His Offering  by Virginia Walker                                                                 

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           “God damn it,” Robert swore under his breath. Over twenty years on his mail route, and he still overshot Hewitt’s box.

           In the front yard, as if Mrs. Hewitt heard the Lord’s name taken in vain, she turned from the fiberglass Jesus nestled in a plastic manger.

            
            Robert pushed the gear into park and grabbed her bundle of mail. Holding up a pale, trembling finger, she signaled for him to wait as she mounted the concrete steps of the modest ranch and disappeared inside.

           “Christ,” he grumbled. Dozens of bins needed to be delivered today and now this. He let out a sigh and walked toward the life-size nativity set, his sneakers sinking into the wet ground. It was only the day after Thanksgiving. The crab grass was still green from recent rain, and dead leaves had just begun falling.

           Up close, the baby Jesus’ peach skin was flaking, and fuzzy mold spread along the creases in Mary’s robe. Robert remembered when this set was new. A middle-aged Mrs. Hewitt had been giddy to recreate the blessed event next to her wishing well lawn ornament.

            
            Now in her seventies, Mrs. Hewitt pushed open the storm door, balancing a tinfoil wrapped plate.  

            
            “Let me help you,” Robert jogged to the door, reached for the plate, and took her parchment hand.

            
            “You’re a good man. Thank you.” She smoothed her faded house coat. “That’s my homemade apple pie.” When she smiled, her eyes were moist marbles barely visible in folds of skin.

            
            “Thanks, Mrs. Hewitt. Twenty-five years I’ve been on this route, and nothing makes me happier than your holiday pies.” This was a lie. For twenty-five years, Robert had thrown each pie in the trash. Like most mail carriers, he refused to eat home–baked goods from the folks on his route. For safety reasons, of course.

            
            “If only they were as gracious as you.” Mrs. Hewitt’s hands trembled, and her eyes watered. She was referring to her children, her grandchildren, her late husband, the mailman who had the route before Robert. No one had ever lived up to her standards, and her standards were His standards - as best as she could interpret them from His Book. Robert handed her the bundle of mail.

            
            “Well, thanks again.” He balanced the pie in his hand and turned to leave.

            
            “Wait a minute!” Mrs. Hewitt croaked, and he nearly tripped over the orange extension cord snaking from the hollow characters.

            
            “Yes, Ma’am?”

            
            “Take this back! I won’t let her wanton ways soil my home.” Mrs. Hewitt waved an envelope above her steel gray curls.

            
            “What’s wrong?”

            
            “My granddaughter. She wants my money; I’m sure. She went off and married some terrorist, you know. The next state over they’re crashing planes into buildings, then she marries one of them. Take this. I won’t have it in my house.” She stood next to a chipped wise man, his beard splattered with bird droppings, and his face frozen in a smile as he knelt with his offering.

            
            “Ma’am, I have to deliver the mail.”

            
            “Return it to sender, back to Hell - where it belongs,” she said and spat into the lawn. There was barely enough saliva to conquer any distance, and most of the spit formed a frothy dribble down her chin.

            
            “Yes, Ma’am.” Robert took the letter from her hand.  “See you tomorrow, Mrs. Hewitt.”

           She turned to fuss with the nativity scene, wrapping her arms around a plastic Joseph almost as tall as she was. Joseph’s head rested stiffly above her shoulder, his eyes painted wide with wonder as she dragged it behind the manger. A fall breeze lifted her house coat, revealing legs marred with knotty purple veins. Back inside the mail truck, it appeared to Robert as if she and the Joseph doll were dancing across the splotchy lawn.   

           While driving, he studied the rejected envelope, only half watching the road. The handwriting was crisp, young, and feminine – much like he imagined Christy’s lettering would appear. That’s all it took. His daughter was resurrected in his mind again. He dug into his pocket for his cell phone.  

           One saved message. Almost four months old. Of course, the phone had rung since then, but it was only the manager at the post office, asking him to cover another route, because, hell, why not? It was a running joke at the warehouse. Good ol’ Robby would cover for anyone because he didn’t have any where else to be. They even nicknamed him –Stand-in Man.  

           “Yo Stand-in Man! My baby boy’s graduatin’ on Saturday. Could you take on Route 7?”

           “Robert, Mr. Stand-in Man! Clemens is hung-over again. Add the Tavistock subdivision.”

           Six days a week, from sun up to sun down, he shoved mail into empty boxes and slapped down red flags. After the last stint in the hospital, the crew stopped calling him Stand-in Man. But they still had him cover routes. Even today, he had taken Eddie’s run in the Belmont neighborhood.

           A fluorescent glow blinked from the cell phone screen. Listen to messages.

           “Daddy, it’s a boy. Seven pounds and six ounces. He’s beautiful. We named him Connor. Please. Just call me.” Christy’s voice cracked in the recording. She no longer sounded like the teenager who used to leave angry messages when it was his weekend to visit.

           Only four years ago he routinely deleted her bi-monthly tirades. “Don’t pick me up. I hate you!”

           He always showed up at the house anyway, the house that he had bought because Christy’s mother loved the white dormer windows. He rang the doorbell, a stranger at his own home, his key relinquished two years earlier to the lawyer.

           Christy opened the front door. Her dark hair masked half her face, and an assortment of silver earrings traveled up the perimeter of her ear. She looked just like her mother, even behind the thick black make-up choking her eyes.

           “I’m not going with you. I have a life too!” She slammed the red door in his face. He had painted that door on a Sunday afternoon nearly a decade ago. Christy, not even in school yet, swung in the weeping willow’s tire swing. Her legs dangled from the black hole, too short to reach the ground.

           “Push me,” she cried.

           “I can’t,” he answered, slabbing thick red paint over the door panels.

           “Please, Daddy!”

           “Not now,” he yelled, too agitated for a Sunday afternoon.

           She didn’t ask again.

           Her mother called him about the pregnancy, four years after Christy had slammed that red door in his face.

           “She’s run off. Some loser bartender. They’re shacking up in his parents’ basement and now she says she’s not going to college. Pregnant at nineteen. Jesus Christ! You need to do something!” Her voice pierced the phone line. It reminded him of when they were married. Her blaming words. Her shrieking voice. And yet, even as she rattled on, he missed her.

           So Robert did something. A mix of sleeping pills and the left-over Vicodin from his knee surgery, washed down with Miller Lite. After they released him from the hospital, his ex-wife didn’t call anymore.

           Nobody called.

           Then at 1:10 in the morning on a Thursday night a message from Christy – a child was born. He had felt nothing. Not a note of pride to be a grandfather or a tear of shame for his lost daughter. The doctors had warned that the meds could be numbing. He stopped taking them.

           Traveling his route, making deliveries every few miles to the scarce mailboxes on the rural road, he thought of Connor. Having never seen him, he imagined the fiberglass baby Jesus that Mrs. Hewitt had propped in her yard. The baby glowed in his mind. What could he offer this child?

           His life stretched before him like the desolate road framed by tree skeletons. His failed marriage. His disgraceful lack of fathering. His empty apartment, with not even one family photo. His endless mail route, delivering life to everyone but himself.

           Now Christy’s message, listened to so many times that he knew at which moment there was a cough in the background, danced in his head with Mrs. Hewitt’s rejected envelope.

           “What the hell!” he said aloud and grabbed the envelope off the dashboard. Yet his calloused finger shook as it jerked the seal, tearing the letter open – a federal offense. He unfolded the note, written in careful script on lined paper, and propped it against the steering wheel.

           “But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him.
           His salvation extends to the children’s children.” 
           Psalm 103:17
           
           It’s not too late!

           Robert set the letter down on the passenger seat and swiped at the tears on his cheeks. In profile, against the pink glow of the setting sun, one after another, the telephone poles emerged from the horizon. How had he driven along this same route everyday and not seen this succession of crosses? It became clear, instantaneously, what he could offer his child’s child. The only salvation he had in this life – his money.

           Of course, after the divorce, that short stint of horse betting, and still paying the mortgage on the house, plus his apartment rent, he was broke. But later, he would be worth $200,000, according to the government sponsored life insurance policy with the post office.

           He listened to the message again. Her melodic voice, Connor, the baby, her request – call me. It wasn’t too late! This time he would answer. He would do it right.

           He let his foot push against the accelerator. The needle twitched up to seventy and the engine roared in protest. The crosses rolled forward from the side of the road, and he picked one. The one with the black mailbox nailed to it.

           He veered the steering wheel to the right and pressed his sneaker firmly to the metal floor.

***
           
           Mrs. Hewitt saw the white mail truck. She shuffled into her slippers and opened the door, but kept the storm door closed. Through the ice crystals on the glass, she watched the young mailman walk up the pathway.

           “Watch the wire,” she yelled, motioning to the extension cord that cut across her walkway and plugged into a splitter illuminating the nativity scene’s donkey. When the mailman reached the stoop, she opened the door just enough to reach out for her envelopes, careful not to touch the man’s hand, even though it was gloved.

           “Have a good day,” he said, his back already facing her as he walked away.  

           “Hold on now,” she called, her voice a ghost in the winter air.

           “Yes?” The new mailman was impatient, and his official mail truck chugged smoky exhaust.

           “Where’s Robert? It’s been almost four weeks now, and he hasn’t been by. He delivered my mail for twenty-five years.”

           “Oh, Robert? It’s a sin. He had an awful car accident. Drove straight into a telephone pole.”

           “Oh my!” Mrs. Hewitt choked on the emotion in her throat. Her hands fluttered to her withered mouth. “Is he … is he …”

           “Oh yes, he made it. He’s alive.”

           She patted her heart in relief.

           “The worst part is that crash paralyzed him from the neck down. Paraplegic, they call it. I hear his daughter will be taking care of him. She’s still a kid herself, with a baby, and now her father to care for too.” The young mailman shook his head. “Either way, I still gotta deliver this mail. Happy Holidays!” He hurried back towards the truck.

           “Yes, and may He guide you,” Mrs. Hewitt said, but her voice didn’t carry any further than the plastic nativity scene in the yard.