One occupational hazard of my job is occasionally getting weird shit in the mail. Some weird shit I like, like the lady who drew pictures on manila sales tags with cryptic messages like “Can I help you? You missed a good moment when I walked down to the lake.” Some of it confuses and disturbs me, like the guy who sent a magnet showing old women talking about penises and a birthday card with cartoon lesbians excited about a giant dildo–and it was nowhere near my birthday. And some of it grosses me out: last week I got a package that included a tiny fetus of indeterminate species (but definitely not human) in a baggie filled with red liquid. That was pretty revolting, though I’m flattered that the responsible party was brave enough to risk federal prosecution just to send me a present.
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But one package last May really freaked me out. A brown envelope addressed to me showed up at my house with no postmark. Where the return address should have been there was just the name Liz Birch and the word “Packit!” Inside was a photo of a blond woman and a cat, a couple short stories about an unnamed writer who was missing and possibly dead dotted with names of places I frequent, and the floor plan of an apartment a few blocks away from mine. I’d just moved, none of my friends had been over yet, and I hadn’t informed the post office of the change.
(toms sin is warm winter is over it’s spring!)
Chapman’s package finally arrived a little over a month ago. Besides a hand-bound booklet about two girls growing up in the westward-ho expansion era who were kidnapped and then left in the woods, she included a map of the Union and Central Pacific railroad routes, tiny illustrations of giant rocks in Kentucky, and a little calico fabric pouch filled with a plastic cowgirl trinket, printouts of old tintype photos, and a scrap of paper the size of a fortune-cookie fortune: “clear out a little home among the bones and make our bed,” it said.
I wandered through the couple dozen folks who’d gathered as they gently fondled the contents of their gifts. One couple sat on the cement poring over a handwritten bio of Fannie Lou Hamer, a handwritten account of the Haymarket riot, and a page cut out of the creator’s seventh grade journal. A friend of Chapman’s showed me his loot: a rectangular slice of an old album cover painted with Wite-Out and decorated with stick-on lettering. Inside was half an LP with letters stuck on to spell cicadas whirring.
