The pride in his voice was obvious. I looked over at the tattooed face, but the young man kept working, even though I was sure he had heard his father's words.

"Well, I have to keep moving," I said. "Be careful working so hard. Don't hurt yourself in all this snow."

He laughed with his mouth wide open. "And I hope you find a cup of coffee!"

We parted ways then, him to his shoveling, and me to my route. I felt a little bad, though, about the way I had a.s.sumed he was looking for a handout. Whatever the facts were about his circ.u.mstances, he had been nothing but polite and friendly toward me, and he was doing what he could to help someone else. Right about now I wished there were several more shovelers just like him out there clearing off the sidewalks.

Most Minnesotans take a pragmatic approach to their snow shoveling-that is, to wait until the last flake is down to avoid working the job twice. Because this snowfall had continued into the late morning when most homeowners were off to work, I was left to tromp my own path through the yards.

With so many retired folks in the neighborhood, however, I knew the s...o...b..owers would be out any time now. Wearing lined coveralls and heavy, felt-insulated boots, the elderly men are amazing to watch as they attack the drifts of snow. They clear off their own sidewalks and driveways, and most of the neighbors', too. They blow snow out of the alleys and clear the curbs in front of their houses. Their wives finish the job with a broom on the steps and stoop. I sometimes think that many of the wives come out simply to keep an eye on the men. Even with a five-horsepower machine doing the heavy lifting, operating a s...o...b..ower in the cold air can be tough on an old heart.

When the sidewalks and driveways are cleared, and all the neighbors are plowed out, the old men turn their s...o...b..owers into the yards to open a narrow path for the letter carrier. Straight across the lawns they go, throwing ma.s.sive arcs of snow, as well as branches, dead leaves, and clumps of sod. Each spring I encounter these same folks reseeding the lawns they destroy in the winter. On one of my blocks, the plowed pathway starts where I park my jeep and winds all the way to the far corner, connecting each house mailbox to mailbox. You can tell where one s...o...b..ower stops and another takes over by the various widths in the swaths they cut.

One year, when the snow was piled more than waist deep, crossing the lawn was like darting through the trenches in France in World War I. The neighborhood kids loved it, and, of course, so did I. I thanked one of the old-timers one day as he stood by his idling machine after clearing my path. The leather choppers on his hands vibrated and shook where they rested on the handlebars. His cheeks were bright red, his stocking cap stretched askew across his head, and his nose ran like an active four-year-old's. "By the time you get all these clothes on," he shouted, acknowledging my thanks, "and get the d.a.m.n s...o...b..ower running, a fella might as well make it worth the effort."

As if on cue, I heard a s...o...b..ower start up in the distance, and I rallied at the thought of walkways opening up soon. I decided to take my lunch break to allow them time to clear some trail. The snow-shoveling trio had long since loaded up and left. By the time my break was over, the whine of two-stroke engines filled the air. I drove my jeep over to the next street and began my trudging all over again. At some point a routine is set, and the blocks and the miles slowly fall behind.

The noise from the machines sounded like the amplified drone of a beehive, even more annoying than the sc.r.a.ping of shovels on concrete. But the sound signaled the opening of my paths and much easier walking. I waved at a man across the street running a s...o...b..ower. He walked through a miniature blizzard as the mounds of snow blew twenty feet or more into the air.

At the corner, I looked up in surprise to see the old pickup truck angling along the street. Deep ruts in the snow pulled it one way and shoved it back another. Behind the wheel was the old Ojibwe man, and I spotted the woman sitting beside him pointing at me. The engine revved and roared as the rear tires dug for traction. Pulling over to the curb would be impossible, so he stopped the truck in the middle of the deserted street and rolled down his window.

I stepped off the curb into the unplowed roadway. The old man was laughing, and his wife giggled beside him. At the far side of the bench seat, the young man leaned forward. Did I detect a hint of a smile on his face? With the truck stopped, he pa.s.sed something to the woman, who gave it to the driver.

"Aaniin niiji," the old man called as he handed over a tall cup of steaming hot coffee. The heat from the cup radiated straight into my cold hands. The earthy aroma engulfed me. My pleasure must have been evident, because they burst out laughing again.

"I have aspirins, too," he said, fumbling inside his coat.

"No, no. That's okay," I replied, holding up a hand. "This coffee is going to make my whole day."

And with that, the engine revved, the truck slid sideways, and they floated off down the snow-covered street like a boat over a froth-filled stream. Their laughter quickly faded away against the background racket of s...o...b..owers. The young man waved at me through the back window, and I raised the cup to him in a salute of thanks.

The Lonely Pines

A woman on my route took the time one day to show me some black-and-white photographs of her house, the house she grew up in. A photo dated 1926 showed her two-story stucco home standing alone on the corner of the block where there are now thirty houses. Ma.s.sive pine trees covered the surrounding open area. I could make out the woman, as a little girl, standing on the front steps. The street was no more than a dirt track. The family mailbox perched precariously atop a fence post near the roadway, and, in the foreground, a discarded axle lay mired in the mud. She told me that they had a milk cow and chickens.

The next photograph was dated thirty years later. All the trees were gone except two towering white pines in her side yard. Houses lined both sides of the paved street. Near the front door of her house was a small garden plot that I recognized immediately, because every spring her perennial bulbs come up in jumbled ma.s.ses in that patch. Early in April I start checking for daffodils and crocuses to burst through the remaining snow, announcing with their vibrant colors the coming of spring.

Now, comparing the photograph from the 1950s to her house, it was amazing to see the changes that had occurred in a mere forty years. The garden patch had doubled or tripled in size. I stood back to take a closer look, and for the first time realized the two big pine trees were gone. "When did you cut down the trees?" I asked.

"I didn't." She showed me the next photograph, from 1965. Both trees were broken off at least twenty feet up their trunks. "They'd become too tall and top heavy," she informed me. "A big wind came through one night and knocked both of them down." She paused for a moment and smiled wistfully. "I used to lie in bed on summer nights with the windows open to listen to the breeze in the pine boughs."

"I bet that was nice," I said. "Sort of like being up north at a cabin on a lake. It must have been sad when they came down."

She nodded, then crossed her arms in front of her and held herself tight. Her gaze went up to where the virgin white pines had reached for the sky. "When my husband went off to war, he told me to listen for the wind in the trees. He said I'd hear his voice talking to me."

This surprised me, because I hadn't known she had been married. She turned her attention back to me when she sensed my confusion.

"We were married only a few months before he shipped out. I was pretty young," she added with a self-conscious smile. She was tall and slender, and it wasn't hard to picture her as a beautiful young lady.

"I know this sounds crazy; maybe I was just naive and in love, but sometimes at night I really did hear his voice in the trees. He told me about his plans and ambitions. He spoke of the family we'd have, and how the house would be full of children. He told me he loved me."

She slipped the photos into a pocket of her ap.r.o.n and looked out over her garden. "But I never saw him alive again. He died in the Pacific."

I suddenly had to sit down on her steps. Her story had sapped the strength from my knees. Bending over to pull weeds from among her tulips, she continued, "Of course, like I said, it was probably all in my imagination. It may have been my own words I heard." She told me about working her way through college and becoming a schoolteacher.

The intimacy of her tale emboldened me to ask, "But surely there were other men. You were so young, why didn't you remarry?"

The eighty-year-old woman sat down next to me. She moved with a dignified grace, smooth and languid. "Oh, there were some other boys around, I suppose." She slapped at my knee. "It wasn't like I never got asked out on a date, or anything."

I smiled and looked at her. A tear sat on her cheek. One slim drop, high up, perched just below her eye.

"But every night, you know, for twenty-some years, he'd come to me on the breeze in the pine trees. He remained faithful to me, how could I do otherwise?"

The loss of the trees took on a whole new meaning now. "I'm really sorry," I said. We sat quietly for a while with our thoughts. She never had the chance to raise a family, or grow old with a mate. In a way I felt angry with her husband for not allowing her to move on. Now she was all alone in her old age.

"I hired a man to cut up the trees and haul them away," she told me. "He said one of them had some rot, but the other one was totally solid. He figured the rotted one must have fallen and knocked the healthy one down."

I nodded. At least the trees had had a long life together.

"But that man was wrong," she continued. "I was awake the night they fell. It's true that the rotted one came down first. I heard it crack and break and hit the ground. I didn't even get up to look, because I knew exactly what had happened. I laid there for hours, listening to the wind for the rest of the night."

The tear had run down her cheek, chased by several more. With no family left, I wondered how many times she had told this story. It had the feeling of being the first.

"Just before dawn the wind died down. I didn't dare move. I listened with all my might. Then, I heard it. Just a creaking at first." Tears cascaded down her face. There were no sobs or sniffles, just a steady stream of tears.

"That old tree was dying," she said, turning a grim face at me. "It wasn't dying from rot, either. Soon the cracking got louder. When it finally fell, it landed on top of the other one. That's how I knew it fell of its own accord."

I didn't know what to say, so we just sat there for a few minutes. Before I left, she said, "They went together. Can you imagine how lonely the sound of the wind in one tree would be?"

Oops

One gorgeous fall day I came upon a small construction crew working in the front yard of a house on my route. The house itself was tiny. It sat way in the back of the lot, right at the alley. It was so small that there wasn't even a garage or an open place to park a vehicle. The owner drove a motorcycle for as much of the year as the weather would allow. He drove his Harley right through the front door and parked it on a sheet of plywood in the living room. When the snow came he holed up in his little house and tore the machine apart, rebuilding it and preparing for another summer of riding.

There wasn't any snow in the forecast yet, but Labor Day had come and gone weeks earlier, so we were getting by on borrowed time. In Minnesota, Labor Day marks the unofficial end to summer. It's a bittersweet time, because the State Fair runs through Labor Day, and while we look forward to spending a day at the fair, we know that when it's over the days will be getting shorter. Deck furniture disappears into garages, perennial gardens are cut back and buried under mulch, and frost covers windshields and lawns in the early morning hours. But until winter actually hits, we get to experience some of the most beautiful days of the year.

Minneapolis is built around dozens of parks and city lakes, connected by biking and walking paths, Minnehaha Parkway, and Minnehaha Creek. In the fall, this urban forest explodes into color. On sunny days the foliage glitters like billions of sequins caught in the light. The sky is a brilliant blue backdrop; the lakes reflect all the colors while their waters turn colder, day after day, until freeze-up.

Fall is a rather precarious time in the life of a letter carrier. I imagine the motorcyclist on my route feels the same way. Each year is different, with no way to predict how long the season will last. I've worn shorts while delivering mail in December and fought through freezing snow squalls in early October. In 1991, the Great Halloween Blizzard dumped nearly three feet of snow in less than forty-eight hours. For several days after that we went out two carriers to a jeep. By taking turns driving and pushing we somehow managed to get the mail delivered. That storm was one of the three weather systems that eventually collided over the Grand Banks in the Atlantic Ocean to create what became known as "the perfect storm."

Because of this potential for a quick descent into winter, we relish the mild, colorful days of fall. It's also why you'll detect a slight hesitation in the enthusiasm of a letter carrier for this time of year. We all know what's coming, and when it gets here, we'll be struggling with it for months.

But for this day, at least, we had stolen another one from Old Man Winter. The little construction crew wore T-shirts and sungla.s.ses; their tool belts were piled off to the side. I paused a moment to try to make out the nature of their project. They were working well away from the house, halfway to the street in the front yard. A shallow trench had been dug from the worksite to the corner of the house. I decided that was for electrical conduit, but what were they erecting way out here that would require wiring?

I studied the small pile of building materials, surely not enough for a garage. Besides, they would have poured a concrete slab first. My next thought was a shed for the motorcycle, but the lumber was solid white cedar. Not many people around here could afford expensive lumber like that for a shed.

Just then I heard the unmistakable rumble of a Harley coming down the street. I put the mail in the mailbox and turned to watch the motorcycle brake to b.u.mp over the curb. The owner slowly rode up the front sidewalk, looking at the construction crew as he pa.s.sed. Pulling up to me near the door, he stopped and nodded a greeting.

The engine rattled and sputtered when he shut it off, like it didn't want the ride or the season to end any more than the rest of us. The sudden silence had a ring to it, and the biker sat astride his machine studying the work crew while our ears adjusted to the quiet. When he finally turned his long-haired, bearded head to look at me, I noted the oddest grin of confusion on his face. "What are they doing?" he asked.

I thought I must have misunderstood him. Now we were both confused, and we looked over the project and the front yard as if the answer might be hidden there, waiting to be revealed. I decided right then I wasn't going anywhere until I knew what this was all about.

The kickstand went down and a stiff leg swung over the seat. The rattle of a chain connecting his belt and wallet, and the creaking of his black leather jacket and chaps were the only sounds. The lead worker, clipboard in hand, approached and addressed the biker by name. "I just need your signature on this work order, and we'll be out of here by the end of the day."

The biker combed his thick fingers through his beard. Stalling for time, he took off his sungla.s.ses and straightened out his long ponytail. His expression of confusion had deepened to a frown of downright bewilderment.

"What work order?" he asked.

"For your sauna."

"Sauna? You have to be kidding me."

The worker looked at the clipboard and repeated the name. "You bought it at the State Fair. It was a really good deal, too, with that last weekend holiday discount. You even instructed us to put it up in your front yard."

The biker looked around and threw out his arms. "I only have have a front yard." a front yard."

"Good choice then, sir. Now, if you'll just sign here."

"Wait a minute." The biker held up his hands and shook his head in disbelief. "You say I bought a sauna?"

They had forgotten all about me, so as long as I could refrain from laughing I got to be the proverbial fly on the wall.

"You paid for it with a credit card," the man said. "I have a copy of the receipt right here."

The biker studied the piece of paper. When he finally exhaled a big sigh, I figured he was beginning to succ.u.mb to the inevitable. "Sure looks like my signature," he said, looking up. "But are you sure it's supposed to be a sauna?"

The man laughed. "Yes, sir. And it's a large one, too. A barrel sauna with two bench seats."

"A barrel sauna?"

"Yep. Looks just like an enormous whiskey barrel tipped on its side."

The biker nodded, accepting his fate. "Oh yeah. I guess that does sound sort of familiar."

They worked their way back over the dates. He had bought it on the Sat.u.r.day before Labor Day. "Well, I was there that day," he admitted. "Darned if I can remember buying it, though," he added, giving me a sheepish grin. "I've been carrying that credit card around in case of an emergency. What the heck am I supposed to do with a sauna?"

I'm pretty sure it never performed the function for which it was designed. It's still standing out in the front yard, though. The heating unit was dismantled that first winter and brought inside as an auxiliary heater in the small bedroom. A heavy padlock was added to the narrow wooden door. The bench seats hold all manner of motorcycle parts, from spare wheels to brakes, even whole transmissions. He told me once, "At least it's watertight. Things won't rust in there, and now I don't have to keep parts on the kitchen counter all winter long."

I HAVE TO ADMIT that over the years I've made some mistakes when delivering mail. Probably not as outrageous as buying a sauna and not remembering it, but no matter how minor the infraction, mistakes are never appreciated. There are the little ones, like an envelope that sticks to another one so you never see it. You find it the next day, though, when it's still in the mailbox with a nasty note scribbled across it in big black letters, saying something like, "This goes to St. Louis! Can't you read?" that over the years I've made some mistakes when delivering mail. Probably not as outrageous as buying a sauna and not remembering it, but no matter how minor the infraction, mistakes are never appreciated. There are the little ones, like an envelope that sticks to another one so you never see it. You find it the next day, though, when it's still in the mailbox with a nasty note scribbled across it in big black letters, saying something like, "This goes to St. Louis! Can't you read?"

After being on the same route for an extended period of time, carriers learn to sort and deliver the mail by name, rather than address number. Any letter carrier will tell you that every day, on every route, there are pieces of mail bearing incorrect addresses. Sometimes it's a problem of dyslexia, or a computer glitch. Other times simply a wrong number, like an eight subst.i.tuted for a nine. When that happens to the last number in an address, it puts the letter on the wrong side of the street. That happens daily. Delivering mail by name, then, prevents many misdeliveries.

One of the first things a letter carrier learns is to double-check to be sure he's on the right street and the correct corner. That sounds simple, and it's second nature when you do the same route every day. Subst.i.tute carriers, however, are often in a hurry, running way behind schedule in unfamiliar neighborhoods. Their mistakes are easy to understand. But subst.i.tutes aren't the only ones who have to pay attention. Several years ago I worked with two senior carriers who have since retired. One day, both of them offered to work extra hours by delivering mail on a route whose regular carrier was sick. After first delivering their own routes, they drove to the second route later in the day. Halfway through a block they both stopped and looked across the street at each other. Obviously, one of them was on the wrong block. After a short pause they shrugged their shoulders and continued on their way. Neither carrier ever admitted to being the one who was wrong, but we laughed about that incident, and the unlikely image of two carriers going in opposite directions on the same street, for years afterward.

AS A SUBSt.i.tUTE CARRIER, I often worked a route for several days for a regular carrier who was on vacation. Here's an obvious fact about mail volume: the wealthier the neighborhood, the more mail you carry, and this particular route received tons of mail. At each house I delivered eight or ten magazines and catalogs and a thick handful of letters. But mistakes happen in even the fanciest of neighborhoods. I often worked a route for several days for a regular carrier who was on vacation. Here's an obvious fact about mail volume: the wealthier the neighborhood, the more mail you carry, and this particular route received tons of mail. At each house I delivered eight or ten magazines and catalogs and a thick handful of letters. But mistakes happen in even the fanciest of neighborhoods.

As I meandered through this opulent streetscape of mansions and luxury sedans, I let myself be entertained by the exceeding beauty of the landscaping and architecture. Each property had its own varieties of trees and shrubs, many professionally manicured, but all of them in their full summer splendor. Cobblestone walkways allowed pa.s.sage through gardens and patios.

One day I heard a faint cry for help. At first, I wasn't sure I had heard it correctly because it was so quiet. But it came again, at regular intervals, seemingly out of nowhere. It was really unnerving, because the voice didn't sound upset in the least. If anything, it was a monotone of complete boredom. "Help. Help me please. If anyone can hear me, please help me."

I finally decided it was coming from the backyard of an enormous limestone and brick mansion. It took me a while to navigate my way through the gardens and gates and pathways, but eventually I found myself in the midst of a beautiful, quiet, terraced garden with a small waterfall and stream. A hobbit would have felt at home here, but I was uncomfortable. As far as I could tell, there was no one around. It seemed like I was trespa.s.sing in someone's little slice of Eden. I turned around to leave when I heard the voice again. "Say there, young man. Could you spare a moment to give me a hand?"

Looking around, I still couldn't spot the source of the voice. Then I heard, "Up here."

An older gentleman sat on a branch high up in a birch tree. His ladder had fallen while he trimmed dead limbs, and he'd been stuck up there for hours. Because the houses were spread so far apart, and most of the neighbors were at work or school, his calls for help had gone unanswered.

I found his ladder where it had fallen in the shrubbery. The man was very appreciative when I helped him down, as he could have been up there for several more hours.

While I knew that as a subst.i.tute carrier I needed to be paying constant attention to delivering the mail, it was impossible to keep my thoughts from wandering away in the peace and beauty of that quiet neighborhood. I think that's the reason I made such a ridiculous mistake a couple of days later. I chuckled to myself when I remembered the old man in the tree. Then I shoved two or three handfuls of mail down a slot and I heard it splatter across a hardwood floor. A horrible thought occurred to me and I tensed up with a rush of panic.

This couldn't be. I stepped back to look at the address over the entranceway. Sure enough, the owners were on vacation for at least another two weeks. The mail I had dropped down their slot belonged to the next house up the road.

As far as I knew, in my short career I had never made such a silly mistake. The first thought that came to mind was to simply walk away, skip the next house, and pretend that nothing had happened. If anyone should ask, I would plead total ignorance.

Head down, ignoring the beauty around me, I set off at a pace just short of a jog. By the time I began pa.s.sing the next house, however, my conscience was getting the better of me. If that had been my mail, I reasoned, I would at least want to know that it had been misdelivered. With the large quant.i.ties of mail these folks received, they would have to be suspicious if a day went by without a delivery. I knew they would call the post office to ask about it. In the end, I decided my best recourse was to own up to the mistake and hope it would all blow over.

I climbed the imposing flagstone steps and stood before a ma.s.sive solid wood door. Pushing the bell, I heard the stately report of chimes inside. The door slowly swung inward, and I was relieved to be met by a well-dressed young mother. A toddler peered up at me from behind her legs. The mother's broad white smile made me feel even more comfortable about my decision.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"Yes, well, you see," I stammered, "I'm pretty new at this job, and it seems I've made a terrible mistake."

The smile disappeared, and I was struck by how swiftly her expression went cold. My reaction was to quickly add, "Well, probably not so terrible as all that." I flashed her my best smile, but she wasn't willing to be rea.s.sured. I could tell that this was a big mistake. I should have played dumb, but now I had to go through with my confession.

"Do you have my mail?" she asked, very businesslike.

"Well, that's the problem. By mistake, I delivered your mail to the neighbor's house over there." She leaned out of the door to look down the road. "I just thought I should tell you," I added, "so you wouldn't wonder what happened to it."

When she again looked at me, her expression had gone from cold to frozen solid. Words came pouring out of me. "They're on vacation," I explained, "and I thought, you know, because you're neighbors, maybe you'd have a key or something. Some way to let yourself in to get your mail."

She didn't say anything, so I kept spewing nonsense. "I was hoping that maybe you were checking on their house for them, you know, like watering the plants or something. Maybe letting the cat out." I don't know where that came from. I had no reason to think they even owned a cat. "Or turning on different sets of lights at night. Sometimes neighbors do that for each other to make it look like someone's home."

I expected some sort of rebuke, but the icy vehemence in her voice startled me. "We haven't spoken to those people in over a year."

Those people? A form of rigor mortis infected my lips while my mouth hung open in shock. We stared at each other, and I knew she was waiting for me to solve the dilemma, but I had nothing to offer. Finally, I managed to croak out, "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I just thought you should know what happened to your mail."

For a long time after that I paid real close attention to my deliveries. When the regular carrier returned from his vacation, I told him what had happened. His response was much more casual. "Hey, don't worry about it," he laughed. "It's just the mail. They'll figure something out."

We joked about it, even coming up with the theory that the woman would have to go next door to get her mail, or the neighbor would bring it over to her, and perhaps they would rekindle a friendship. We never did find out what happened, but I kind of liked that idea-that maybe the neighbors would get along again because of my mistake. At least, that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it.