catalog. Bob asked about the five bucks he had lent Charlie the Thursday before.
'Check's in the mail, pal,' Charlie said, making his way to the sorting area. The mountain of mail called to him, a cast of thousands clamoring for attention. Scraps of sorrow, broken phrases, and poisoned lines swirled in his mind like a siren song.
'…sorry to have to tell you…'
'…death of…'
'…never did love you…'
'…a question about your tax return…'
'…kill you, you bastard…'
'…what about the kids…'
'…just couldn't face…'
'…thank you for submitting your manuscript, but…'
'…come to the funeral…'
Charlie bent to the pile and thumbed the lighter, holding the flame to one corner of a drug store flyer. The flame flickered for a second, sending a thread of greasy black smoke to the ceiling, then burst brightly to life. Red stepped around the corner and dropped his coffee mug in amazement. A brown puddle spread around his spotlessly buffed boots.
'What's going on, soldier?' Red bellowed.
Charlie pulled the. 38 from under his jacket. Red's military training failed him when it mattered most, because all he could do was stand there with his jaw hanging down. Charlie fired twice, hitting Red in the stomach and knocking him backward. Red tumbled into a letter cart, his life leaking out to stain the snowy whiteness of the mail.
The fire kicked up into a roaring blaze. Bob ran up, having heard the shots but unable to reconcile those sounds with the everyday hum of postal business. He looked into the eyes of Charlie, but his friend had been replaced by a scowling specter whose eyes shone like sun-bleached skulls.
'Can't you hear them?' Charlie yelled. 'The hurt…people and words…it's all our fault. We have to stop the hurt.'
Bob backed away, sweat popping up on his beefy face. 'Uh, sure, buddy, whatever you say.' After a hot, heavy pause, as if waiting for the cavalry to arrive, Bob added, 'And you can just forget about the five bucks.'
'But the voices…we're to blame…letters and lies.'
Bob's eyes flitted to the now-raging fire and then settled on the gun pointed toward his face. He licked his lips. 'Easy, now, Charlie…yeah, I can hear them.'
He tried to turn and run, but damned if Charlie wasn't another corn-fed country boy gone crazy and Bob's feet may as well have been freight scales. The bullet whistled into his throat. He fell like a sack of junk mail, without bouncing.
Charlie grinned into the bonfire, adding a few armfuls of mail to the immolation, a burnt offering to some great Postmaster in the Sky. The voices in the letters screamed in pain and supplication. Out of the corner of his sepulchral eyes, Charlie saw Susan trying to crawl away from the loading dock. If he didn't stop her, she might rescue the letters in the drop box out front.
Susan fell face-first as two bullets slammed into her back. Her half-finished cigarette rolled away from her slack hand and down the ramp, coming to a stop in the shadow of Charlie's jeep.
He wheeled the remaining carts of letters to the fire and tipped them in, including the cart that contained the late Red, who stoically rode shotgun on his final mission. Charlie saluted him and crouched to avoid the black layer of smoke that clouded the office. He reloaded his gun.
The voices in his head faded, leaving an echo as bitter as ash. Charlie could think his own thoughts again, but they made no more sense than the voices he had stilled, because he could only think in words, and words told lies.
He went out the back door, the heat from the fire curling his hair. Sirens wailed in the distance, reaching Charlie as if from across a void, from another zip code. He ignored them as if they were fourth-class letters.
Charlie climbed into the jeep. It was time to make the rounds.
THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE
Silence wasn't golden, Katie thought. If silence were any metal, it would be lead: gray, heavy, toxic after prolonged exposure.
Silence weighed upon her in the house, even with the television in the living room blasting a Dakota- Madison-Dirk love triangle, even with the radio upstairs tuned to New York's big-block classic rock, even with the windows open to invite the hum and roar from the street outside. Even with all that noise, Katie heard only the silence. Especially in the one room.
The room she had painted sky blue and world green. The one where tiny clothes, blankets, and oversized books lined the shelves. Wooden blocks had stood stacked in the corner, bought because Katie herself had wooden blocks as a child. She'd placed a special order for them. Most of the toys were plastic these days. Cheaper, more disposable.
Safer.
For the third time that morning, she switched on the monitor system that Peter had installed. A little bit of static leaked from the speaker. She turned her head so that her ear would be closer. Too much silence.
Stop it, Katie. You know you shouldn't be doing this to yourself.
Of course she should know it. That's all she heard lately. The only voices that broke through the silence were those saying, 'You shouldn't be doing this to yourself.' Or else the flip side of that particular little greatest hit, a remake of an old standard, 'Just put it behind you and move on.'
Peter said those things. Katie's mom chimed in as well. So did the doctors, the first one with a droopy mustache who looked as if he were into self-medication, the next an anorexic analyst who was much too desperate to find a crack in Katie's armor.
But the loudest voice of all was her own. That unspoken voice that led the Shouldn't-Be chorus. The voice that could never scream away the silence. The voice that bled and cried and sang sad, tuneless songs.
She clicked the monitor off. She hadn't really expected to hear anything. She knew better. She was only testing herself, making sure that it was true, that she was utterly and forever destroyed.
I feel FAIRLY destroyed. Perhaps I'm as far as QUITE. But UTTERLY, hmm, I think I have miles to go before I reach an adverb of such extremity and finality.
No. “Utterly” wasn't an adverb. It was a noun, a state of existence, a land of bleak cliffs and dark waters. And she knew how to enter that land.
She headed for the stairs. One step up at a time. Slowly. Her legs knew the routine. How many trips over the past three weeks? A hundred? More?
She reached the hall, then the first door on the left. Peter had closed it tightly this morning on his way to work. Peter kept telling her to stop leaving the door open at night. But Katie had never left the door open, not since-
Leaving the door open would fall under the category of utterly. And Katie wasn't utterly. At least not yet. She touched the door handle.
It was cold. Ice cold, grave cold, as cold as a cheek when-
You shouldn't be doing this to yourself.
But she already was. She turned the knob, the sound of the latch like an avalanche in the hush of a snowstorm. The door swung inward. Peter had oiled the hinges, because he said nothing woke a sleeping baby faster than squeaky hinges.
The room was still too blue, still far too verdant. Maybe she should slap on another coat, something suitably dismal and drab. This wasn't a room of air and life. This was a room of silence.
