Fellow Mortals Read Online Free PDF

match. The fire looked clear in the sun and he threw it down, thinking the wind had blown it out and not thinking twice, despite the drought, despite the mulch under the boxwood hedge.
    He struck another match, fresh cigar clamped in his teeth, mailbag swaying off his shoulder. He wasn’t allowed to smoke on the route. He wasn’t allowed at all, having promised it to Ava, married all these years and there it was, she put her foot down. But it was such a fine day with the leaves sashaying in the trees, he told himself the smell wouldn’t linger in his clothes—that a few quick puffs were a very small betrayal. The flavor made him salivate. He’d found it in the truck, a single White Owl that had rolled behind the clutch, and when he finally got a light, puffed big, and sniffed it in, he drifted to a thousand other spring afternoons. He thought of Ava in a sundress, twenty years younger and firm as a plum, and then he pictured her expression if she smelled stale cigar. He saw his uniform reflected in the window of a car—gray pants with vertical stripes, collared shirt, blue sweater with the streamlined eagle on the breast. A uniform of dignity, a uniform he loved. He licked tobacco off his lip and contemplated the ember, and then he crushed the whole cigar underfoot, smiled, and continued on his way, walking to the door at 6 Arcadia Street.
    It was Sam and Laura Bailey: married, late twenties, childless, and relatively new to the block, still getting junk addressed to the previous owners. They got a water bill, a medical journal for Laura, and a sculpture magazine for Sam. He guessed that Laura was a doctor, having seen her a few times in the early afternoon, as if her shifts were different hours than a regular person’s hours. She was willowy and pale with warm, smoky eyes, as if he’d woken her from dreaming or she hadn’t yet slept. He handed her the mail one day and felt transfixed, comfortable but weirdly self-conscious in her gaze. She was quiet in a way that made her seem smart, and when she turned, he saw the beautiful knot that she had fashioned in her hair.
    Turning from the Bailey house, he caught a whiff of smoke. It was one of his favorite parts of spring, everything fragrant for the first time in months—grass, dirt, tulips, sunlight softening the asphalt. All he missed was rain, though as a mailman he hadn’t begrudged so many weeks of dry weather. He’d been a carrier for two decades but only had his current route a handful of months. Arcadia was one of the smaller streets, a cul-de-sac with sixteen houses, tightly packed Capes with long backyards, the east-side homes bordering the woods and giving the block a special kind of privacy—rural and remote, separate from the town.
    Everybody worked except for Nan and Joan Finn, there at number eight with the floral lace curtains flapping at the screens.
    Five catalogs, a Medicare notice, a handwritten letter, several flyers, something from the bank, an envelope of seeds, and more junk mail than anyone under eighty was liable to get in a week: a typical day for Nan and Joan. They were both skinny and tall, with noses so hooked he once saw a pair of umbrellas hanging on a rail and thought of the Finns.
    He found Joan sitting in the living room, surrounded by shelf upon shelf of figurines: songbirds, saints, miniature trees.
    “Afternoon,” he said. “Beaut of a day.”
    She smiled and looked around like maybe Jesus had addressed her. Then she noticed Henry standing there and smiled just as warmly. He thought of her hair as butterscotch-gray, same as her teeth and skin, but her sweater and her eyes were cornflower blue.
    “Spring has sprung!” Joan said.
    “It sure has. You have some letters here.”
    “Thank you!” she said, not getting up. “The weather’s saying rain tomorrow.”
    “April showers,” Henry answered, sending her into ecstasy. “Say hi to your sister.”
    “I will!”
    Henry walked off, admiring the sky. He cut across the lawn