The Collection

delirious and half-crazy. But the only thing he got for his trouble was a beating with wooden batons which left huge welts on his arms and legs and which he was sure had broken at least one rib.

Sometime later—it could have been hours, it could have been days—two guards he had never seen before entered his cell. 'Kwo ta?' one of them demanded angrily.

'English,' he tried to explain through cracked and swollen lips. 'I only speak—'

He was clubbed on the back of the neck and fell face­down on the floor, a bolt of pain shooting through his shoul­ders and side.

'Kwo ta?' the man demanded again. He nodded, hoping that was what they were looking for, not sure to what he was agreeing. The men nodded, satis­fied, and left. Another man returned an hour or so later with a small cupful of dirty water and a few crusts of hard bread smeared with some sort of rice porridge. He ate slowly this time, drank sparingly, and kept it down.

He was taken outside the next day and, though the bright­ness of the sun burned his light-sensitive eyes, he was grate­ful to be out of the cell. Hands manacled, he was shoved against a bamboo wall with several other silent, emaciated prisoners. He glanced around the camp and saw a group of obviously high-ranking officers nearby. One of the men shuffled his feet, moving a little to the right, and, in a mo­ment he would never forget, he saw the dwarf.

He was suddenly cold, and he felt the fear rise within him. It couldn't be possible. It couldn't be real. But it was possible. It was real. The dwarf was wearing a North Viet­namese army uniform. He was darker than before and had vaguely Oriental eyes. But it was the same man. Jack felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Kwo ta.

Quarter.

The Vietnamese guards had been trying to say 'quarter.' The dwarf smiled at him, and he saw tiny white baby teeth. The small man said something to another officer, and the other officer strode over, pushing his face to within an inch of Jack's. 'Gi meea kwo ta,' the man said in a thick musical accent.

And Jack began to scream.

He spent the rest of his incarceration in solitary, where he was beaten regularly and fed occasionally, and when he was finally released he weighed less than ninety pounds and was albino white, with bruises and welts and running sores all over his body. He saw several guards on his way to the airstrip, but though he looked wildly around before stepping onto the plane, he saw no sign of the dwarf.

But the dwarf was waiting for him when he arrived at Vandenburg, disguised as a cheering onlooker. Jack saw the horrible face, the oversized head on its undersized body, between the legs of another POW's family. He had in his hand a small American flag which he was waving enthusiasti­cally. He was no longer Vietnamese—his hair was blond, his light skin red with sunburn—but it was without a doubt the same man.

Then the face faded back into the crowd as friends and families of the newly released men rushed forward onto the tarmac.

He had avoided dwarves and midgets ever since and had been pretty successful at it. Occasionally, he had seen the back of a small man in a mall or supermarket, but he had al­ways been able to get away without being seen.

He had had no problems until now.

He picked up the mail from where it had fallen through the slot, but the envelopes felt cold to his touch, and he dropped them on the table without looking at them.

The next day he left the house before noon and did not re­turn until after dark. He was afraid of seeing the dwarf at night, afraid the small man would come slinking up the steps in the darkness to deliver the mail, but the mail had already been delivered by the time he returned home.

He returned the next night a little earlier and saw the dwarf three houses up from his own, in the exact spot he'd seen him before, and he quickly ran inside and locked the door and closed the curtains, hiding behind the couch.

He was gone the next three afternoons, but he realized he could not be away every day. It was not practical. He only had three more weeks until he started teaching, and there was still a lot of unpacking to do, a lot of things he had to work on around the house. He could not spend each and every afternoon wandering through shopping centers far from his home in order to avoid the mailman.

So he stayed home the next day, keeping an eye out for the mailman, and by the end of the week he had settled into a routine. He would hide in the house when the mailman came by, shutting the curtains and locking the doors. Often he would turn on the stereo or turn up the television before the mailman arrived, but he would inevitably shut off all sound before the mailman actually showed up and sit quietly on the floor, not wanting the dwarf to know he was home.

And he would hear the rhythmic tap tap tapping of the little feet walking up the wooden porch steps, a pause as the mailman sorted through his letters, then the dreaded sound of metal against metal as those stubby fingers forced open the mail slot and pushed in the envelopes. He would be sweating by then, and he would remain unbreathing, afraid to move, until he heard the tiny feet descend the steps.

Once there was silence after the mail had been delivered, and Jack realized that though he had heard the mail slot open, he had not heard it fall shut. The dwarf was looking through the slit into the house! He could almost feel those horrid little eyes scanning the front room through the limited viewspace offered by the slot. He was about to scream when he heard the slot clack shut and heard the light footsteps re­treat.

Then the inevitable happened.

As always, he waited silently behind the couch until the mailman had left and then gathered up his mail. Amidst the large white envelopes was a small blue envelope, thicker than the rest, with the seal of the postal service on the front. He knew what that envelope was—he'd gotten them many times before.

Postage due.

Heart pounding, he looked at the 'AMOUNT' line, knowing already how much he owed.

Twenty-five cents.

A quarter.

And he stood there unmoving while the shadows length­ened around him and the room grew dark, and he wondered where the dwarf went after work.

The next morning Jack went to the main branch of the post office. The line was long, filled with businessmen who needed to send important packages and women who wanted to buy the latest stamps, but he waited patiently. When it was his turn, he walked up to the front counter and asked the clerk if he could talk to the postmaster. He was not as brave as he'd planned to be, and he was aware that his voice qua­vered slightly.

The postmaster came out, a burly man on the high side of fifty, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and a fixed placating smile. 'How many I help you, sir?'

Now that he was here, Jack was not sure he could go through with it. His head hurt, and he could feel the blood pulsing in his temples. He was about to make something up, something meaningless and inconsequential, when he thought of the dwarf's cruel little face, thought of the de­mand on the postage due envelope. 'I'm here to complain about one of your mailmen,' he said.

The postmaster's eyebrows shot up in surprise. 'One of our mail carriers?' Jack nodded. 'Where do you live, sir?'

'Glenoaks. Twelve hundred Glenoaks.'

The postmaster frowned. 'That's Charlie's route. He's one of our best employees.' He turned around. 'Charlie!' he called.

Jack's hands became sweaty.

'He's right in the back there,' the postmaster explained. 'I'll have him come out here, and we'll get this mess straightened out.'

Jack wanted to run, wanted to dash through the door the way he had come, to hop in the car and escape. But he re­mained rooted in place. The post office was crowded. Noth­ing could happen to him here. He was safe.

A man in a blue uniform rounded the corner.

A normal-sized man.

'This is Charlie,' the postmaster said. 'Your mail car­rier.'

Jack shook his head. 'No, the man I'm talking about is ... short. He's about three feet high.'