When peers and postal customers saw Tommy Shaw coming, they knew they were witnessing something special. He was legendary for the efficiency and precise street sequence with which he sorted and dropped mail into letter boxes. He carried two heavy satchels, strapped across his shoulders, bandolier style. He marched for hours, down streets, up hills, across front yards, up and down concrete stairs, and on and off porches, to the quick time cadence of an honor guard. He handled the mail like a drum major’s mace.

 

They called him Mailman Tommy.

 

What they didn’t know was that twenty months before reaching retirement eligibility, Tommy’s job was threatened. He was at serious risk of being fired and the reasons were confoundingly foolish: He had had three fender benders in one year. Each involved minor property damage, no one got hurt. But three accidents were two too many under postal regulations. For this, Tommy had been suspended from driving a mail truck. That wasn’t his only problem. Tommy had trouble with what they called "the portable," a wireless scanner and signature capture machine. The device assigned to him generated so many error messages Tommy had been locked out of processing insured, registered, certified, and other “accountable” mail in the field. 

 

All of this added up to Tommy’s being reclassified as a probationary letter carrier. It would lead to termination unless Tommy took and passed a “retention” exam. In postal corporate parlance, though, retention was a code word for “separation.”  The test algorithms and contrivances of grading metrics produced what had come to be known as Postal Service Personnel Rule No. 1: The Employee Loses. 

 

But first Tommy had to sit through a “counseling” session with a junior member of the retention consultant team two weeks before the test. He was accompanied by his union representative. The meeting was held in a small, windowless room at the back of the Algonquin Postal Annex. A once bustling sorting facility, the Algonquin had quit postal processing a year earlier. This was on recommendation of a different set of consultants. The building was all but empty. Three cars stood on the black asphalt lot. The consultant’s name was Brad. The session lasted two minutes:

 

Brad:     Thanks for coming in, Mr. Shaw. I’m sorry to say there doesn’t appear to be much for us to talk about. 

Tommy:  That’s up to you.

Brad:      I just want to make sure you understand that if you can’t safely drive a truck, you can’t deliver mail. Right?

Tommy:   Did you check the dates of the collisions and the prevailing weather and road conditions where they occurred? Did you notice it was winter, that snow had fallen and crews were out delivering mail?  Did you see where I was not cited for a traffic violation in any of the incidents and the other drivers in two of three had been cited? Have you checked my driving record for the preceding 30 years? Have you ever delivered mail?

Brad:     You seem to have difficulty with digital technology. These appliances have been around for a while, and everybody has received a lot of training, including the new AI module, which makes it fool proof. What’s the problem?

Tommy:   The portables perform poorly. When they don’t work, I follow the rules. I have turn in handwritten, hard copy reports documenting each delivery and every hand-held failure, more than 100 error and compliance reports over the past 12 months. Did you get those?

 

Brad the consultant swiped through a few pages on his tablet. He looked up at Tommy and smiled: “Good luck on your test. We hope everything works out for the best.”  ​

​*

​The test day arrived. The rules were simple. Tommy was expected to appear at the Postal Learning Center on Kasen Pike by 7:30 a.m. Testing would officially begin at 7:45. The details of the test service area had been kept secret. They would be revealed to him precisely at 7:45. Ready or not, the clock would start to run. Tommy would have ninety minutes to pour over a service map and formulate a delivery route, while also sorting and packing the day’s letters, large envelopes, magazines, newsletters, and other flats. 

 

Tommy would not be tested on parcel delivery. He wished he were. He could juggle packages better and longer and more spectacularly than any seal could keep a beach ball aloft. By 9:15, Tommy would have to set his two filled satchels onto the passenger seat. He would have loaded reinforced plastic postal trays set up with sorted mail, stacked high, into the back of a standard, long life U.S. Postal Service vehicle. The nearest boundary of the test territory was a 15-minute drive from the Learning Center. There, Tommy would make the choice most strategically crucial to timely completing his appointed rounds: Where to park his truck. 

 

The parking question was a false constraint the postal service had imposed on Tommy as part of this test. Letter carriers on a regular route are free to park and move their vehicles as, when, and where they see fit. They park and move the truck according to delivery progress, advancing the truck as they complete delivery, usually two blocks at a time. 

 

Because Tommy’s disciplinary action arose from his driving record, the subsequent retention exam should have tested driving safety. But, according to the twisted logic of postal consultants, Tommy couldn’t be tested on driving safety, because he couldn't be trusted to drive safely, his driving privileges having been suspended. But in yet another twist, he received the one time grace of a limited postal driving permit which allowed him to drive the truck but only from the learning center to the test area and then park the vehicle, after which he would have to leave the vehicle in place.

 

Tommy would need and still could have access to the truck. But the vehicle would have to stay put. It could not be moved. Tommy thus was being tested on his “route sense.” The purpose of such a test was to see if, in real time, the letter carrier unaided by technology could discern the ideal center of a service area and position a stationary mail truck so it could serve as the place to which a letter carrier on foot readily could return and, in due course, replenish the mail bags, as needed until her rounds were complete.

*

The service area assigned to Tommy and on which he was being tested consisted of 265 closely adjacent, mostly one-story, single-family brick bungalows all built in the late 1920s. Tommy had four hours – half a shift – to get the mail delivered. From a bird’s eye vantage, completing the route in the time allotted would be ambitious for a journeyman carrier but manageable for an experienced hand such as Tommy – a piece of cake, really. The map, however, contained a curious line of cul-de-sacs and dead ends. They marked a break in the rights-of-way cutting across the long center of the oblong service area. The paper map supplied by the postal service provided no explanation. Surely it could be assumed that, whatever was the topographic condition, a letter carrier could work around it via cut throughs past the closed streets and across side yards on customer properties.

 

Brad the consultant knew from his real birds' eye view what bisected the neighborhood and what the map failed to reveal: a deep creek bed and open concrete storm water culvert, flanked by a steep embankment with rock outcropping. It was a rough ravine that ran for more than a mile and there was no obvious place to cross on foot. That meant there was no logical place to position a mail truck that would permit a letter carrier access from both sides of the ravine. The only apparent way to traverse the poorly mapped, seemingly impassable precipice was by circumnavigation – sidewinding on city streets that ran parallel to the creek until you reached a distant trestle. There were two such crossings. Each was situated outside the service area, and resorting to either would add at least an hour to an otherwise efficient route. 

 

If Brad-the-consultant’s wish for everything to “work out for the best” meant he hoped Tommy would end up getting screwed by a test, then everything seemed set to work out for the best.

*​​

From his first glimpse of the service map, that morning, Tommy understood the challenge posed by the ravine. At the same time he silently realized through the chill of unexpected memory the presence of angels. 

​

He parked the mail truck in front of 4166 Ash Ave. As a young boy, and over little more than a year starting the summer  before 1st grade, Tommy had lived on the 4100 block of Ash, almost in the geographic dead center of the test area. These were the first streets and pedestrian hazards he ever navigated in life without holding an adult’s hand. Four doors down and across the street from where Tommy, his folks and little sister had lived, stood 4166 Ash. It was a two-family house. His boyhood friend, Antoine Podesta, who went by the nickname “Link,” lived in the downstairs apartment. 

​

Tommy recalled a gangway running to the north of Link Podesta’s house. It led to an alley and then down a path running to the creek bed, where there stood a narrow, low arched stone footbridge that spanned the ravine and creek that ran through it. 

​

Tommy knew the bridge had been built to last. His late Uncle Mack, his mother’s younger brother, had been a train buff. On one visit to the Ash Street Apartment, Tommy showed his uncle the creek bed around which he and his friends played. Uncle Mack explained that the little arched bridge seemingly in the middle of nowhere was an artifact from the old Port De Lys Pacific Railroad. It had been built by the railroad to ensure track inspectors and engineers could reach the right of way, long since abandoned.

​

Tommy was amazed at how little had changed since he last walked the alleys and shortcut a lifetime ago. The backyards through which he passed still had the feel of enchanted enclaves. He imagined the sounds of small children playing behind the homes, their older siblings at school. He recalled the backyard sight of linens and clothing hanging on lines between iron poles or one of those umbrella shaped spinning drying racks.

​

The low bridge above the creek bed stood largely intact, a few stones missing but otherwise a mason’s pride. Tommy pointed with surprise at the boulder protruding from the embankment a little downstream from the bridge, on which he recalled he and his friends having climbed. It did not seem as large as he had remembered it. 

​

The creek bed was dry but dappled by morning sunlight shining through branches which in turn were dropping orange and yellow leaves. After crossing the bridge, Tommy scooted along a path up a modest grade before stepping foot on the sidewalk. He picked up the pace and headed toward the most distant outer boundary of the test area. His plan was to begin deliveries there, and then work backward toward the footbridge, steadily shortening the distance to the truck for resupply. Tommy imagined his progress by picturing a plat map of the neighborhood with street markings, property boundaries and the footprints of each of the homes. With each mail drop, an imaginary check mark would appear on the house.

 

Check … Check … Check.

​

Tommy was making his usual good time and as he moved along any route, old or new, he felt the payoff for carefully selecting his daily dress – always with regulation uniform and gear, preferring the pith helmet to the baseball cap, and above all else dressing ideally for weather conditions, employing the Goldilocks standard of not too hot, not too cold, just right. Today, it being a sunny but still early autumn day, he wore his gray woolen shorts and tall socks and a zip up cardigan vest with postal service sonic eagle markings over a short-sleeved shirt. He always kept a poncho in one of his bags just in case.

​​

Tommy credited his efficiency as a letter carrier to the fluid motion he had developed for retrieving the next address’s mail from his bag. His reach for the next packet would start just as he turned from the preceding mailbox or slot. Still on the move, he would pull the packet and hold it chest high, in front of his face at arm’s length. With his free hand he would flip through it, item by item, confirming with peripheral vision, while watching his step, the presence of a correct and consistent address and addressee.

​​

Tommy respected the privacy of his customers. Doing so was a priority on par with the faithful and timely delivery of mail, a pillar of professionalism. He recalled the “inviolability” of mail being a part of the text of what, when he was a young letter carrier, had been called the mailman’s creed. For letter carriers no less than postal clerks, this meant no snooping. No snooping around the customer’s house and no snooping around their mail beyond looking for what was necessary to confirm an article was being delivered to the right customer at the right address. Tommy’s career had been characterized by a satisfying routine of connection with customers. Letter carriers’ territorial assignment typically lasted between five and ten years. The letter carrier was like the priest who gets to know a parish and its people as pastor for the better part of a decade before being reassigned and moving on. 

​​

Tommy was a comforting presence to his postal customers because of the confidence he projected on his route, especially his calm and reliability. The connection had a personal element because Tommy had a gift for remembering names. When customers along his route headed out in the morning to commute to work or bring children to school or walk the dog, Tommy would summon their family name without hesitation: “Good morning, Mr. or Ms. So-and-So. Good morning,” he would say.

​​

Everyone liked hearing neighbors addressed by their family names, a respectful, old-fashioned formality, but also enjoyed knowing Tommy’s name, his first name, in any case, which was reinforced each year by the holiday card Tommy would drop off, signed “Mailman Tommy.” 

 

Tommy’s ritual, while on the move, while flipping through and confirming, house to house, the addresses on each item of each packet of mail, included a nearly indelible recall of postal customers’ names and connection to a particular address. His process was meditative, an impressionistic manipulation that created in Tommy an emotional, albeit subconscious, reaction to his customers’ well-being. Most customers, for example, received a variable but ordinary mix of advertising (junk and catalogue), institutional (bank statements and utility bills) and personal mail (handwritten addressee and return addresses). This registered with Tommy as a positive indication of stability. But Tommy would project as part of the rhythm of his work something like prayer for some customers. He worried about them. Regular delivery of meager packets of few items suggested isolation. Items, by their officiousness (registered mail, “second notice” and such), were evidence of personal difficulties or vulnerability to scams.

​

Today, Tommy did not know the customers in the test area, so he focused on the cadence of his step, the emptying and lightening and reloading of his satchels, the wending up and down the streets and the proximity to the mail truck which, thanks be to angels, turned out to be at hand each time he needed to replenish his satchels.​

* ​

Tommy had been told to wait for an inspector after he completed the test route. They would meet up where the truck was parked. Tommy glanced at his watch as he headed down the final block. He estimated he would arrive at the truck a full forty minutes ahead of the deadline.

​

But there, off the curb, on the loose but not quite in the path of traffic, stood a portly but smallish-sized dog, short snooted, browned eyed, panting and looking mildly confused, as dogs of a certain age sometimes do, his muzzle gray and short tan coat matted and soiled. Tommy found him wearing a collar with a tag, on which “Oscar” was engraved on one side and “1288 Michigan Ave” on the other. Tommy looped his belt as a leash through Oscar’s collar and the two stepped back onto the sidewalk.

 

Tommy consulted his paper service map. Michigan Avenue ran parallel to Brancusi Boulevard, the northern boundary of the test area, 12 blocks outside of it. Tommy was certain his satchels contained GPS tracking devices. He believed the consultant could and would generate reports detailing precisely where and when Tommy had been and for how long.  

 

Tommy tucked Oscar, with his round belly, under his arm and headed towards home when, to his surprise, he saw an old green relay mailbox at the next intersection. Tommy would have bet there weren’t a dozen of these relics left in the city. Tommy also was probably one of an even smaller number of letter carriers who kept on his ring, mostly as a nostalgic keepsake, an old postal master key. Sure enough, it opened the box. He set Oscar down while he tossed and locked his satchels in the box. He scooped Oscar up and double timed it toward the twelve hundred block of Michigan.

​

An elderly woman answered the door.  Oscar, she said, had been missing since the previous afternoon. She thanked Tommy and apologized to Oscar for leaving the gate to the side yard unlatched. She turned away to wipe her tears, and to tell Oscar how worried she had been. She thanked Tommy again and pulled the door closed.

​*​

Tommy sat on the rear bumper of his truck, his eyes closed and his face warming in the sun, as the postal inspector arrived. A church bell began ringing and kept ringing as the inspector looked the truck over.

​

Tommy never saw Brad the consultant or Oscar the dog again. He never heard whether he had passed or failed the test. He never received feedback of any kind. No one asked him to explain the twenty-eight minutes during which his mail bags appeared to not have moved. 

​

Tommy Shaw never received a termination notice. He continued to deliver mail. For the rest of his days as a mailman he was left alone to do what he knew how to do.