Brick Mailbox Quotes

Three years in London had not changed Richard, although it had changed the way he perceived the city. Richard had originally imagined London as a gray city, even a black city, from pictures he had seen, and he was surprised to find it filled with color. It was a city of red brick and white stone, red buses and large black taxis, bright red mailboxes and green grassy parks and cemeteries. It was a city in which the very old and the awkwardly new jostled each other, not uncomfortably, but without respect; a city of shops and offices and restaurants and homes, of parks and churches, of ignored monuments and remarkably unpalatial palaces; a city of hundreds of districts with strange names - Crouch End, Chalk Farm, Earl's Court, Marble Arch - and oddly distinct identities; a noisy, dirty, cheerful, troubled city, which fed on tourists, needed them as it despised them, in which the average speed of transportation through the city had not increased in three hundred years, following five hundred years of fitful road-widening and unskillful compromises between the needs of traffic, whether horse-drawn, or, more recently, motorized, and the need of pedestrians; a city inhabited by and teeming with people of every color and manner and kind.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t think Jesus’ words were meant to be tied to a brick and chunked through your neighbor’s window at midnight. Anytime you drop a picture of Christ in the mailbox while muttering a self-righteous “This’ll teach ’em,” something has gone terribly wrong.

But the actual mail was delivered to the little brick post office on the main drag and distributed to the keyed, ornate boxes inside. My family had one of the lower numbers because we’d inherited our box as it was passed down through the Shepherd line. “So your family is Levan royalty, then?” Moses had teased. “Yes. We Shepherds rule this town,” I replied. “Who has PO Box number 1?” he inquired immediately. “God,” I said, not missing a beat. “And box number 2?” He was laughing as he asked. “Pam Jackman.” “From down the street?” “Yes. She’s like one of the Kennedys.” “She drives the bus, right?” he asked. “Yes. Bus driver is a highly lauded position in our community.” I didn’t even crack a smile. “So boxes 3 and 4?” “They are empty now. They are waiting for the heirs to come of age before they inherit their mailboxes. My son will someday inherit PO Box #5. It will be a proud day for all Shepherds.” “Your son? What if you have a daughter?” His eyes got that flinty look that made my stomach feel swishy. Talking about having children made me think about making babies. With Moses. “She’s going to be the first female bull-rider who wins the national title. She won’t be living in Levan most of the time. Her brothers will have to look after the family name and the Shepherd line . . . and our post office box,” I said, trying not to think about how much I would enjoy making little bull-riders with Moses.

It was clear just how much Tommy loved the city. New York City. The CKY Grocery on Amsterdam had giant, bright red Spartan apples every day of the year, even if it wasn’t the right season. He loved that grocery, and the old, shaky Persian man who owned it. Tommy emphatically, yet erroneously believed that the CKY Grocery was the genuine heart of the great city. All five boroughs embodied distinct feelings for him, but there was only one that he’d ever truly romanticized. To him, Manhattan was the entire world. He loved everything between the East River and the Hudson; from the Financial District up to Harlem; from Avenue A to Zabar’s. He loved the four seasons, although autumn was easily the most anticipated. To Tommy, Central Park’s bright, almost copper hues in the fall were the epitome of orange. He loved the unique perfume of deli meats and subway steam. He loved the rain with such verve that every time it so much as drizzled, he would turn to the sky so he could feel the drops sprinkle onto his teeth. Because every raindrop that hit him had already experienced that much envied journey from the tips of the skyscrapers all the way down to the cracked and foot-stamped sidewalks. He believed every inch of the city had its own predetermined genre of music that suited it to a tee. The modal jazz of Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter was absolutely meant for the Upper East Side, north of 61st Street. Precisely between Gershwin and gospel. He loved the view from his apartment, even if it was just the leaves of the tree outside in July or the thin shadows of its bare branches crawling along the plain brick wall in January. Tommy loved his career. He loved his friends. And he loved that first big bite of apple I watched him take each and every morning. Everything was perfect in the city, and as long as things remained the way he wanted them to, Tommy would continue to love the city forever. Which is exactly why his jaw dropped when he opened the letter he found in his mailbox that morning. The first bite of still un-chewed apple fell out of his mouth and firmly planted itself within the crack of that 113th Street sidewalk.

Perhaps it’s just me, but I don’t think Jesus’ words were meant to be tied to a brick and chunked through your neighbor’s window at midnight. Anytime you drop a picture of Christ in the mailbox while muttering a self-righteous “This’ll teach ‘em,” something has gone terribly wrong.