The Legend of the Barefoot Mailman

by John Henry Fleming

  As Josef passed through the crowd, they shouted these names at him—“Yaha!” “Tuste!” and “Emathla!”—each faction hoping they could prove their theory by Josef’s reaction. Several members of the Emathla group felt that Josef had turned his head slightly at the sound of that name, but the other factions only laughed and said that the Emathla people had their eyes pointed at the backs of their heads and could only see the little pictures their brains made for them. They all laughed at each other, but they no longer laughed at Josef, because now that they looked at him closely, his blackened eyes and his swollen nose indeed gave him the appearance of an eagle, and his disgraceful bare feet suddenly took on mystical and cataclysmic qualities.

  He was taken to a walled, unoccupied hut. As the crowd lingered outside, he was given a mat and told to sit down. They watched his motions carefully, especially the way he sat on the mat. A great bucket of cool water, like the one in the chief’s hut, was brought in and placed in the middle of the floor. Soon after, a trio of women appeared. Two of them carried bowls of food—some soup, meat, and fruit—while the third presented him with a steaming black drink, darker than coffee.

  He was left alone, then, though he could see the skirts of two braves stationed outside his door, and passersby could not help but pause for a glimpse of the white Indian until the braves waved them off.

  He was still too nervous to eat, but his lips and throat ached from the salty air. He sniffed the pungent black drink, which smelled of ginseng and a dozen other bitter herbs and roots he could not identify. He tried to sip it and his entire mouth seemed to tighten and collapse of its own accord. A shiver ran down his spine, and the small amount of liquid that squeezed itself down his throat felt like it was building a railroad as it went. He took a few bites of grapefruit just to wash it down.

  Then he took a good look around him for the first time and spotted the reason he’d been given this hut. There was a small hole in the thatched wall, and someone had his eye to it, observing him, studying him. The eye saw him looking and moved away from the peephole. Josef turned his back to it. So that’s it, he thought, I’m to be studied like a caged animal. My behavior is to be noted and weighed as evidence in some kind of experiment.

  Josef pondered his dilemma. If their changeling theory was proved correct, then he might be forced to remain with the tribe and “rehabilitated.” He couldn’t let that happen; he had a duty to the U.S. Postal Service and the nation at large to get his mail sack delivered, not to mention a duty to himself and his uncle to carry out his big plans as a pioneer. If he were somehow able to disprove their theory, he’d risk being seen as their destroyer and, though they’d probably think it would do no good in the long run, they’d want to kill him on the spot, on the slim chance that the Great Eagle was mortal or at least able to be wounded. Yet he could not think of a way to prove he was white.

  He clutched the canvas mail sack in his hands, praying for guidance.

  Soon some of the elders entered his hut and sat opposite him. There was no interpreter; they’d just come to observe. They studied the remains of the grapefruit he’d taken some bites of, inspecting the way he’d peeled off the skin, and the size and depths of his bites. One man held the meat in front of Josef’s nose, and Josef turned away, recognizing the smell of alligator meat that brought back painful memories from the postmaster’s restaurant.

  The elders exchanged looks, each of them thinking, Yes, this is white man’s behavior, but neither did Yaha-Chatee favor the taste of alligator meat. Still, they could certainly rule out Tustenuggee, since he’d have eaten his own mother, had she been a gator. Of course, Tuste had been a tremendous jokester; if this white man was truly Tustenuggee he’d be lying for the simple pleasure of lying. Clearly, more tests were needed.

  The elders left to consult with the chief, and they left Josef alone for the rest of the day, which Josef occupied with thoughts of his dear Lena. He slept little that night, for whenever he opened his eyes, there was that peephole, and though he could not definitely make out a staring eye, the hole seemed far too dark for a moonlit night.

  WHEN THE ELDERS returned in the morning, they brought with them two braves who carried bows and arrows. Josef was led out of his hut, and the group traveled down a damp path out of the village and through the swamp to a cleared plot of high ground. Josef’s legs trembled as he walked; he thought he was being taken to his death. And what a terrible way to die! he thought. His body would be thrown into the swamp by these red men, and he’d never be heard from again. The mail would go undelivered and his wife and aunt back in Brooklyn would never get word of him. His great plans would go unrealized, the small progress he’d made thus far would be forgotten. He’d not even warrant a footnote in the great struggle to rebuild Paradise.

  When they came to a stop on the island, the elders spoke and the two braves loaded their bows. Josef’s heart raced and his hands shook. He tasted the black drink returning to his throat. He closed his eyes, waiting for the end. But nothing happened. When he opened them again, he saw an opossum emerge from beside a mangrove some sixty feet away. The braves took careful aim, and an instant later the opossum was on its side, two arrows side by side in its neck.

  The braves congratulated each other with a clasp. Josef wondered if this was to be his last supper—a filthy opossum eaten in the company of Indians.

  Instead, one of the braves handed him his bow and an arrow, and the other brave tried to demonstrate how to use them. The elders observed gravely.

  Somehow, Josef got the arrow loaded properly on the bow. His hands shook wildly. He knew his performance could mean the difference between life and death. Yet he didn’t know whether he preferred life as a captive to these Indians or an inglorious death at their hands. He didn’t have time to think about it, for now another opossum showed its pink nose. Josef couldn’t help but think this animal, too, had the heart of Satan, and he prayed that the opossum, along with the boar, would be excluded from Paradise, just as they’d done all in their power to exclude him from his role in its construction.

  Josef pulled the bow back as far as he could, which wasn’t even half as far as the braves had done. The bow shuddered in his hands. He closed his eyes, and a moment later something hit him in the back of the head. He thought he’d felt his last earthly sensation.

  But again, he opened his eyes and knew he was alive. He lay on the spongy earth, the bow resting on his chest, looking straight up into a tree, where the arrow he’d fired hung loosely from a branch.

  The braves couldn’t keep from laughing as they helped him to his feet. The elders thought, Very convincing white man’s behavior, even for Yaha-Chatee. But it could be Emathla, since he disappeared while he was still too young to know the Way of the Arrow. Tustenuggee was a superior marksman, but this raises a new question: is it a man’s blood or his skin that determines his excellence in arrow shooting? Perhaps Tustenuggee lost his ability to shoot when his skin paled. If so, then is there a proportional relationship between arrowshooting ability and skin color, or is there a critical shading of skin below which a man cannot possibly achieve arrowshooting excellence?

  The elders were intrigued. They agreed that once this man’s blood had been determined, they would call together all the best arrow shooters of the tribe and take measurements of their skin color to see if the two were positively correlated. Perhaps someday, thought one, we can match up men and women of the darkest skin color, thus producing a breed of the greatest warriors the tribe has ever known. Perhaps then the white men will run scared, and all of the tribe’s enemies will be defeated with great ease. As they walked back to the village, the elders pondered the exciting possibilities.

  The elders remained in Josef’s tent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, studying him closely, speaking few words among themselves, and no words at all to Josef. With the men watching, Josef ate very little of his supper, some sort of thick gray stew with chunks of fish. Whenever he took a bite, the men would point at him a
nd make comments, “a-ha” noises, and even quiet laughter. Josef had never felt more self-conscious in his life. Before the bowl was taken out of the hut, the elders huddled around it to inspect exactly how much he’d eaten and which of the vegetables and fish he’d eaten the most of. Worst of all, when they let him out of the hut to relieve himself, Josef thought he spotted someone watching him in the woods; and when he’d finished and headed back to the hut, he was certain there was someone poking around where he’d been, taking samples for later analysis.

  The elders left his hut when it began to grow dark, but they weren’t finished with their experiments, for shortly after, a young squaw entered alone. Her dark skin and deep black eyes and hair reminded Josef of the tales he’d heard about native women in the South Pacific who drove dedicated seamen to heinous mutinies and greedy traders to abandon their business.

  At first, the girl merely sat across from him and waved a palm frond over the water bucket to cool him. Josef thought the idea was for him to get some rest in preparation for another day of experimentation and close observation. The breeze she made with the palm frond was cool and refreshing, like the first breath of autumn that settled the dust and the tempers in the Brooklyn marketplace. His weariness at last overcoming his fears, he lowered himself to his side and closed his eyes.

  He dozed off, and soon began to dream of a reunion with Lena. Back in Brooklyn, her cares would be few. There’d be nothing to trouble her mind and make her curl up in a distressed little ball at night, unresponsive to Josef’s affections. She’d open her arms to him unbegrudgingly, forgiving in a single gesture all that had come between them, all of his foolish plans and his pathetic failures and the dangers and discomforts to which he’d subjected her. Then at last their marriage would be consummated and all that had happened between the day of their wedding and the day of their consummation would be erased from their lives, as though it had never happened, as though he’d sent a letter to himself on his wedding day and, though the letter had traveled for months, down to Florida and back again, in the end there was nothing to mark the distance it had traveled or all the hands it had passed through but a simple postmark, and the time that had elapsed between would be collapsed into sheer, beautiful nothingness.

  It all seemed so real and possible to Josef that he thought he felt his wife’s hands caressing his chest as he slept. She was nudging him, desiring his attentions, but still too bashful to tell him outright, he thought. He need not say anything, just reach for her hand, hold it in his, open his eyes and smile at the woman he loved. Or perhaps it was better not to look at her yet; he didn’t wish to embarrass her. Soon enough, she’d grow bold, and he’d find her astride his stomach, her beautiful naked body gleaming with twilight.

  Yes, things would be well then, he could open his eyes and look deeply into hers. She’d slide his nightshirt off and massage oils onto his chest in slow, gentle circles, her small firm breasts only inches from his nose, and he’d reach up and hold them lovingly, smiling at this sexually playful, almost aggressive side to her he could never have imagined in the early days of their marriage. And yes, he could look at her then and see the love in her eyes. Just when he thought he could no longer bear the intensity of his desire he’d find himself shrouded in the deepest miracle of feeling that nature had to offer. And he’d let his body break into what felt like a million separate fragments of disconnected sensation, for each part of him to experience that feeling individually. They’d fall together again on their own, into a wholeness that seemed to make him more alive than the sum of all his parts. Like a breathing motion, the experience would repeat itself perfectly, and it dawned on him then that this was the gentle breath of Paradise, repeating itself since In the Beginning, like an echo that does not fade, waiting to be acknowledged by someone, and here he was like the Chosen One, accepting this gift and the knowledge of its supreme importance, the breath that would give life to his God-given Vision of Paradise. And all he had to do was open his eyes and bathe himself in the light of God, the light that was the eyes and the future of all mankind.

  The breathing grew stronger then, until the world itself seemed nothing but breathing, each breath quicker and stronger than the last, and each time more and more of himself flying forth and investing itself into the individual fragments that seemed to conjoin with God, and taking longer and longer to pull himself back into a whole, each time losing just a little bit of the mortar that held him together, until he thought, If I let go this time, I’ll no longer be Josef Steinmetz, but a thousand particles of perfect and joyful beatitude scattered into the infinite breath of God. At that very moment, every sensation Josef had ever felt gathered into one and released itself in an explosive sensation the likes of which he’d never imagined possible, and in the vacuum created by that explosion, the fragments of himself were pulled all at once back into the center, in great disarray at first, but then gently and painlessly returning to their natural geometry.

  Only then did he open his eyes and see the face of the squaw.

  She wore no expression whatsoever and pushed herself off him, and when he looked up at her, he was reminded of that moment earlier in the day when he thought he’d died, only to open his eyes to the misfired arrow dangling from the branch above him, making a cruel joke of his fear and sadness.

  The squaw dressed and left, but Josef could not watch her go. He could not turn his head; he hadn’t the will. I was asleep, he thought, and cruelly taken advantage of for the sake of these pagan superstitions. But there was this nagging feeling that he hadn’t been fully asleep, that maybe he’d known what was going on, and had let his baser desires get the best of him. He knew right then he’d never be able to fully convince himself of his innocence, and that if he ever tried to tell Lena, he’d falter terribly and make himself out to be even more of a monster than he considered himself at this very moment.

  When he finally sat up, he looked across the room in the last light of day and saw the little peephole and the eye of an elder peering through it. And then he saw two more holes and two more unblinking eyes, and he wondered if he’d heard them making those holes and had paid no attention, or worse, that the three eyes had only fueled the fire of his perversion and the lie he told himself with his eyes closed and his mind pretending to be with God.

  Hollow and ashamed, Josef felt like crying, though he held it back with all his strength; those eyes at the peepholes had seen enough.

  He held his head in his hands for what seemed like hours, until his morbid and self-pitying thoughts were interrupted by the sound of gunshots.

  Chapter 11

  THERE WERE SHOUTS and screams and heavy footsteps all around, everything quickened and intensified by the intermittent gunshots. At first Josef was just thankful to have something take his mind off what he’d done with the Indian woman. Then he thought that perhaps they’d reached a conclusion about his being the Great Eagle and now a ceremony had begun that would reach its climax with his slaughter. He felt utterly alone and unprotected.

  Heavy steps approached his door, and someone stepped inside. Josef couldn’t even discern the outline of a figure, because now the moon was hidden by storm clouds; there were rumblings of an approaching storm.

  “There a white man in ’ere?” said an English voice.

  Josef was elated; here was the voice of civilization. “Yes! I am here! I am a white man!”

  The voice called outside his hut, “’E’s in ’ere! I got ’im!”

  In a few moments, there was a commotion at the door and several men entered.

  A hand grabbed Josef by the arm. “Come along wi’ us. We’ll save ya from these ’ere heathens.” A flash of lightning illumined an aged and deeply lined face.

  Josef was not undisturbed by the strange voices and the grasping hands in the darkness, but he followed anyway, clutching his mail sack to his chest, glad to be moving forward again.

  The Englishmen marched him through the village. Josef counted five different voices and discerned
some of their figures when lightning flashed or when they passed near to a burning hut. They were big men. When they spotted an Indian scurrying to safety, they fired shots into the air. Josef sensed the Indians crouching in fear as they watched their huts burn. He felt sorry for them. There was something terrible and violent about these white men, and yet here they were saving his skin.

  They marched out of the village, leaving a narrow swath of terror and destruction, then followed an unseen path through the black swamp. The rain came and soaked Josef all at once while he protected his mail sack. None of the men seemed to mind. The man beside him kept his big hand around Josef’s arm and spoke continuously—“Stupid bloody heathens. Black-booted boobies. Red-faced monkey scavengers. Yer all right now, I tell ya. Yer in good hands. We saved ya from their filthy animal paws. Yer fine now. Yer back t’civilization. Yer among friends. Why, jest a few minutes longer and you’d’ve taken a berlin’ bubble bath, I tell ya. The bloody cannibals. Yer teeth woulder made fer some fancy garnish on the chief’s boots. The gaudy, dress-wearin twits. Yer awright now. Yer back wid white men. We’re all yer friends here. . . .”

  Josef was soaked to the bone and chilled. The soft, cool mud of the swamp oozed up between his toes. He had a strange feeling about these men. They were nothing more than voices in the dark, and he wondered if they were truly leading him back to civilization. What if he were to return? How could he hold himself tall when he’d shamed himself with an Indian woman? How could he ever hope to face Lena again? He couldn’t even imagine writing her a letter now, because the only proper words would be a complete confession, and he doubted his courage to write them.