Read Online Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver - Free Book Online

the door with it. One of the little girls let me in and ran off to fetch her mama. The place was cluttered with odds and ends of old furniture and with clothing tossed just anywhere. But it wasn’t what you’d call dirty. Not tidy maybe, but not dirty either. An old couch and chair stood along one wall in the living room. Under the window was a bookcase made out of bricks and boards, crammed full of little paperback books. In the corner there was a stack of paintings with their faces turned away, and to one side another painting stood on an easel covered over with a sheet.
    I shifted my mail pouch and stood my ground, but starting to wish I’d paid the difference myself. I eyed the easel as I waited, about to sidle over and raise the sheet when I heard steps.
    “What can I do for you?” she said, appearing in the hallway and not at all friendly.
    I touched the brim of my cap and said, “A letter here with postage due, if you don’t mind-”
    “Let me see. Who’s it from? Why it’s from Jer! That kook. Sending us a letter without a stamp. Lee!” she called out. “Here’s a letter from Jerry.” Marston came in, but he didn’t look too happy. I leaned on first one leg, then the other, waiting.
    “I’ll pay it,” she said, “seeing as it’s from old Jerry. Here. Now goodbye.”
    Things went on in this fashion—which is to say no fashion at all. I won’t say the people hereabouts got used to them—they weren’t the sort you’d ever really get used to. But after a bit no one seemed to pay them much mind any more. People might stare at his beard if they met him pushing the grocery cart in Safeway, but that’s about all. You didn’t hear any more stories.
    Then one day they disappeared. In two different directions. I found out later she’d taken off the week before with somebody—a man—and that after a few days he’d taken the kids to his mother’s over to Redding. For six days running, from one Thursday to the following Wednesday, their mail stayed in the box. The shades were all pulled and nobody knew for certain whether or not they’d lit out for good. But that Wednesday I noticed the Ford parked in the yard again, all the shades still down but the mail gone.
    Beginning the next day he was out there at the box every day waiting for me to hand over the mail, or else he was sitting on the porch steps smoking a cigarette, waiting, it was plain to see. When he saw me coming, he’d stand up, brush the seat of his trousers, and walk over by the box. If it happened that I had any mail for him, I’d see him start scanning the return addresses even before I could get it handed over.
    We seldom exchanged a word, just nodded at each other if our eyes happened to meet, which wasn’t often. He was suffering, though—anybody could see that—and I wanted to help the boy somehow, if I could. But I didn’t know what to say exactly.
    It was one morning a week or so after his return that I saw him walking up and down in front of the box with his hands in his back pockets, and I made up my mind to say something. What, I didn’t know yet, but I was going to say something, sure. His back was to me as I came up the walk. When I got to him, he suddenly turned on me and there was such a look on his face it froze the words in my mouth. I stopped in my tracks with his article of mail. He took a couple of steps toward me and I handed it over without a peep. He stared at it as if dumbfounded.
    “Occupant,” he said.
    It was a circular from L.A. advertising a hospital-insurance plan. I’d dropped off at least seventy-five that morning. He folded it in two and went back to the house.
    Next day he was out there same as always. He had his old look to his face, seemed more in control of himself than the day before. This time I had a hunch I had what it was he’d been waiting for. I’d looked at it down at the station that morning when I was arranging the mail into packets. It was a plain white envelope addressed in a