The Mailman

THE MAILMAN

by Bentley Little

1

It was the first day of summer, his first day of freedom, and Doug Albin stood on the porch staring out at the pine-covered ridge above town. It wasn't technically the first day of summer -- that was still three weeks away. It wasn't even his real first day of freedom -- that had been Saturday. But it was the first Monday after school ended, and as he stood at the railing, enjoying the view, he felt great. He took a deep breath, smelling pine and bacon, pollen and pancakes, the mingled odors of woods and breakfast. Morning smells.

It was cool out and there was a slight breeze, but he knew that that would not last long. The sky was a deep navy blue, devoid of even a single cloud, and by noon the temperature would be well into the nineties. He scanned the horizon.

A hawk circled lazily overhead, moving in ever-widening circles away from its point of departure. On the ridge, he could see the thin gray line of a single campfire rising into the air above the line of trees. Closer in, small animals flitted about, stirred into hyperactivity by the breeze: rabbits, squirrels, hummingbirds, quail.

Although he had arisen with the sun the way he did every Monday morning, he had done so out of choice not out of necessity, and the pressure of impending work that usually marred his mornings was absent. He didn't have to rush to get dressed, he didn't have to speed through his breakfast and read only the headlines of the newspaper. He didn't have to do anything. The whole day was before him and he could do with it as he pleased.

The front door opened behind him and he glanced around, hearing the sound of the latch clicking.

Trish stuck her head out from behind the screen. "What do you want for breakfast?"

He looked at her wild hair and her still-sleepy visage, and he smiled.

"Nothing. I'm not hungry. Come on out here with me."

She shook her head dully. "No. It's cold. Now, what do you want? You can't skip breakfast just because you're on vacation. It's --"

"-- the most important meal of the day," he finished for her. "I know."

"Well, what do you want? French toast? Waffles?"

Doug breathed deeply, smelling other breakfasts from other homes. "Eggs,"

he said. "And bacon."

"Bran cereal," she told him. "And wheat toast. You've eaten enough cholesterol lately."

"Then why did you even ask me?"

"It was a test. You failed." She closed the screen door. "After you're through communing with nature, please come inside. And shut the door behind you. It's freezing this morning."

He laughed. "It's not that cold," he said.

But she had already closed the door, and he stood alone on the porch, looking out across the acres of ponderosa pine at the rocky crags of the ridge on the other side of town. The thin trail of campfire smoke had grown larger, dissipating, a gray stream in the blue ocean sky. He took another deep breath, hungry for summer, longing to breathe in that delicious freedom, but something had changed and the odors on the breeze brought with them something bittersweet, a vaguely familiar fragrance that awoke within him a subtle sense of loss he couldn't quite place.

The mood gone, he turned away from the railing. A hummingbird buzzed his head on its way to the feeder next to the kitchen window as he walked inside the house. Trish had already started breakfast and was busily cutting up slices of homemade bread for toast. She had relented a little on the bran cereal, but not much, and an open cardboard cylinder of oatmeal sat next to the pot on the stove. A pitcher of orange juice stood on the counter next to her. She looked up as he entered the room.

"Wake Billy up," she said.

"It's summer," Doug said. "Let the boy sleep if he wants. It's vacation time."

"I don't want him wasting his whole day sleeping."

"His whole day? It's six-thirty."

"Just get him up." She returned to her bread, carefully slicing the round loaf into thin equally small pieces.

Doug walked loudly up the stairs to the loft of the A-frame, hoping his exaggerated footsteps would awaken the boy. But Billy's still feet were sticking out from under the sheet at the head of his bed, and his head on the pillow at the wrong end of the mattress was covered and unmoving. Doug walked across the rug, stepping over the underwear, socks, shirts, and pants strewn over the floor. Sunlight was streaming through a crack in the green curtains, a wedge of brightness illuminating the posters of rock stars and sports figures on the slanting woodroofwalls . He pulled the covers off his son's head. "All right, bud spud. Time to get up."

Billy moaned incoherently and reached groggily for the sheet to pull over his head.

Doug kept the sheet out of reach. "Rise and shine."

"What time is it?"

"Almost nine."

One eye opened to squint at the watch hanging by a string from the sloping wall above his bed. "It's only six. Get out of here!" He reached again for the sheet, this time more aggressively.

"It's six-forty-five actually. Time to get up."

"Okay. I'm up. Leave!"

Doug smiled. The boy took after his mother. Trish was always a bear when she first woke up: silent, uncommunicative, nasty. He, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. He was, as one of his old roommates had put it, "disgustingly cheerful" in the morning, and he and Trish had long learned to stay out of each other's way the first half-hour or so after waking.

He let Billy reclaim the sheet, and although the boy instantly hid his head, he knew he was awake and would soon be coming down.

Doug walked downstairs, offering a parting "Get up," which received no response. He sat down at theformica counter that separated the living room and the kitchen and that they used as a breakfast table.

Trish, stirring the oatmeal, turned around. "What are your plans for today?"

He grinned. "It's summer. I have no plans."

She laughed. "That's what I was afraid of." She turned off the burner on the stove and moved over to the cupboard from which she withdrew three bowls. "I thought you were supposed to get that boy up."

"He is up."

"He's not at the table, and I don't hear any noise upstairs."

"Want me to go up there and get him?"

She shook her head. "I'll do it." She moved into the living room and looked up at the railing of the loft. "Time to eat," she called out. Her loud voice had an edge of anger in it, whether real or not Doug was unable to tell.

"Breakfast is ready."

A moment later, they heard the sound of feet hitting the floor and two minutes later Billy was coming down the stairs.

After breakfast, Trish went out to work on the garden. Billy finished watching the _Today_ show, then took off on his bike to practice motocross moves in the forest. There was a bike tournament coming up at the end of July, and he wanted to be in it. "Be careful," Doug called from the porch as the boy pedaled furiously down the dirt path that wound through the trees toward the hill, but Billy either didn't hear him or didn't intend to be careful and didn't say anything back.

Trish looked up from her weeding. "I don't like him riding that bike the way he does."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay. It's dangerous. He's going to break an arm or leg someday.

I wish you wouldn't encourage him."

"I don't encourage him."

She smiled teasingly. "Come on, don't tell me you don't feel a little macho thrill every time he goes careening off into the underbrush?"

" 'Careening off into the underbrush?' "

"All right, Mr. Teacher. It's summer. Quit lecturing."

He chuckled. "Those who can, teach."

She playfully stuck her tongue out at him, then returned to her weeding.

Doug went back inside and turned off the television. He stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, thinking. There were a few things he had to take care of this morning, some correspondence he'd let slide through these last two weeks of finals and graduation, and he figured he'd better get them out of the way before settling down to some serious non-work. He was going to give himself a week off before starting his big project for the summer: the storage shed. It had been three years now since he'd first promised Trish he'd build a storage shed in the back yard to house their tools and firewood and extraneous garbage, and though each June he'd sworn that he was going to build the shed, somehow he had never actually gotten around to it. This year, however, he had finally broken down and bought a prefab construction kit. This year, he was going to do it. He figured he'd spend this week reading, lounging about, and just relaxing. Knowing his ineptitude with tools and his incompatibility with manual labor, the storage shed, which theoretically should be a one- or two-week project, would probably take all summer, and he wanted to make sure he enjoyed at least part of his vacation.

He walked through the kitchen and down the short hall to the bedroom. His desk was on the other side of the brass bed, inconveniently close to the closet.

A stack of books and papers sat next to the dusty uncovered typewriter, and he pushed everything aside as he sat down on the hard metal ice-cream chair he used in lieu of the wooden swivel seat he'd originally wanted. He quickly glanced through the pile. Bills. Bills. More bills. A letter from an ex-student who'd joined the army.

His application for the grant.

He dropped everything else on the desk and held up the yellow application form, staring dumbly at it. The application was for a federal program that offered teachers in specific fields year-long paid sabbaticals so they could conduct independent research. There was nothing he really wanted to, or needed to, research, but he desperately wanted the year off and had managed to put together a rather convincing application. He thought he'd sent it in last month, but apparently he hadn't. He looked at the deadline date on the form.

June seventh.

Five days away.

"Shit," he muttered. He placed the application in an envelope, addressed it, and affixed a stamp. He went back outside and walked down the porch steps.

"What is it?" Trish asked.

"My study grant. I forgot to send it."

She grinned up at him. "Those who can, teach."

"Very funny." He walked across the gravel driveway to the mailbox, opening the metal door, throwing in the envelope and pulling up the red flag. He walked back across the gravel, stepping carefully in his bare feet. Ronda would pick up the mail around lunch; it would get to the post office around four, get to Phoenix by the next morning, and probably arrive in Washington two or three days after that. It would be cutting it close, but he would probably make it.

He went back inside to make out bills.

Doug and Tritia ate lunch on the porch, sandwiches, while Billy ate inside and watched reruns of _Andy Griffith_. The weather was warm but nice, and they tilted the umbrella on the table to keep out the worst of the sun. Afterward, Doug did the dishes and they both retired to the butterfly chairs on the porch to read.

An hour passed, but Doug could not relax and enjoy himself. He kept looking up from his book, listening for thesputtery cough of Bob Ronda's engine, the metallic squeal of old brakes, thinking of his application wasting away in the mailbox, curiously annoyed that the mailman had not shown up on time. He looked over at Trish. "The mail hasn't come yet, has it?"

"Not that I know of."

"Shit," he muttered. He knew it was stupid to turn Ronda into a scapegoat when it was his own stupidity that had led him to wait this long before sending the grant application, but he could not help feeling a little angry at the mailman. Where the hell was he? He returned to his book, trying to read, but soon gave it up, unable to appreciate the words in front of him. His mind kept wandering and he found himself reading the same sentence over and over again, not comprehending. He placed his book on the plastic table next to him and settled into the chair, closing his eyes for a moment. He heard Trish get up, open the door, go inside. He heard the humming wash of water through pipes as she poured herself something to drink in the kitchen.

But he did not hear the mailman's car.

Trish came back out, her bare feet loud on the creaking wood, and he opened his eyes. Something was wrong. Bob Ronda inevitably came by about eleven or, at the very latest, twelve. He was a talker and he often stopped to chat with people, but he also knew his job and was extraordinarily efficient in his work. New people were added to the route each year, families arrived to vacation in their summer homes, but somehow Ronda found the time to talk, to deliver the mail, and to still finish his route by four. He had been delivering the mail for the past twenty years, as he would tell anyone who would listen, since Willis had been on a star route with so few people that being a mailman was a part-time job. He now wore a postal service cap, but he still favored Levi's and western wear, and he still drove his beat-up blue Dodge. A tall heavy man with a white beard and mustache, Ronda took his postal-service credo very seriously and had been known to deliver mail even when he was ill. Which was why he had never, to Doug's knowledge, been late with his delivery.

Until now.

He glanced at his watch. It was two-fifteen.

He stood up. "I'm going to go into town and drop off my application at the post office. I can't wait any longer. Mail leaves town at four. If that thing doesn't get in on time, I'm dead."

"You shouldn't have waited so long."

"I know. But I thought I already mailed it."

Trish stood up, pulling out her sweaty shorts where they stuck to her buttocks. "I'm going into town anyway, I'lldrop.it off."

"Why are you going to town?"

"Dinner," she said. "I forgot to pick up everything I needed yesterday."

"I'll go."

She shook her head. "You'll stay here and rest. Because tomorrow you are going to paint the porch."

"Oh, I am, am I?"

"Yes you are. Now go get your letter. I'll put on my shoes and sort through the coupons."

Chuckling, Doug walked down the driveway to the mailbox. He withdrew the envelope from the box and returned to the house, stepping inside. The front curtains were drawn to keep out the afternoon sun, and there was a fan perched on the small table next to the hat rack. The swiveling head turned at a ninety degree angle, creating an indoor breeze that cooled everything from the Franklin stove and the bookcase along the left wall to the couch where Billy lay watching _The Flintstones_.

"Turn that off," Doug said. "Why are you wasting your day watching TV?"

"I'm not wasting it. It's _The Flintstones_. Besides, it's summer. What should I be doing? Reading?"

"That's right."

"You don't read for fun."

"Your mother and I do."

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"I read when I have to. That's good enough."

Doug shook his head. "After this show's over, the television goes off. You find something else to do."

"God," Billy said disgustedly.

Trish came out of the bedroom, putting on her sunglasses, her purse over her shoulder, keys in hand. She was wearing new white shorts and a thin white sailor shirt, her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail. "What do you think?" she asked, turning around, fashion-model-style. "Susan St. James?"

"Abe Vigoda ," Doug said.

She punched his shoulder.

"That hurt."

"It was supposed to." She picked up her grocery list from the counter.

"Anything else we need besides milk, bread, and dinner food?"

"Cokes," Billy said.

"We'll see," she said, putting the list into her purse.

Doug handed her the application envelope and followed her onto the porch as she walked outside to the Bronco.

"Cokes!" Billy called again from inside.

She smiled, getting into the car. "I'll be back in an hour or so."

Doug gave her a quick kiss through the open window. "Okay. Thanks."

"Tomorrow you paint, though."

"Tomorrow I paint," he agreed.

Tritia backed out of the drive and headed down the dirt road toward town.

She rolled up the Bronco's windows to keep out the dust and turned on the air conditioning. The first blast of air was stale and humid, but it quickly turned refreshingly cold and dry as she drove past the other houses scattered along this stretch of forest. The road curved around the side of a hill, then dipped down to the level of the creek. She sped over the lowered crossing with the confidence of a native, the Bronco's tires spraying up water as they rolled through the stream.

She slowed down as the dirt became pavement and she passed the first cross street. She was glad that it was summer, that Doug was off work, but she could tell she was going to have to lay down a few ground rules -- the way she did each summer. Yes, he was on vacation, and that was good, but she needed a vacation too and, unfortunately, there was no way to take time off from being a mother and housewife. They were full-time, year-round occupations. If left to his own devices, Doug would spend the entire summer veging out, reading on the porch, doing absolutely nothing. It was up to her to point out that the meals he ate had to be cooked, that the dishes afterward had to be washed, that the house required constant maintenance and did not just rejuvenate itself. He couldn't be expected to be a mother, but he could help out around the place: vacuum, do the dishes, rake the yard. She would still do the lion's share of the work, but it would help immensely if some of the duties were divided.

The road wound past the trailer park before hitting the highway. She signaled and turned left. The town was quieter than usual. There were some cars in the Bayless parking lot, and a few campers and station wagons were on the road, going to or coming from the lakes, but the usual Monday-afternoon work rush was nowhere to be seen. She drove past the Exxon station, past the Circle K, and turned down Pine Street toward the post office.

The post office was always crowded, and today was no exception. The small parking lot was filled with old cars and dusty pickups, and seemed to be more crowded than usual. Three cars were lined up in the street, waiting for the next available parking spaces.

Rather than wait, Tritia decided to pull into the parking lot of the chiropractor's office next door and hike it in. She parked under the shade of a ponderosa and walked across the lot and around the low brick fence that separated the chiropractor's and the post office. She noticed that both the American and Arizona flag on the pole in front of the tan brick building were at half-mast and tried to recall if someone important had died on this date. She didn't think so.

Maybe someone famous had died and she just hadn't heard about it yet.

She moved up the sidewalk steps and pushed open the door, walking inside.

The swamp cooler on the roof of the post office had lowered the interior temperature but raised the humidity, so the trade-off was just about equal. The line inside was long, stretching from the counter, through the double doors, into the lobby next to the P.O. boxes. Howard Crowell, the postmaster, was at the counter, and Tritia saw immediately that he was wearing a black armband. She felt a sinking in the pit of her stomach, an instinctive intuitive reaction. She got into line behind Grady Daniels, who, for once in his life, was standing completely silent, completely still, unmoving.

He turned around to face her. "Shame," he said soberly. "It's a damn shame."

"What is?"

"Ronda," he said.

"What happened?"

"You didn't hear?"

She shook her head.

Grady lowered his voice. "Blew his brains out this morning. With a shotgun."

The postmaster looked dazedly up as the customer he had been helping turned to leave. "Next."

Tritia kept her eyes on Howard as she moved forward in line, feeling strangely cold. The postmaster's eyes were red and watery, his cheeks flushed, and it was clear that he had been both shocked and deeply hurt by the tragedy.

His voice, ordinarily loud and boisterous, was a subdued whisper, and his hands shook as he handed out stamps and change. Bob Ronda had been not only his employee but his best friend, and it was a rare Saturday night that the two of them were not seen at The Corral, listening to the country swing of the Tonto Trailbiazers, downing a few cool ones, and discussing the fate of the world. It was no secret that Howard's wife had left him two years ago, though he continued to insist that she was in Tucson attending to her invalid mother, and since that time, he and Ronda had been nearly inseparable. Ellen, Ronda's wife, had even complained that he spent more time with Howard than he did with her.

The line continued to move forward until she and Grady were at its head.

"Next," the postmaster said.

Grady moved forward. "I need to pick up my mail," he told the postmaster.

Tritia 'seyes were caught by a sign taped to the front of the counter:

"Mail will be delivered on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays until a new postal carrier is appointed. The post office will temporarily be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays only. Sorry for any inconvenience."

Next to the sign was a funeral notice for Bob Ronda.

"How long's it going to be before you hire a new mailman?" Grady asked.

"I'm not going to be hiring one," the postmaster said. "Themam office in Phoenix holds an open enrollment once a year and they do the hiring. They're going to appoint someone. I called in this morning and put in an application for a new carrier, but it'll probably be a few weeks before they send someone down."

"It's a damn shame what happened to Ronda," Grady said. "A damn shame."

Howard nodded silently.

Grady got his mail, waved good-bye, and Tritia moved to the front counter.

"How are you, Howard?" she asked kindly, putting her hand on his.

He shrugged, his eyes blurry and unfocused. "As well as can be expected, I guess."

"I didn't hear until now. It's -- it's hard to believe."

"Yeah."

"Bob just didn't seem . . . I mean, it didn't seem like he'd do something like that."

"That's what I been telling people all day. I can't believe he killed himself. People always say that when something like this happens, but usually there are reasons. A guy gets divorced, his wife dies, he loses his job. But there's nothing. I was just over at Bob's house last night, and me and him and Ellen sat down, had a good dinner, some good talk. Everything was normal. He wasn't depressed at all. He wasn't happier than usual or sadder than usual or more talkative or less talkative. There was nothing out of the ordinary. He hadn't been fighting with Ellen, 'cause when they fight me and him always go out and get something to eat instead of staying to home." He shook his head, looking down at the counter for a moment, then he looked up at her and tried to smile.

The effect on his grief-stricken face was oddly gruesome. "Anyway, what can I do for you?"

"I just came to deliver a letter and to buy a book of stamps."

"A book of stamps it is," Howard said, reaching under the counter and placing the stamps before her.

She paid him the money, then gave his hand a small squeeze. "If you need anything just call," she said. "Anytime."

He nodded tiredly. "Will do."

She stepped away from the counter. Behind her, she heard the postmaster's dazed voice. "Next."

2

The funeral was well-attended. Almost everyone in town knew Bob Ronda on a first-name basis, and almost everyone liked him. The cemetery was packed and many of the latecomers were forced to stand outside the wrought-iron gates on the side of the small hill. Bob had never been a churchgoing man, and Ellen had decided to have the entire service conducted outside at the gravesite. She stood next to the preacher, dressed in a simple black dress, staring down at the ground. A wilted wet hanky was clutched in her right hand, and she twisted it absently between her fingers. Rumor had it that she had nearly gone crazy when she'd found her husband's body, screaming and yelling, tearing apart the house, even ripping off her own clothes, and that Dr. Roberts had had her heavily sedated ever since. Looking at her now, supported on both sides by her grown sons, Doug could believe it.

The newspaper account of the mailman's suicide had been sketchy and general, a polite glossing over of the facts in deference to the survivors, but in a town the size of Willis news sometimes traveled through quicker and more efficient channels than the press, and by noon the day after, nearly everyone had heard the full story. Apparently, Ronda had gotten out of bed before his wife had awakened, had walked into the garage for his sawed-off shotgun, and had gone into the bathroom. There he had taken off his clothes, stretched out in the tub, placed the tip of the shotgun in his mouth, and blown a hole through his brain. The blood and bone and tissue had splattered against the tile behind him and was dripping into the tub by the time Ellen had run in.

There had been no note.

There were other versions of the story. One version, one in which Doug put no credence, said that Ronda had sat on the shotgun, greasing it, placing it to his asshole and blowing out his insides. Another said that he had shoved the barrel deep into his eye socket, putting out his eye before pulling the trigger.

These false reports had died almost immediately, however, and by the day of the funeral there was only one story circulating.

Billy had been very shaken by the news of the mailman's suicide. He still had all four grandparents, had never lost a pet, and this was his first real experience with death. He had also liked Ronda a lot, as had most of the kids in town, and it had been a shock to learn that the mailman had killed himself.

Billy had been quiet and subdued for the past two days, unusually pensive and well-behaved, and Doug and Trish had discussed at length whether the boy should go to the funeral. In the end, they decided against it, agreeing that the sight of the mourners and the coffin would probably be too traumatic for their son, and they had found a babysitter to watch him for the morning. When they returned, they would talk the funeral over with him, make sure he understood what had happened.

Standing at the head of the grave, in front of the closed casket, the minister read selected excerpts from the Bible. He tactfully refrained from mentioning the cause of the mailman's death and instead discussed the positive aspects of Ronda's life and the loss to his family and to the community his death had wrought.

Doug listened to the preacher's generic comments but found his mind wandering. Although he felt sad, he should have felt sadder. He should have been as moved by the words he was hearing as by the thoughts and memories in his head. What was missing from the minister's well-meaning words, he realized, was the spirit of the man himself, and he thought that there were many people who could have given a better, more heartfelt eulogy, people who had known and loved the mailman on a personal level. The bartender at The Corral, for instance. Or George Riley.

Or Howard Crowell.

His eyes scanned the crowd until he found the postmaster. Howard was standing next to Ronda's family, dressed in a new black suit bought especially for the occasion, sobbing openly. He was obviously listening to every word the preacher said, and his gaze appeared to be riveted on the casket.

Doug frowned. Standing next to the postmaster, wearing a light-blue postal uniform that contrasted sharply with the somber black conservative attire of the other mourners, was a man he had never seen before. Tall and thin, with a shock of red hair topping a long pale face, he was staring off into the distance, obviously bored with the funeral. Though Doug was not close enough to see clearly the expression on the man's face, he sensed an arrogance in the newcomer's stance, a disdain in the tilt of his head. The man turned lazily to look at the minister, sunlight glinting off a series of gaudy buttons on his jacket. On anyone else, the uniform might have looked dignified, even respectful, but on him it seemed mocking, clownish, and it served only to trivialize the proceedings. The man turned again, gazing outward across the crowd, and Doug had the sudden inexplicable feeling that he was looking directly at him. It was an unnerving experience, and he glanced quickly away, his eyes shifting back to Howard.

Tritia , too, was looking at the postmaster, but she did not notice the stranger next to him. Her gaze was focused on Howard's face, on his wet cheeks and shattered expression. He looked so lost, so hopeless, so helpless. They would have to invite him over for dinner sometime, she decided. Probably half the town had extended similar offers to him this week, but she knew that he liked her and Doug more than most, and she thought they might be able to cheer him up a bit.

She glanced over at Ellen Ronda, on the other side of the postmaster. She had never really liked the mailman's wife. Ellen had always seemed too hard, too driving, too status-conscious for Bob, who had always been an amiably laid-back man, but it was obvious from the pain, evident even through the drug-induced haze of her eyes, that Ellen had loved her husband deeply and that his loss would not easily be borne. Tritia 's heart went out to the widow, and she felt welling in her eyes the tears that had eluded her until now.

Above them, the sky was a rich deep blue, the sun hot already at ten o'clock. From here could be seen most of the town: the dull-blue wall of the diner peeking out from behind the Valley National Building and the small Chamber of Commerce office; portions of the shopping center revealed through the trunks and branches of the trees; the brightly colored signs of the gas stations and fast-food restaurants in the newer section beyond. Closer in, across the meadow that separated the cemetery from the golf course, was the original nucleus of the town: the newspaper, the library, the bars and the police department conveniently located within a block of each other -- and, of course, the post officer The post office.

Tritia found that she could not look at that empty building for any length of time. It seemed sad and forlorn, almost abandoned, though it was only closed for the day. She wiped her eyes and concentrated on the words of the minister, focusing her gaze on the dark rosewood of the casket. Smooth and rounded, it looked almost like a large polished stone. Tritia knew that Ronda's family couldn't afford such an obviously expensive coffin, and she was pretty sure that the insurance provided by the Postal Service would not make up the difference.

She would have Doug find out if someone in town had started a memorial fund to help defray the funeral expenses. If no one had, they would institute one. The mailman's family would have a tough-enough time just living with the pain and getting on with their lives without having to worry about financial burdens as well.

"Ashes to ashes," the minister said, "dust to dust."

Tritia and Doug looked at each other, then grasped each other's hands, holding tightly.

"Amen."

Ellen and the boys moved forward as the casket was lowered into the grave.

Between the sobs of mourners, the quiet hum of machinery could be heard as the motorized jack folded downward. The town was silent. Since most of the residents had come to the funeral, there were not even the occasional noises of car engines or power tools to mar the stillness.

Ellen reached down to pick up a handful of earth. Before dropping it into the open grave, she mouthed something inaudible, pressing the dirt to her lips.

Then she collapsed, dropping to her knees and pounding her fists against the ground. She began to scream and one of her sons lifted her to her feet while the other spoke softly to her, trying to calm her down. Dr. Roberts pushed his way through the crowd toward them. Most of the people in attendance looked away out of deference, out of politeness, but Doug saw that the newcomer was staring boldly at the widow, bouncing a little on the heels of his shoes as if enjoying the sight.

A moment later it was over. The doctor held Ellen's hand and she stood stiffly erect next to the grave as her sons dropped symbolic handfuls of earth on top of the casket.

The minister said a final prayer.

They walked up to Ronda's family after the service, waiting in line to pay their condolences. After her emotional outburst, Ellen once again seemed dazed and drugged, and her teary-eyed sons found the strength to support her between them. The minister stood with the family, as did Dr. Roberts and Howard. Next to the postmaster, on the outer ring of this inner circle, was the newcomer. This close, Doug could clearly see the man's features: the small sharp nose, the piercing blue eyes, the hard knowing mouth.

Tritia grasped Ellen's outstretched hands firmly. "You're strong," she said. "You'll get through this. It may seem as though the pain will last forever right now, but it will pass. You'll survive. Just try to take things one day at a time. Just try to get on with your life. Bob would have wanted you to go on."

Ellen nodded silently.

Tritia looked from one son to the other. "Watch your mother. Take care of her." "We will, Mrs.Albin ;" said Jay, the eldest.

Doug could think of nothing to say that wasn't trite and ineffectual. But then words from others at a time like this were bound to be meaninglessly superficial. "I'm sorry," he said simply, taking Ellen's arm for a moment, then shaking each of the boys' hands. "We liked Bob a lot. We're going to miss him."

"That's the truth," said Martha Kemp in back of him.

Tritia was already talking to Howard, echoing similar sentiments. She gave him a quick hug. Doug moved next to her and clapped a sympathetic hand on the older man's shoulder.

"He was the best friend I ever had," Howard said, wiping his eyes, looking from one to the other. "Usually your childhood friends are the best, the people you grow up with. It's not often you find someone who's as close as that."

Tritia nodded understandingly. Doug took her hand.

"I miss him already," Howard said.

"We know," Doug told him.

The postmaster smiled wanly. "Thank you. And thank you for the card and the call the other day. Thank you for listening to a crazy sentimental old man."

"You're not crazy, and you're not that old," Tritia told him. "And what's wrong with being sentimental?"

Howard looked at Doug. "Keep her," he said. "She's a good one."

Doug nodded, smiling. "I know."

"We want you to come over one night this week," Tritia told the postmaster. She looked him in the eye and there was something in her voice that forbade argument. "I'll make you a good home-cooked meal, okay?"

"Okay."

"Promise?"

"I promise."

"Okay, then. We'll see you later. And if you don't call us, we'll call you. Don't think you're going to get out of this."

Howard nodded good-bye as they began to move off. He had not introduced the man next to him, but Doug knew without being told that he was Ronda's replacement. The man held out a pale hand, which Doug reluctantly shook. The man's skin was warm, almost hot, and completely dry. He smiled, revealing white even teeth. "Nice day," he said. His voice was low and modulated, almost melodious, but there was an undercurrent of mockery in his tone, an attitude that only amplified the casual callousness of his words.

Doug said nothing but put his arm around Trish, ignoring the man and moving down the hill toward the parking lot with the other townspeople. As he turned around to unlock the car door, he happened to see the new mailman standing tall among the mourners. It was hard to tell from this distance, but it looked as though the man was watching them. And it looked as though he was still smiling.

Billy told Mrs. Harte he was going to go out and play, and she said that was all right as long as he stayed within calling distance of the house. His parents could come back anytime, and she didn't want them to think she had lost him.

Billy said he was just going to The Fort; it was right behind the house, and as soon as he heard his parents' car, he'd run immediately back.

Mrs. Harte said it was okay.

The Fort was located in the green belt behind the house but was not visible from any window. He and Lane Chapman had built it last summer out of leftover materials from the construction of a summer cabin down the road. Lane's father's company had built the cabin, and Lane's father had given them posts, two-by-fours, planks, and even some cement -- enough material to build the basic structure of two rooms. It had taken them most of the summer to scrounge up the rest of the wood and the signs, decorations, and furniture for the inside, but after they'd finished, The Fort was perfect. Even better than they'd thought it would be. The front and sides were camouflaged with branches of sumac and manzanita; the rear wall was backed against a tree. You entered from the roof, climbing the tree until you were on top of The Fort, then pulling the string that unlatched the hinged trapdoor. There were no stairs and no ladder, but the jump was not far.

Inside, the Big Room was decorated with cast-offknicknacks salvaged from garbage cans around town: old album covers, bamboo beads, an empty picture frame, a bicycle wheel. Lane had added a stolen Stop sign given to him by another friend in order to lend the place a touch of class. The other room, the HQ, was smaller and carpeted with a stained throw rug they'd scavenged from the dump. It was here that they kept the _Playboys_ they had found in a sack of newspapers destined for recycling.

Billy walked down the short path in back of the house. He could have called Lane and had him meet him at The Fort, but he wanted to be alone today.

He felt sort of strange and sad and lonely, and though it wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling, it was not something he wanted to push away and force out of his system. Some emotions just had to run their course -- you had to think about them, experience them, let them pass of their own accord -- and this was one of those.

He also didn't feel much like talking, and with Lane around talking would have been unavoidable. The boy talked more than anyone he had ever met, and while sometimes that was fine, it was not always appropriate, and he just wasn't in the mood for conversation today.

Still, he felt slightly traitorous coming here alone. It was the first time he'd been to The Fort without Lane, and it seemed somehow wrong, as if he were breaking some type of pact, though there had been no such agreement either spoken or unspoken between them.

He reached The Fort and quickly clambered up the forking branches of the tree, swinging himself onto the roof and opening the trapdoor. He dropped into the Big Room and stood there for a moment, looking at the old metal ice chest that they had turned upside down and made into a chair. The ice chest had been given to them by Mr. Ronda, who, when he had seen them sorting through a pile of garbage at the side of the road, had offered to give them the ice chest as well as a few pieces of plywood paneling he had at his house. He'd brought the materials by the next day, leaving them next to the mailbox.

Billy thought of Mr. Ronda's kind face now, of his blue laughing eyes, of his thick white beard. He had known the mailman all his life. He had seen him every day until he had had to go, to school, and had seen him every Saturday, holiday, and summer after that. When he had needed rubber bands for a school project, Mr. Ronda had saved rubber bands for him, delivering them along with the mail each morning. When he had done a report on the post office, Mr. Ronda had taken him on a tour. Now the mailman would never help him again, would never drive by to drop off the mail, would never talk, would never smile, would never live.

He felt his eyes filling with tears, and he moved through the curtains into the HQ. He wanted to feel sad, but he didn't want to cry, and he forced his mind to think about something else for a minute. He would come back to Mr. Ronda in a while, when he was ready.

He sat down on the rug and picked up the top _Playboy_. He flipped through the thick magazine until he came to the first pictorial. "Women in Uniform," the headline read. His eyes scanned the page. There was a woman straddling a fire hose, wearing only a red fireman's hat and a red slick raincoat. Underneath that photo was a picture of a topless woman with large breasts wearing a police cap and licking the rounded tip of a nightstick. His eyes moved on to the next page.

Here was a nude woman wearing nothing but a smile and the hat of a mailman. One hand clutched a group of sorted letters; the index finger of her other hand hung from the bottom lip of her pouting mouth.

Billy felt something stir within him. He pressed down on the rising lap of his jeans.

Was this the way the new mailman would look?

He stared for a moment at the woman's triangle of reddish pubic hair and the pink hard nipples of her breasts. He felt guilty for thinking such thoughts, and he quickly closed the magazine and put it on top of the pile. He tried thinking of Mr. Ronda again, of the things the mailman had done and would never do again, of the man he had been but was no more, but the moment had passed and, try as he might, he could not make himself cry.

3

They neither saw nor heard the new mailman come by the next morning, but when Tritia walked out to the mailbox around ten to drop off a letter, the mail had already arrived. "Damn,",sjiesaid. Now she'd either have to go down to the post office and mail the letter herself or put it in the box and let the mailman pick it up tomorrow. She reached into the metal receptacle and took out the mail, sorting through the envelopes. There were only four pieces of mail today: three for Doug, one for her. There were no bills, she noticed, and no junk mail.

She closed the mailbox door. Doug would be going into town sometime today for groceries. She'd let him drop the letter off at the post office.

She studied the envelope addressed to her as she walked back up the driveway. There was no return address and the postmark was from Los Angeles. She opened the envelope and unfolded the letter itself, glancing first at the signature. She stopped walking. No. It couldn't be possible. Paula? She looked again at the signature. Paula. She ran quickly up the porch steps into the house. Doug was rummaging through the junk drawer in the kitchen, looking for something. "You'll never believe it," she said as she walked into the kitchen.

"I just got a letter from Paula."

"Paula?" He looked up. "Paula Wayne?"

She nodded, scanning the letter.

"I thought you didn't know where she moved to."

"I didn't." Tritia shook her head. "I wonder how she found me?"

"Your parents, probably."

"But they've moved twice since the last time I saw her. And they have an unlisted number." She grinned happily. "I can't believe it. I don't know how in the world she found me, but I'm glad she did."

"Well, aren't you going to read the letter?"

"I am," she said, looking down at the paper, waving him away. "Wait." She read quickly, her eyes moving easily through the neatly scripted, almost calligraphic letters. "She divorced Jim and moved to L.A. and now she works as a paralegal."

"Divorced him?" Doug laughed. "I thought those two were a perfect match."

"Shut up," Tritia said, continuing to read. "She says that she's happy but misses Santa Fe. She hopes I haven't forgotten about her. She may be taking a trip to the Grand Canyon in August and wants to know if she can stop by and see us."

"I'll think about it," Doug said.

"Haha ." She read in silence, turning the page.

"Well, what else?"

"It's personal. Girl talk." Tritia read the second and third pages, then folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. She shook her head. "Paula. I can't believe it."

Doug pulled a screwdriver from the drawer and closed it. "You miss her, don't you?"

"Of course I do. Oh, here, I almost forgot. Some mail for you." She handed him the other three envelopes.

He tore open the top letter. "You're not going to believe this," he said.

"What?"

"It's from Don Jennings."

"Jesus, you haven't seen him since --"

"-- you saw Paula," he finished for her.

She laughed. "That's a weird coincidence." She moved forward to peek over his shoulder, but he pulled away, hiding the letter.

"It's personal," he explained.

She hit him lightly on the arm. "Very funny." She stood next to him and read along, catching up on the events in Don's life. Don had taught social studies at the high school and had been hired at about the same time as Doug.

The two neophytes on the faculty had become friends out of necessity, but they had grown very close. A city boy, Don had never really been happy in Willis, and about ten years ago had taken a job in Denver. The two families had kept in touch for a while, writing letters, calling on the phone. Doug and Trish and a baby Billy had even visited the Jennings in Denver one summer. But new friends had come along, responsibilities had grown and shifted, it was no longer as convenient to keep in touch, and gradually the families drifted apart. Doug had said to Tritia many times that he "should call Don" or "should write Don," but somehow he never did.

Now Don had written to say that he and Ruth were moving back to Arizona.

He had gotten a job at Camelback High School in the Valley and suggested that when they moved and got settled in, the two families should get together.

"Are you going to write nun back?" Tritia asked when she finished reading.

"Of course." Doug opened the other two letters. One was from the district, announcing that an agreement had been reached with the teachers' union for a cost-of-living raise next year. The other was from the Department of Education, announcing that the deadline date for the grant application was actually a week later than stated on the form and apologizing for any problems caused by the misprint.

Dquglooked at Tritia incredulously. "Let me get this straight. You and I

both hear from friends we haven't seen or contacted in years; we're going to get the raise we asked for; and my application will have no problem getting in because the deadline is a week later than I thought?"

"Hard to believe, isn't it?"

"I'm buying a lottery ticket today. If our luck holds out, we'll be millionaires by midnight."

She laughed.

"You think I'm kidding? This isn't just a happy coincidence. This is luck." He grabbed her around the waist, drawing her to him. "We're on a roll, babe."

" 'Babe?'"

Doug turned around. Billy was standing in the back doorway. He seemed tired, but he smiled as he walked into the kitchen. "Can I call you that too, Mom?"

Tritia pulled out of Doug's arms, turning toward Billy. "Very funny. Your father, as usual, is being a buffoon. I expect you to observe his mistakes and learn from them."

Doug tried to grab her, but she pulled away from him on her way, to the bedroom and he managed only to slap her rear. Billy watched them mutely.

Ordinarily he would have joined in, but now he stood passively, a blank expression on his face.

Tritia put away her letter, then went into the bathroom. Billy continued on into the living room, turned on the television, and sat silently down on the couch. Doug stood in the kitchen, carefully watching his son. They had talked to him last night, a long intense discussion of death and dying in which, he'd thought, a lot of fears were faced and confronted, but apparently little if anything had been laid to rest. Billy was obviously still quite disturbed over the mailman's suicide. And, Doug had to admit, so was he. Like Billy, he had never really had to face death; it had never hit close to home. Although he had known people who had died, they had all been, like Ronda, acquaintances rather than close friends, and he was not sure what he would do or how he would react if his parents died or Trish was taken from him or something happened to Billy.

Despite his talk with his son, which was filled with the current psychologically accepted beliefs concerning the necessity of facing negative feelings and fears, he preferred not to dwell on such subjects. It was a shallow and easy way out, but rather than seriously confront his own feelings, he chose to joke, to laugh, to go on with his life as if nothing had happened.

He found himself thinking of the mailman now, though. Imagining how he must have looked with the top of his head blown off, blood and wet brains splattered on the tile behind him. Death, in any form, was a difficult subject to deal with, but violent suicide was messy and gruesome as well.

He looked down at the letters in his hand and thought of the new mailman.

The coincidence of receiving so much good mail in a single day was wonderful, but it was also a little creepy. If Ronda had delivered these letters, Doug would have been ecstatic, although he would probably not even have noticed the coincidence. But knowing what the new mailman looked like, imagining those pale hot hands slipping the envelopes into the mailbox and then carefully closing the door, he could not help feeling that they had been tainted somehow, and though nothing had actually happened to affect his mood, he was not as happy as he had been a moment before. He looked over at Billy. "What time did the mailman come by?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Didn't notice," Billy said, not taking his eyes from the TV.

Doug recalled the mailman's mocking smile, his arrogant attitude. He found himself wondering what type of car the mailman drove. He found himself wondering the mailman's name.

Doug stopped first at the store for bread, charcoal, tomatoes, lettuce, and peanut butter, then dropped by the post office on his way home. He arrived between the noon andmidaftemoon rushes and had no trouble finding a parking spot. The tiny lot was virtually empty. There were two old-timers sitting on the bench outside the post office as he walked up the steps, but there were no customers inside. Howard, as usual, was at the counter, wrapping a package. He looked haggard, his face red and blotchy, eyes teary, and Doug guessed that he had probably spent the night before drinking. The sight of the postmaster filled him with an uncomfortable feeling, but he forced himself to smile as he approached the counter. "How goes it, Howard?"

The postmaster looked up distractedly. "Fine," he said, but there was no conviction in his voice. It was a stock answer, an automatic reply, and meant nothing. "Can I help you?"

"Actually, I just came by to drop off a letter, but I thought I'd see how you were doing while I was at it."

The shadow of a frown crossed the postmaster's face. "I'm fine. I just wishpeople'd stop treating me like I just got out of a mental hospital. I'm not that fragile. I'm not going to have a breakdown or nothing. Jesus, you'd think I was a little kid."

Doug smiled. "People around here care. You know that."

"Yeah, well, I wish they'd care a little less." He must have heard the annoyance in his voice, for he suddenly stopped wrapping the package before him and shook his head, smiling sheepishly. "I'm sorry, I guess I haven't been myself lately." He shot Doug a warning glance. "But I don't want any sympathy."

Doug laughed. "You won't get any from me."

"Good."

"So who's the new mailman?"

Howard placed the package on the scale, putting on his steel-framed glasses and squinting through the thick lenses to read the weight. "His name's John Smith."

_John Smith?_

"Got here pretty quick, didn't he?"

"Yeah, that surprised me, too. I'd never had to go through this before, but I heard it took four or five weeks for them to transfer someone. I put in a request down to the main office on Monday, though, and he was here on Wednesday."

"He's from Phoenix?"

"I'm not sure. He don't talk much. But I'm sure I'll find out soon enough.

I told him he could stay with me until he found a place of his own.Murial's room is vacant while she's gone, and I told him he could sleep there so long as he makes the bed and picks up after himself. It's cheaper than a hotel, and it'll give him some time to pick out a place. Usually, postmen end up taking the first place that comes along because they can't afford to stay in a hotel any longer. The Postal Service don't give you no moving allowance, and God knows they don't pay carriers enough to stay holed up in a hotel for weeks at a time."

He wrote down a number on a small slip of paper, stamped it with a red seal, and took the package off the scale. He stamped FIRST CLASS on the top of the package.

"So what's he like? What do you think of him?"

Howard shrugged. "Too early to tell. He seems nice enough."

Doug looked suspiciously at the postmaster as he dropped the package into a large cart. It wasn't like Howard to be so circumspect. He was usually quick and bold in his judgments; this cautiousness and taciturnity seemed out of character for him. Either he liked someone or he didn't, and he did not hesitate to make his opinions known.

But Doug said nothing. The man had just lost his best friend. Who was he to judge behavior in such a situation? "Trish was serious," he said. "We want you to come over."

Howard nodded. "I'd like that," he said honestly.

"How about the weekend, then? Friday or Saturday?"

"Sounds good."

"I'll tell Trish. She'll probably call you about it. She doesn't trust me to handle these things." He opened the post-office door. "See you."

"Later," the postmaster said.

John Smith, Doug thought as he walked down the steps, taking his keys from his pocket. A likely story.

Doug was halfway home before he realized that he had forgotten to buy a lottery ticket. He had been half-joking when he'd said that to Trish, but he had also been half-serious. He was not a gambler by any stretch of the imagination, but he did buy an occasional lottery ticket when he remembered. And though he was ostensibly a rational intelligent man, he was not entirely immune to superstition. He didn't really believe in luck -- good or bad -- but it wasn't something he ruled out as being entirely impossible. Besides, he wouldn't mind winning a few million. It would be nice to be fabulously wealthy. It was something to which he would gladly adjust.

He turned the car around and headed to the Circle K. He bought a ticket, letting the machine pick the numbers, and read over his choices as he walked back out to the car. He was about to open the door when he saw, near the mailbox by the curb, the mailman. The postal carrier was kneeling on the ground, the door to the mailbox open, key and chain hanging from the lock, and was taking out the deposited mail. Only he wasn't simply emptying the bin the way Doug had seen Ronda do; he was carefully examining each envelope, sorting through them.

Some he placed carefully in a plastic tray beside him. Others he shoved unthinkingly into a brown paper sack.

There was something odd about that, Doug thought. From the careful way he handled the one group of envelopes and the casually rough way in which he dealt with the others, it seemed as though he was planning to hide some of those envelopes from Howard, as though he had plans for them other than delivery.

The mailman looked up and stared directly at him.

Doug glanced away, pretending as though he had been scanning the street and his gaze had accidentally landed for a second on the mailman as he'd looked around. But in the brief moment that their eyes locked, he had the unmistakable feeling that the mailman had known he was watching and that that was precisely why he had looked up at that moment.

You're being stupid, Doug told himself. The man had glanced in his direction. That was all. It was a perfectly ordinary occurrence, a simple random event. There was nothing strange or sinister about it. But when he looked again at the mailman, he saw that the man was still staring at him and that there was a disdainful half-smile on the pale thin lips.

Doug quickly opened the car door and got inside, feeling vulnerable, exposed, and slightly guilty, as if he had been caught watching someone undress.

He wasn't sure why the mailman's gaze made him feel that way, but he didn't want to stay here and analyze it. He started the car and backed up. The only exit from the Circle K lot was right next to the mailbox, and he hurriedly sped across the asphalt, hoping to pull immediately onto the road. No such luck. The highway was filled with cars and campers coming down from the lake, and he was forced to sit there and wait for an opening. He concentrated on the traffic, looking only to the left, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that the mailman was staring at him, still and unmoving. Then the line of traffic ended and he swung out onto the road. He could not resist the impulse and glanced out the passenger window as he drove by.

The mailman, smiling, waved at him.

4

Billy was on the porch when the mailman came by. There was no warning as there had been with Mr. Ronda, no loud motor or squealing brakes. There was only the quiet purr of a new engine and the soft dry crunch of tires stopping on dirt. Billy put down his BB gun and glanced over at the new mailman, curious, but the windows of the red car were tinted, the interior dark, and all he could see was a thin white hand and the sleeve of a blue uniform reaching out from the driver's window to put a stack of letters in the mailbox. There was something about the sight that bothered him, that didn't sit right. In the darkness of the car he thought he could see a shock of red hair over a pale indistinct face. The mailman did not look friendly like Mr. Ronda. He looked somehow . . . inhuman.

Billy felt a slight chill pass through him, a distinctly physical sensation, though the temperature was already well into the eighties. The white hand waved to him -- once, curtly -- then the car was off, sailing smoothly and silently down the road.

He knew he should go out and get the mail, but for some reason he was afraid to. The mailbox and the road suddenly looked awfully far away from the safety of the house and the porch. What if, for some reason, the mailman decided to turn around and come back? His dad was in the bathroom at the back of the house and his mom was over at the Nelsons'. He would be stuck out there by himself, on his own.

Knock it off, he told himself. He was just being stupid. He was eleven now, almost twelve, practically a teenager, and he was afraid to get the mail.

Jesus, how pitiful could a person get? It wasn't even night. It was morning, broad daylight. He shook his head. What awuss !

Nevertheless, he was scared, and for all of his self-chastisement he had to force himself to walk down the porch steps and up the gravel driveway.

He walked slowly past the pine tree in which they'd hung the bird-feeders, past the Bronco, over the culvert, and was at the edge of the road when he heard the car's quiet engine. His heart pounding, he looked down the road to see the mailman's car backing up quickly toward him. He stood rooted to the spot, wanting to run back onto the porch but knowing how foolish he would appear.

The car pulled to a stop next to him. Now Billy could see clearly the black interior of the new car.

And the white face of the mailman.

In his chest, Billy's already racing heart shifted into overdrive. The mailman's face was not ugly, not scary in any conventional way, but his skin seemed too pale, the features on his face too ordinary. His hair, by contrast, was so garishly red as to appear artificial, and this juxtaposition seemed to Billy somehow frightening.

"I forgot to deliver a letter," the mailman said. His voice was low and even, smoothly professional, like the voice of a game-show host or news commentator. He handed Billy an envelope.

"Thanks," Billy forced himself to say. His own voice sounded high and babyish.

The mailman smiled at him, a slow, sly insinuating smile that made Billy's blood run cold. He swallowed hard, turning and walking back up the driveway toward the porch, concentrating on keeping his feet moving at an even pace, not wanting the mailman to sense his fear. He kept waiting to hear the car shift into gear behind him, to hear the wheels on the gravel as the mailman pulled away, but there was only silence. He stared straight ahead at the windows of the house, but he saw in his mind the creepy smile of the mailman, and it made him feel dirty and slimy, as though he needed to take a bath.

He was suddenly aware that he was wearing shorts, that the mailman could see the backs of his legs.

He reached the porch and walked directly to the door, pulling it open and walking inside. Only now did he turn to peek through the screen door at the mailman. But the car was not at the foot of the drive, and there was not even a cloud of dust where it had been.

"What're you looking at there, sport?"

He jumped at the sound of his father's voice. "Nothing," he said immediately, but he could tell from the look on his father's face that he wasn't going to buy that story.

"What's the matter? You seem a little jumpy."

"Nothing's wrong," Billy repeated. "I just went out to get the mail." He handed over the envelopes he'd been holding.

The expression on his father's face changed from puzzlement to what looked like . . . understanding?

But at that moment there was the sound of tires crunching gravel outside.

They both looked out the window.Hobie Beecham's dented white pickup had just pulled into the driveway, andHobie himself was hopping out of the cab.

"Okay," Doug said, nodding at Billy. He put the envelopes down on the table and pushed open the screen, walking out onto the porch.

Hobiewas striding across the driveway with his patented redneck swagger.

He clomped loudly up the porch steps, adjusting the baseball cap on his head. "I was gonna come by yesterday," he told Doug, "but I was on crotch watch." He grinned, taking off his mirrored sunglasses and putting them in the pocket of his Parks and Recreation T-shirt. "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it."Hobie taught auto shop and driver'sed at the high school, but during the summer he volunteered to work twenty hours a week as a lifeguard at the public pool. He was a fair swimmer but certainly no trained lifeguard, and Trish had often wondered aloud why they'd accepted him at all, since it was well known that he spent more time ogling the mothers from behind his sunglasses than he did supervising their kids. She was prejudiced against him, but she had a point, Doug thought.Hobie was big, loud, andunredeemably sexist. Proudly sexist.

Billy, in the doorway, laughed, already feeling better. He liked Mr.

Beecham.

"You didn't hear that," Doug told him.

Hobieshook his head, chuckling. "They'restartin ' 'emyoung these days."

Billy picked up his BB gun and went to the opposite end of the porch, aiming at the aluminum can he had placed on a tree stump in the green belt, the incident with the mailman already beginning to fade into memory.

Doug andHobie walked inside, andHobie took off his baseball cap. He sat down, uninvited, in the nearest chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Got anything cold to drink in here?"

Doug walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. "We have some sun tea, some Coke, some water --"

"Anything more manly?"

"We're out of beer. Besides, it's not even eleven yet."

The other teacher sighed. "Coke, then."

Doug popped open Coke cans forHobie and for himself and carried the drinks into the living room, handing one to his friend. "So what brings you out this way?"

"The board meeting next Tuesday."

Doug groaned. "Board meeting? We just got out." He sat down on the couch.

"Besides, I thought the meeting wasn't until the end of July."

"Well, the bastards moved it up. They figured if they held it while most of the teachers are on vacation, they'd be able to slip the budget through with no opposition. Hell, the only reason I found out is because one of the janitors told me. I saw him at the pool."

"But they have to post the date and time."

Hobieshrugged. "I'm sure they did." His voice took on a sarcastic note.

"You know them. They would never do anything illegal." He snorted. "They probably buried it in the classified ads of the paper last week so noone'd see it." Doug shook his head. "I'm sick of school. I don't even want to think about it until the end of August."

"I just thought you might want to know. If I remember correctly, you were going to petition them for more funds?"

Doug sighed melodramatically.

"For new books?"

He nodded, drinking his Coke. "Yeah," he admitted. "I'm tired of teaching _To Sir, With Love_." He leaned back, his head against the wall. "Some asshole got it into his head a few years ago that teaching popular novels instead of classics would interest kids in reading. So they bought a twenty-year-old novel the kids hadn't even heard of, bought a videotape of the movie, and told me to teach it. It doesn't interest them in reading; all it does is bore them to tears. _The Scarlet Letter_ would bore them to tears too, but at least they'd learn from it."

Hobiechuckled. "Ikinda liked Lulu, though. She had nice knockers."

"Very funny. It's just that the board and the parents are always harping about how our test scores compare to the rest of the state. Well, other schools are reading _Heart of Darkness_ and _Huckleberry Finn_. Our kids are at a disadvantage. I just want them to be able to compete."

"I learned to read from comic books,"Hobie said.

Doug sat up straight. "I have nothing against that theory. Of course kids will want to read if they are given interesting reading material. And there is a lot of popular fiction that is worthwhile. I just think that if we're going to operate on that assumption, we should have better material to work with." He shook his head. "Shit."

On the porch Billy giggled.

"Stop spying," Doug called out. "Nixon Junior!"

Hobiegrinned. "Sounds like you're going to the meeting."

Doug sighed. "Yeah, I'm going to the meeting."

"Good. We can present a united front."

"A united front?"

"I need a new spray gun for my advanced auto."

"And you want me to back you?"

Hobielooked hurt. "We're brother teachers."

"Okay, but you know how tight the board is. If it comes down to a draw, I'll toss you to the wolves."

"It's a deal."Hobie held up his Coke can. "Cheers."

Walking up the road from the Nelsons', Tritia sawHobie's truck in the driveway before she had reached the mailbox. She considered turning around and going back, returning after he had gone, but she heard his loud voice carrying on the warm slight breeze and could tell that he was just leaving. She walked across the dirt and turned into the drive.

"Trish,"Hobie called out. He laughed loudly and rushed forward, grabbing her around the waist, hugging her. "How's itgoin '?"

Tritia put on a strained smile. She didn't likeHobie Beecham, although she tried to get along with him for Doug's sake. She honestly could not understand what her husband saw in the man. He was lewd, crude, and a step above beefwit. She tensed as the hug continued, finally pushing him away. The last time he'd greeted her, he'd taken the opportunity to squeeze her ass, though when she'd told Doug about it he said it was probably an accident. It was no accident, she knew, and she'd told him his friend had better keep his hands to himself or he would find himself with one testicle less.

Billy thoughtHobie was great, however, and each time after he came over, the boy walked around the house affecting a swagger, trying to put a southwestern twang in his voice. She wished there was some way to get Billy to emulate and admire some of their more cultured and intellectual friends, but he was at the age when that sort of simplistic macho posturing seemed extremely appealing, and there was no way to effectively dissuade him without pushing him intoHobie's corner completely.

Tritia looked the big man over. "We missed you at the funeral," she said pointedly.

"Yeah, well, I didn't go. I mean, itwoulda been kind of hypocritical. I

didn't even know the guy. He dumped off my mail, I saw him every once in a while, but we certainly weren't friends."

"A lot of people were there."

He shrugged. "I wasn't. Sue me." He smiled. "Making friends has never been one of my major goals in life."

"I noticed," Tritia said coolly.

Hobieturned to Doug. "Speaking of Ronda, have you seen the new mailman?"

"Yes," he said noncommittally.

"I saw him this morning by the post office. Creepy guy. I don't like him."

Someone else had noticed too! Doug forced himself to remain calm. "Did you talk to him?"

"Don't want to. His job is to deliver the mail, not be my buddy. I don't talk to the meter-reader or the paperboy or the telephone man either. No offense, but that was something I never liked about Ronda. He was always stopping to chat with everyone --"

"Ronda was a good man," Doug said simply.

"And don't you dare say anything bad about him," Tritia ordered. She nailed him with dark stern eyes.

Hobiewas about to say something else but apparently thought the better of it and shut his mouth. He gave Doug a condescending smile of male camaraderie, a smile that all but said that his wife was being a typical foolish female. Tritia was right, Doug thought. Sometimes his friend was an insensitive asshole.

Tritia walked up the porch steps and slammed the door behind her.

"Anyway,"Hobie said, "I don't like the new guy."

"I don't either."

"Weird sucker. He's so pale. And that red hair. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if it was dyed. He is kind offaggoty -looking."

"Well, I don't know about that . . ." Doug said, his voice trailing off.

He wasn't sure what he thought, he realized. He had no concrete beliefs about the mailman, only an unfounded dislike, a strong sense of unease sharpened by impressions gleaned from a few random meetings. He was not usually given to such impulsive, instinctive judgments, and he was a little surprised at himself.

Ordinarily, he prided himself on giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, on believing only the best about a person until shown otherwise. His negative opinion of the mailman, however, had been born fully formed; he had experienced an instant dislike of the man without knowing a single fact about him.

_Dislike and fear._

And fear, he admitted. He was, on some level, for some reason he could not quite understand, afraid of the mailman. And that too had been instant.

Hobiepulled open the door of the pickup and hopped onto the ripped seat.

He dug into the right front pocket of his Levi's and pulled out his key ring.

"Well, Igotta be going. You're coming with me to the meeting, though, right?"

"You got it."

"All right. We'll kick some butt." He slammed the door, grinning, and started the engine. "I'm onpoon patrol tomorrow and Friday, but I'll give you a call before Monday."

"Okay," Doug said. "Have fun."

"I will,"Hobie said, pulling his mirrored shades from his T-shirt pocket, putting them on. "You bet I will." He backed up quickly and swung about on the road, turning the truck toward town. He waved once, a short swipe of his hand above the cab of the pickup, and then was gone.

Doug walked back up the steps.

"Kick some butt," Billy said, putting down his BB gun.

"Don't you repeat that," Tritia called from inside.

"You heard your mother," Doug said. He tried to make his voice sound tough, but he couldn't help smiling. He pushed open the screen door and walked into the house, picking up the mail from the top of the table where he'd put it down. He glanced at the envelopes in his hand.

Again there were no bills.

5

The next day Doug received a letter from Ford informing him that, due to the outcome of a lawsuit the company recently lost to a consumer-rights organization, the warranty on their Bronco's power train had been extended for another year. There was also a two-dollar rebate check from Polaroid and a letter to Billy from Tritia 's mother, with a five-dollar bill in it.

The day after that, the mail consisted of a letter from Doug's mother to Billy -- the letter contained a one-dollar bill: she was richer than Tritia 's mother but cheaper -- and a subscription to the Fruit-of-the-Month Club from an anonymous donor "on this, the occasion of your birthday." The accompanying card was addressed to Tritia , but her birthday was not until January. Doug's was closer, in October, but it was still several months away.

"Who coul4 have sent us this, and why?" Tritia wondered, looking at the small box of red delicious apples.

Doug didn't know, but he didn't like it. He was also starting to worry about the bills. It had been exactly a week since Ronda had killed himself, and while he could not really find any fault with the man who had taken his place _John Smith_ -- he did not think it natural that they had received no bills or junk mail in that time. There was something suspicious and unsettling about that. It was strange enough that it had happened once, but for the exact same thing to occur day after day . . . Well! Mail, by its very nature, was neither all good nor all bad. It carried indifferently messages both positive and negative, filtering nothing, making no distinctions. The odds against something like this occurring were probably astronomical.

Besides, he knew that both his water bill and Exxon bill came due at this time each month.

If he didn't get those bills by Monday, he told Trish, he was going to go in and have a talk with Howard.

"Stop being so paranoid," she said. "Jesus, if you're bored, start cleaning up that trash in the back of the house. Start working on your storage shed. Do something useful. Stop thinking up bizarre conspiracy theories."

"What bizarre theory?" he asked. "Some of our mail is obviously getting lost. I'm just going to talk to Howard about it."

"Don't give me that. You've had it in for that new mailman since the moment you laid eyes on him."

She was right, although he had never come out and said as much. He had not, in fact, talked to her at all about the mailman, not specifically, though he had talked about the mail and obviously must have telegraphed to her his thoughts and opinions. What worried him as much as the lack of bills and junk mail, however, was the sheer amount of letters and positive correspondence they were receiving. Under normal circumstances, they did not get this much good mail in a month, let alone in a few days, and that was not something which could easily be explained, which had an alternate, obviously rational explanation.

There were too many factors and variables involved. This was not something that could be attributed to theincompetency of a postal worker.

He remembered seeing the mailman carefully sorting the letters he took from the mailbox.

"I'm going to call Howard," he repeated.

Howard himself called the next day, ready to take them up on their dinner invitation. Trish answered the phone, and while Doug knew immediately who it was from the sympathetic tone she adopted and from the sudden understanding in her voice, he did not mention anything about the mail. The postmaster was going through a difficult period, and he did not want to make it even more difficult.

He would bring up his complaint next week if nothing had changed, and he would bring it up in a business rather than social environment.

Trish set up a date and Howard agreed to come over on Saturday for roast and potatoes.

"You know what?" Doug admitted to Trish that night before they went to bed. "I think I'm actually starting to miss all that junk mail. I used to toss most of those ads and flyers out without reading them, but now that we don't get them anymore, I feel like we're cut off from society. It's almost like not getting a newspaper. I feel like I'm not up on what's current."

Trish rolled over and turned off the light. "Shut up about the mail," she said. "Go to bed."

6

Lane Chapman lived in a large three-bedroom house on the top of the hill, above the flattened ruins of the oldAnasazi village. The house was modern, all wood and glass and angular corners, and the inside looked like something out of a magazine: white throw rugs on white Mexican tile floors, overstuffed white couches, track lights with framed art posters on otherwise bare white walls.

Billy stared at the two-story structure as he walked up the paved drive to the front steps. He admired the house, appreciated it, but he didn't like it. It seemed cold, more like an art exhibit than a home, and the two boys usually spent most of their time at theAlbins ' small but comfortable A-frame.

Although he would never tell this to Lane, Billy also found his friend's parents cold and aloof. Mr. Chapman was hardly ever home, but when he was, Lane stayed well out of his way. He seldom smiled, swore often, and did not like to waste his time talking to kids. Billy was not even sure Mr. Chapman knew his name, though he had been his son's best friend since kindergarten. Mrs. Chapman was always home, but there was something false about her unwavering smile, something phony about her constant niceness. Lane, he knew, adored his mother, but Billy was not sure the feeling was reciprocated. Mrs. Chapman seemed about as warm and responsive as her precious white furnishings.

Before moving here to Pine Top Acres, theChapmans had lived just down the way from Billy's family in a prefab log home that Lane's dad had built and that he used as a demonstration model for his contractor's skills. Now theChapmans had an unlisted phone number, and the only people allowed into the house were those few who had been invited.

Billy pressed the doorbell and heard the familiar musical chime sound dully from the depths of the house. A few moments later, Lane was at and out the door.

"Come on," he said. "Let's hit the road. My dad's home and he's pissed. He just lost a contract toGagh and Sons, and he's in a bad mood. He's threatening to take me to Crazy Carl again."

Billy laughed. Crazy Carl was the town's oldest barber. A World War II

vet, with pictures of the Big One all over his tiny shop, he considered it his patriotic duty to make sure every boy's hair was cut to a length he considered acceptable. No matter what style was requested, Carl would inevitably shave the hair down to a uniform butch. Once, years ago, Billy's dad had taken him to Crazy Carl and had told the old man to just trim a little above the ears. Carl had shaved him almost completely bald, and he had been the laughingstock of his classroom for weeks. Neither he nor his dad had ever gone back again.

"He's not serious, is he?" Billy asked.

"Hard to tell with my dad. He's always threatening to send me off to military school or something." He shook his head. "I'm getting tired of this crap. I swear to God. I'm hitting the road when I'm eighteen, and if my old man tries to stop me, I'll deck him."

Billy hid his smile. Lane was always talking about how he was going to "deck" his dad or "beat his ass." Last week, when they'd found a lottery ticket on the ground, Lane had said that if they had the winning numbers he was going to leave home and send a truckload ofdogshit to be dropped on his father's car.

Lane's plans and pronouncements were always funny, but there was something sad about them too, and Billy was thankful that he didn't have his friend's parents.

Lane looked around the drive. "Where's your bike?"

Billy nodded toward the edge of the road. "I left it back there. I thought maybe your brother was sleeping. I didn't want to wake him up." The last time he'd come over, he'd called out for Lane instead of knocking on the door or ringing the bell, and Lane's mother, smiling as always, had come out and told him in a polite voice edged with steel that he had awakened the baby.

Lane laughed. "You think your bike was going to wake him up? The doorbell's louder than that."

"Did I wake him up again?"

"No. He's fine. Stop being such a pussy. What do you think my mom's going to do? Beat you?"

It was possible, Billy thought, but he said nothing. He walked down the drive to the bush where he'd stashed his bike while Lane got his own wheels, and soon the two of them were speeding down the road.

Although the land at the top of the hill had been open for development for over two years, few of the acre lots had sold and even fewer had been built upon. There was theChapmans ' house; Dr.Koslowski's house; the house of Al Houghton, who owned Pine Top Acres; and a few expensive vacation homes built by people who never used them. Other than that, the flattened hilltop was home to only trees and rocks and bushes.

Billy and Lane pedaled down the paved road past the dark wood and stone of the doctor's rustic residence. The view from here was spectacular. To the left was the town, white wooden buildings and brown shake roofs peeking up from between summer green trees, and the rugged ridge beyond. To the right was the forest, stretching toward the horizon in an alternating pattern of hill and valley, hill and valley, broken only by the cleared spaces and tiny jumbled patterns of increasingly far-off towns.

They sped along the road. Their plan today was to check out the Indian ruins at the bottom of the hill. A team of archaeology students from ASU had arrived yesterday for their annual summer workshop, and they hoped to be invited to join the exploration.

They had discovered the dig last summer while practicing motocross jumps and maneuvers on the maze of barely perceptible trails that branched outward from the forest service road that dissected the narrow valley. They had seen, from far off, moving swaths of color amid the forest green and had ridden up to investigate. The dig had already been under way for a month by the time they'd arrived, and the sight that greeted their eyes amazed them both. Fifteen or twenty men and women were digging with tiny trowels in square shallow holes precisely outlined with sticks and string. Many of them were examining small rocks and pieces of pottery, dusting the objects off with small black brushes.

In the center of the meadow, next to a battered pickup truck, were rows of bones and skulls and Indian grinding stones. Around the perimeter of this activity, a low stone wall had been partially unearthed.

The two of them had stood with their bikes at the edge of the meadow until someone had spotted them and yelled, "Hey!" Then they'd taken off, pedaling fast and furiously away from the site.

But they had returned the next day.

And came back the day after that.

Gradually, like wild animals, they grew used to the archaeology students, and the students grew used to them, and one day, finally tamed, they had gathered the courage to walk into camp.

It had been an eye-opening experience. The two of them had hung around, trying to stay out of everyone's way, until the professor in charge let them chisel out some arrowheads from the hard-packed ground. It had been fun and rewarding, and although they hadn't been able to keep any of the artifacts they'd unearthed, they had both decided then and there that they were going to be archaeologists when they grew up.

The road curved down and they found the trail that led off the pavement through a vacant lot into the forest. Billy jumped the small embankment, Lane followed, and then they were through the lot and into the trees. The trail wound through the underbrush, following the path of a long-dead stream, running down the hill to the valley below. They sped over the sandy earth. Small lizards scattered out of the way of their onrushing tires; birds flew up from the surrounding bushes, squawking into the air. Finally they reached the bottom of the hill, and Billy turned into his stop, sliding across the dirt. Lane skidded to a halt next to him. From off to their right came the faint sounds of conversation and rock music, and they swiveled their bikes around, heading toward the sounds.

Although the low stone outlines ofAnasazi buildings stretched across the entire floor of the valley, the university team concentrated on only one small section at a tune. Last year, the students had been digging at the north end of the tiny valley, near the meadow, but this year it sounded as though they had given up on that idea and were trying to look for artifacts on the heavily forested south end.

Billy and Lane were at the site almost before realizing it, and they quickly stopped at the edge of the small clearing. Folding tables and chairs had been set up underneath various trees, and on them were piled books and boxes and assorted work tools. The carpet of brown pine needles that ordinarily covered the ground had been cleared and flat bare dirt shone through, broken in spots by square shallow excavation holes. Bright-blue and red tents were set up about the area, though not enough for everyone to sleep in. The students themselves were grouped around their professor, a baldingmiddleaged man with an Abe Lincoln beard and a prospector's tan.

The boys parked their bikes in the bushes and walked slowly and shyly forward. A few of the students' faces were familiar from last year, but most of them were new and Billy and Lane weren't sure what kind of reaction they were going to get.

The eyes of the men and women shifted focus from the professor to the two boys trekking across the rough ground. The professor turned to see the new center of attention, and a smile of recognition crossed his face. "I was wondering when you were going to show up," he said. His voice was cracked and hoarse. "Ready to work?"

"That's why we're here," Lane said.

The professor laughed. "Glad to have you aboard. I'm sure we'll be able to find something for you to do." He turned to face his class. "Those of you who are new to our extension course, meet Lane . . ."

"Chapman," Lane prompted.

"And Billy . . ."

"Albin."

"Right." The professor was about to add something else when his attention was drawn to the other end of the clearing. Pressing forward, Billy followed his gaze. He saw movement in the underbrush. A man. A man with a blue uniform and a thin white face.

And bright red hair.

The mailman stepped into the clearing from the other end. He had obviously been walking through the trees and bushes all the way from the control road, which cut across the valley at its southern tip, but his postal uniform was free from all traces of dirt, there were no small dead leaves or branches in his hat, and the gold buttons on his jacket shone brightly, unscratched. He held in his hand a single envelope.

"Dr. Dennis Holman?" he asked in his smooth low voice.

The professor nodded.

"I have a letter for you." He handed the envelope to the professor, then glanced purposefully over at Billy. There was the same suggestive smile on his face that Billy had seen that day by the mailbox, and he felt both sickened and scared. His heart was pounding, and he glanced over at Lane to see if he had noticed, but Lane's attention was focused on a braless woman in the front row of students.

Billy forced himself to stare only at the professor, trying to ignore entirely the creepy insinuating look of the mailman.

Dr. Holman opened the letter and quickly scanned its contents. "Our funding came through," he announced to the assembled group, holding up the letter. "The university has decided to go ahead with our research project."

There was a spontaneous and only partially tongue-in-cheek cheer from the students.

The professor, grinning, nodded at the mailman. "Thanks," he said. "That's the best news I've gotten all semester."

"Glad to be of service," the mailman said.

Ordinarily, Billy thought, that would have been the man's cue to leave, but he showed no intention of doing any such thing. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood there calmly, looking around the camp, taking everything in.

His face was purposefully neutral, carefully expressionless, but there was an underlying smugness, an indefinable something that manifestedkself in his attitude and that gave Billy the feeling that he was passing judgment on all he surveyed -- and that he was happy it did not live up to his standards. He was silent and expressionless, but Billy could tell that inwardly he was gloating.

The mailman's eyes scanned the faces of the students, lingering on none of them, then landed once again on Billy.

Billy was sweating. He could feel twin trickles of perspiration slide in winding paths from beneath his armpits down his sides. His forehead, too, was sweaty, and he wiped it with a palm. It was hot out, but not that hot, and he swallowed hard, wanting to escape, to run, to get the hell out of here. But he could not move. He was frozen in place by that gaze, by the unnatural promises behind that superficially benign smile, so utterly powerless to react that he could not even glance over at Lane.

The mailman nodded at him, a nod of recognition and acknowledgment, a nod that said "I know what you're thinking," then turned away and strode back through the forest the way he had come.

"We got our funding," the professor enthused. "We finally got our funding!" He was holding up the letter proudly. "Now we'll really be able to make some progress."

Billy felt Lane, next to him, give him a nudge with his elbow. "That's great, huh? I guess we'll be able to do more stuff."

"Great," Billy repeated. But his thoughts were not on the professor or on archaeology. His eyes and thoughts were focused on the space between the trees where a moment before he had seen the mailman's white hand wave slowly and lovingly good-bye.

7

Howard pulled into the driveway at seven sharp. It was still light out, but the blue in the east was quietly being usurped by purple, and there was an orange tinge to the pale sky in the west. Billy was sitting on the couch and was right in the middle of a _M.A.S.H._ rerun when Tritia turned off the TV and kicked him upstairs. He complained loudly, but hurried up the steps nonetheless.

He was not comfortable around adults, and he usually hid each time they had friends over. Watching him tromp loudly up the stairs, his mother couldn't really blame him. She'd felt the same way herself when she was his age.

"I'll call you when dinner's ready," she said. "You can come on down and get some food."

"Okay."

Doug stood up and went to open the door.

"Don't say anything about Bob unless he brings the subject up first,"

Tritia suggested. "We're supposed to be cheering him up, taking his mind off his troubles."

He shook his head, pressing past her. "I'm not entirely dim, you know."

She smiled. "Just trying to counteract theHobie Beecham influence."

"Thanks." Doug pulled open the door while Tritia hurried into the kitchen to check on the food, stepping onto the porch just as Howard started up the stairs. "Glad you could make it," he said.

The postmaster smiled. "Glad you invited me." He was wearing his equivalent of dress clothes: new dark-blue jeans, a starched white-and-rose cowboy shirt, and an agate bolo tie. His boots had been shined and his hair slicked back and held in place with some sort of wet-looking gel. In his hand was a gift-wrapped bottle.

"Come in," Doug said, holding the door open. Howard stepped past him, and both of them moved into the house.

Tritia was taking off her apron, and she moved forward to greet their guest. She, too, had dressed up for the occasion and was wearing a low-cut black dress, matching turquoise bracelet and necklace, and silver antique earrings.

Her brown hair was done up in a sophisticated roll. She accepted the proffered present graciously. "Thank you," she said. "But you really didn't have to bring anything."

"I wanted to." Howard looked at her and shook his head appreciatively.

"You sure look mighty beautiful today." He turned to Doug. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again, you're a lucky man."

Tritia blushed. She unwrapped the bottle and turned it around to read the label. "Champagne!" She gave Howard a quick peck on the cheek. "Thanks so much.

I guess this means we'll forgo the Dr. Pepper." She went into the kitchen, put the bottle down on the counter, and threw the wrapping paper in the garbage sack under the sink. "You two keep yourselves busy for a few minutes. I'll get the hors d'oeuvres ready."

Doug motioned for Howard to sit down in one of the chairs across from the couch, and the postmaster obliged. Doug sat down as well. It was warm. The windows were open, the fan on, but the air still bordered on the uncomfortable.

From upstairs came the familiar strains of the theme from _M.A.S.H._ Doug smiled at Howard.

"Excuse me for a moment." He stood up again and walked to the foot of the stairs. "Turn it down," he called out. "It's too loud." The noise of the television faded into a drone, then was silenced. "Billy," he explained, walking back. He settled into the chair. There were questions he wanted to ask, things he wanted to know, but he didn't know how to approach the subject subtly. He cleared his throat, deciding to jump right in, hoping he didn't sound too interested, too curious. "So how're you getting along with the new mailman? Is he still living with you?"

"Yeah," Howard admitted, "but I don't see him much. You know how it is.

I'm an old man. I go to bed earlier than he does, wake up later than he does.

Our lifestyles don't exactly match."

"So what's he like?"

Tritia walked up and placed a plate of cheese crepes on the small table between them. "I'll be back with the champagne," she said sweetly. She fixed Doug with a hard meaningful stare as she turned away from the postmaster, but he pretended not to see it.

Each of them took a crepe and bit into it. "Mmmm," Howard said, closing his eyes and savoring the taste. "That's one thing I miss withMurial being gone: good cooking. You get tired of frozen food and hot dogs after a while."

"Don't you cook?" Tritia asked, bringing them two glasses of champagne.

"I try, but I fail."

She laughed lightly as she returned to the kitchen for her own drink.

"So what's he like?" Doug asked again. "He sure delivers the mail early.

Bob used to come by around noon. Now by the time we eat breakfast and clean up a bit, the mail's there."

"John does start early. He's usually gone before I'm even up. He's done with the entire route by eleven, and he stays until four." Howard grabbed another crepe, popping it into his mouth. "He hasn't turned in a time card yet - it's due this week -- but when he does, Igotta see what hours he puts down.

He's not supposed to be working more than eight. I think it's more like ten or eleven, though."

"Don't you think that's a little weird?" Doug asked. "I mean, delivering the mail so early?"

Trish shot him another withering glance over the postmaster's head as she sat down next to him.

"Yeah, John might be a tad strange. But he's a good worker. He does his job well and gets things done. And he's always eager to do more. That's not something you see a lot of these days. I couldn't ask for a better carrier."

Doug nodded silently. Howard's words were full of praise, but there was an undercurrent of something else in his tone of voice. It was as if he were repeating words he had read and practiced, as if he were saying what he was supposed to say rather than what he actually felt. For the first time since he'd known the postmaster, Doug thought that he was being out-and-out hypocritical, and that was something he never would have thought he'd feel about Howard Crowell. His eyes met Tritia 's across the table, and he knew that she'd caught it too.

But Tritia refused to continue this line of conversation, and she deftly changed the topic to something less personal and more neutral, and Doug followed her lead.

Dinner was excellent, and they ate it slowly. Billy had come down, taken what he'd wanted, and then retreated upstairs to his hideaway. The rest of them ate at the table, enjoying the food at a leisurely pace: Cobb salad, followed by rare roast in wine sauce, served with baked potatoes stuffed with sour cream and chives. To go along with the meal, Tritia had baked some of her homemade bread, whkhwas thick and warm and soft and disappeared almost immediately.

Howard smiled blissfully. "I can't remember when I've had a meal this good."

"Neither can I," Doug said.

"Enjoy it while you can," Tritia told him. "This is our red-meat quota for the month."

"She's very big on eating right," Doug explained. "This is a very health conscious family."

"You need all the help you can get. If you exercised a little more, we could afford to be more lenient. But you live a completely sedentary life. It's the least I can do to see that you eat properly."

Howard chuckled.

Billy came down with his dishes, smiled shyly at the postmaster, then returned upstairs. They finished off the champagne and Tritia brought Howard and Doug each a beer. She drank ice water.

The conversation grew more somber and less frivolous as the meal progressed, and it was Howard who brought the subject up first. He was already well into his second beer. "I keep wondering why Bob did it," the postmaster said, looking down at his plate, pushing the empty potato skin with his fork.

"That's the one thing that really gnaws at me, that I can't understand: why he did it." He looked up at Tritia , his eyes red but his voice even. "You knew Bob.

He was an easygoing guy. He didn't let things get to him. He wasn't an unhappy man. He liked his job, loved his family, had a good life. And nothing changed.

There was no big catastrophe, no death in the family, nothing that would push him over the edge. Besides, if something was bothering him, he would have told me." His voice trembled slightly and he cleared his throat. "I was his best friend."

Tritia put her hand on his. "I know you were," she said softly.

He wiped his nose with the back of his hand, forcing himself not to give in to tears. "Ellen's taking it really hard. I mean, harder than I thought she would. She always seemed like such a strong woman." He smiled sadly. "Bob used to call her the Rock." He absently fingered his napkin. "She was all drugged out when I went to see her the other day. The doctor's giving her . . . I don't know what all. He says it's the only way to keep her calm. The boys are the ones who have to take care of everything, but you can see that the strain's starting to show. They have questions just like I do, and there just aren't any answers."

"Are they still staying at the house?" Doug asked.

Howard nodded. "I told them to get out, at least for a while. It just stirs up bad memories, and I'm sure it's not doing Ellen any good."

Doug had a sudden picture of the two sons waking up each morning, each of them taking a shower in the same bathtub where their father had blown his brains out, getting their soap from the indented soap dish in which puddles of his blood and pieces of his fragmented scalp had lain. He wondered how Ellen bathed, how she avoided thinking about what she had seen.

"It'll be all right," Tritia told him.

"I miss him," Howard said bluntly. "I miss Bob." He took a deep breath, then the words came out in a rush. "I don't know what I'm going to do with my Saturdays anymore, you know? I don't who I'm going to be able to ask for advice or give advice to or go places with or . . . Shit!"

And he began to cry.

After dinner, they sat on the porch. It was warm, humid, felt like rain.

Bats, fluttering shadows of darkness, spun in and out of the illuminated circle generated by the streetlamp. From down the road came the harsh electric sounds of a bug zapper instantaneously frying its victims.

"We used to go bat fishing when we were little," Doug said absently. "We would hook a leaf or something to fishing line and throw it up into the air next to a streetlight. The bats' radar told them that it was a bug, so they'd dive for it. We never caught anything, but we came close a few times." He chuckled.

"I don't know what we would've done ifwe'd've caught one."

"You do stupid things when you're little," Howard said. "I remember we used to shoot cats with pellet guns. Not just cats that were wild or strays. Any cat." He downed the last of his beer. "Now it's hard for me to rememberbein' that cruel."

They were silent for a while, too full and too tired to make the effort at conversation. In the east, above the ridge, lightning flashed, outlining billowy dark clouds. Like most summer storms, it would probably come at night and be gone by morning, leaving behind it a heaviness and humidity that would create a boom business at the air-conditioned movie theater and would send people running to the lakes and streams. They looked upward. The evening was moonless, and though there was obviously a storm approaching, the sky directly above them was an astronomer's dream, filled with millions of pinprick stars.

Doug's chair creaked as he shifted his weight, leaning forward. "Where's, uh, John Smith tonight?" The name sounded ludicrous when spoken. "Is he at your house?"

"Don't know." The beer must have loosened his tongue, for Howard shook his head, a vague movement in the darkness. "He's usually not there this early, though. He goes out at night, but I don't know where he goes or what he does.

Some nights I don't think he comes home at all."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, I been having a hard time sleeping lately. I'm real tired, but I

can't fall asleep."

"That's understandable," Tritia said.

"Yeah, well sometimes I get up and walk around, you know, just to have something to do. The other night, I was going out to the kitchen to get a drink of orange juice, and I notice as I pass by that his door's open. I look in there and the bed's made and he's gone. That was around two or three in the morning."

"Maybe he has a girlfriend," Tritia suggested.

"Maybe." Howard sounded doubtful.

"Have you ever seen him sleeping?" Doug asked.

"What kind of question is that?" Tritia frowned.

"Humor me."

"No," the postmaster said, speaking slowly, "come to think of it, I

haven't."

"Ever seen his bed unmade?"

Howard shook his head. "But he does stay in his room on Sundays. Don't even open the door. Just stays in there like he's hibernatin ' or something. I

think he sleeps then."

"All day?"

Howard shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe he does something else.

He always seems real tired on Monday morning."

Doug felt the coldness wash over him. He didn't know why he was pursuing this line of questioning or what he hoped to find out, but there was something about the mailman that bothered him in a way he could not explain. "Have you been getting many complaints about him?" he asked.

"None."

Doug felt more than a twinge of disappointment. He had been half-hoping to hear that there was a ground swell of resentment against the new mailman, that either residual feelings for Ronda or a recognition of the mailman's own obvious peculiarity had brought in a negative verdict from the public.

"As a matter of fact," Howard continued, "people seem to be very happy with the job he's doing. I can't remember the office ever being so busy.

People're sending more letters, buying more stamps. I don't rightly know what it is, but the people seem to be more satisfied than they were before." His voice took on an edge of bitterness. "That's all well and good, mind you, and I'm not complaining, but I can't help thinking that this is like a judgment against Bob.

I mean, no one's said anything bad about him. In fact, it's exactly the opposite. I hear nothing but praise and good things about him. But on a professional level, people seem to be happier with John." He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was filled with quiet conviction.

"Bob was a damn fine mail carrier. The best I've ever known or worked with, and I can't help feeling that he's being betrayed."

Doug and Tritia were silent.

Howard stood up and walked over to the railing, staring out at the green belt. "John's a good worker. He's polite and hardworking. He does a fine job."

The postmaster's voice was so low they could barely hear it. "But I don't like him. I don't know why, but, God help me, I don't like the man. I don't like him at all."

Howard left after ten. Doug offered to drive him home, but he said he was not drunk, and indeed he seemed to have no trouble walking in a straight line or speaking clearly. Still, Tritia made him drink a cup of coffee before he left, and both of them watched from the porch as he drove away, red taillights disappearing into the trees.

Doug had asked him about the mail, had told him that he suspected that the new mailman was losing letters, but the postmaster, once again closed off, said that what was happening was common. Mail, like tides, he said, had ebbs and flows, it was never constant. But there seemed to be a pattern here, Doug argued. They were getting no bills or junk mail, nothing negative. Coincidence, Howard said, and although Doug did not believe him, he did not press the point.

It was nothing he could prove. Still, he was determined to make out checks for the regular monthly payments on his bills and send them out tomorrow instead of waiting for the bills themselves to arrive.

Locking the front door behind them as they went inside, theAlbins decided to leave the dishes until tomorrow. From upstairs, they could hear the rough arrhythmic sounds of Billy's snores. Doug smiled. The boy was a regular lumbermill with his log sawing, his snores as loud and deep as those of an old man. Tritia turned the light off in the kitchen and they walked down the short hall to the bedroom.

"Don't you think Billy's been kind of quiet lately?" Tritia asked.

"No more than usual."

"It seems like something's bothering him. He's been, I don't know, distracted. Like today, when he came home from Lane's, I asked him what he'd been doing, and he just shook his head, wouldn't even answer me. Then he sat there and watched TV for the rest of the day."

Doug chuckled. "So what else is new?"

"I'm not joking. Could you just ask him what's wrong? After all, you are his father."

"Okay. I'll talk to him tomorrow. I don't know what you want me to find out, but --"

"Just see if he's in any kind of trouble, find out what's wrong. I'm probably just imagining things, but it never hurts to check. He's almost a teenager, you know."

Doug knew what she was hinting at, but he didn't pursue the subject.

"Okay. I'll talk to him."

"Thanks."

They had reached the bedroom. It was dark, and neither of them turned on the lights. "Of course," he said, "Billy's asleep now."

Tritia was silent.

"Sound asleep," he prodded.

He heard the sound of the bedspread being pulled down. The room was warm, but not nearly as warm as the living room in the front of the house. Far away, thunder rumbled. Doug began unbuttoning his shirt. "It's kind of romantic with the lights off," he said. "Don't you think? I --"

It was then that he felt her hand between his legs. Surprised, he reached forward in the darkness, and his fingers touched smooth rounded flesh. Somehow Trish had silently wiggled out of both her dress and her underwear. Their lips met, and he felt her warm wet tongue slide lovingly into his mouth. Her hands slowly unbuckled his belt, unzipped his zipper, pulled down his pants and shorts. He kicked off his shoes, stepped out of the clothes bunched around his ankles, and the two of them moved silently over to the bed. She pushed him onto his back without speaking, and he stretched out straight on the mattress. Her fingers, soft and gentle, grasped his penis, massaging it, making it hard. The bed creaked and jiggled as she moved into position, and he could smell the musky scent of her arousal as her pubic hair brushed his face. He moved his head upward, and his tongue touched moisture. He could taste her, sweet and sour, and as his tongue slid into her ready opening, he felt the warmth of her mouth engulf his penis.

It was nearly an hour later before they were through. It had been a long time since they'd both enjoyed it this much, since they'd allowed themselves to enjoy it this much. In the past year or so, their lovemaking had consisted of commercials rather than feature films, short quick trysts taken when they were sure Billy was asleep or would be gone for a long period of time. Ever since Doug had explained to his son the facts of life, they had both been careful that no clues to their lovemaking could be spotted by the boy. But this had been like the old days, long and unhurried and giving and wonderful.

Exhausted, sated, they fell asleep in each other's arms, still naked, still clutching each other.

8

Billy stood outside the theater, waiting for his dad to pick him up. The movie had ended early nearly twenty minutes ago, and everyone else was gone. The parking lot was deserted. Even the ushers and other theater workers had finished cleaning up and were leaving.

Where was his dad?

He'd called home about ten minutes ago, once Brad and Michael's parents had come to pick them up, and his mom had said that Dad had just left and was on his way.

So where was he?

The last of the theater workers' cars left, loud rock music blaring distortedly from speakers that were not meant to handle such volume, and now the parking lot was empty save for an abandoned pickup at the far end. The overhead lights, one mounted on a telephone pole, the other on an actual lamppost, blinked simultaneously off.

And now there was only darkness and silence.

No, not quite silence.

There was a soft purring.

The sound of a new car engine.

Billy's heart began pounding. He stepped across the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, desperately searching for his dad, but his dad was nowhere to be seen.

There was only a new red car cruising slowly down the street toward him.

Panic gripped his chest, and he looked around for some place to hide. But the outside of the theater was flat and featureless, with no alcoves or indentations in which to conceal himself. There were not even any bushes behind which he could duck. The people who had built the theater had torn out all trees and bushes and had paved over the bare flattened ground for their parking lot.

He was stuck. There was nothing he could do, no place he could go.

The car pulled into the parking lot. The passenger window slowly lowered, and against the darkness of the interior he saw the mailman's milk-white face and bright-red hair.

The car stopped next to him. "Need a ride?" The smooth voice was seductive, suggestive.

"My dad's coming to pick me up," Billy said. His heart was pounding so crazily that he thought he might have a heart attack.

"Your dad's not coming," the mailman said. His voice was still silky, but there was an undercurrent of menace in it. The passenger door opened. "Get in."

Billy backed away.

"Your dad's not around anymore," the mailman said, and chuckled. There was something about the way he stretched out the word "around" that sent a chill of goosebumpsdown Billy's arms. "Get in."

"No," Billy said.

"You'll get in, and you'll like it." The mailman's arm stretched out through the open door.

And continued to stretch.

And continued to stretch.

Until his cold white fingers were clamped around Billy's throat.

And Billy awoke screaming.

9

It was Doug's turn to make breakfast, and he plugged in the waffle iron and mixed the batter while Tritia went outside to do her morning watering. He stirred the waffle mix absently. The screaming bothered him. Billy had never had a nightmare of that magnitude before. Even after they had calmed him down, convinced him it was only a dream, he was still pale and trembling and he seemed reluctant to let them leave. But he refused to tell them what the nightmare was about. Doug had pressed him, but Tritia had told him with a slight tug on the arm that the questioning could wait until a more opportune time.

Billy had slept the rest of the night on the couch downstairs.

The batter mixed, Doug moved into the living room and peeked out the window. He had placed a letter in the mailbox late yesterday afternoon before Howard came over, a long detailed answering letter to Don Jennings, catching him up on the milestones of his life over the past decade. The red flag on the box was down now, and he glanced over at the clock. Six-thirty-three. The mail was being delivered earlier every day. And on a Saturday. He thought the post office had discontinued Saturday service.

He walked outside onto the porch, down the steps, and up the drive. Last night's storm had not materialized, passing over Willis without even bothering to say hello, but it had left behind it some hellacious humidity. By the time he reached the mailbox, he was already starting to sweat. He opened the metal door.

His letter was gone and in its place was a thin white envelope with striped blue trimming addressed to Trish.

"My tomatoes!"

He could hear Trish's cry from the road. He hurried up the drive to where she stood in the garden, hose in hand. She looked at him and pointed to the plants at her feet. "Thejavelinas got my tomatoes again!" She kicked the ground. "Goddamn it!"Javelinas had eaten her tomato plants each summer for the past three years. Last year, the tomatoes had been greenish red and almost ripe when the wild pigs had raided the garden. This year, Doug had made a little chicken-wire fence around the garden to keep the animals out, but apparently it hadn't worked.

"How are the other plants?" he asked.

"Radishes are okay, zucchini is salvageable, cucumbers are all right, cilantro and the herbs are untouched, but the corn is completely ruined. Damn!"

"Need some help?"

She nodded disgustedly. "We'll redo what we can after breakfast. I'll just finish watering right now."

"We could set traps if you want.Hobie knows how to do it."

"No traps," she said. "And no poison. I hate the little bastards and I

want *hem to die, but I don't want to be the one to kill them."

"It's your garden." He walked around to the front of the house and went up the porch, hearing the sound of slow tired footsteps on the floor as he stepped through the door. He stood unmoving, mouth open in mock incredulity, as Billy headed away from the couch toward the kitchen. "I don't believe it," he said.

"Miracle of miracles!"

"Shut up," Billy said.

"You actually got up on your own."

"I have to go to the bathroom," Billy mumbled, making his way down the hall.

"Wait a minute," Doug said seriously.

Billy turned around.

"Are you all right?"

The boy stared dumbly at him for a moment, then recognition registered on his face. He nodded tiredly and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it.

Doug deposited the envelope on the coffee table in front of the couch and opened the refrigerator, taking out the butter and jam. From the cupboard he withdrew honey and peanut butter, setting them all on the counter next to the plates. The dirty dishes from last night were still in the sink, but he figured he'd do the dishes all at once after they finished breakfast. He opened the now hot waffle iron and ladled in some batter, closing it and listening to the quiet sizzle, smelling the familiar rich buttermilk odor.

The toilet flushed and Billy came out, walking straight through the kitchen to the living room, where he automatically turned on the television.

"TV on Saturday morning?" Doug said. "That's sickening."

Billy ignored him and turned on a cartoon, settling back into the couch to watch.

Tritia came in, looking hot and angry, as he pulled the first four waffle squares from the iron. "You want these?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Give them to Billy."

"Why don't we go on a picnic today?" Doug suggested, dropping the waffles on a plate. "We haven't done that for a while. It's going to be hot and horrible anyway. We'll go to Clear Creek."

"Sounds good," Billy said from the living room.

Tritia looked at her son, pushed the hair back from her forehead, then nodded her assent. "All right," she said. "Let's do it."

They decided to hike down the path through the green belt rather than drive or walk along the road. It was faster, more fun, and would take them to a less-populated section of the creek. Tritia made them salami-and-cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, and Doug carried the ice chest while she and Billy hauled the folding chairs. To their right, the low gentle slope of the land graduated into a steeper rise, dirt and light sandstone giving way to darker granite. The vegetation changed from pine andmanzanita to aspen and acacia, with longvinelike tendrils of wild strawberries growing parasitically over the rock face, intermixed with ferns and bottlebrush and poison sumac. The trail itsajfwas lined with the tiny red flowers of Indian paintbrush. To their left, the level ground swooped downward to meet the creek, and the path followed this descent in its own late unhurried way.

They heard the creek before they saw it, a low continuous gurgle that sounded remarkably like the peal of distant thunder. As they grew closer, the amalgam of sounds became differentiated and they could hear birds and bugs as well as water. This section of the creek was flanked by saplings -- aspen and cottonwood and sycamore -- that grew in chaotic abundance between the boulders that ran like a second stream along the side of the creek, and they had to walk quite a ways past the bend before finding a flat spot of dirt close enough to the water to set up camp.

They set down the ice chest between their chairs. Billy had worn his cutoffs and, after grabbing a can of Coke, immediately jumped into the creek, splashing wildly to cool himself off. The water level was low, but still deep enough for him to swim. He dogpaddled for a few moments, dunking his head and pushing from rock to rock, then, bored, stood up and began wading upstream.

"Don't go too far!" Tritia called out.

"I won't!" he yelled back.

Doug sat down on his chair. He had brought along the latest Joyce Carol Oates novel to read. He found Gates, as a person,unrelievedly pretentious and phony, and most of her books boring and much too long, but there was something compelling about her as an artist, and he found himself inevitably reading her novels and short-story collections as soon as they came out. He didn't like either her or her work, but he was a fan.

Strange how that worked, he thought.Hobie was a hardcore Clint Eastwood fan, and he was not. Yet when it came down to it, he liked more Clint Eastwood movies thanHobie did.

Life was full of paradoxes.

The mailman was a paradox. Doug hated the man, but as he had told Howard, the man had been delivering the most consistently good mail they had ever received. Of course, the carrier had nothing to do with the contents of the mail -- if the messenger was not to be blamed for the message, he was not to be congratulated either -- but it was hard not to associate the two.

He glanced over at Tritia , peacefully looking out over the creek at the cliffs beyond. He was surprised that she had not felt any real dislike for the mailman, that she had not picked up on the unnaturalness that seemed to be an inherent part of his makeup. Ordinarily, she was by far the more sensitive of them, noticing instantly any behavioral aberrance, making snap judgments based on intuition, which were usually correct. He did not see how she could be so blind this time.

He opened the book on his lap. Why had he been thinking about the mailman so much lately? It was beginning to border on the obsessive. He had to force himself to stop it. He had to quit sitting around, worrying, fretting, and find something else with which to occupy his time. Instead of thinking about the mailman, he should be getting to work on that damn storage shed.

But Howard didn't like him either.

That meant nothing. Two negative reactions to a person's personality did not mean that that person was evil.

Evil.

_Evil_.

There. He had thought it, if not actually said it. For that was the word that had been floating in the back of his mind since the day at the funeral when he had first seen the mailman. It was a simplistic word, almostcartoonish in its romantic-pulp implications, but much as he hated to acknowledge or recognize it, it was the word that best described what he felt about the mailman.

The man was evil.

"What are you thinking?" Tritia asked.

He looked up, startled and embarrassed to be caught in his ruminations.

"Nothing," he lied, turning back to the book in his lap.

"Something."

"Nothing." He was aware that she was staring at him, but he chose not to acknowledge the fact. Instead, he concentrated on the words in front of him, on the meaning behind the words, on the thoughts behind the meaning, trying to lose himself in the prose. Eventually, he succeeded. Just as he used to fall asleep as a child while pretending to be sleeping as his parents checked in on him, he now began reading while pretending to read.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, he heard Billy's voice, only a fraction louder than the creek song but rapidly gaining in volume. He looked up from his book.

"Dad!"

Billy came splashing through the center of the creek toward them, holding in his hand a wet and soggy envelope. Water was dripping from the uneven ends of his bangs and from his bare arms. There was a look of excited discovery on his face, as though he had just found the Lost Dutchman gold mine or had just unearthed some long-buried treasure. "Dad!"

Doug marked his place in the book and put it down on a large dry rock next to him. "What is it?"

"Come here. You have to come here."

He looked at Tritia questioningly.

"Oh, do something with your son for a change," she said. "Remember what we talked about? Besides, it's a beautiful day. Don't sit here and waste your life reading."

Doug stood up. "That's where he gets it," he said, wagging an admonishing finger in her direction. "It's a part of the rampant anti-intellectualism that's sweeping this country."

"Pedant."

"Fine. But if he turns out to be a gas-station attendant, it's your fault.

I tried my best." He took his wallet out of his pants, placing it on top of his book, then walked over the weeds and rocks toward his son. Scores of tiny brown grasshoppers sprang up at each step, moving frantically from one clump of grass to another. "What is it?" he asked Billy. "And why do you have that letter in your hand?"

"I can't tell you, I have to show you."

"Where is it?"

"Just down the creekaways ."

"Do I have to get wet?"

Billy laughed. "Don't be such a baby. Come on."

Doug took one tentative step into the water. It was cold.

"Weird stuff," Billy promised. He waved the envelope tantalyzingly in the air. "There's more where this came from. That's your only hint."

Doug stepped fully into the water. The creek was cold, but it was shallow and came up only to mid thigh . Billy began moving away, motioning for him to follow, and he waded after his son.

They rounded a bend and then another one, the cliffs growing steeper on the sides. The water was a little deeper here, the rocks at the bottom slippery.

On the floor of the clear creek he could see small black spots on some of the stones. Leeches. "I didn't know you were walking through this kind of area," he said. "I don't like it. It's dangerous. From now on, you stay closer to us."

"It's not that bad."

Doug nearly slipped, and he caught himself on a rock with his hand. Billy, however, was wading straight through the water like an expert. "Well, at least make sure someone's with you if you go out of sight. You could break your head and we'd never know."

Billy had stopped at another bend, pointing around the curve. "There it is," he said.

Doug caught up to him.

And stopped.

Both sides of the creek were littered with envelopes, white and brown and tan and beige. Hundreds of them. They were everywhere, like rectangular patches of snow or some bizarre form of fungus that grew in precise geometrical patterns, covering everything, caught on bushes, sticking out from between rocks. Most of them were wet and waterlogged, in the mud at the edge of the creek. Still others were perched in the branches of nearby trees.

"Weird, huh?" Billy said excitedly. He pulled an envelope from the branches of a sapling next to him.

Doug picked up the two nearest envelopes. Bills. He recognized them immediately from the preprinted return address and the clear window with the name, number, street, city, state, and zip code of the intended recipient. He looked around him. Nearly all of the envelopes seemed to be of the short squarish type that ordinarily housed bills or bad news. Very few were of the long less formal variety or were the small cute envelopes of personalized stationary.

He stared, stunned, at thirty or forty envelopes that looked like they were growing on a tree.

The mailman had been dumping mail at the creek.

It was an inescapable conclusion, but it still gave Doug a strange feeling to acknowledge it. Why would the mailman do such a thing? What was the point?

What was the reason? The very strangeness of it was frightening, and he could not understand what the mailman hoped to gain. It was crazy. If he had simply wanted to get rid of the letters, he could have burned them or buried them or dumped them someplace more convenient. He looked around. The spot was so far off the beaten track that Doug did not see how the mailman could even have known about it. He would have had to hike in a mile and a half from the road to get here, carrying the mailbags, since there was no path to this location that was wide enough to drive upon.

He glanced over at Billy. His son must have seen the expression on his own face, for he had dropped the envelope he was holding. The excitement was disappearing from his eyes and was being replaced by what looked like understanding.

And fear.

Tritia sat in her chair, head tilted back, staring up at the sky. She loved to watch clouds, to lay back and enjoy their billowy transformations, ascribing concrete form to their temporary shapes. And nowhere Were the clouds more visually dramatic than in Arizona. As a young girl growing up in Southern California near the Pacific Ocean, she'd had her share of clear days, of blue Rose Parade skies, but in California the cloud situation was either feast or famine. Either they were nonexistent or they covered the entire sky from horizon to horizon with a monochrome ceiling. Rarely did she see the huge shifting shapes she saw in Arizona, clouds so white against sky so blue that they looked fake. "Trish!"

She sat up straight at the sound of Doug's voice. His tone was unexpectedly serious, and her first thought was that he or Billy had slipped and fallen and broken something, but she saw with relief that they were both walking normally through the water toward her, not holding arms or wrists or fingers.

She relaxed a little, though she noticed that Billy was not as excited as he had been earlier.

He looked . . . scared. She pushed the thought from her mind. "What is it?" she asked.

"You have to see it. Come here." Doug stepped out of the creek toward her.

She stood, adjusting her shorts. "Do I have to?" she asked teasingly, but the only response she received was a slight attempt at a smile. Something was definitely wrong. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing serious."

"What is it?"

"I have to show it to you. Come on."

Feeling increasingly apprehensive, she followed Doug into the creek, holding tightly to his arm as the three of them walked over the slippery rocks upstream, moving through small banks of rapids, around bends. Tree branches swiped at her face as the creek narrowed.

"I'm not crazy," Doug said as they rounded a curve, and before she could figure out what the hell he meant by that enigmatic remark, she saw what they had brought her here to witness. Her heart gave a small leap in her chest as she stared at the envelopes, seemingly thousands of them, scattered about both sides of the creek, on the rocks, on the trees, in the weeds, in the mud. It looked almost like a fairy-tale land, this section of the creek, a place that had been either blessed or cursed by magic. She stood rooted to the spot, water coursing over her tennis shoes and ankles. The sight before her was so crazy, so wrong, that she did not know what to think. She looked over at her husband. She had caught his fear, she realized, and though it was not a pleasant feeling, at least she knew she was not alone. The two of them stood next to each other, holding hands. Billy, in front of them, was silent, and she knew from the expression on his face that he too understood that something here was definitely not right.

"There's no road to this spot," Doug said. "He had to walk here, to carry all those sacks, however many there were." He pointed up at the cliff beside them. "I figure he dropped them from up there. It's the only way they could be so scattered and the only way they could get into those top branches."

"But why?" Tritia asked.

He shook his head slowly. "I don't know."

A slight breeze stirred the trees, several envelopes falling from the branches on which they were perched into the creek, and the three of them stood there, silent, unmoving, as the envelopes swirled around their legs and continued downstream.

10

Doug tried to call Howard after they returned home from the picnic, but he wasn't at either his house or the post office. Or, if he was, he wasn't answering the phone. Doug let the phone ring fifteen times before hanging up.

"That mailman'll be fired for this once Howard finds out," he told Tritia . "It's a federal offense to tamper with the mail. He'll probably go to prison."

He hoped the mailman would go to prison.

They had picked up several envelopes from the creek and had brought them home. They'd looked for mail addressed to themselves but hadn't been able to find any, so they'd settled for envelopes addressed to people they knew. The rescued mail was still in the car. He was planning to show it to Howard as proof. Doug spent the rest of afternoon trying to call Howard, trying to read, trying to listen to the radio, trying to start on the storage shed, but he was anxious, hyper, and could not seem to settle down enough to concentrate on any one thing.

They had spaghetti for dinner that night. Billy complained because it was homemade, with herbs and vegetables from the garden, but he ate it anyway. "Next time," he advised, "let's just have Ragu like normal people."

"This is better than anything you could buy at the store," his father told him.

"And healthier too," his mother added.

Billy grimaced as he swallowed the food.

Doug tried to call Howard again after dinner, but when he picked up the phone, it was dead, no click, no dial tone. He jiggled the twin buttons in the cradle but to no avail. "Something's wrong with the phone," he said. "Did either of you call anyone recently?"

"No one's touched it since the last time you tried to call Howard," Tritia said, clearing the table.

"I'll try the one in the bedroom." He walked into the bedroom, picked up the receiver, but this phone was dead too. He hit the receiver once, hard, against the nightstand and put it to his ear, listening. Nothing. "Damn," he muttered, slamming it down. He'd have to stop by the phone company as well as the post office tomorrow. He stared at the white plastic telephone. He hated dealing with the phone company. Every time he went into their office he saw four or five workers lounging around, trying to pick up on the receptionist, but whenever he asked for someone to stop by his house to investigate a problem, it took at least three days to schedule the call, no matter how simple the problem was, no matter how great the rush.

"Nothing?" Tritia asked as he came back down the hall.

He shook his head. "It's dead."

"Well, there's nothing we can do until tomorrow." She finished putting the dishes into the sink. "You want to wash or dry?"

"Dry," he said tiredly.

She handed him a towel.

There was nothing to watch on either regular TV or cable, and after doing the dishes they decided to put in a videotape. "Something we can all agree on," Tritia said.

Billy trudged upstairs. "I'm watching regular shows."

"I said we're going to watch something we can all agree on," she called after him.

"TV shows are better than movies," Billy called back.

She looked at Doug. " 'TV shows are better than movies.' Did you hear that? Somewhere we went drastically wrong with that child."

He chuckled. "Okay, what's it going to be, then? _Deep Throat_? _Love Goddesses_?"

She hit his shoulder. "Be quiet. He can hear you."

"Yes I can," Billy called from upstairs.

"See?" She picked up the list of their videotapes from the table, scanning it. "Let's watch _Annie Hall_," she said finally. "I haven't seen that for a while."

"Sounds good." Doug got up and went over to the bookcase, turning his head sideways to read the titles on the videotape boxes until he found the right one.

_Annie Hall_ was on the same tape as _The Haunting_ and _Burnt Offerings_, sandwiched in between the two horror movies, and he had to fast-forward the tape to get to it.

"Last chance," he called upstairs as the credits began.

Billy did not even bother to respond.

The movie was as funny, and as on-target, as ever, and Doug was glad that they'd decided to watch a comedy. It helped take his mind off everything else that was going on.

Woody was just entering Christopher Walken's room to talk about night driving when the lights in the house suddenly dimmed into darkness and the television blinked off with a crackle of electronic static. The VCR hummed as it slowly powered down.

"Blackout," Tritia announced. She stood up and felt her way to the kitchen, where she took a flashlight from the junk drawer. She also withdrew a book of matches and two candles. "Are you coming downstairs?" she yelled to Billy. "No. I'm going to bed."

"At eight-thirty?"

"There's nothing else to do."

"You could come downstairs and read by candlelight with us," Doug suggested facetiously.

Billy loudly snorted his derision.

Tritia lit the candles, placing them in candle holders, while Doug moved over to the front windows. "It's kind of weird to have a blackout with no storm," he said, pushing aside the curtains. He peered into the darkness, toward the other homes down the road, and thought he saw yellowish light filtered through the branches of the trees. "That's strange," he said.

"What?"

"I think the Nelsons still have power."

"I could call them --"

"No phone," he reminded her.

She laughed. "It's a conspiracy."

"It's an adventure. We're cut off from the world, all alone. Kind of exciting, don't you think?"

"And romantic," she added, moving next to him. She put a candle on the windowsill.

"I'm still awake!" Billy yelled. "Don't do anything that'll embarrass you later."

They both laughed, and Doug felt Tritia 's arm snake around his waist. She drew him closer, giving him a light kiss that barely missed his mouth. "We'll wait until he's asleep," she whispered, promised.

Tritia woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Doug was asleep next to her, breathing regularly and half-snoring, and she quietly, carefully, pushed the sheet from her body and swung her legs off the bed, glancing at the digital clock on the dresser. The blue liquid quartz numbers said it was three-fifteen. She had put on her panties and nightdress after they'd made love, but she still slipped on a robe before padding across the hall to the bathroom. She'd never felt comfortable walking around the house undressed. The full moon shone through the opaque window above the bathtub like a streetlight, partially illuminating the small room. She pulled up her robe and nightdress, pulled down her panties, and sat down on the toilet to pee. When she was through, she pulled up her panties, flushed the toilet, and went into the kitchen to get a drink.

The night was quiet, but not as quiet as it should have been. Below the melodic chirping cricket music and the occasional cry of a nocturnal bird was another, less natural, noise. A low even rumbling that started and stopped and grew ever closer.

A car engine.

Tritia moved into the living room and bent forward to peek through a slit in the closed curtains. Who would be driving around here at this hour? Certainly not the Nelsons or the Tuckers or any of the other people who lived around them.

She pulled the curtain opening wider.

The red car of the mailman pulled up on the road in front of the house.

Tritia sucked in her breath. She could hear the faint sound of a rock-'n'

roll song from the car's stereo. As she watched, a thin pale hand reached out from the driver's window and pulled open the gate of the mailbox, the other hand depositing several envelopes. The mailman's face appeared at the car window, white against the black background. He looked in her direction, seeming to know right where she was, though he could not possibly have seen the thin crack between the curtain halves in this darkness. He smiled, a slow sly corrupt smile that promised things she did not want to think about, things that made her blood run cold.

She wanted to look away, to move out of his sight, but she was afraid to let him see the curtains fall, and she remained completely still, unmoving.

Although only one eye and a portion of her right cheek was next to the narrow opening, she was acutely aware of the fact that she was almost naked, that her nightdress had ridden up above her panties as she bent forward, and she felt as embarrassed and humiliated, as if she had been caught masturbating.

The mailman waved once, smiling broadly at her, then pulled away, into the darkness, the sound of his engine fading.

She realized only now that she'd been holding her breath, and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply, relaxing, as the car drove down the dirt road.

She let the curtain fall and stood there for a moment, holding on to the table for support, before finally retreating to the bedroom, climbing into bed, and snuggling under the safety of the sheets. Next to her, Doug's body felt warm and strong and reassuring.

The night was completely silent now, even the crickets making no noise, and she lay awake for what seemed like an eternity before finally falling asleep.

She dreamed of the mailman.

He was delivering the mail, but instead of stopping at their mailbox, he pulled into the drive and parked next to the house. Through the window, she saw him getting out of the car. He was smiling. She ran through the house, into the bedroom, the bathroom, the loft, looking for Doug or even Billy, but she was all alone. The house was empty. She tried to escape through the back door, but it would not open. Behind her, she heard the mailman's footsteps crossing the living room and then the kitchen. She ran into the bedroom, intending to shut the door and barricade it, but she discovered that there was no door.

The mailman stepped into the room, grinning hugely.

He was wearing no pants.

And then he was on her and in her, his unnaturally long penis hot and burning, like a curling iron or a soldering gun, and she could feel the cauterizing pain as he pumped away inside her. The agony of it caused her to scream --primally , uncontrollably -- but she was aware with a sickening feeling of revulsion that there was pleasure mixed in with that horrible burning pain, that on some gross physical level a part of her body was enjoying this.

She awoke drenched in sweat, hair and pillow damp, and she cuddled close to Doug to push away the fear, holding him tightly. Outside, far away, she thought she heard the low smooth purring sound of the mailman's car retreating into the forest.

11

Doug was taking a shower when the water went off; he was washing his hair, the top of his head covered with shampoo lather, as the water disappeared in midspray. "Hey!" he yelled. , "Water's off!" Tritia called from the kitchen.

"Great," he muttered. Eyes still closed, the shampoo beginning to drip onto his nose and cheeks, he drew aside the shower curtain and felt along the wall for the towel rack. His fingers closed around terry cloth. It felt like one of Tritia 's good towels, the ones that hung in the bathroom for decoration and were not to be used, but this was an emergency and he used it to wipe the shampoo off of his face and out of his eyes. The bathroom was dark. The power had not come back on since last night, and the only illumination came from the small window. He quickly toweled off his hair, then stepped out of the tub. He pulled on his underwear and pants and opened the door, walking out to the kitchen, still dripping. "What happened?"

Tritia was standing in the center of the kitchen, hair sticking out at odd sleep angles, staring at the half-filled coffeepot in the sink. She shook her head. "I was filling the pot and the water shut off."

"Did you check under the sink?" He opened the bottom cupboard, but the garbage sack and the boxes of cleanser and detergent were all dry. None of the pipes was dripping.

"I'll go outside," he said, "see if I can find anything."

He went out through the back door. The rocks and pine needles hurt his feet, but he walked across the dirt to the side of the house where the pipes connected with the meter. He looked at the numbers through the yellowed glass.

There was no water pressure at all.

He bent down and opened the runoff faucet but nothing came out.

"What the hell . . . ?" He turned the handle at the junction of the water main and house pipes, but nothing registered on the meter.

"What is it?" Tritia asked as he came back in the house.

"Hell if I know. The water doesn't seem to be turned on." He ran a hand through his hair, feeling the stickiness of the shampoo against his fingers.

"I'll go find out about the water and electricity after breakfast."

"And the phone," Tritia reminded him.

He shook his head disgustedly as he walked back into the bathroom. "And the phone."

The department of water and power was located in a small brown prefab building adjoining Town Hall. Doug drove slowly over the speed bump that separated the parking lot from the street, and pulled into a marked space next to one of the town's three police cars. He got out of the Bronco without bothering to lock it and strode across the asphalt to the glass doors of the front entrance. The top of his head felt strange and he realized that he could still sense the subtle stiffness of dried shampoo in his hair.

The girl behind the counter seemed young enough to be one of his students, but her face didn't look familiar. She was bent over the keyboard of an Apple computer, studiously watching her fingers hunt and peck through the alphabet, not even bothering to look up when he entered the office.

He cleared his throat loudly. "Excuse me."

"Be with you in a sec," the girl said. She examined the screen before her, then pressed a series of keys, intently watching their effect.

Doug looked around the office. It was small and poorly furnished, the walls covered with cheap paneling and framed documents. An empty desk across from the girl's was covered with layers of paperwork. Against one wall was a series of gray metal file cabinets.

The girl pressed another key, then, nodding, stood up and approached the counter. She was pretty and her smile appeared to be genuine, but the expression on her face was terminally vacuous. "How may I help you, sir?"

"Last night, around nine o'clock, our electricity went out. We thought at first that it was just a blackout, but the power never came back on. Then, this morning, our water was shut off. I went out to check the pipes, but there was nothing wrong. The meter said we had no water pressure at all. I want to get both our water and electricity turned back on."

The girl retreated to her computer. "Can I have your name and address?"

"DougAlbin . Lot Four-fifty-three, Trail End Drive."

One key at a time, the girl punched his name and address into the computer. She examined the screen before her. "According to our records, you notified us that you wished to discontinue service."

"Discontinue service? Why the hell would I do that?"

"I don't know, sir." She stood up. "Here, let me check. We should have your letter on file."

"My letter?"

"According to our records, you sent us a letter last Thursday." She walked across the office to the file cabinets. After a few moments of searching through a row of forms' and papers, she pulled out a single sheet of typing paper stapled to a business envelope. "Here it is." She returned, handing him the paper.

He scanned the typed text, reading aloud: " 'Dear Sirs, On June 12, my family will be moving to California, where I have taken a job with the Anaheim Unified School District. Please disconnect my electricity on June 11 and my water on June 12. Thank you.' " He glanced up sharply. "What is this?"

The girl looked confused. "I don't know what you mean, sir. You didn't send us that letter?"

"I most certainly did not. Now I want my electricity and water turned back on, and I want you to find out who did send it."

"Well maybe it was a joke. Maybe one of your friends --"

"It's not a joke, and I don't think it's funny." His hands were shaking, and he put them up on the counter. He realized that he was being unnecessarily harsh with this girl, that he was taking his anger out on her though she obviously knew nothing, but there was a sickening feeling beginning to form in the pit of his stomach, a feeling of helplessness, a feeling that he was being dragged into something he could not hope to fight against, and it made him want to yell at someone. He closed his eyes and forced himself to calm down. "I'm sorry," he said. "Just turn my water and electricity back on."

"It'll be this afternoon before we'll be able to put a man on it," she said. "There's a five-dollar hookup charge --"

"Look," Doug said, keeping his voice intentionally low and even, "you guys screwed up. You turned off my water and electricity without me asking you to, and I'm sure as hell not going to pay for your mistake."

The girl stiffened, her manner suddenly defensive. "It's not technically our mistake. We received a letter --"

"I'm not going to waste my day playing word games," Doug said. "Let me speak to your supervisor."

"The manager's out of the office right now, but I can leave your name and number and have him call you when he returns."

"Do that. And do you think you could have my water and power turned back on? My wife and son would like to take a bath sometime today, and it would be nice if we could cook our dinner tonight."

The girl nodded. "We'll get this straightened out. I'm sorry for any inconvenience." Her voice was conciliatory, with a hint of worry in it, and he realized that she was worried about what he would say to her supervisor.

"It's not your fault," he told her. "I don't mean to take it out on you.

I'm just frustrated right now."

"I understand. And I'll have the manager call you as soon as he returns,"

she promised.

"Thanks." He turned and walked out the door, reaching into his pocket for his car keys.

His hands were still shaking.

His anger grew stronger after his trip to the phone company. Here, again, they had received a letter supposedly from him telling them to discontinue service, but when he asked them to reconnect his phone, they told him there would be a twenty-dollar charge and that the earliest phone service could be reinstated would be Thursday. He went up the office hierarchy, telling his tale to increasingly authoritarian men until he had reached the district manager, who told him, unequivocally, that service would be reinstituted only after he paid the charge and that the earliest possible hookup date would be Wednesday. He could, if he so desired, file a refund request explaining the particulars of his situation. The request would be sent to Mountain Bell headquarters and its merit judged there.

He angrily pulled out of the small parking lot and nearly backed into old Mrs. Buford, who honked her horn at him. She yelled something he could not understand through her closed window. He waved his apology.

Letters.

Who would send letters to the phone company and the water and power company asking them to discontinue his service?

No, not who? Why? He already knew who had sent the letters, or at least had a good idea who'd done it.

The mailman.

John Smith.

It was not logical, and he had no idea why the mailman would do such a thing, but there was no doubt in his mind that it had been he who'd sent the false messages. There was something about the almost perfect calligraphy of the forged signature that reminded him of the professional-caliber speaking voice of the mailman. There was fear mixed in with his anger, but anger definitely had the upper hand, and he drove directly to the post office, intending to voice his opinions, his suspicions, his accusations to Howard.

The parking lot was crowded, but a Jeep was pulling out just as he arrived, and Doug quickly drove into the spot. He picked up the envelopes from the seat next to him. They were still damp, the paper smooth and softly pliable against his fingers. He nodded politely to the old men seated on the bench outside the building, then pushed open the door.

The first thing he noticed was the heat. It was warm outside, but it was absolutely hellish in here. The air was humid and stagnant; nothing came out of the ceiling vents, and the familiar low whistle of the swamp cooler was absent.

The office was crowded anyway, though. Six or seven people stood in line, letters and packages in hand, and he could smell the sickeningly tart odor of women's perfume and men's deodorant mixed with the scent of freshly flowing sweat. He glanced toward the counter, but Howard was not there. Instead, the mailman stood behind the front desk, talking in low patient tones to the elderly female customer before him. There was sincerity in his voice and on the expression of his face, but it was a false smarmy sincerity, the superficial interest shown by a salesman to a mark, and Doug found the mailman's attitude both condescending and offensive.

The mailman was not sweating.

Doug tried to peek behind the paneled partition in back of the mailman to find out if Howard was somewhere in the rear of the post office, but he could not see anything. He was surprised that Howard would let the new man take charge of the front counter, particularly after what the postmaster had revealed to them the other night. He could not remember ever seeing Ronda within the post office unless it was to pick up or drop off a batch of mail, and he had never seen anyone besides Howard working behind the counter.

Somehow that made Doug even angrier.

The old woman accepted the change given to her by the mailman, put it in her purse, and turned to walk away. Doug quickly stepped past the other patrons up to the counter. "Excuse me," he said shortly. "I'd like to talk to Howard."

The mailman looked at him, with a hint of a smile playing about his thin lips. "There were other people in line before you, sir. Please wait your turn."

His eyes rested for a second on the soggy letters in Doug's hand. He said nothing and his eyes betrayed no recognition, but his smile grew broader.

"Could you just call him out here for a moment?"

"I'm sorry, sir. Please wait your turn."

He was about to argue, but when he turned to look at the people behind him, he saw them gazing at him with impatience. "Fine," he said. He moved to the rear of the line.

Ten minutes later he finally moved up to the counter. He had been watching the mailman constantly, studying him, looking for a trace of anything out of the ordinary, but aside from his air of natural superiority there seemed to be nothing amiss. The mailman did not look at him once.

The fear and the anger were in about equal portions now.

He stepped up to the counter, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his palm. "I'd like to talk to Howard."

"Mr. Crowell is not here today."

The words were so simple yet so totally unexpected that they caught him off guard. Howard wasn't here? Howard was always here. "Is he sick?" he asked.

"Yes he is. May I help you?"

Doug glared at the man. "Maybe you can. My family and I went on a picnic by Clear Creek yesterday, and we found unopened, undelivered mail strewn along the banks of the creek."

A light smile played across the mailman's lips. " 'Strewn?' "

His mocking intonation was so much like Tritia 's that Doug faltered for a second. But he recovered almost immediately and put the envelopes on the counter. "Here are a few pieces of mail we rescued."

The mailman reached for the envelopes, but Doug drew them back. "I'm going to give these to Howard."

"I'm sorry. It is the duty and responsibility of the postal service to deliver mail. It is against the law for you to retain undelivered items."

Doug could feel the adrenaline rushing through his veins. He was sweating profusely now and again he wiped his forehead. "These all seem to be bills," he said. "And there were hundreds of more bills at the creek. Now, I haven't been getting my regular bills lately. In fact, I don't think I've gotten a bill since your predecessor died. I don't know what's going on, but a large chunk of my mail seems to be disappearing."

"I haven't gotten my bills lately either," the man in back of him said.

Doug watched the mailman's face for a reaction, for a sign that he had hit a nerve. He'd expected the mailman to glare at him, to get angry, to somehow tip his hand and admit that he'd been dumping the mail at the creek, but the mailman's face remained serenely neutral.

"I promise that we will look into these complaints as soon as possible,"

the mailman said. His voice was pleasant, unperturbed, calmly reassuring. "Do you have anything else, Mr.Albin ?"

"Just that someone's been sending letters to the department of water and power telling them to cut off my water and electricity. The same person sent a letter to the phone company telling them to disconnect my phone. I believe that's mail fraud."

"Yes it is, Mr.Albin . And I assure you we will look into it immediately.

I will tell Mr. Crowell of your concerns."

Doug looked into the mailman's eyes and saw in them a blank hardness that bored right through him and made him want to glance away, but he forced himself to hold contact. The sweat felt cold on his body. "Thank you," he said tersely.

The mailman stretched out a thin pale hand. "Now would you please hand over the undelivered mail in your possession?"

Doug shook his head. "Take me to court. I'm giving these to Howard."

"Fine," the mailman said, his voice eminently reasonable. "Now, would you please step aside? There are other people waiting behind you, Mr.Albin ."

Doug turned away from the counter and strode out of the post office to his car. It was not until he was halfway home that he remembered that he had not told the mailman his name.

The mailman had simply known.

12

Hobiearrived home feeling good. The pool had been crowded today, and not just with kids. A gaggle of women in their early to mid-twenties had arrived in the afternoon and had taken up residence near the deep end of the pool, far away from the children and their mothers. Before their arrival he had been casually scoping out Mrs. Farris, who was trim and fit and wore a pinkish-peach bathing suit that became nearly see-through when it was wet, but his attention shifted as the new group set up their towels and broke out the tanning lotion. They all had the brown smooth bodies of aerobic instructors, and they all had incredibly great tits. One of them, a brunette, was wearing a modified string bikini, and when she bent over, he could see almost up the crack of her perfectly formed ass. The others wore brightly trendy swimsuits cut so close to the crotch that he knew they had to shave.

It had been a damn good day.

He pulled out his keys and opened the door, taking his mail out of the box before walking inside.

AlthoughHobie lived in a large brown-and-white mobile home near the center of town, just down the road from the shopping center in what was admittedly not the best section of Willis, he was comfortable with his place of residence. The houses here were close together and not as nice as those in the rest of town, but that suited him just fine. No one bothered him, no one told him to turn down his stereo, no one told him to clean up his yard or get rid of his automobiles. He knew that his property looked like a miniature junkyard.

There was no lawn to speak of, only flat dirt, and there was a 1974 Vega and a 1979Datsun parked in the front and a 1965 Mustang on blocks in the back. His carport was littered with various auto parts and two old engine blocks. But he didn't mind it, and neither did his neighbors.

The inside of the trailer was nicer. He kept it up, even though he lived alone, and it wasn't bad, if he did say so himself. He tossed his shades on the front table and went into the kitchen, grabbing a beer from the fridge. He popped open the tab, took a swig, and glanced at the return addresses on the envelopes in his hand: his mother, the Classic Mustang Club, his paycheck from the district.

One piece of mail, a long yellowish envelope, had no return address at all, and he turned it over in his hand. Both the front and back were covered with smeared brownish red fingerprints. Frowning, he put down his beer and tore the envelope open. Inside were two photographs paper-clipped together. The top one showed a nude Oriental girl of fifteen or sixteen lying on a flat straw mat.

He stared at the picture. The girl was beautiful, with large almond-shaped eyes and a full sensuous mouth. She was spread-eagled, legs in the air, the dark folds of her vagina clearly visible through her sparse black pubic hair.

He unfastened the paper clip. The bottom photo showed the same teenage Oriental girl on the same straw mat.

But her head had been cut off and placed on top of her stomach.

On the photo were the same smudged brownish red fingerprints as on the envelope.

He felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Against his will, he had been aroused by the first picture of the girl. She was young, but she was gorgeous and her body looked luscious, inviting. But the second photo was like a punch to the gut. He closed his eyes, turning the picture over so he wouldn't have to look at it, but he could still see in his mind the girl's dead staring eyes and round-O mouth, the twisted veins and tubes protruding like spaghetti from her open throat, and the puddle, no, _pool_ of blood spreading outward from her neck across the mat.

Who would have sent him such a thing? Who could have sent him such a thing? And why?

And what about those fingerprints?

He quickly crumpled up the photos and the envelope they'd come in and dropped the whole thing in the trash. He washed his hands off in the sink, scrubbing them with Lava the way he did when trying to get grease off his fingers. The kitchen seemed darker than it had before, although the sun would not set for another two hours, and he flipped on the lights, grabbing another beer after downing the first in three large successive swallows. He sat down at the table, forcing himself to read the other letters, but even the message from his mother could not cheer him up, and when he tried to recapture his earlier good mood, tried to think again of the bathing beauties at the pool, he saw them lying on the hard concrete, decapitated, their heads placed on their tan stomachs and staring at him with dead open eyes.

13

Hobiecame over just after breakfast, knocking once, perfunctorily, on the doorjamb before pulling open the screen and walking into the living room. He cocked a finger at Billy, sprawled on the couch. "Hey, sport."

Doug was putting away the last of the breakfast dishes, and he glanced at his watch asHobie headed toward the kitchen. "It's only eight-thirty."

"Yeah, well, the meeting starts at ten, and I figured we should get there ahead of time and discuss things, plan what we're going to say. I tried to call yesterday after I finished at the pool, but a voice kept saying your line had been disconnected."

Doug shook his head. "Someone forged a letter from me and sent it to the telephone company, telling them I was moving and wanted my phone service stopped."

Hobielaughed. "Really?"

"They sent a letter to the department of water and power, telling them to cut off my water and electricity too."

Hobie'ssmile faded. "That's a little more serious. One letter might be a joke, but two . . ." He shook his head. "Who do you figure it was?"

The mailman, Doug wanted to say, but he shrugged instead.

"You think it was a student? Who did you flunk this year?"

"No one. Besides, I don't think I had any students who hated me this time.

The closest I can figure is Duke Johnson, but even he didn't dislike me that much."

"And even if he did, he wouldn't be smart enough to think up something like this."

"Exactly."

"Did you call the cops?"

"I told them everything and gave them copies of the letter, but they said there wasn't a whole hell of a lot they could do."

Hobiesnorted. "What else is new?"

Doug wiped the counter and hung up the dishtowel. "You want to head over there now?"

"Yeah. I called Mark Pettigrew, and he's going to meet us there. I tried calling the coach and Donovan, but neither of them was home. I think they're on vacation. I heard Donovan say something about going up to Durango."

"All right, let's get it over with, then." Doug stepped into the hall and knocked on the bathroom door. "Hobie'shere. I'm going."

"Okay," Tritia said through the closed door. "Good luck. I hope you get your books."

"I'm not holding my breath." He returned through the kitchen into the living room.Hobie opened the screen door and stepped outside. Doug turned to his son, still on the couch. "I'll be back around lunch. Mind your mother."

"I always do."

Doug laughed. "That'll be the day." He followedHobie onto the porch and the two of them walked out to the auto teacher's truck.

"Speaking of water and electricity, I didn't get my utilities bill this month,"Hobie said.

"We haven't gotten any bills at all."

"Come to think of it, I haven't either.Ain't that weird? I shouldn't say anything bad about this new guy -- I mean, he's just getting started, just learning the ropes and all -- but I think he's losing a lot of mail. I usually get a ton of mail every day. Lately, though, I've been getting two or three letters at the most, some days nothing at all."

Doug climbed into the cab and slammed the door, digging his safety belt out of the crack of the seat. "Bills and junk mail, right? You're missing bills and junk mail."

"Yeah."Hobie seemed surprised. "You too, huh? Maybe I should go in and talk to Crowell and bitch about this, find out what's going on." He started the truck and backed up the drive, swinging around on the road.

They took off, a spray of gravel shooting up behind them. Doug held on to the dashboard with one hand for support. Although he taught driver'sed ,Hobie himself was a scary driver and Doug needed as much reassurance as possible whenever he went someplace in his friend's truck.

As they drove through the trees toward town, he toldHobie of their picnic at the creek, of the dumped and scattered letters. He reported the facts objectively. He didn't come out and say that he thought the mailman had been stealing and dumping mail, that he thought the mailman had sent the fake letters to the telephone company and department of water and power, but the implication was unmistakable. The other teacher's face became more serious and more set as he spoke.

Hobiewas silent as they drove past the trailer park and turned left onto the highway. "There's a lot of weird things going on," he said finally. "A lot of weird things."

Doug asked him what he meant, if he had experienced anything unusual connected with the mail, but he frowned and shook his head and refused to answer, and they were both silent as they drove through town toward the school.

Willis High was separated from the town proper by an especially large stand of oaks and acacias and ponderosas, and was located next to the Edward G.

Willis Memorial Park. The football field had been constructed at one end of a natural meadow, and the pool, which was shared jointly by the school and the park, was located at the opposite end.

There was a crowd at the school when they arrived, a large group of people standing near the open door of the gym. In the faculty parking lot were two police cars and an ambulance, lights flashing, although neither Doug norHobie had heard a siren all morning. Doug glanced over at his friend, then out the window at the scene before them. A strange feeling had come over him. He was at once surprised and not surprised, tense and numb, as he looked at the crowd. He knew this was going to be bad.

"Something happened," he said simply.

Hobiepulled the truck under a tree for shade, and they got out, hurrying across the dirt to the gym. Several other teachers were there, as well as nearby residents and one of theschoolboard members.

Doug walked up to Jim Maxwell, who taught ninth-grade social studies.

"What is it?"

"Bernie Rogers hung himself in the gym."

Doug looked atHobie , shocked, feeling as if someone had just kicked him in the stomach. He did not know what he' had been expecting, but it had not been this. A senior who had graduated with honors, Bernie Rogers had been one of those rare students who was into both academics and athletics. The basketball team's star forward, he had scored in the top 10 percent nationally on his SATs and was the only senior this year to have passed the Advanced Placement tests for both history and English. He was also the only student Doug could remember who had taken both his American Literature class andHobie's Advanced Auto, and had excelled in each.

"Lemmesee,"Hobie said, pushing his way through the crowd toward the door. Doug followed, jostling past people until he was through the door and inside the gym.

Bernie was naked, his body bluish and bloated, blackened blood dripping in uneven rivulets from where the rope had cut into his neck. It looked as though he had been there for several days. Below him on the smooth wood of the gym floor was a puddle of hardened urine and feces, some of which had run down the inside of his thighs and now hung like stalactites from his feet. The boy's eyes were wide open and staring, focused on nothing, surprisingly white against his darkened skin.

Doug felt sick to his stomach, but he could not look away. A note was pinned onto Bernie's chest, the pins shoved deep into his skin, dried blood dripping down the page in a jagged wave, obscuring whatever words had been written. The boy had obviously put the noose around his neck and leapt from the top of the closed bleachers, and Doug found himself staring into the rafters high above, wondering how Bernie could have possibly tied the end of the rope up there without the aid of a ladder. Two policemen, a photographer, and a medical examiner stood off to the side of the gently swinging body in a tight group, talking among themselves. Two ambulance attendants stood next to the far wall, waiting. Another policeman kept the crowd from getting too close.

"Jesus,"Hobie breathed. The usual bravado, aggressiveness, was gone from his voice, and his face was bleached, pale. He stepped aside as two other policemen, one carrying long-handled shears, the other a retractable stepladder, pressed through the gym door behind him. "I knew Bernie," he said. "He was a good kid."

Doug nodded. He watched silently as the policemen set up the ladder and cut down the body. Apparently, the photographer had taken his pictures before they'd gotten there. Bernie's form was stiff, unmoving, legs and arms still frozen in the position in which they'd been hanging, but the men laid him down as carefully as they could on the floor, on top of a white plastic tarp spread by one of the ambulance attendants. The medical examiner moved forward to have a look, crouching down on one knee and opening his black bag.

"I was just talking to him last week," a man said. "After school got out."

Doug looked to his right, to the source of the voice. It was Ed Montgomery, the coach. The portly man's natural hangdog expression had been intensified and cemented with shock. He shook his head slowly back and forth, talking to no one in particular. "He was saying how he was going to get a part time job at the post office this summer to help pay for his schooling in the fall. His scholarship didn't cover books and rent, only tuition."

Doug's ears pricked up at this, and he felt a familiar chill creeping down his back. He moved next to the coach. "He was going to get a job where?"

Ed looked at him blankly. "At the post office. He'd already okayed it with Howard." He shook his head. "I can't understand why he'd do such a thing. He had everything going for him." The coach stopped shaking his head and looked into Doug's eyes, his troubled gaze focused, as if he'd just thought of an idea. "You think maybe he was murdered?"

"I don't know," Doug said. And he didn't. He suddenly wanted very badly to see what was written on that note pinned to the boy's chest. He took a step forward.

"Stay back please," the policeman warned, holding his hand palm-up in Doug's direction.

"I have to see something. I was his teacher."

"Only official personnel and family members are allowed near the body."

"Just for a second."

"Sorry," the policeman said.

Doug turned away from the gym and pushed his way out the door, into the fresh air, needing more room, more space in which to breathe. The blood was pounding in his temples.

Bernie Rogers had been planning to work part-time at the post office.

The post office.

It didn't make any logical rational sense, but in some twisted way it fit, and it scared the hell out of him.

He moved through the small crowd and leaned against a tree, gulping in the fresh air. He looked up, toward the road, and thought he saw, through the pines, a red car moving slowly away from the park toward the center of town.

14

Tritia sat alone on the porch, feeling uncharacteristically depressed.

Both Doug and Billy were gone, Doug to his meeting and Billy off somewhere with Lane, and she was all alone. Usually she liked being by herself. She so seldom had time alone anymore that, when the opportunity presented itself, she was grateful. But today she felt different, strange.

The cassette player was next to her on the slatted wooden floor of the porch. It had been barely working the last time she'd used it, but she'd scavenged three batteries from one of Billy's old remote-controlled cars and had found a fourth in a drawer in the kitchen, and now it was playing perfectly. She had the tape player turned loud. George Winston. Ordinarily, she liked to match the music to the day, choosing sounds to complement her feelings, but today the music seemed totally inappropriate for a sound track to her life. The soothing impressionistic piano, the deliberate spacing of clear notes and silences, went perfectly with the summer sky and green forest, but she herself felt hopelessly out of sync.

She stared out at the trees, at the hummingbird-feeders hanging from the branches, seeing them but not seeing them, her eyes using the feeders as a focal point, though her mind was off in space somewhere, thinking about something else.

Thinking about the mailman.

She had not told Doug about seeing the mailman last night, nor about her nightmare afterward, although she was not sure why. It was not like her to be secretive, to keep things from him. They'd always had a close, honest relationship, had always confided in each other, shared their hopes, fears, thoughts, opinions. But for some reason, she could not bring herself to talk to him about the mailman. She had made excuses, rationalized, tried to convince herself, and all of her excuses sounded logical, reasonable -- Billy was awake and listening, Doug had left too early and she'd had no time to talk to him but the truth was that she didn't want to talk to him, didn't want to tell him what had happened. She had never felt that way before, had never experienced anything like it, and it scared her more than she was willing to admit.

Doug had not picked up the mail this morning before he left, and she'd been too afraid to go out to the mailbox and retrieve it herself, so she'd sent Billy out to get it, watching him from the porch to make sure he was all right.

He came back with three letters: two for Doug, one for her. The letter was sitting next to her right now, on the small table on which she'd put her iced tea. She hadn't wanted to open it right away, though it was from Howard and she had no real apprehension about its contents, and she'd set it aside until she felt like looking at it. Now she picked it up, tearing open the envelope. The letter was addressed to her, but the first line of the message read, "Dear Ellen." She frowned. That was strange. But then Howard had been under a lot of stress lately, a lot had happened to him. It was bound to show up in some way or other. She continued reading:

Dear Ellen, Sorry I couldn't come by Saturday night, but I was forced into dinner at theAlbins '. What a horrible time. The food was awful, the kid was a brat, and Albinand his wife were as boring as ever. That phony bitch Tritia . . .

She stopped reading, feeling as though all of the air had been sucked out of her lungs, a sudden emptiness in the pit of her stomach. She looked at the letter again, but the words were blurry, liquid, running. Her eyes brimmed with tears. She was surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. She had never been an overly sensitive person about either herself or her cooking, had never really minded constructive criticism, but this type of cruel betrayal, particularly in regard to her family, particularly coming from a friend like Howard, hurt a lot.

A hell of a lot. She wiped the tears from her eyes angrily, refolding the letter and putting it back in the envelope. Howard had obviously intended to send a letter to both her and Ellen Ronda and had unthinkingly placed the letters in the wrong envelopes.

Ellen was no doubt reading about the lovely time and dinner Howard had had.

She was not usually this emotional, this easily hurt, butdammit , she had been trying to help Howard through a difficult period, and this backhanded backstabbing cut deep. She and Doug had always considered him a friend. Maybe not a close friend, but a friend nonetheless, a man whose company they both enjoyed. Why would he do something like this? And how could he be so two-faced?

He had never been a deceitful or duplicitous man. Outspoken honesty had always been his greatest strength and greatest weakness. He had never hesitated to speak his mind, no matter what the consequences. It would be one thing if he had just come out and said he didn't want to come over for dinner or didn't enjoy their company or didn't like the food they served him, but to sit there and lie to them, to The phone rang. Tritia dropped the letter on the small table, pushed herself out of the butterfly chair, and hurried across the porch into the house.

She caught the phone on the fifth ring, clearing her throat to purge the emotion from her voice. "Hello?"

"He's after me!" The whisper on the other end of the line Was frantic and borderline hysterical, and Tritia did not at first recognize it. "He's here now."

"Excuse me?" Tritia said, puzzled.

"I think he's in the house now," the woman whispered.

Now she recognized the voice. Ellen Ronda. She was shocked at how different Bob's wife sounded. Gone was the cool-as-ice voice Tritia had heard for as long as she could remember; gone, too, was the grief-stricken wildness she'd heard on the day of the funeral. In its place was fear. Terror.

"Who's after you?" Tritia asked.

"He thinks he's being tricky, but I can hear his footsteps."

"Get out of the house," Tritia said. "Now. Go someplace and call the police."

"I already called the police. They refused to help me. They said --"

Ellen's voice was cut off, and a man's deep baritone came on the line.

"Hello?"

Tritia 'sheart leapt to her throat. It took all of her courage, all of her inner strength not to hang up the receiver. "Who is this?" she demanded in the most intimidating voice she could muster.

"This is Dr. Roberts. Who is this?"

"Oh, it's you." Tritia relaxed a little, breathing an audible sigh of relief. In the background, she could hear a male and female voice arguing. "This is Tritia Albin ."

" Tritia . Hello. I heard part of your conversation from this end. Ellen told you she was being chased, did she?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry she disturbed you. Her sons have been trying to keep an eye on her, but they can't monitor her twenty-four hours a day, and lately each time she has a chance she calls someone and tells them she's being stalked." He breathed deeply, the heavy intake of air thick and rough over the phone. "I

don't know what we're going to do. The boys don't want to even consider it, but I told them that their mother's g9ing to have to seek some kind of counseling. I

refuse to treat her by simply pumping drugs into her body, and her emotional situation is far worse than I am equipped to handle. She may even have to be institutionalized for a short period of time. Who knows? I'm certainly no expert in these matters."

"What's happened to her?" Tritia asked.

"Grief. Repressed, pent-up emotions suddenly finding an outlet. As I said, I'm no expert, but it's clear that Bob's sui -- uh, death, triggered this whatever-it-is, acted as the catalyst." The arguing in the background grew louder, more heated. "Sorry, but you're going to have to excuse me. I think we have a slight emergency developing here. Thank you for your patience and cooperation. I'll be in touch."

He hung up before Tritia could say good-bye. She lowered the receiver slowly into its cradle. For some reason, she felt guilty, as though she had somehow betrayed Ellen's confidence. It was a strange thought, not at all logical, but then the entire conversation had been more than a little surrealistic. She had been relieved when the doctor had picked up the phone, grateful to hand over the reins of responsibility and decision, but she had not been able to do so wholeheartedly or with a clear conscience, though she trusted the doctor completely. She walked out of the house, back onto the porch, and sat down numbly in her chair. Ellen was obviously disturbed, obviously having some serious emotional/psychological problems, but for a moment there, before the doctor had come on the line, Tritia had actually believed that someone had been after Ellen, that someone had been in her house.

And she knew exactly who that someone was.

"Wow, look at the tits on that one." Lane grinned hugely.

Billy smiled wanly back. They were on the floor of The Fort, going through the _Playboys_. Ordinarily, Billy would have been just as caught up in their reading as Lane, but today was different. He felt restless, ill at ease, bored.

He stared down at the magazine on his lap, at the photo of the woman in the postal cap. She was without a doubt the most gorgeous, most perfect woman in all of their _Playboys_, but today he didn't feel excited looking at her. He felt uneasy. Was there something familiar about her eyes? Did her mouth look like . . . _his_?

Stop that, he told himself. He forced himself to look at her boobs, at the huge pinkish-brown nipples on the tips of her perfectly formed breasts. There was nothing about her tits that reminded him of the mailman or that was the least bit unusual or masculine. They were normal, healthy, good old American female breasts.

Still. . . .

"Guess what?" Lane said. His voice was casual, nonchalant, but it wasn't a natural nonchalance. Billy had known Lane for most of his life, and he could tell when his friend was lying and sometimes even what he was thinking just by the tone of his voice. This was not spur-of-the-moment. This was a purposeful, intentional casualness, something Lane had planned and practiced.

"What?" Billy said, equally cool.

Lane glanced slowly around, as if making sure that no one was peeking into the HQ from the outside or from the Big Room. He withdrew a crumpled folded envelope from his pants pocket, handing it over. "Check this out."

Billy glanced at the outside of the envelope. It was addressed to Lane at his house, and the return name in the upper left corner was Tama Barnes.

"Look inside," Lane prodded.

Billy took out the folded paper inside. It was a letter, written in an obviously female hand. He turned the letter over. Underneath the flowery cursive characters was a Xeroxed photo of a nude Hispanic woman. She was smiling, hands cupping her ample breasts,tegs spread wide. The photocopied picture was too smeared and dark and blurry to provide details, but Billy had seen plenty of details in the magazines on the floor, and his mind filled in what his eyes could not see.

"Read it," Lane said. He was grinning.

Billy turned the letter over and read. The letter started out with a standard salutation but quickly began describing in detail all the forms of pleasure that Tama was willing to give to Lane, all the sexual techniques at which she was an expert. Billy couldn't help smiling as he read what Tama wanted to do to Lane's "love pump."

"What are you laughing at?" Lane demanded.

"I bet she doesn't know you're eleven years old."

"I'm old enough," he said defensively. "Besides, I already sent her a letter back."

"You what?" Billy stared at him.

"Read the end of the letter."

Billy turned the paper over. His eyes flew down the page to the last paragraph:

. . . Maybe we could get together some time. I think we'd have fun. If you send me $10, I'll send you some intimate pictures of me and my sister, along with our address. I sure hope I hear from you soon. I'd love you to come and visit me.

Billy shook his head, looking up from the letter. "What a dick. Can't you tell it's just a rip-off to get your money?" He pointed toward the Xeroxed photo. "They probably cut this out of a magazine."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Besides, look at where that P.O. box is. New York. Even if she does send you her real address, what are you going to do? Go to New York?" He handed Lane the letter. "You didn't send ten dollars, did you?"

Lane nodded. "Yeah," he admitted.

"That was dumb." He looked at his friend curiously. "Where'd you get the money anyway?"

Lane glanced away. "My old man."

"You stole it?" Billy was shocked.

"What am Igonna do? Tell him I want ten dollars to send to Tama Barnes so I can get her pictures and address?"

"Youshouldn't've stole it."

"Fuck you. My old man has plenty of money. He didn't even notice it was gone."

Billy looked down at the open magazine on his lap, saying nothing. He and Lane often fought, often argued, often insulted each other, but there had been something else in his friend's voice just now, a hardness, a belligerence, a seriousness that said this was not a subject for argument, at least not for their usual temporary playful form of argument.

They were silent for a while, the only sound in The Fort the quiet whisk of turning pages.

"You're probably right," Lane said finally. "I probably won't get anything. I probably won't even get my pictures. But who can tell?"

"Yeah," Billy said.

"I bet she has a nice beaver, though."

Lane's voice was normal again, but underneath the superficialities something had changed, something that could not change back, and Billy somehow knew that this mundane moment was a turning point in their relationship. He and Lane might never again be as close as they had been, or even as close as they were now. It was a sad realization, a depressing discovery, and though Lane soon tired of looking at the _Playboys_ and wanted to ride down to the dig and see what was happening there, Billy convinced him to stay in The Fort, as if by remaining within its boundaries they could stop the change from occurring and freeze everything exactly as it was now.

The two of them remained within the HQ for the rest of the morning, talking, looking at the pictures, reading aloud the party jokes, like the friends they had always been and had thought they always would be.

15

The entire town was talking about The Suicides. For that was how they thought of them now. The Suicides. In big capital letters. It had been easy in the aftermath of the funeral and the outpouring of public sympathy for Bob Ronda's family to focus on the mailman's life rather than his death, to dwell on his good points. But the fact remained that he had killed himself. He had blown his brains out with a double-barreled shotgun and had, in the process, pushed his wife over the edge of sanity and let down an entire town that had loved him, cared about him, believed in him.

And now Bernie Rogers had done it as well.

It was all Doug and Tritia heard about at the grocery store. The Suicides.

Willis had had suicides before --Texacala Armstrong had shot herself last year just after her husband had been finally taken by cancer -- but the deaths had been isolated and understandable: people dying of disease, people who had recently lost a loved one, people with no hope. Never, in anyone's memory, had there been two suicides within two weeks of each other. And by seemingly normal people for no good reason.

The bizarreness of the coincidence was not lost upon anyone, and shocked grief was mixed with both morbid curiosity and superstitious fear as people talked in hushed whispers about what had happened. Even the worst gossips in town seemed to approach the subject reverently, as if suicide was a communicable disease and by not trivializing or sensationalizing the deaths they could somehow vaccinate themselves against it.

The afternoon before, after returning from the meeting, Doug had told Tritia about Bernie Rogers, about seeing the body, about his suspicions. She, in turn, had told him about the call from Ronda's wife and about the letter from Howard, although she still, for some reason, could not bring herself to tell him of her nocturnal experience with the mailman. He wanted to go immediately to the police, to explain to them that he thought the mailman was somehow behind or responsible for both deaths, but she convinced him, after a heated name-calling argument, that as a teacher and supposedly respected member of the community, he could not afford to damage his credibility by making wild accusations. He still had the envelopes they'd retrieved from the creek, but he realized that everything else was entirely unsubstantiated and required not only a tremendous leap of faith but also a belief in . . . what?

The supernatural?

Maybe he was crazy, but he didn't think so, and he knew that behind Tritia 'slogical arguments she didn't either. He still thought he should go to the police and tell them what he knew, or what he suspected, but he was willing to hold off for her sake. She was right. News spread in a small town, and if he happened to be wrong, if the mailman was just a normal man with pale skin and red hair, he would forever be branded a nut. In the back of his mind, though, was the nagging thought that someone else might be in danger, that by remaining silent and passive he might allow something else to happen, and he was determined to keep his eyes and ears open for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary, and to report everything to the police if he suspected that anyone was going to be hurt or injured. Or killed.

They moved up and down the aisles of the store, Tritia going through the coupons, reading aloud from the shopping list, Doug taking the items from the shelves and putting them into the cart.

"Mr.Albin !"

Doug put a box of cornflakes into the cart and looked up. A tan young woman wearing tight shorts, a tight T-shirt, and no bra waved at him from down the aisle. She smiled, radiant teeth lighting up her pretty face. He knew she was an ex-student, though he could not immediately place her, and he tried desperately to connect a name with the face as she walked up the aisle toward him.

"Giselle Brennan," she said. "Composition. Two years ago. You probably don't remember me --"

"Of course I remember you," he said, and now he did, although he was surprised at himself. Giselle had been one of those fringe students who had shown up for class only when she felt like it and had barely eked out a C for the semester. Not the type of student he ordinarily remembered. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," she said.

"I haven't seen you around for a while."

"Yeah, well, I moved to Los Angeles, worked as a temp in a law office while I went to school part-time, but I didn't really like it much. Los Angeles, I mean. Too crowded, too smoggy, too everything. I'm back here visiting my parents right now." She smiled brightly at him. "The place seems to haveweirded out since I left."

Was it that obvious? Doug wondered. Could even an outsider sense it?

Giselle gestured toward Tritia . "Is this your wife?"

"Yes. This is Tritia ."