knew his name, but had things she wanted to tell him about…like maybe how he was going to die and when, or what some of her friends had done with Lily while he was gone.
He turned away as she tried to speak again, pretty certain that he was going down this time as fluttering wings filled his head. He scrambled up the embankment and held onto the guardrail, almost losing his lunch right there and maybe his mind, too.
Down at the ditch, he heard Tommy say, “What’re you gonna do with her?”
And one of the deputies said in an almost hysterical voice: “Do with her? Well, we’re gonna get her to the ER, see if they can patch her up.”
His partner uttered a sharp laugh that was just this side of a scream.
Then Tommy was coming up the embankment and Mitch felt his hand on his shoulder. He recoiled from his touch. The idea of being touched by anyone or anything was akin to violation at that moment. The kid was still standing there, jaw hanging open, gum forgotten. Rain dripped off the brim of his baseball cap.
“You live near here?” Mitch asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, pointing towards a row of old company houses up the road, each one exactly the same. “Over there.”
“You better get home then.”
“I was watching, I was-”
“Get your ass out of here now!”
The kid took off running, splashing through the puddles, tossing a few fearful looks over his shoulder.
“You okay, Mitch?” Tommy asked.
“No,” Mitch said. “I’m not. Now take me home. I have to get home right now.”
12
Well, it was raining, goddamn yes, it was raining, but that did not mean the mail would not go through. Craig Ohlen had been delivering for twenty-three years, thank you very much, and neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night was about to stop him. And that included a very temperamental God with an especially weak and leaky bladder that was drowning Black River Valley like a bag of kitties.
Take more than some rain to keep me off my route, Craig told himself. If the blizzards of ’84 and ’96 didn’t stop me, rain sure as hell will not.
Craig was taking his job even more seriously since the flooding began and had even suggested to the assistant postmaster-that uppity, ass-kissing squeeze of hot shit Wally Morrow-that just because Bethany and River Town were flooded, did not mean the mail should not get through. Because people were living down there by the river and that goddamn water would have to rise pretty damn high to wash them out. The National Guard had tried. Many went. Many were already gone. But some? No, they refused to move. And it was to these people Craig had been speaking. All I’m saying, Wally, is that if these people are still there, they have a right to their mail. You get me a rubber boat with a motor on it and a bullhorn and I’ll see to it that they get it. Of course, Wally Morrow had looked at Craig like his fly was unzipped and something was dangling out in the wind.
No surprise there.
Wally had gone to hell ever since he took the assistant’s job and quit the union. Now he wore a suit and a brown little nose, had his head so far up postmaster Hebert’s rosy-cheeked bunghole that every time Hebert smiled, you saw Wally’s goddamn dentures grinning at you. Craig’s suggestion of getting the mail through was promptly-and not necessarily politely-shot down.
And Hebert, of course, wasn’t much better.
He was a hell of a taskmaster and universally despised by members of the Postal Worker’s Union, not only for his stinginess and his radical attempts to cut jobs and pay and benefits, but for his constant spying and route changes, and his encouragement of union members to tattle on one other. Hebert was pushing sixty and maybe, God be praised, he’d retire, but that was probably wishful thinking. Adlar Rose, the former postmaster, had been practically senile before he was put out to pasture-pissing his drawers and picking his nose with the tip of a pen (leaving plenty of telltale pen-marks at the edges of his nostrils) and then, of course, there had been the legendary incident of the turd on the floor of the office Men’s Room. Adlar-who had shit his pants more than once, usually when he sneezed-had heard about the mystery turd (a big one, too, Bobby Frieze had said, about the size of toilet paper tube and evil-smelling), had gone straight in there, sighted the offending log through his bifocals and picked that sucker up with a tissue. And, also according to Bobby Frieze, had said, “Must be fresh…kind of warm and squishy.” So, there was little doubt who had shat out that particular brown bomber, given that most people have a taboo about handling adult turds. But the burning question at the time, one that was even broached at the monthly union meeting was this: How could a turd that size roll out your ass without you being fully aware of it?
Anyway, Craig was thinking that if tradition held, they’d have to wheel Hebert out.
About the time Tommy Kastle and Mitch Barron were hearing from Hot Tamale and Herb about the weird and possibly dead woman outside their car that had sent them running right back to the Sadler Brother’s Army/Navy Surplus, Craig Ohlen was on Kneale Street, making his rounds.
Kneale was a pretty good run. There were more than a few nuts, but that was part of the job. The rain was coming down hard and it didn’t seem that you could hear much else. Craig kept going, stuffing letters and circulars in mail slots and wishing that leaky bladder overhead would take a breather already.
He cut through the Fisher’s yard and into the Boyne’s.
The Boyne’s weren’t bad people, when you got to know them. Margaret Boyne was a pissy old bitch who regularly reported people in the neighborhood for not cutting their grass or fixing their fences, and when she wasn’t doing that she pretty much liked to sit on her dead ass and feel sorry for herself. She had herself a job at a factory downtown, claimed she was some kind of production manager, but Craig had heard firsthand that the only production she managed involved a dustpan and a broom. She was too damn stupid and too damn lazy to do much else. Even so, word had it she had a hell of a time figuring which end of the broom you held onto and which actually moved the dirt.
Still, Craig figured, she wasn’t a bad sort.
Her son Russell lived with her. He had a kid somewhere, was pushing forty, but didn’t work on account of his bad ticker. Funny, that, because Russell smoked like a chimney and was one hell of a bowler, could throw a curve like you wouldn’t believe.
As Craig came up to the Boyne’s, he began digging through his bag, getting the delivery ready. When he reached the roof overhang, he dug out the Boyne’s mail. A gas bill from WisCon, a letter from Margaret’s sister in Clintonville, a big manila package from International Correspondence Schools for Russell-he was learning animal husbandry or mortuary science or something in his spare time, something he had a lot of-and a Priority Mail envelope from some law firm in Madison. Craig knew what that was all about. Frank Boyne, Margaret’s deceased husband, had gotten his arms chopped off from a sheet metal guillotine at Wisconsin Tool amp; Bearing over in Bethany, bled to death long before the ambulance arrived. The safety mechanisms were faulty and Margaret had promptly sued the manufacturer, Quisby Manufacturing Equipment, Inc. She received a nice fat check twice a year from them and would until the day she died.
As Craig made to stuff the mail in the box, he saw Russell watching him through the screen door. “Come on in,” Russell said.
Craig did, stepping into the screened-in porch after shaking the water from his slicker.
“You feel like a cup of coffee?” Russell asked.
“Can’t and you know why.”
Russell did. It was Hebert, the postmaster, he sent out spies to see if his letter carriers were working or screwing off. Craig had told Russell and more than once that he felt like he was being watched all the time.
Russell was sitting there, leafing through a magazine. It wasn’t Thursday, so he wasn’t off to pick up his mother. He never missed on Thursdays. Thursdays were paydays and Russell liked to help his mother spend her paycheck.
“What you reading?” Craig asked him.
“One of those Watchtower magazines.”
