’s green eyes.
Maybe I should send a second letter. I could get correspondence from her estate detailing her gruesome death, at least providing a semblance of closure. Or it would nudge her, and she would be reminded of my love. Oh Alfie, she’d write back, I hadn’t been able to write back because I’ve been so busy. I could not find the words to describe my love. All would be well again.
No, that would be desperate, and not receiving a response to a second letter would be torture, confirmation of the worst. So I figured I would just sit there all day and wait. Oh what a fool I’d seem if the letter was lost. There she sat waiting for my letter, getting as upset as I was, readying herself to move on. At the heart of all these trains of thought, there it was: despair. And in despair, deep gut-wrenching apathy. And in apathy, no need for games or luck or a shine from the Gods. So as the families, the actualizers of my dreams, the thieves of my joy, prepared for supper, I headed to the post office.
In the dusk, no carriage came by. The kids had all gone home to their parents. My reflection in the water was plain, merely present and no more. Crenshaw, with his big goofy hat compounding the darkness to cast a shadow onto his face, looked at me and said, “A river’s walk to a letter from your love.” I nodded to him gently as one might an old acquaintance’s gravestone and continued on.
In the post office, not glowing, not immersed in spotlight, not on a pedestal, but rather unceremoniously mixed in with the others, drab even in the poorly lit room, sat an envelope to Alfie Cuttling from Katherine Lockwood. All was well.
Alfie
My word, this indecency is remarkable. Your disgusting letter does not warrant a response, but I shall send this hoping to put an end to the madness once and for all.
You worked only briefly with my brother, and we have made acquaintance but once. To get such an idea to send a letter as you did is certainly delusional. If you contact me again in any capacity, I will involve my brother and the authorities.
I am eternally scarred from what you sent. I cannot even fathom how you’ve done this. It’s inconceivable that you took the time to acquire the use of a camera, point it at your genitalia as you’ve done, get the image developed, and send it to a stranger for reasons unknown.
I picture the bulb shattering and your indecent manhood flopping in the wind and I become violently ill.
There will be a reckoning for your actions, Alfie, and I hope it is soon.
With no affection and with utter disgust,
Katherine