The Box

School one day became irrelevant to Aaron and he quit, feeling suddenly immensely free, a great burden lifted.

A job, he must have a job.

He decided to work for the Post Office. His beat was from 45th to 47th and from Woodlawn to Cottage Grove. Most of the time, he whistled his days away, oblivious of occasional black snarls; but this time, he had some trouble. He had just opened the big red-and-blue mailbox on the corner of 47th and Ingleside when six young men sauntered up, smiling and rolling, saying:

"Hey, it's Uncle Sam!"

"Uncle Sam, what you say, my man?"

"Hey, man, you live in that mailbox?"

"Yeah, man, he lives there. Going home, Uncle?"

Weak smile.

"Hey, let's put Uncle Sam in the mailbox."

This banter continued for a while and then they stuffed Aaron into the mailbox, his knees folded up to his chest, back against the back of the box, arms around his drawn-up legs, hat on. They shut the door, locked it with his key and, finally, walked away, laughing and slapping skin.

Well, he thought, what am I going to do now? This is pretty fucking embarrassing; how am I going to feel when they get me out of here?

I'm going to the in here, he thought. Gotta hold out until the next pickup.

After about a minute, he started yelling; yelled until he was hoarse and then rested.

He thought of yelling again but that hadn't seemed to help, so he started counting to pass the time—500, 600, he couldn't keep it up, because he thought it was driving him insane. He did isometric exercises for a while—arm tensions, leg flexions—beat his head against the side of the box, then just sat still. He spent nearly an hour composing a ballad about his situation, while intermittently tearing his fingernails on what felt like a loose flap of metal near the back of the box; when it was finished, he sang his song ten times, wondering what passing people thought about a singing mailbox. Not much, he decided. It eventually occurred to him that his position presented an ideal opportunity for propagandizing, indoctrinating, so he began a rather lengthy diatribe against Nixon, capitalism, alienation, anti-Semitism.

Maybe it will start a fad, he thought—mail a letter and get a message.

He began to get very hot, worked off his shoes, socks, unbuttoned his shirt.

If only someone would mail a letter. I'm going to die, that's all. Heatstroke, maybe.

He wedged a shoe into the letter-drop opening, getting a little light and some ventilation.

(continued on page 210)The Box(continued from page 123)

There's no reason for this; I'm dying for no reason.

Someone dropped some letters into the chute and he yelled after him, but he only seemed to leave faster.

He started fanning himself with an envelope, noticed the return address on it: the Sexual Freedom League. He debated for half an hour whether to open it, finally decided he'd be dead by morning, anyway, and tore it open. It was an announcement of an orgy the next night on the South Side, all friends welcome, and included was a picture of a naked boy and girl. He put the address in his pocket and hung the picture from a convenient rivet, trying to make the best of his situation, creating a little homeyness out of the austere new surroundings. With sudden realization, he saw that this was to be his new home; it was the same kind of epiphany he had readied as a youngster when he had discovered that when the letters of the lines and spaces of the treble staff were synthesized they formed the alphabet. He smiled with new satisfaction and riffled through the letters he'd been sitting on, opening first the ones with interesting handwriting. Most were so superhumanly pedestrian it was boring, then depressing. He opened an Army envelope. The letter went:

Dear Ed,

I've applied for another tour of duty here in Vietnam, I like it so much. You begin to hate these little yellow slopes. I just want to kill them all. I found this girl and her little sister and XXXX X XXX XXXXXX XXX XXXX X XX XXXXXXX X XXXX XX XXX and I XXXXXX XXX her XXXX XXX little rats. See you next year.

Ralph

Joke, thought Aaron. The next one he picked was a suicide note. It read:

Jonah,

I'll be dead when you get this. It wasn't your fault, honest. I don't know what I can do to make you believe that, but I just can't worry about that at this point.

All my love always, Beth

This really shook Aaron and for some time he tried shouting again, but ended by feeling only very useless, helpless, totally constrained, prevented from any action whatever, no control, no possibility of implementation of his decisions, desires. He sat. He worked off his pants, sat still again. He feebly waved a letter through the opening but soon stopped; he took off his shirt and hung it out, but someone stuffed it back in about 15 minutes later.

If Grandpa were here, he'd know what to do, Aaron thought morosely. He had liked his grandfather a great deal. They lived at opposite ends of a century, touched lives only briefly, in the middle. And then, on his 80th birthday, Grandpa fell down the steps of his home and hit his head. After a few days in the hospital, he was fully recovered physically, being a lively old fellow, but he had total amnesia; he had forgotten the past 80 years. His entire life was nonexistent in his memory as if it had never been; no jokes, no wars, no fallen comrades, no bullshit. In his 81st year, he had to begin from the start (except for language, which tool he had retained), and this seemed to Aaron a prospect so crippling as to want to kill yourself. But not to the old man. He made new friends, read new books, thought new thoughts. His goal in life, he used to chuckle, was to reach the age of 21, so he could legally drink before he died. Once, he told Aaron, "If you're ever someplace you don't want to be, then hit your head like I did and you'll be someplace else."

That's how Grandpa died—he hit his head with a hammer and died.

Someone mailed a letter and tried to close the mailbox flap, but Aaron's shoe was in the way; Aaron yelled up for help, but this scared the caller away and he was alone again.

Another letter dropped onto his head, the corner scratching close to his eye. He yelled and swore and embarked upon a long river of invective, lasting some minutes. To his amazement, a voice responded down the opening, very patiently:

"You should not hate so much, young man. Hate is not a satisfying emotion."

"I don't hate anybody and I don't hate you most of all," he replied sullenly, still unready to believe anyone was willing to recognize his existence.

"What have you to be so angry about?" came the voice, historical-sounding in the way it echoed in the small metal box.

"I'm locked in this box," Aaron said.

"So are we all, boy. It is a box of loneliness. God made Adam and then Eve because He knew Adam was lonely, and He knew this because Adam was made in His own image, and He knew that He was lonely. You don't want to get out; you only want a friend to get in there with you."

Aaron heard him walk away and became first very desperate and then very tired. There was a slow rumbling outside, amplified in his container, and finally it started to rain, a summer rain. The plinks made a nice sound on the steel and he welcomed the cool air that began to enter the box and surround him. A few drops even managed to bounce their way to his face and he relaxed a little. He was comforted, too, by the thought that the rain was driving all the other people into their own little boxes; cars and houses and store lobbies and umbrellas, each fugitive creating his own distinctive patter in the storm. He heard footsteps approach quickly, slow down, and some letters were dropped onto his head.

More running steps.

The relieving cool changed his entire outlook. His future didn't matter too much, it was certainly out of his hands, so he decided to get some sleep. He felt a little guilty about the opened letters but was more concerned about his shoe, which was now stuck tight in the open flap. He soon gave up his exertions to listen to the rain. The patter reminded him of something from his early memories—rain on a red wagon, maybe. No, on a greasy stained-glass window on 53rd Street. But that's in another life, he thought, and don't ever look back.

The rain gushed now and changed direction for a moment, so it was blowing straight in through the slot, washing his bare skin with cold, wet strokes. Then the wind stopped, or shifted, and he sat still, dripping. He felt chill and a new sense of malaise touched him momentarily, then left. He maneuvered his shirt off the floor, to drape over his back, but the new disquiet came again and grew. He sneezed.

He heard people and shouted. He thought he could hear them stop and yelled again, but there was no response. He grew colder.

His shirt was no help since it, too, was wet, as were the letters on which he sat. His teeth began to chatter. He could think of nothing but his misery, of how damp to the very soul he felt. He even cried, so much worse was the cold than the heat. He tried as hard as he could to imagine worse suffering but could not. He could not really think at all; he sat and cowered, occasionally whining.

The wind changed again, throwing in new gusts or half pailfuls of rain water. It ran down his hair continuously now, down the inside of his arms, his thighs, the walls of the mailbox. His legs started cramping; his skin took on the feel of dank basement concrete, long kept from the air. The paper photo on the wall of the box curled moistly on itself, producing a new sexual position as the colors on the six-inch nudes ran together. He shivered constantly, quite unable to conceive of such torment much less understand it. The cold sank deeper into his flesh, while the rain poured in harder and harder still. Whimpering, without thought or sight, he sat, until quite without warning, an unusually heavy box, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string, tumbled through the slot into the box and struck him on the side of the head, letting some blood; he swooned for a number of long and sinister minutes through various stages of nausea and vertigo until, mercifully, he lost consciousness.

• • •

When he awoke, he was cold and cramped but dry. There was a dim morning light overhead, but he had no idea of the time. His head ached horribly, more when he realized, with excruciating slowness, where he was. He put his hand up and felt crusty flakes of dry blood peel off his temple in places; his throat was sanded thick. He remained in a semi-stupor for a long time, thinking dismal thoughts when he thought at all.

After several hours, he began to rouse himself. This is still absurd, he thought slowly; it's just gotten to be a bad joke. He put his forehead against the cold metal to wake up, adjusting his position somewhat, as if arranging his life, assuming a calm pose that would enable him to think coolly and come to a rational decision, a plan. He listed all the alternatives in his mind and then proceeded to pursue each one.

First, he could call for help. This he did, loudly and thoughtfully. No help came, but his head hurt a little more than it had; this he noted. The next proposal suggested that he try to pick the lock on the door. Failing this, he attempted to force the door open with brute muscle. He pushed against it with his knees, his shoulders pressed to the back of the box, but all he succeeded in doing was dislodging his shoe, which fell against his head and started the bleeding again.

It occurred to him, some time after he had stopped screaming, to open the package that had hit him. Maybe it was a gun and he could shoot the lock off, or a drill, or a Bible. He hefted it, listened to it, wondered what it might be. Doubtless something unique and meaningful, something for his freedom. Just like his grandfather, he would be transported to someplace new. He tore off the wrapping with difficulty and looked.

It was a brick. Just a brick. A very nice brick, to be sure, but nothing near the category of windfall or revelation usually associated with seeing stars. In the end, just a brick.

He thought a good deal more in the glowing afternoon heat; but the brick episode had finished him, really. Most of his spirit and all of his misdirected hopes had been dissipated. Wasted. Wasted, man, he thought.

Ultimately, he decided to the heroically, to pen something historic on the wall and then light a match to the letters, a smoke signal for posterity, a lesson. He scratched the message in the side with a key, Stop the War on one side and Zippy takes it up the ass on the other. He put on his hat—dignity of the ceremonial uniform—lit a match and touched it to one of his socks. And then, miraculously, the door opened. Outside stood a quaking, dumfounded old mailman, not comprehending the vision of a boy holding a burning sock, wearing little else but a gold-braided hat, sitting inside the mailbox.

"Better to light one sock than curse the darkness," said Aaron, stepping out gingerly, gathering his clothes. He dressed himself and, leaving the man still standing there, went off to the residence of the authoress of the suicide letter; maybe he'd ask her to the orgy.

He got to the building and rang her bell. She buzzed the inside door and he entered, walked down one flight; it was a basement apartment. The door was closed; he approached and waited. It was painted in bright-blue enamel with a red number one in its center; he knocked on it twice. There were scuffling, retarded footsteps inside. He looked up and noticed there was an open transom, with a black shoe jammed in it, apparently to keep it from slipping shut. The door opened and a girl stood there, dripping wet, with a towel around her, water collecting in a puddle at her feet.

"I just got out of the shower," she said. "Come in while I put something on."