Dear Kevin: The mail bag I was in landed in New York, was brought to the main post office on 33rd Street, and with the rest of the bags I came in on the train with, left in a room for two days. Then I got the brainstorm to feel inside the other packages in my bag. If something sharp was in one of them, I’d use it to cut my way out. Someone, I discovered, was sending a jackknife through the mail. I hope the person expecting the knife didn’t know he was getting one, because that’s the something sharp I used to slice open my bag. I climbed out and said to the 200 or so other bags piled on top of one another with my bag being a few from the top, “Hey? Any package in one of the bags want to be let out?” “I kind of like it in here,” a voice said from one of the bottom bags. “I don’t,” another voice said from the same bag. “You two want to be let out or not?” I said. “No.” “Yes.” “Look,” the first voice said to the other. “I promise no more arguing. And that I’ll stop smoking in here and won’t hog most of the room when we sleep. And lastly, that I won’t fool around with any other package in the bag but you.” “Okay then,” the second voice said. “We stay.” Well, I didn’t want to hang around and get involved in any more arguments between two packages in a bag and maybe get caught by a post-office worker. And then stored away in the Address Unknown section here till I was either claimed by the person who mailed me or auctioned off as a package of books in the post office’s annual sale of unclaimed mail. So I climbed down the pile to the grunts and groans of the bags I was stepping on, and slipped past the working part of the post office into the customer’s section. Then to avoid any suspicion that I was a package escaping from the post office, I quickly pretended to be a customer on the stamp line. This was much easier to pretend to be, as I look more like a stamp customer than a package of books. Though as a package of books I didn’t need to have money on me, which is probably why I wasn’t recognized as a person by so many postal workers for the past few days. While on line I needed money for whatever it is a person pretending to be a stamp customer might have to buy. “Next,” the clerk said behind the stamp counter. “Um, let’s see,” I said. “I’d like one of something. Two of another thing. Three of anything else I might want. And maybe one more thing besides.” “Will you hurry it up?” a customer said behind me. “There
“Cancel that order,” I told the clerk. “Instead I’ll have three more of some other thing. Two less of a few more things. Definitely one each of anything I haven’t asked for yet. And if it’s no bother, nothing else I forgot besides.” “I’m afraid they’re all out of everything you want to buy today,” the customer behind me said. “Next,” she shouted into my ear and shoved me off the line. “I’d like one nine cent stamp with my face on it,” the clerk said to her, “and three picture postcards.” “We only sell the cards plain,” she said to him. “Not even with butter on them? A little mayonnaise? Because I hate to have my cards dry.” She reached through his stamp window, spilled his coffee cup on the postcards, took some change he had in front of him for his postage money and said “Next.” “I’d like the same thing the clerk just ordered,” the customer behind the woman said to her, “but with less cream on my cards.” I mailed the last letter I wrote you and left the building. A parade was passing in front of the post office when I got outside. I’d never been in a parade, so didn’t know where they all ended once they were through. Maybe all the parades I’d seen in the past ended in Palo Alto. Or if they only marched across the country and ended in San Francisco, then from there I might be able to join a new parade marching through Palo Alto on its way to New York. But the only way to find out where they all ended was to join one. I leaped over the police barricade and got behind a high-school band. Because I had no instrument, I opened my typewriter case and typed on the keys with one hand. We marched to Fifth Avenue. Up to 81st Street. Through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and out its back entrance into Central Park. Then through the park to 110th Street. Right to Madison. Down Madison to 42nd Street and over to the main branch of the public library, which we marched around three times before the parade ended and the band and all the marchers packed their instruments and guns and flags and floats and started home.
“Good parade,” a drum majorette said. “And you type very well. What schools you go to for it?”
“None. I type by ear.”
“Pity. Because I’m sure if you had taken lessons for a few years, you’d be typing on a concert stage by now. Well, see you in the next parade,” and she threw in the air the box her baton was in, caught it behind her back, twirled it under her legs, and bouncing the box from one knee to the other, high-stepped away. I sat on the library steps and thought that I had used up all the ways to get to Palo Alto that I knew of. But as long as I was in front of one of the world’s largest book collections, I should go inside and see if they have a travel book on how to get to Palo Alto. The man at the library’s information booth told me to go to the Palo Alto room to find what I was looking for. In the Palo Alto room I asked the librarian if she had a book dealing with every possible way to get to Palo Alto. “But you are in Palo Alto,” she said, holding a handkerchief over her nose because of what she feared was the heavy smog drifting up from Southern California and settling over Palo Alto today. “I mean the city of Palo Alto, not the room.” “Excuse me. I’ve been around all these Palo Alto books so long that I feel I’m living there sometimes. But why go to Palo Alto when you can learn much more about it from reading here?” “I’ve a good friend there I want to see. Kevin Wafer.” “Kevin, Kevin. No, I don’t know him personally. But I’ll get you his book and save you the cost and time of a trip there. We keep all our biographies up-to-date. If he’s not too old, he won’t take you long to read. What street is he on?” “Leary. But I want to see him, not read about him.” “Nonsense. Now sit down. Make yourself at home. Like me to build a fire? And don’t split on me, man, and I’ll bring you Kevin’s groovy book and a sweet roll and sody pop. I mean, don’t leave, sir, and I’ll bring his nice book and a danish pastry and bottle of soda.” She climbed the bookshelf ladder and rolled along on it till she came to the shelf marked Leary Street. She counted off the first letters of people’s last names on the shelf till she got to W, then began reading their names.
“Wackamaw… Wackaslaw… Wacky… Wackydup… Waddle… Waddles… Wafawin… Wafelost… Wafer. Here it is.” She pulled a book out and brought it over. It had your name on the cover and a recent photo of you on the first page. Inside the book were lots of facts about your life. All the facts, in fact. Starting with the first facts of where and when you were born and who was under the football-stadium stands when it happened and what each member of both football teams said when they jogged out of the dressing room to the field and saw you. And then all the places you’ve lived in or traveled to after that. Your schools, teachers, friends, classmates, toys you’ve owned and clothes you’ve worn and foods you’ve liked or disliked or once liked and then didn’t like and now like again. Even your favorite color and ice-cream flavor and lucky number and all the dreams and nightmares you woke up remembering and imaginings and wishes you went to sleep with or dozed off in class thinking about. Even a list of all the funny and intelligent things you said. And another list with side-by-side snapshots of all the persons and animals you met and drawings and constructions you made and birthday cakes you had and holiday trees you helped decorate. And even a tiny mention of me when for a while I lived with you and your mom and dog till about a year ago. “You keep searching through that,” she said, “while I hunt up your ways to get to Palo Alto book.” Other than for most of your dreams and wishes and things, your book didn’t tell me much about you I didn’t already know. Except that your first words were “Doctor, you look exquisite tonight,” while I thought they were “Will you stop twiddling around with my nose, you clumsy oaf.” And that nobody thought you old enough to walk when you kissed your dog goodbye at the door, crawled after the bus at the corner, and lifted yourself up and stepped to the rear of the bus as the driver had ordered.