Drown

The unnamed narrator of this story works as a deliveryman for a department store. He performs his deliveries with a co-worker named Wayne. The narrator opens the story by telling us that the first time he and Wayne try to deliver a Gold Crown pool table to a particular house, all the lights are on inside, but no one answers the door. While they attempt to be let in, the narrator has the feeling that someone is inside, laughing at them. Wayne grows increasingly agitated and the narrator remarks that Wayne is the one who takes his job too seriously. While Wayne continues to bang on the home’s windows, carefully walking around freshly-planted rosebushes, the narrator sarcastically remarks that he takes a more “philosophical approach”: he smokes and watches “a mama duck and her three ducklings scavenge the grassy bank and then float downstream like they’re on the same string” (121). He remarks that the scene is beautiful, but Wayne does not hear him because he is banging on the door with a staple gun.

The next day, Wayne picks up the narrator at nine in the showroom. The narrator already has their delivery route planned out. He intimates that he can surmise all of the unspoken details of every delivery that appear on his list: “If someone is just getting a fifty-two-inch card table delivered then you know they aren’t going to give you too much of a hassle but they also aren’t going to tip.