18.

Tritia felt a little better today. For the third day in a row they had received no mail, and for some reason that cheered her up. The old no-news-is good-news theory. Besides, she was going to see Irene Hill, and a visit with the old woman never failed to lift her spirits.

She turned off the highway and drove down Pine Street. She passed the Willis Women's Club and sped by the brick building guiltily. She had made a commitment to attend Weight Watchers meetings there every afternoon for six months but had not shown up since the third meeting. She had adhered to the strict diet for the first two weeks and had lost five pounds, half of her goal, but the pressure had been too much. The weigh-ins, the pep talks, the lectures, the journals, the propaganda, had all made her feel too constrained. Besides, although she could afford to lose a little on the thighs, she still had a shapely figure and she knew she looked a hell of a lot better than some of the women in town who had not signed up for Weight Watchers at all.

She saw one of those women now, Beth Johnson, pulling out of the post office parking lot. Beth waved at her, a false plastic smile on her face, and Tritia waved back.

She continued down Pine, then turned off on the dirt road just before the golf course. She continued around the small hill until she came to the small .cluster of homes adjacent to the old ranger station.

She pulled into Irene's driveway. She had first met Irene Hill when they had both worked as volunteers for the annual library book sale a few years back.

Irene had been one of the original founders of the library, back in the days when few people in the town read or wanted to read, and she had, by all accounts, been one of the major civilizing forces in the community. Even after retiring, Irene had continued her association with the library, spearheading fund-raising efforts and volunteering for book drives, patron-membership drives, and book and magazine sales. It was Irene herself, in fact, who* initially called Tritia , soliciting her help.

The two of them had hit it off instantly. They were of different generations, of course, but Irene was up on current politics and cultural events, and with her outgoing personality and boundless enthusiasm for everything, she seemed to have more in common with Tritia than with the fossilized volunteers her own age.

Tritia got out of the car and walked up the faded wood steps to the screened porch. She knocked on the door and Irene's voice sounded from the kitchen, "Come on in. Door's unlocked."

Tritia pushed open the door and walked inside. Irene's house was decorated with antiques, though they had not been antiques when originally purchased. The foyer was dominated by a large hall tree, and the living room contained not only antique bookcases and china cabinets but a pristineVictrola and a beautiful baby-grand piano. Tiny porcelain figures, collected for the past half-century, lined shelves on the wall. The house was warm and comfortable, filled with healthy plants, and Tritia always felt good here, happy, as though she were in some sort of sanctuary protected from the outside world.

Irene was in the kitchen, plucking leaves from a tied bunch of dried plants. She often made her own tea from a mixture of mints and flowers she grew in her garden, a wonderful brew that Doug and Billy both said tasted, like dirt.

The old woman turned around as Tritia entered the room, her fingers continuing to skillfully defoliate the dried herbs as if they worked on their own, disassociated from the rest of her body. "How've you been, sweetie?" she asked.

"Haven't seen you in, what, two or three weeks?"

Tritia smiled. Irene was the only person she'd ever met, young or old, who could say words like "sweetie" or "honey" without making them sound either cloying or condescending. "I'm okay," she said.

"You don't sound okay. You sound kind of tired. In fact, you look a little peaked as well."

"Stress," Tritia said.

The old woman stopped tearing leaves and used a corner of the apron she was wearing to wipe sweat off her forehead. "Doug?"

"No, nothing like that. It's just . . ." Her voice trailed off. "I don't know what it is."

"I got your card this morning."

"Card?" Tritia felt a warning light go off in her brain. She had sent Irene no card.

"Yes. It made me laugh, but I don't know why you sent it. I'm not sick."

Tritia felt the stability she'd begun to recapture the last few days recede, a familiar fear welling within her. She looked around the kitchen and suddenly the room itself seemed strange, the light coming in through the window not quite right. "I didn't send it," she said.

The old woman's face clouded over. She was silent for a moment, though her fingers continued to work. "I was afraidofVthat ." There was no surprise in her voice, no emotion at all. It was a statement of fact, delivered straight.

Tritia moved over to the breakfast nook and sat down. "You know, too."

"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.

He reminded Billy of the mailman.

That was what it came down to, really. There was no resemblance at all, not in actions or attitude, but on some gut level, he had made the connection and it stuck. He was not simply worried about his friend, he was afraid of him.

Lane's familiar shave-and-a-haircut knock rattled the screen, and Billy called for him to come on in. Lane was dressed in old jeans and a black rock T shirt. He had combed his hair differently than usual, parting it in the middle, and it made him seem older, harder.

"Hey," Billy said in greeting, nodding at his friend.

Lane sat down on the couch. He was grinning hugely, a sincere grin of happiness that for some reason struck Billy as wrong and unnatural, and he looked toward the back of the house. "Your mom here?"

Billy shook his head.

"Too bad."

Billy tried not to let his puzzlement show. When had Lane ever expressed disappointment that a parent was absent from either of their houses? On the verge of adolescence, eager to prove their adulthood, both of them ordinarily tried to avoid parents as much as possible.

The two of them stared silently at the TV for a few minutes. Finally, Billy swung his feet off the coffee table and stood up. "So what do you want to do?" Lane shrugged noncommittally, a gesture that somehow rang false.

"Want to go down to the dig,aee what's happening?"

"Why don't we check out The Fort?" Lane said. "There's something I want to show you."

Billy agreed, though he was not at all sure that he was ready to see what his friend wanted to share with him. He walked outside and around the side of the house, where his dad was sitting on the porch, reading. "We're going," he announced.

His father looked up from his book. "Who's 'we?' And where are you going?"

Billy reddened a little, embarrassed by this verbal recognition of his not-yet independent status. "Me and Lane," he said. "We're going out to The Fort."

"Okay."

"See you later, Mr.Albin ," Lane said.

The two boys walked across the slatted and recently stained two-by-fours to the front of the house, stepping off the porch and moving past the garden.

They followed the path through the green belt, into the trees, and the house was lost from sight. Small branches and dried pine needles crackled beneath their feet. "So what is it?" Billy asked. "What do you want to show me?"

Lane smiled enigmatically. "You'll see."

They reached The Fort, hopping easily up on the roof and shimmying down through the trapdoor into the Big Room. Lane strolled casually into the HQ, sat down, picked up a _Playboy_, and began thumbing through it. Billy grew angry. He knew that his friend was drawing out the tension, making him wait, wanting him to beg to see whatever it was he wanted to show him, but he refused to give Lane the satisfaction. He remained in the Big Room, pretending to straighten one of the posters on the wall.

Lane tired of the charade first, and he put down the magazine, standing up. "I got a letter back," he said simply.

"From that woman?" Billy was surprised.

Lane smiled, a cunning, knowing smile that should have been conspiratorial but was not. "Want to see it?"

Billy knew he should say no. The smug self-satisfied expression on his friend's face was so unlike Lane that it seemed almost frightening, particularly in the dim half-light of the clubhouse. That smile had awakened within him a growing feeling of dread, but he found himself nodding assent.

Grinning, Lane handed over the envelope.

Billy took out the letter, unfolding it slowly. Lane's eyes were on him, hungrily taking in every move, studying his face as if waiting for a reaction.

He pulled open the final fold and felt his stomach contract as if it had been hit with a softball.

His mother, completely naked, sitting in a chair with her legs in the air and her pubic area thrust outward, was grinning up at him from the Polaroid photo attached to the letter. He could clearly see, even through the blurred focus, the glistening folds of her wet vagina, the tiny puckered hole of her anus. The handwriting on the letter was not that of his mother, but his eyes focused anyway on an underlined phrase in the middle of the page: I love dick.

It was hard to breathe. His lungs did not seem to be working properly. He tried to suck in air, but his mouth was so dry that the inhalation tasted dusty and harsh and almost made him throw up. The paper was shaking noisily in his trembling hand and he let it fall to the dirt. He looked up at Lane. His friend was grinning hugely, his face filled with a sickening expression of smugness.