SALINGER’S POSTMAN

He didn't usually open the myriad birthday cards he received. He had not cared what his “fans” thought of him for 40 years or more; he'd lost count, really. So what compelled him to pick up this particular card on this particular birthday?

Loneliness, he guessed. Coupled with the thought of mortality. Ninety years old, and having driven away everyone who ever loved him, it had been occurring to him lately that he might not have gotten things just exactly right. 

Truth is, he was itching for human contact, but not enough to leave the cottage. There weren't really any itches left he was willing to leave the cottage to have scratched. His groceries were delivered, he hadn't felt the need for liquor in decades, his grandchildren barely acknowledged him, and hadn’t craved the physical comfort of a woman in . . . well . . . at ninety, there were just some memories he couldn't retrieve anymore. 

The mail, though, never stopped coming. After all this time in self-imposed exile, he thought it would've died down. But it just kept coming. Less than in years past, to be sure, but still, in an average month he got more mail than most people would see in a lifetime.

Especially in January. He was a New Year's baby, so invariably the highest volume of correspondence started around Christmas, and didn't really die down until February. 

The postman, he pondered, must really hate him for that. Vermont Januaries are pretty stout, and most days the beleaguered soul made two or three trips down the hopelessly muddy drive just to lay the canvas bags on the doorstep. He also pondered that, in all these years, he'd never even bothered to learn the poor dear's name. Yet another moral failing he'd rather not be reminded of today. 

It was, though, related to one moral failing he did think about quite often. One that had been particularly galling to him of late. He'd never understood how he could so deeply love mankind in the abstract, yet happily go years and years at a time without interacting with even a single human being. 

In his Zen days, the riddle wouldn't have bothered him much. But Zen wasn't really a philosophy for the aged and contrite – those who weren't worrying about their next meal so much as their next life. Reincarnation had lost the ring of truth as well. If anything was clear to him, it was that he'd never have made it to the level of humanity yet, just based on the life he'd lived thus far. Arthropod, maybe; crustacean, perhaps. Not human though. He just wasn't ready. 

In any event, it was this morbid pondering that led him (Compelled him? Drew him? Pushed him? Who can say?) to pick up one of the envelopes. It had a spare, minimal look to it that he liked – white envelope, handwritten address in a hastily scrawled, but categorically not illegible block script. No name on the return, just an address; showing a lack of ego he felt immediately charmed by. The address was in Augusta, Georgia, a place he was reasonably certain he'd never been, and where was absolutely certain he didn't know anybody. 

The card itself was simpler still – a 5x7 index card, dated, with a note, which read thus: 

Normally, of course, I celebrate your birthday by buying you a card but not sending it, because I know you prefer it that way. Forgive me if you can, then, for reversing field on you this year, by not buying you a card and yet sending one all the same, as it were. 

My reason is this: Epictetus told us it is true to nature for men to keep and cherish friendships. As you and I have been friends for so long, I thought perhaps it wouldn't be horribly inappropriate to finally let you in on the knowledge that we've been friends, albeit anonymously, and to let you know how much it has meant to me all these years. Neither of us is getting any younger, Jerry, and some things need to be said while the time reamins for saying them. 

Fondly,   

JG                                                                                                                      

And so, Jerome David Salinger cried for the next 18 hours straight. His tears purging his body and soul of untold years of bad comportment, and worse actions. When he was done, he took a nap, bathed, had a bit to eat, and then went to town. He stopped at the package store, where he bought two bottles. Scotch for himself, and bourbon for the postman, who, he had always thought, just sort of looked like a bourbon man.