Sean Towey

Gloom of Night

Tiff’s jeep was a tin can on wheels. There was a heater, but the air barely got warm. Cheap fans had been bolted into the roof. The engine was burning oil and stank up the cab. She’d heard the new ones would be electric with AC. She hoped to get one before she retired but wouldn’t bet on it.

She was parked on Boyle underneath a sweet gum tree beginning to turn orange. There was a package for 4105 on her lap. That house mostly got fitness magazines, vitamin supplements, and boxes from northern California. Tiff would fold the magazines in half and place them in the black mailbox that hung a little crooked because one of its anchors was loose from the brick. The packages she tucked by the door. Black plastic sheets hung from the windows. The kindest interpretation was the guy was remodeling without permits and didn’t want neighbors reporting on him.

She checked the name again, Ermin Besic. Bosnian, probably. She liked the Bosnians, worked with a bunch of them. They all came to St. Louis after the war. What war and why it was so bad she never asked.

The tape on the box ran along every edge and crease. There was more tape than box, practically. It didn’t smell like weed. She held a retractable knife in her hand, the handle yellow. It was shaking.

Probably there was nothing in it. Ermin however-you-say-his-last-name was just cautious. She would re-tape the package and deliver it and think of another way to help her father.

And then the bitterness returned, the soft anger at the state of her life. Twice she had saved kids from running into the street. Once she alerted the authorities to an elderly man whose mail was piling up, and it turned out he had passed on. Did she ever get any raises for that? No. You got paid on time in, not how good you were.

She had visited nursing homes and long-term care centers, wading through swamps of brochures and websites and insurance forms, each one with a calming, near-Biblical name, like Cana Gardens or the Nazarene. She always arrived at the same conclusion, that the only place Dad could afford was the sort of facility that belonged in a former Soviet republic. The entire world had been through a horrific exercise in figuring out what was essential, and it turned out it was people like mail carriers and educators and waiters, people like her and her father, and she could not stomach the fact that everywhere with fresh flowers, with personal trainers and speech coaches, were unavailable to him.

She ran the knife along where the two flaps met, and then the other edges, too. The inside was full of packing peanuts, and there was no telling aroma. She reached into the box’s guts and felt around. She pulled out a book, the spine cracked, written in a language full of check marks and consonants she assumed was Bosnian. Her heart sank.

Dad would have to make do. He could have bought end-of-life insurance, but he didn’t. It was like DeAndre said. It wasn’t on her to fix everything. 

She reached inside again, and her fingers ran against the bottom. She noticed that her hand was only about halfway down the box. She closed and re-taped the top, flipped it over, and opened the bottom. Inside, there were fifteen vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana. She checked for anyone walking by and then pulled one up to the sun; it was dark green with streaks of purple and pink, almost pretty, she thought, like photos of wildflowers strewn across a mountain meadow. Her hands were shaking. Fifteen had been far more than she was expecting. She placed the weed underneath her seat and re-taped the box.

She swore the eagle emblazoned on her uniform was staring at her. She tried not to look at it.  The package felt like it was burning the tips of her fingers. She walked so fast she was almost out of breath. She climbed the steps and nearly threw the package at the door. She thought she saw the plastic sheet move behind the window, and she just about jumped off the porch.

*

DeAndre’s guy didn’t have the cash to buy fifteen pounds at once, and though he offered to pay her on the back end, she wanted to be done with the whole thing. So DeAndre’s guy told them about Big Higgy, who lived up north.

DeAndre drove them. His car was small and low with tinted windows, and inside it smelled like a Christmas tree. They drove until they got to the neighborhoods of block after crumbling block, some houses missing entire walls, only the front remaining, like a movie set. Tiff had lived in St. Louis her entire life and could count on one hand the number of times she had been here, each time with her dad when he got nostalgic and wanted to show her where his father grew up.

DeAndre was the first and only person she told. His normally unflappable expression went wide with disbelief. Fifteen pounds? He asked why she told him. She said that she assumed everyone younger than her smoked weed, and maybe he knew a guy.

—Do you not do weed? she asked.

 —You don’t do weed, you smoke it, he said. —And of course I do. But fifteen pounds. Jesus.

On the drive, DeAndre was quiet. He was a kind, thoughtful young man. She had been his training supervisor, and she considered him something between a son and protégé. He was about her height but stocky, with light skin and brown eyes. He had the sort of confidence that came from escaping a difficult childhood mostly unscathed. He had mentioned fundraising the money for her father through social media, but to Tiff that sounded like begging.

They didn’t know any of the rules, and not knowing the rules made her feel itchy in the space between her skin and bones. She stayed calm by reminding herself that it was in everyone’s interest to treat it like any other transaction.

They pulled into a church parking lot. Grass grew between cracks in the asphalt, and the parking stripes had mostly faded away. The church had an electronic billboard that said forgive your enemies it messes with their heads. DeAndre was scrolling on his phone.

—What now? she asked. —And why a church?

—I guess we wait. And I don’t know. I’m not a drug dealer.

A black SUV came in behind them, the thump from the bass rattling the car. The passenger window rolled down and a thick-set woman with chubby cheeks wearing a white puffy jacket leaned out. Tiff tried to contain her shock that Big Higgy was a woman, and then she thought maybe she would help her out. Women sticking together. Tiff couldn’t look straight at her, so she stared at the door, where she could see DeAndre’s car reflected in the paint.

—You Dre? asked Big Higgy.

—DeAndre, yeah.

Big Higgy asked to see the weed. DeAndre tossed her an open package. It was freezing outside, but still Tiff felt hot and sick, the sweat pooling under her shirt.

Big Higgy stuck her face in the bag and inhaled. She pulled out some of it and held it in the light, her nails bejeweled. Tiff felt like a contestant on one of those cooking shows, like her entire life was about to be evaluated and found wanting. Big Higgy passed the package to someone behind her; Tiff didn’t like not being able to see it.

—I’ll give you fifteen-hundred a pound, said Big Higgy.

Tiff started shaking her head. This was no normal drug deal. This was for Dad, her Vietnam vet father, who taught her how to caulk the outside of the house before the spring rains and lay concrete and change the oil in her car, who had a stroke in the shower and knocked his head on the faucet, Tiff lucky to find him, stopping by for lunch on her route, the blood swirling in gasp-inducing streaks before being sucked down the drain. She leaned across DeAndre.

—Hi, yeah, excuse me? she said. —I thought the deal was two-thousand?

Big Higgy had the weed again, picking through it like she was searching for a prize.

—Fifteen-hundred, lady.

Tiff was incensed, and she looked up at DeAndre, who was staring out of the windshield, eyes directed at the church.

—They know we don’t know what we’re doing, he whispered.

What could she do? It was the way of things. Same system that meant her hardworking father couldn’t afford a decent care facility. She nodded, and Big Higgy tossed them a grocery bag full of cash. DeAndre passed across the bag of weed, and the SUV drove away. Tiff counted the money, and it was all there, but what if it hadn’t been? What would they have done? She took out ten percent and passed it to DeAndre.

—We’re even now, he said.  

They were still in the church parking lot.

—What? she asked.

—I know you helped me a lot when I was starting.

 Tiff looked at him, exhausted, filled with a new kind of hurt. If she had known he considered helping her as some kind of payment, she would never have pulled him into it. But she didn’t say any of that.

*

One of the trained speech pathologists was in her father’s room, helping him relearn his vowels, and in that moment she managed to forget about the stealing, the risking her job, the current frost in her relationship with DeAndre. The stroke and fall caused Dad to lose everything except fuck and shit and here today, but it was impressive what he was able to convey with those four words and wiggling his eyebrow around a lot.

She redoubled her efforts at the office. She kept track of magazine subscriptions and yelled at the rookies in sorting for losing the flats. She took shifts on her day off. Sometimes, her ankles aching from the million stairs she climbed, she jumped into the passenger side of her car, like it was the jeep.

It was in these moments that she nearly regretted never getting married. She had been close a couple of times, but in the end she always chose herself. Because that was what marriage seemed like to her. You either stayed single and yourself, or married and became someone else.

The young carriers liked to wear a single wireless headphone, like secret service members. They had names like Cruz and Willow. They were polite and aloof, nice enough, but none as good as DeAndre.

Weeks later and he still avoided her. Their relationship was the only thing that she could not bring back to balance. His comment in the church parking lot kept returning to her as she listened to Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn in the jeep, all those real singers her father loved. She wanted to show DeAndre how much he meant to her, how often she fretted over his future, planning out his career as he surged through the ranks. They had stopped chatting over coffee, never filled out time sheets together, and it made her so furious she wanted to stand up at staff meetings and scream, and though she had never had children, she figured this was probably how it felt. Finally, she confronted him by his jeep before they left for their routes.

—I just don’t want to get involved, he said. —I know it’s for your dad, but still.

—There’s no getting involved. It was a one-time thing.

He nodded at her and got in his jeep. He was a kid. He’d come around. But it ate at her; he was a walking reminder of what she had been forced to do, and what right did he have to do that? Considering that all sorts of carriers were doing the same thing. Considering it’s not like any of them were getting rich delivering mail, so who cared if they skimmed a little, especially off a drug dealer? Considering she wasn’t his mother, just a coworker, and maybe if she had spent less time on him on more time worrying about Dad she would have taken better care of his insurance situation.

*

Ermin had not received any more packages from California. Like she always did now, she said a little prayer before dropping off the mail. Then, she sat in her jeep and thought of her dad. And she smiled, because she knew what Dad would say, after yelling at her for being stupid. Helluva caper, kid. He said it to her growing up whenever she was into mischief, like when one of the boys in first grade told her nuns had legs made of wood and she lifted Sister Regina’s habit to check. Helluva caper, kid.

A slap against the side of her jeep made her jump, the seatbelt tightening around her waist. She thought someone hit her. Then a man appeared.

He was short, that was what she noticed first, and wore a tight-fitting shirt to show how much he worked out. He was resting his arm against her open window. He wore a Cardinals hat over his eyes, a sticker glinting underneath the bill. She knew right away who it was.

—Hi, she said. —Can I help you?

—I’m Ermin Besic. You have something of mine.

His name sounded like BAY-sich. She tried to concentrate on her breathing.

—If you have a complaint, there’s a website.

—We both know I can’t go to no website.

He sounded like he wanted to stay reasonable but didn’t know how long he could last. Her mouth was so dry; she kept swallowing like she was on an airplane and needed her ears to pop.

—I want my shit back, he said. 

In an attempt to play dumb, she muttered something about the warehouse, the sorting center, all the different hands that touched a package before it reached her jeep.

—I don’t want to hear all that, he said. —I’ve got cousins at the warehouse watching out.

He was getting louder. She looked up and down the street, hoping for a pedestrian, but they were alone. The fear and shame seemed almost malleable, something she could grip and form, but unbearably heavy, too. Had she kept her composure, she might have come up with a story. Instead, she broke, tearing up, telling him about her father, about how she would never do it again, about how she was sorry.

Ermin seemed to soften, and he tugged at the hairs on his forearm. He lowered his voice.

—Listen, let’s be reasonable. For what I paid for the weed, plus all my expenses for the trip you wasted, let’s call it an even twenty.

The fear choked her, so it took a minute to get out that she didn’t have that kind of money. That it was all spent on her dad. Nonrefundable. He shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. He didn’t give her a timeline, but instead repeated the number, twenty grand, and walked away.

There wasn’t anything else to do but finish her route, but she did so in a haze, her consciousness floating just above her. She nodded and smiled and hid packages, but she wasn’t really there. She was driving all night to Mexico. She was hiding out at DeAndre’s apartment that he shared with two friends from high school. She was saying goodbye to Dad over and over again. 

She had to admit, despite the fear, that Ermin had a good thing going with the spies in the warehouse. Especially as the weather turned and they prepped for the busy months, for delivering out in the slashing rain. She wondered how much weed was being delivered to all the Ermins around St. Louis.

A few nights later, in the depths of her need, praying like she hadn’t prayed since grade school, she came up with the plan. The next day, Ermin was waiting for her by the door, like he had been all week. She asked if the type of payment was negotiable.

*

Anyone who doesn’t believe in God should witness a USPS sorting warehouse in December and reflect on the fact that the United States has the sixth best mail delivery system in the world. The stream of packages and flats and cards in thick fancy envelopes was diluvial, the noise from the machines and the workers screaming over the racket in fifty different languages apocalyptic, the cacophonous beep of scanners.

She had worked in the warehouse for a few months before she was accepted into the union, all the carriers did, and though that was decades ago she remembered the flow, how to focus on task after endless task.

Mirza and AJ, Ermin’s cousins, met her by the door. They were tall and thin and very tan. Mirza had the chiseled jawline of a high school quarterback, but AJ’s features were all mushed together, like he had emerged from a canvas sack dropped from the back of her jeep. They both seemed good for heavy lifting and not much else.

—You understand the plan? she asked.

She would have loved to have DeAndre with her instead of the cousins. There was a little-boy quality to the way they nodded, puffed up with newfound responsibility. They each got on a medium-sized package machine, while Tiff found the tiny office marked DAMAGE CONTROL. With her seniority and the department’s desperation for manpower, she got to choose her job. The room barely fit an old metal desk, garbage can, and standing lamp, and it smelled like potato chips. The drawers slammed closed like peals of thunder. But none of that mattered. She had it to herself, and there were no cameras.

The cousins sorted boxes into certain carts depending on the ZIP code. There was a special cart for damaged goods, and that was where Mirza and AJ put all the packages from the Emerald Triangle. 95501, 95502, 95518: Tiff would be able to recall them for the rest of her life.

There was a box with a shard of glass sticking out from the side. There were packages deteriorating from rain. There was one with something oozing from a bottom corner that reeked of rotting fish and pickle juice that she left in the hall.

And then, a couple of hours in, she found two ounces of weed in a box full of packages of organic coffee beans and a mind-opening array of sex toys. She felt like doing a touchdown celebration but settled on pumping her fist a few times under the desk.

By the end of the shift, she had about half a pound sitting in her bottom drawer, along with enough packages of edibles to open a store. The cousins picked it up, but not before she weighed it in front of them on the scale she kept on her desk. It was the first time since she robbed Ermin that she felt anything besides a clenching anxiety, and she discovered what made dealing drugs so appealing. It was the win. It was the thrill of a plan actually working. It was control.

*

The restaurant had old-world charm: linen tablecloths, waiters wearing black ties, amateurish paintings of bucolic mountain landscapes. She sat across from Ermin in a table next to the wall. The staff kept popping by and clapping his hand, shooting off phrases of their language. Once, Ermin pointed across the table, and the waiter’s face lit up, and she knew Ermin must have been talking about his connection to some wayward mail lady.

She wondered if she might invite DeAndre here as a peace offering, a restoration of their relationship, like a dutiful mother taking out her college-aged son. She wondered at how quickly he forgot about the boots she bought him to survive his first December.

—Order more wine, Ermin said. —I’m paying.

—You don’t have to do that.

—In my culture, it would be really rude for me not to.

She smiled but didn’t order any more to drink. The food was excellent, everything stuffed with meat and salt and cheese, cuisine made for surviving hardship. Ermin asked her to dinner after she made the final payment, and she felt like she couldn’t say no. She wasn’t sure what he wanted, but if he was going to kill her, taking her to a restaurant first seemed odd.

They talked about her father, who the doctors said would be able to live mostly on his own again. She asked about his family and discovered that they had moved to St. Louis when he was five, after his town was destroyed in the war.

—What was that war even about? she asked.

—Same thing all wars are about, he said. —Big fucks small.

He waved his hands as if that was all there was to it, human nature summarized in three words. She felt bad for him, all the same.

—I’m sorry for stealing from you, she said. —It was just because of my dad. That was it.

—That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think there’s a way to keep helping him.

Ermin’s pitch was clear: keep it going. Run it back, was what he said. He promised her one-thousand dollars per pound. Said it didn’t have to be at the same pace. She did some mental math, and even if she worked one shift a week she might be able to double her salary. All cash.

Still, she declined. It wasn’t so much that she had learned her lesson but that she was tired, worn out from the constant dread. She wanted to return to her normal route, spend time at her cute house, her vacations to Destin.

—You sure? he asked.

—I’m sure.

He nodded, smiling through his disappointment. She ordered the baklava for dessert. Ermin still paid the tab.

*

And that would have been that except Ermin, the idiot, told his cousins to keep up the scheme. Tiff never found out how they tried to open the packages without her. All she knew was one Monday two agents from the Office of the Inspector General were waiting for her after she got back from her route. She felt cold all the way through.

They brought her to a small room at the back of the office normally used for interviewing potential hires. They were both women with serious demeanors. Tiff differentiated them by their hair styles. One had a tight ponytail, the other wore hers short and tucked behind her ears. They had legal pads in front of them. The short-haired one spoke first. Her accent sounded like she was from Chicago, the vowels all strung out.

—We know you have been removing marijuana from packages, she said. —What we don’t know is how much, and who else you’re working with in the service, besides those two at the sorting center.

Tiff didn’t say anything. Not because she had a plan, but because her throat felt so tight she wanted to scratch at it. She thought about her dad.    

—Whether you get a lawyer or not, said ponytail, —it doesn’t matter. Either way, there’s one deal.

So she listened. She was lucky, they said. She didn’t have to go to jail. She could tell them what she knew. She could give them a name.

—And if I don’t? she asked.

It was short-hair who answered.

—Then we’re going to bury you. And when the federal government buries you, you don’t ever come back.

She felt tired. She had sacrificed so much already. Her entire life a service to others. She thought about who would take care of her dad if she went to jail. She thought about what Ermin said about war, big fucks small, and how it applied to basically everything.

*

At the huge company, the one that was everywhere, she didn’t have a route. They sent her all over. At first, she assumed it was efficiency; her coworkers spoke of the algorithm like it was a sacred, all-knowing being. But it was hard not to feel like they didn’t want her getting to know the community, like they preferred her unattached.

She didn’t see her father for lunch anymore. Even if it was on the way, there was no time. Every day was December for the big company. It was a young person’s game, but she did her best. Up the stairs, scan the package, down the stairs, drive a half-block. At least the trucks had heaters and AC.

At night, she watched a few innings of baseball with her dad, who employed the full array of his curse-word language, goddamn, shit, here today. That was all the speech pathologist could get out of him. They made it work.

She saw DeAndre about a year after she wrote down his name on the short-haired agent’s legal pad. He was delivering food two houses down, racing back to his car as she was getting out of her truck. They stopped and stared at each other, DeAndre’s jaw set, and she knew everything she heard was true, that the investigation stopped with him, that he served six months in prison, that he became the sacrifice the Inspector General needed to prove they were doing something about being the nation’s largest drug distributor.

He was skinnier now, a too-large black polo hanging off his shoulders. She mouthed I’m sorry, her voice not quite working. 

DeAndre spit on the sidewalk, got into his car, and drove away. Still holding a package, she watched him turn at the intersection, the twilight falling around her, the weight of it all in her arms.

Sean Towey has work published in Crazyhorse, North American Review, Barrelhouse, Chicago Quarterly Review, Sport Literate, the minnesota review,  Hobart, Word Riot, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His essay “Low-Voltage Hope” appears in the 2019 Orison Anthology. He earned his PhD from Florida State University, where he was the recipient of a 2016 Emerging Writer Award, chosen by Debra Monroe. He grew up in Tacoma, and he currently lives in St. Louis where he teaches high school English.