'Know what?'
'About the mailman.'
Irene stopped working and sat down across the table from Tritia . 'I
haven't seen him. But how could I not know what's been happening to the mail?
I've been getting letters from people I haven't seen for years. Decades, even.
People I thought were dead. I got a letter from Sue at the library that Sue never sent.'
Tritia nodded. 'It's been happening to everyone.'
'Well, no one's talked to me about it. I called Howard up the other day to complain, but he seemed real distracted and didn't seem to pay much attention to me. I went over to the post office that afternoon, but that new man was there, and he told me that Howard had gone home sick.' She shook her head. 'I've never known Howard Crowell to be sick.'
'Neither have I,' Tritia said.
'The past few days, I've been getting get-well cards from people.' Irene smiled. 'At first I thought the doctor was telling everyone else something he wasn't telling me. But then I thought that this wasn't a joke. Friends sent me cards as though they thought I'd suffered a heart attack. I called to let them know I was all right, and they said they hadn't sent me anything.'
'I didn't either.'
'I know.' Irene looked out the window. A hummingbird alighted for a moment on a honeysuckle branch next to the window, then zoomed off above the trees.
'I've decided to just ignore it. Hopefully it will all go away.'
Tritia frowned. It wasn't like Irene to simply 'hope' that something would go away. She had never been the passive type. 'Have you talked to Howard since then?'
Irene shook her head. 'Have you?'
She hadn't, but she was not sure why. It was obvious to her now that Howard had not sent that letter to her, but she had still been harboring some residual anger and had not been able to quite shake her duplicitous image of the postmaster. She would force herself to see Howard today, on the way home.
'Let's talk about something else,' Irene said, standing up. 'We have quite a bit to catch up on.'
This wasn't like Irene either. Tritia looked into her friend's face and saw in her expression a woman she didn't know. A frightened woman. The warning light was now flashing, accompanied by a buzzer. 'Have you told anyone?'
'Let's talk about something else,' Irene said firmly.
Tritia drove around the block once, twice, then finally gathered up enough courage to pull into the post-office parking lot. She sat for a few moments in the car, then forced herself to get out and walk inside.
The parking lot was virtually deserted, only one car and one pickup in the spaces next to her. That was unusual but not completely unheard of for this time of day, but what was weird was the fact that no one was sitting on the benches outside the building. The old men who usually wiled away their days in front of the post office were nowhere to be seen.
She stepped inside. The mailman was alone behind the counter, helping an elderly man with a white mustache. This close, his sharp red hair seemed somehow threatening, particularly when paired with the blandness of his pale features.
Howard was nowhere to be seen. She tried to catch a glimpse of the room behind the partition in back of the counter, to see if the postmaster was working in the back, but she could see nothing from this angle.
She looked around the lobby. She had not been here in several weeks, and the room had changed. In place of the Selective Service poster that had been prominently displayed on one wall -- a poster featuring a benign young man seated on a stool next to his pretty girlfriend -- was a poster filled with the grimacing sweaty head of an ugly marine, flecks of blood on the collar of his uniform, aggressive words printed over his photo, demanding, ordering that all eighteen-year-old males register upon reaching their birthdays. The entire character of the post office seemed different. Even the stamp posters on the walls had changed. Where once had hung beautiful posters for the most recent nature stamps and wildlifephilatelies were now three identical signs for a new stamp celebrating the anniversary of the invention of the hydrogen bomb.
The room seemed very hot, almost oppressively so. The day was not particularly warm or humid, was in fact uncharacteristically cool for this time of year, but the inside of the post office was roasting.
The man at the counter finished his business, turning to go, and Tritia realized with something like panic that she was the only other patron in the post office. She, too, turned quickly to leave, but the mailman's smooth professional voice held her. 'Mrs.Albin ?'
Tritia turned around. The mailman was smiling kindly at her, and she thought for a second that she and Doug were wrong, they'd both been paranoid, there was nothing wrong with the mailman, nothing unusual. Then she moved forward and saw the hardness of his mouth, the coldness of his eyes, remembered the creek, the letters.
And the night-time delivery.
The mailman continued to smile at her, although it was really more of a smirk than a smile. 'May I help you?'
She was determined to remain strong and confident, to not show her fear.
'I'd like to speak with Howard.'
'I'm sorry,' the mailman said. 'Howard went home sick this morning. Is there something I can help you with?'
The words he spoke were innocent enough, straightforward enough, but there was something about the way he said them that made her flesh creep. She shook her head, beginning to back slowly out of the office. 'No, that's okay. I'll come back later when he's in.'
'He may not be in for a while,' the mailman said.
Now both his words and his manner had taken on a distinctly threatening edge, though he continued to hold his plastic smile in place.
She turned to go, her skin prickling with cold despite the oppressively warm air.
'You're nice,' the mailman said, and his voice took on a sly suggestive quality.
She whirled around, feeling both the anger and the fear coursing through her veins. 'You stay away from me, you slimy son of a bitch, or I'll have you in jail so fast your head will spin.'
The mailman's smile grew wider. 'Billy's nice too.'
She stared at him, unable to think of a retort, the words reverberating in her head to the rhythm of her furiously pounding heart, _Billy's nice too Billy's nice too Billy's nice too_, the fear, now on the surface, taking control, no longer something she could contain. She wanted to run from the building, hop in the car, and take off, but some inner reserve 6f strength came to her rescue and she said coldly, 'Fuck you, I'm going to the police.' Walking slowly, assuredly, confidently, she left the building and got into the Bronco.
But she did not go to the police. And it was not until she was well off the highway and almost to the first crossing that she had to pull over and park the car until she had stopped shaking enough to continue driving.
19
Billy was watching TV when Lane came over. Well, not really watching. The television was on and he was looking at it, but it was merely background to him, white noise and white light. He was thinking about Lane. Ever since the other day at The Fort, his friend had seemed altered, different. It was nothing he could put his finger on, no change in outward action or appearance, but the difference was more profound and more disturbing than the schism he had sensed when he and Lane had argued over the letter, much more than the seeds of a gradual drifting apart. No, this was something else. He and Lane had gone down to the dig yesterday, had helped unearth an extremely well-preserved group of primitive cooking utensils, and Lane had acted, for all intents and purposes, the same way he always had. But there was a new secretiveness to his manner, a not-quite-definable quality that made Billy extremely nervous. Lane reminded him of a man he had seen in a movie, a man who had for years been killing young children and burying their bodies in his basement, waiting patiently for the right time to spring his secret on the world, to proudly announce his deeds to everyone.
But that was stupid. There was no way Lane could be harboring such a horrible secret. Still, his friend seemed changed in a way he found impossible to understand.
