The storekeeper opened the back of the counter, pulled out three trout, and placed them on the scale. "Tell your husband I don't appreciate what he's doing," he said.

Tritia frowned. "What are you talking about? What is he doing?"

"Tell him I don't appreciate it at all."

"Don't appreciate what?" Tritia stared at him. "Todd, tell me what's going on here. I don't know what you're talking about."

His reserve broke. He smiled at her as he wrapped the fish, and there was sadness in the smile. "I know you don't."

"Todd?"

"I believe you. Otherwise you wouldn't be here." He gestured around the empty store. "You're my first customer today."

"What's wrong?" she asked. She leaned forward over the counter. "Is it the mail?"

His face grew stony, cold. "That'll be three-fifty," he said.

"Todd?"

"Three-fifty."

She paid for the fish and walked out of the store. As she backed up in the parking lot, she saw him standing in the doorway, staring after her. It looked as though he was crying.

28.

Billy sat in the darkened living room watching TV. _Dick Van Dyke_ segued into _Andy Griffith_, which segued into _The Flintstones_, which segued into _The Brady Bunch_. There was something comforting about the unchanging characters of the people on television, a reassuring element in the familiar plots and predicaments of the shows. Outside, things might be getting stranger, more chaotic. But on TV Mike and Carol Brady were still good-naturedly understanding parents trying to quell a war between the sexes that was brewing between their children.

A commercial came on and Billy got up to get something to eat. He had been glued in front of the TV set for most of the past three days, and though he enjoyed watching the shows, he was starting to feel a little restless and stir crazy. He also felt a little guilty. His parents had never let him watch this much television before, and he could not help feeling that he was doing something wrong, that he should be doing something productive instead of wasting his time vegetating in front of the tube.

But his parents didn't seem to care. They were too preoccupied with other matters. His dad had not even commented when he'd walked through the house a few minutes ago, had not even seemed to notice that he was there.

Billy made himself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich, then moved back into the living room and sat down in his chair before the TV. He had tried finding other things to do the past few days, but had been spectacularly unsuccessful. He had called everyone he'd known, asking if they wanted to go biking or go swimming or come over to The Fort, but his friends either weren't home or didn't want to talk to him. He had ridden by himself to the hill above the dig, but he knew without venturing down the slope that the archaeology students had gone, that the dig was over. He had pedaled as quickly as he could back toward home. The hill frightened him.

He wondered what Lane was doing.

He found himself thinking a lot about Lane lately, wondering how this estrangement could have happened to the two of them. He was aware that friendships often ended quickly and bitterly. He remembered how he and Frank Freeman, his best friend from fourth grade, had broken up after a relatively minor argument, and how alliances were quickly shifted, effectively redrawing the social map of the playground. He and Frank had ended up enemies, hanging out with rival factions of students, never missing an opportunity to hurt each other as deeply as possible.

And no one knew how to hurt more than an ex-friend.

But he and Lane had been buddies for a long time, had weathered rights both minor and major, and had still remained friends. It was hard to believe something like this could happen.

But Lane had changed.

A lot of people had changed.

_The Brady Bunch_ ended and Billy switched the channel to the Flagstaff station to watch _Bewitched_.

He finished his sandwich, wiped his hands on his pants. He had never thought this was possible, had never thought this would happen, but for the first time in his life he was looking forward to the end of summer. He could not wait for the start of school.

Doug sat on the porch thinking about the mail. Brooding about the mail.

This morning, he had received a slew of returned envelopes, some of them bills made out weeks ago, stamped with the notice "Not Deliverable as Addressed."

There had also been an envelope addressed to Tritia , written in a flowery hand, smelling of perfume, which he had torn up and thrown away without opening.

The walk to the mailbox was really frightening him, he realized. Much as he tried to hide it, much as he tried to deny it, he felt nervous walking down the drive and was now almosthypersensitively aware of the bushes and trees on the way to the mailbox, knowing they could be used for possible hiding places.

He thought of moving the mailbox to a spot right next to the door, like mailboxes in the city, but he rejected that idea immediately. He did not want the mailman coming up to the house, coming that close to Tritia and Billy. He also thought of taking the mailbox down entirely. If they had no mailbox, they could get no mail, right? But that was not only cowardly, it was crazy. What the hell was he doing hiding from the mail? Did he think if he ignored the problem or tried to avoid it that it would go away?

Tritia pulled into the driveway. Doug looked away, toward the trees. He heard the muted clicking of the emergency brake being put on, the slam of the car door, followed by the sound of Trish's steps on the wooden porch. "I'm back," she announced.

When he did not respond, she walked over to him. "I said I'm back."

He looked up at her. "You want a medal?"

Her expression went from anger to hurt to a calm neutrality. He felt guilty and looked away. He didn't know why he was being so mean to her. She was only trying to be friendly. But there was something about her Pollyanna attitude, her pretending that everything was okay, that grated on him and made him mad. Made him want to hurt her.

He had been mad at her a lot lately, though he didn't really understand why. "We're having fish tonight," she said. "Barbecued trout. I'll let you set up the barbecue."

"Did you buy any charcoal or lighter fluid? We're all out."

She shook her head. "Forget it. I'll broil it, then."

He stood up. "No. I'll go buy some. I want to get away from the house for a while anyway."

Tritia put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

He stared at the hand, surprised. It had been days since they'd touched each other. He looked into her eyes and his voice softened. He felt some of his hostility, some of his tenseness, dissipate. He knew she was trying hard not to fight with him. "Yeah," he said. "I'm fine."

"Okay." She opened the screen door. "Better put some gas in the car too.

We're almost out."

"Yeah."

As he walked down the porch steps and across the gravel to the Bronco, he heard the television shut off, heard Trish talking to Billy. The sound of her voice, used not in anger but in concern, was nice and familiarly comforting, like the voice of an old friend not heard in a while, and suddenly he felt much better.

The Bronco was nearly out of gas, the fuel gauge on empty, and the first thing he did was stop by the Circle K and put in five dollars' worth.

The second thing he did was drive to Howard's house.

He pulled to a stop in front of the low ranch-style home. It now looked definitely abandoned. The lawn was tan, even the weeds dried up and dead. Next door, a man was just getting out of his pickup and Doug quickly got out of the car and tried to wave him down. "Hey," he called.

The man took one look at him and hurried into his house.

Doug stopped walking. The whole damn town was acting squirrelly. He considered approaching Howard's neighbors on the other side, knocking on their door, asking if they'd seen the postmaster, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't get much cooperation from them. Or anyone else in the neighborhood.

He noticed that several other lawns were starting to look kind of ragged.

Knowing he would probably get no answer or response, he walked up Howard's driveway and knocked on the door. Pounded on the door. Yelled for Howard to come out. But his entreaties were met with no response. Again he checked the front door, the back door, the windows, but again everything was locked up tight. A darker, more solid drape seemed to have been put up behind the original curtains because now nothing could be seen inside the house, not even a shadow.

He wondered if he should call the police. Howard's house now showed definite signs of abandonment, and since no one except the mailman could claim to have seen him at all within the past few weeks, there seemed to him good cause to break into the postmaster's house and see if he was all right.

But he knew calling the police would do no good. He had told them the same story last time, and they'd donezippity shit. Besides, they'd never even try to get a search warrant or break into Howard's house unless they saw the mailman run inside the door with the postmaster's bloody head in his hands.

Doug shook his head. If there was one thing he hated about Arizona, it was the almost fanatic worship of land and property common to nearly everyone in the state. Here, people still had an Old West mentality, a perverse worldview that placed possessions above people in importance. He remembered one time when he and Billy had gone hiking out toward Deer Valley. They had been walking through a drycreekbed , following its course, when they happened upon a cabin in the woods. They turned immediately around, but not before they heard a young boy's voice call out, "Intruders, Pa!" A minute or so later, they heard the thunderous echoing sound of a shotgun blast. He'd felt like he was in some sort of damn movie. The noise was not repeated, but he and Billy had run the rest of the way back to the car, keeping low to the ground. When he told the police what had happened, the desk sergeant had merely smiled tolerantly and told him he shouldn't have been trespassing, as though death would have been fair punishment for a person who had inadvertently stepped on someone else's land.

It was this attitude that a man should be allowed to do whatever he wanted, with no restraints, that led to situations such as this.

Still, he got back in the Bronco and drove to the police station. It couldn't hurt to try. The chief, fortunately, was not there, but unfortunately, neither was Mike, and Doug ended up telling his story to a young female clerk who took down his statement and promised to give it personally to the lieutenant assigned to that sector of town. Doug was nice to her, cooperative, smiled at her, thanked her for her help, and left knowing nothing would be done.

Hell, maybe he should break in there himself, take this into his own hands.

But, no, the chief would just have him arrested and thrown in jail.

He drove toBayless to pick up the charcoal and lighter fluid, aware that Trish was probably already starting to worry. He had gone to town to buy two items and had been gone for more than an hour.

He quickly went into the store, walked directly to the aisle containing nonfood items, and picked up a cheap bag of charcoal and a plastic container of store-brand lighter fluid. The express checkout lane was closed, and the three registers that were open had long lines of customers, so he picked the shortest one and got behind an elderly man carrying a handheld grocery basket piled with dairy products.

As he stood in line, Doug saw empty wire rack space formerly taken by the newspaper. The rack seemed sad and forlorn, if emotions could be ascribed to newsstands, and he found himself wondering what had happened to therisque fortune cookies in BenStockley's desk drawer. He could still see in his mind the editor sitting behind his desk, but that image was beginning to fade, replaced by that of the bullet-riddled body he had seen on TV. What had happened toStockley ? A lump formed in Doug's throat and he forced himself to look away from the rack to the impulse items next to it.

It had been nearly half a month that the town had been without a paper.

The _Weekly_ had been, for all intents and purposes, a one-man operation, and whenStockley died, the paper abruptly ceased publication. Doug had no doubt that it would eventually get back on its feet once everything was sorted out there were a few part-time reporters who could probably take over the editing duties, and the secretary pretty much knew how the business end of the operation worked -- but for now the press in Willis was effectively shut down, and Doug couldn't help feeling that that was exactly the way the mailman wanted it. No independent means of disseminating information. No official way to learn what was going on.

Of course, news still traveled through unofficial channels. And traveled quite well. Through overhearing several unconnected conversations the past few minutes, for example, he knew that several more dogs had been murdered, not poisoned this time but decapitated, their severed heads stolen.

Gossip might be reviled in certain quarters for being unreliable -- a children's party game of pass-the-message had been designed precisely to support that argument -- but Doug knew from past experience that word-of-mouth was not nearly as faulty a means of learning news as it was made out to be.

He looked up to see Giselle Brennan walk into the store.

She saw him at the same time and waved. "Hi, Mr.Albin ." She walked through the turnstile and around the cash register to meet him.

She was wearing no bra, he noticed immediately, and the hard points of her nipples were visible through the thin material of her tight T-shirt. Her large breasts jiggled as she walked toward him. She was grown now, he knew. An adult, a woman, but in his mind he still thought of her as a young teenager, and he felt strange seeing her in such an obviously sexual light. It disturbed him somehow, bothered him. He smiled warily as she approached. "Hi," he said. "How's it going?" He moved up in line.

"I got a job."

"Really?" he said. He placed his items on the moving black top of the register counter, automatically inserting a rubber divider behind it. "Where at?" She grinned widely. "The post office. Can you believe it?"

The smile of congratulation froze on his face. Yes, he could believe it.

"I didn't know they were hiring," he said carefully.

"Yeah, well, it's just temporary. I guess their sorting machine broke down and they were looking for someone to do it manually."

Doug moved forward. "Who hired you? Howard?"

"No, Mr. Crowell was sick. I guess that's one of the reasons they need an extra person. Mr. Smith hired me."

Doug forced himself to smile. "What do you think of Mr. Smith?"

Giselle's face clouded over for a second and he thought she was going to say something about the mailman, but instead she just shrugged. "I don't know."

The man in front of Doug paid for his groceries. Doug put a hand on Giselle's shoulder. She did not move away. "I don't know if you should work there," he said seriously.

She laughed. "My mom said the same thing. Don't worry. I'll be all right."

"Be careful," Doug warned her.

She smiled and pulled away. "Of course." She wiggled her fingers at him as she headed toward the frozen foods. "See you."

He watched her walk away, saw the outline of her tight ass beneath her jeans, the material pulled provocatively in at the crack.

"Two-eighty-five."

"What?" Doug turned around to face the cashier.

The young man smiled knowingly. "Two-eighty-five."

Doug took out his wallet.

In bed that night, Tritia snuggled next to him, laying an arm across his chest, holding him close in a way that she hadn't for quite some time. The dinner had been good and, more important, healthy. Trout and rice and asparagus stalks. She was back to her old nutrition-conscious self, and for some reason that made him feel more optimistic, less worried. Everything else might be going to hell, but at least they were going to be all right.

Her head shifted under the crook of his arm as she looked up at his face.

"Do you still love me?" she asked.

"What kind of question is that?"

"Do you still love me?" Her voice was quiet and there was a seriousness in it he did not quite know how to take.

"Of course I love you."

"You never say it anymore."

"I didn't think I had to." He smiled. "God, we've been married for fifteen years. Why else would I put myself through this hell?"

"Be serious."

"Look, if I didn't love you, I wouldn't be with you."

"It's not that simple. Besides, I like to hear it sometimes."