The Man Who Wrote Letters to Presidents

The all-time longtime loser of the world was a completely forgettable salad chef named Paul Greer. He blamed himself for his two divorces; he was a slack conversationalist; he had grating habits such as cracking his oversize knuckles in public and cleaning the fingernails of one hand with the fingernails of the other. The only telephone calls he received were wrong numbers due to the hazards of direct dialing, and his skimpy mail consisted of solicitations from friendly Miami loan companies and an occasional blunt, overdue alimony notice from his second wife's Legal Aid representative. For six weeks he had been growing a pencil mustache, changing his face from a zero to a zero with at least a line in the center.

Somehow, in spite of two grim divorce-court settlements, Paul Greer had managed to retain ownership of an electric-blue sports car, made in France. He drove it to and from work at law-abiding speeds. The sports car was the only thing that set him apart from some 300 other employees of the Cairo Hotel, and he lived forever in the hope that the car's low-slung speedboat lines would prove an instant aphrodisiac to some Miami Beach waitress or hotel switchboard operator. It was for this reason that he always parked near the Silver Palm Lounge, a favored drinking corner of the local hotel employees; and when his day's quota of dinner salads had been met, he presented himself at the Silver Palm for a ritual nightly gin and tonic. He had been more than successful in buying drinks for an army of sweet young things just out of elevator uniforms or still wearing waitress aprons; but each girl invariably went home with a bellboy, a beachboy or even Harry, the bartender, while Paul Greer drove back to his miniature efficiency at the Checkerboard Apartments in Coconut Grove, across the romantic Venetian Causeway at a respectable 45 mph, with the car radio turned low to the top ten and the bucket seat empty beside him. For 23 of his 39 years he had carried a rabbit's foot in his pocket--from France, the land of his father and his father's father--but it had brought him no luck.

With his mustache at six weeks' maturity, Paul Greer walked into the late-afternoon gloom of the Silver Palm Lounge with a dash more of his usual optimistic anticipation. He mounted his favorite stool, strategically near the draped entryway, stroking alternately the rabbit's foot and one wing of his mustache, waiting for his weak eyes to adjust to the dark so that he might check around him for any unescorted ladies the Silver Palm should contain at this hour. But it was too early, no one around; Harry had not even bothered to plug in the jukebox yet. Paul Greer was about to retreat, go back out to Collins Avenue and walk over to Indian Creek Drive to check the paint job on his car for scratches, to use up a little more of the dead part of the evening, when an old man's voice asked out of the darkness: "What's your Social Security number, partner?"

"What?" But before he could stop himself, he was reciting: "401-30-9672."

"Shake, partner, you're the first one I ever met yet that could reel off his numbers as good as me." The old man moved from stool to stool until he was sitting next to Paul Greer. He remembered seeing the old man in the hotel kitchen earlier, on the afternoon shift, running racks of dessert plates into the dishwashing machine.

"Meet 105-78-3110. Born loser. I lost my very first Social Security card I wasn't (continued on page 80) Man Who Wrote Letters (continued from page 77) ten minutes out of their office. Hole in my pocket you could run your fist through. They cussed me out good, but they had to refund me another one. I memorized all my numbers after that. Say, what's your timecard number?"

"274. Why?"

"I'm 885. New man. Temporary only. They'll give me the old heave ho the next Cuban deflected from Cuba comes in."

Paul Greer felt the old man's shriveled paw pick up his hand and shake it; he had the sensation of holding a worn-out tennis shoe in his hand. Harry moved the old man's beer down from the other end of the bar and poured a split of quinine water into a double shot of gin for Paul Greer. His drink in front of him, Paul Greer was officially crucified to the bar stool, trapped between the old man and the cash register. He drank, but not even the quinine could cancel out the old-man smell of sour wine and dishwater. Why couldn't Kathleen, the new cashier, come in? Or Mildred, the cocktail waitress at the Crown Jewel? No, it was Paul Greer's eternal misfortune to fall in with another loser like himself, elbow to elbow, at the Silver Palm.

"In Twenty-nine, I was living on ragweed salad and boiled swamp root. You should've seen me. My stomach was swelled up like nobody's business. I wrote President Hoover if he didn't quick send me a CARE pack and a bag of tobacco, I was done for, to subtract my number from the U.S. census."

If he said nothing, maybe the old man would go away, but he could not keep from asking, "Did he answer?"

"Answer? Hell, they have to. Afraid you won't vote for them next time around. He wrote and referred me to Welfare, which didn't exist in Florida yet. It was only 1929. Hell, yes, they answer. Their letter paper's got an eagle on it."

Paul Greer had been expecting another Depression to hit any year now--two Depressions were none too many to predict in any loser's lifetime. "What did you do then?" he asked. He really wanted to know. He might need the information later on.

"Only one thing a man can do when he's down to rock bottom without a paddle; bring your case to the attention of the local authorities. I went and broke a beer bottle on a street curb in Tampa and swallowed two big jagged pieces of it in public. Must've been a crowd of fifty seen me do it and not one soul amongst them stepped forward to volunteer first aid. That's how far apart people have fell. Finally, a cop came and put me under arrest. When he has to, a cop'll take action. Providing he's in his home precinct. They operated and got the glass out of me and I ended up in a nice bed, with clean sheets and my own radio to listen to. They fed good, too, for a hospital."

His eyes adjusted to the meager light, Paul Greer stared at the jockey-size figure perched on the bar stool beside him. He felt a chill in his stomach, as if he had swallowed the ice cube from his drink: The old man's face could have been his own, change the color of the eyes, take away Paul Greer's new mustache and add 40 years of dried scars and gullies.

"What's your Service number, by the way?" the old man asked.

"280-90-90."

"Mine's 63-49017. They had a different series the First War. In 1918, I got drunk in a little Belgian town you never even heard the name of, before they blew it up, and the next day I went and tried to go over the top with a wine hangover, the worst kind, and got gassed. I later tried to get disability out of it. I wrote President Wilson, but he was signing peace treaties in Paris and his office wrote and referred me back to the Army. My pension forms must've went through two-hundred-some-odd secretaries; Washington's probably got reels and reels of microfilm on me. Seven years later the VA wrote and told me no, it was my own negligence. Eyewitness from my own company said I went and forgot my gas mask. That's the kind of lovable buddies you had the First War."

Suddenly Paul Greer wanted to share war reminiscences with the old man, tell him his own experiences as a baker second class in the South Pacific; but the only tale he had to trade was the time a Japanese mine exploded 50 yards from his destroyer's bow and ruined four oven racks of bread loaves; and, anyway, the old man was still talking.

"Don't ever think I always just wrote letters to Presidents so as to get something out of it for yours truly. I one time wrote Roosevelt if he didn't get his CCC boys off of the Florida Keys, they'd get blowed off. A friend of mine was a pureblood Seminole Indian and he knew a hurricane coming when he smelled one. Everybody except the right authorities knew a hurricane was coming. The Government's always the last one to get the word. Every single flamingo in the Everglades was flying north and the goddamn dumb Government left all them boys, I don't know how many, down at Esmeralda in the CCC camp."

Harry had put out pretzels and potato chips, and Paul Greer was snapping pretzel twigs between his fingers to keep from cracking his knuckles. "What finally happened?"

"Happened? What finally happened was one of the awfulest blows in Florida history and all them stranded CCC boys got washed out in the ocean on a tidal wave."

"But didn't Roosevelt answer?"

"Hell, yes, they always answer. Afraid you won't vote for them next time around. Me and my Indian buddy was sitting the hurricane out in Homestead when I got a telegram, two days late, said, 'all necessary precautions have been taken.' That's the Government for you."

Paul Greer drank his drink down to the bare cubes. He did not want to hear any more; he thought he would walk over to Indian Creek Drive and check the air pressure in his tires, but the old man put his worn-out tennis-shoe hand on his arm and said, "Don't worry. They put up a real nice memorial monument for them--which is a hell of a lot more'n you and me'll get--and every year the ladies from the Florida Historical Society puts a pot of wax flowers on it, first week in hurricane season."

Paul Greer wanted to pay and slide away from the bar, but Harry had drifted from behind the cash register to a coffin-shaped pinball machine in the far corner. The old man had to raise his shaky voice to talk above the sound of bells and buzzers.

"Down in Key West one time on the bum, I tried to get a job in the post office. They're supposed to give you veteran's preference if you've fought a war for them. But the First War's too old-fashion and long forgot for them. They give my mailman job out to a Young Republican. I was sore as boils--I wrote President Truman about it and he referred me to civil service. Civil service didn't like my looks, on account of I didn't have no necktie on or on account of my tattoo, this here rattlesnake, or I don't know what, so they put me in their file and forgot about me."

Harry had turned on the jukebox, and in the reflection of its watery neon light, Paul Greer could make out the pale-blue reptile coiled along the old man's forearm, and the legend tattooed above his wrist that read: don't tread on me, a warning the world had evidently ignored.

"Nothing I could do but bring my case to the attention of the local authorities. I swallowed a fishhook in plain view of a church letting out from Sunday service. The entire congregation ringed theirself around me like I was a free circus and nobody budged. Me turning blue and spitting blood and the preacher stepped up and asked me, 'Why'd you do it, son?' I finally had to stagger in a phone box and call up an ambulance myself, in my condition. They operated on me again. All told, I've had six probesurgery operations. My stomach looks like a road map, look."

(concluded on page 116) Man Who Wrote Letters (continued from page 80)

The old man pulled the T-shirt out of his belt. It was true. Paul Greer stared at the saw-toothed edges of surgical scars twisted across the old man's stomach. All that Paul Greer had to show for 39 years of low man's luck were the nicks on his thumbs from carving thousands of radishes into rosettes.

"Let me tell you something, and I mean it; when I go to the VA or to Unemployment, or if I go into Social Security or the Red Cross or anyplace, I want the girl behind the desk to treat me like a human man and give me ordinary decent respectfulness like I deserve. By God, I'm a human man with a name and a face and feelings like everybody else. I'm not looking for some snotty clerk at the counter to call me 'You' or 'Next' or a number. I've had Presidents of the United States call me Mister, and they almost always get my name right, too."

Speaking of names, Paul Greer wanted to tell the old man about his father, Henri Grillère, who lost his two-star restaurant to creditors in Lyons and took a cattle boat to the New World, and how his name was flattened to Henry Greer passing through the Immigration Service on Ellis Island, but the old man was too wound up to take a breath and listen.

"And another thing, this goddamn numbers racket gets my goat. By the time you're my age, you got so many numbers attached to you, you turn into a laundry list. Only way a man can fight back is carry a ticket puncher in his hip pocket, and every time you get hold of an IBM card, punch hell out of it and throw a monkey wrench in their machinery. Catch me using a Zip Code? Hell, I don't even put a Zip Code on the President's letters.

"If I write the President, I don't just write looking to get gravy for yours truly. I write to try to get a flyspeck of attention for all the old drifters washed up on U.S. shores, left behind down in the doldrums like me. Why, I'd a hell of a lot rather go in front of a firing squad than go into one more Government file; I'm damn near buried in case numbers as it is, already."

For some reason, Paul Greer suddenly remembered that his Diners' Club application was still pending; he would write them tonight and cancel out.

"You won't believe this, but I once dove for sponges off Sarasota with the Greeks, till I got too old to hold my breath. I went back one season, Fifty-three, I think it was, to work the boats with them, but plastic sponges had come in and the natural-sponge trade went to the devil. Try selling a genuine real sponge to a woman nowadays, she'll throw you off the porch. Housewifes don't know nothing about housekeep that they didn't learn on TV.

"Well, anyway, me and this Greek family I lived with, we got down to four dollars and there was seven mouths to feed, not counting yours truly. We ate spoilt tomatoes till we was sweating tomato juice. Made a whole meal one time out of boiled potato peels. Coconuts we picked up out of the gutter for dessert. Before they'd have to put their oldest girl out on the street for a whore, I got hold of a post-office pen and wrote Eisenhower a four-page letter. But my mistake was I went and forgot it was McCarthy's heydays, and for an answer I got an FBI guy knocking on our door to find out if any of us was Communists. The Greeks threw me out on my ear, flat, for getting them investigated. Can't hardly blame them: They'll have a black mark in Washington for the rest of their life. The FBI warned me I was a known crank from then on and under strict surveillance and I'd lose my mail privilege and my passport if I didn't watch my goddamn step." The old man wept, no question of it: The tears fell into his beer glass. "After that, I sort of lost touch with the White House."

When the pretzel sticks were broken to crumbs and finally reduced to powder, Paul Greer began cleaning the fingernails of one hand with the fingernails of the other.

"My last job, I took a job night watchman of a parking lot out in Coral Gables--try living on sixty-five-fifty a month Social Security sometime, if you want to live dangerous--but I got sick and tired of being called Whitey and Shorty and Pop and went and let the air out of some snot's tires one night. So they fired me."

The gullies in the old man's face ran wet with tears and Paul Greer wanted to buy the old man another beer, but he saw no way to signal Harry away from the pinball machine.

"The last letter I ever wrote a President, or ever will write, I wrote to Kennedy--the only President on TV that knew how to smile a real honest smile--but some son of a bitch down in Texas killed him before he could answer me."

The old man dropped his hands to his hips and, in a sudden fumbling spasm, emptied his pockets onto the bar: a dirty khaki handkerchief, some small change (mostly dimes), a mimeographed I. D. card from the A-1 Employment Agency, a ticket punch and a safety pin.

"I swallowed a whole box of staples one time, but I just vomited them back up again. Last year I went and swallowed a bottle of nail polish, bottle and all, and they had to fish it out, out at the VA hospital. The doc out there, he kept calling me Old-Timer, which always gets my goat. 'Old-Timer,' he says, 'one of these days you're liable to swallow one dangerous object too many.' Trying to use psychiatry on me. To needle him I said, 'What about a nice big opened-up safety pin?' and he got sore and said, 'You swallow a pin and it's liable to catch in your gullet and work and pierce you right in the heart.' What he meant was, he wished I would."

Paul would give the old man five dollars, what the hell; but reaching into his pocket his hand touched first on the rabbit's foot. Just then the old man picked up the safety pin and said, "See this here pin. It turned up in my clothesbag at the laundrymat, must've come off of some kid's diapers. They put a plastic safety catch on them now so they won't accidental open up and stick your baby."

He opened the plastic catch to show Paul Greer how it worked. Then he rocked backward on the stool, opened wide his toothless mouth and dropped the safety pin into it. He rocked forward again. With a terrible gagging sound, the old man washed the pin down with a swallow of beer.

Paul Greer felt himself go numb. Not since the explosion of the Japanese mine reverberated through his ship's bakery, not even the night he came home to find his first wife in the shower with a bus boy from the Cairo Hotel, had he known a panic like the panic he felt now, trying to remember whether the safety pin had been opened or closed when the old man swallowed it. When he could move again, he pulled the rabbit's foot from his pocket, thrust it onto the bar in front of the old man and fled.

Somehow, two blocks from the Silver Palm Lounge, he found himself sitting safely behind the wheel of his electric-blue sports car, parked in the luxuriant shade of a coconut palm. He did not try to start the car. His pencil mustache was dripping perspiration, and somewhere between Collins Avenue and Indian Creek Drive his legs seemed to have dropped off at the knees--but he would be all right in a little while, he told himself. He reminded himself of his accomplishments: He was a man who could make a mayonnaise in 12 seconds, provided the vegetable oil was pure and the egg had not been refrigerated. He had been awarded the Good Conduct Medal by the U.S. Navy; his car would be absolutely paid for in eight more payments. Once--and this was the high point of his career--he had supervised as many as 700 lettuce-and-tomato salads for a single Veterans of Foreign Wars luncheon, with Thousand Island dressing, and not one wilted lettuce leaf by the time the salads were served. He sat cracking his knuckles until he heard the ambulance siren coming across Arthur Godfrey Road. It was then that he began writing frantic letters in his head: "Dear Mr. President"--but whether to write about the old man's case or his own, he did not know.