The Slot Machine

I saw Mac the second I pushed through the post office door. He was hard to miss; his great hulk nearly filled the narrow aisle before the rows of rent boxes, and his heavy cigar smoke filled whatever space he didn’t.

“Hi Miller,” he said around the cigar.

“Hello Mac. Mail up ret?” I asked.

“Naw, these guys are always late. I spend half my day down here just waiting for the mail.”

Something flicked nearby.

“There’s one now,” he said, shuffling to his box. The key was already in the glass and metal door.
“Unh, a bill,” he said, jamming it into his pocket and shuffling back to his strategic watch by the high counter near the outer door.

Another man entered and opened a bigger lower drawer--the kind the big companies in town rented, like Caswells, Schact Rubber, and the First National Bank.

“Hey there, Joe, what’s new?” Mac said. He knew everybody in town; it was his business to.

“Howdy, Mac,” the man replied, routinely snatching up several parcels and tied bundles of letters and stuffing them into a big company bag with a key lock on top. “Had another kid last Monday, you know.”

“Eh? How’s that?” Mac perked up, like a buzzer went off at a switchboard in his head. “Another one, eh? Hey, hey! What’d you call it?”

“Alfred Morris, “ Joe answered proudly. “Seven pounds four ounces.

“Hey, how about that! Why, he’s half-grown already,” Mac joked.

“Yeah, but I still got a ways to go to catch up with you,” Joe countered.

“Eh? Oh, heh-heh, you’ll make it alright.” Ma.c pulled out a note pad and pen. “Al—vin-Mor-ris.”

Joe had gone down to the stamp machine, but he heard Mac’s loud voice like everyone else. Many had now gathered to wait and watch the boxes as shutters of light opened and closed through the small windows. Behind the partition the clerks moved to and fro mechanically, flicking letters which ticked as they struck the front plates.

“You got to put everything down right away in this business,” Mac said, putting his notepad back into his vest pocket. “Trust to memory and you’ll go broke in a month. A million details.”
“I guess that’s right,” I agreed. “Yeah. You know, this mail is really something else. I spend
more time down here than I do at the office as it is.”

“They route everything through Indianapolis now,” I said. “Takes longer if you ask me.”

“You can say that again--say, I had a gal to put a check in that box around the corner there last Thursday, addressed to me, and I didn’t get it for four days!”

“Went to Indianapolis,” I said.

“Can you believe it? Fifteen feet, that box right over there to mine right here, and it took four whole days!”

Mac shifted his weight and fingered his cigar affectionately. Sud­denly he turned. “Hey there, Joe--.” Mac caught the man by the arm, near the outside door. “I put little Alfred on that family plan of yours; he’s covered already.”

“Oh, you’ll take care of it?” Joe said.

“Yeah, it’s all set, no problem. Cost you about three bucks-fifty or four more a month, and give him a little something to start college with. They grow faster’n you can bat your eye, you know.”
“Hey, that’s for sure,” Joe laughed on his way out.

There was another letter in his box by the time Mac shuffled back. “Looks like a bill,” he muttered, turning the key. “That’s about all it is these days, calendars and bills and lapses.”

Tearing off the end, he puffed a quick breath into the edge and squinted into the envelope.

“Eh? What’s this?” he said. He jerked out a single page of coarse yellow notebook paper and unfolded it by the window light. “Oh no,” he groaned softly.

“Not a bill?” I said.

Mac read the letter with his lips. I could only see that it was handwritten, with rude lettering, and brief. When he finished, his hand dropped slowly to his side. He looked confused, like someone had asked a simple question that he couldn’t quite answer. He read it again.

“Accident claim?” I asked.

“Huh?”

“That an accident claim?” I repeated.

“Oh, no, no-—just a fellow I knew over in Bonner Corners a while back, went to school together. His little girl died.”

Mac carefully folded the letter and put it back in the envelope, then gently placed it in his inside coat pocket. For a long time he just looked at the floor. Then he walked over to the counter and deliberately ground out his cigar in an ashtray, then returned and pulled his key from the rental box door and pushed it hard shut.

“I can’t wait on these guys forever,” he said loudly. “I got a business to run. Spend half the day down here as it is.”

Mac pushed through the outer door and held it open as another man brushed by. “Hey there, Freddie!” he shouted. “What’s new?”