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silver-plated letter opener up to catch the light. This had been going on from the time Larry was five years old, ever since he could first remember being able to grasp the concept of letter . Just as some boys watched their own fathers cut into the silver bellies of freshly caught trout, Larry had watched his father make incisions in the bellies of envelopes, slicing them open with a quick movement of the wrist. He was twelve years old when he knew for certain that he did not want the damn letter-opening thing. And he was eighteen when he told his father outright that he didn’t want to be a goddamned postman. He was ready for college, and older, horny women, and Playboys all over the coffee table any time of the night or day without fear of retribution. “Maybe another time, another place,” he had gone on apologetically, trying to ignore the fact that his father’s face was growing like a long, tanned squash, a sad vegetable elongating, searching out a place for the sadness to take root. Maybe in the old days of postal service Larry would’ve taken up the call. Those were the days of Pony Express riders, when that dangerous route from St. Joseph to Sacramento was waiting to be ridden, to be broken in. Larry had read about it in history class. Maybe then, if he’d had a fast horse, a little excitement, maybe then he would have saddled up, grabbed the mailbag, and turned his collar up against those outlaws and bandits and dangerous holes in the black road ahead. In those days, mailmen were heroes. Those Pony Express riders must have gotten all the best, loose women, like modern rock stars and athletes. Trembling virgins probably waited on the edges of towns to lift their dresses at the first sound of hoofbeats. And while it would make sense that a good-looking, modern-day mailman would have all the lonely, bored housewives to himself, what small-town, teenaged boy would want to bed down the mothers of his best friends? “I’m sorry, Dad, but the answer is no,” Larry had said. A month later, he was enrolled at the University of Maine.
    By the time things settled down, Larry Munroe had a BA in history and was teaching at his old high school. And he might have persevered, too, might have made it to the old gold watch and a retirement plan, had he not met Katherine Grigsby. May his ex-wife rot in hell for turning him, in his later years—a time when the gray was just coming to his thinning sideburns enough that it might appear to some student that Mr. Munroe actually knew what he was talking about—into a fucking mailman! But that’s what had happened after he lost his teaching job at the only high school in town, the problem being that little fistfight in the classroom. He had then put on a decent suit and gone out on one job interview after another, holding in his hand the résumé that spoke of a man aged forty-three with no other visible experience beyond teaching history. After four weeks of what might be considered self-inflicted humiliation, Larry had to face facts. The only establishment sincerely interested in hiring a middle-aged ex-schoolteacher was the Bixley Post Office, where his own father presided over the business of deliveries, stamps, money orders, dog bites, customer complaints, and other sundries. They had lost a good postman when Henry Munroe’s heart exploded in his chest, so now the Bixley Post Office and Lawrence Simon Munroe III had thrown open those ancestral doors to Lawrence Simon Munroe IV. May Katherine Grigsby rot in Hades.
    There were facts to be faced, and Larry faced them. He was struggling to keep up with his child support payments. He was struggling to pay rent on a one-bedroom apartment now that the house had been sold. He was no match for the twentysomething young men who were fresh out of college and snapping up all the good jobs. What choice did he have but to take up the leather gauntlet of his forefathers? What choice did he have