The storekeeper glared angrily at Doug. "I at least expected better from you. Some of these rednecks" -- he waved a dismissive hand toward the crowd "I can understand. They've never seen a Jew before, don't know what to do or how to handle it, but you . . ."

Doug stared at him, confused. The man seemed to be talking gibberish.

"What are you talking about?"

"What am I talking about? What am I talking about? What the hell do you think I'm talking about?" The storekeeper dropped a sack of mail onto his seat and began sorting through it furiously, picking up envelopes, tossing them aside, until he found what he wanted. He held it up. "Look familiar?"

Doug shook his head dumbly. "No."

"No?" Todd read the letter aloud. " 'You Christ-killing kike, we're tired of your greasy fingers touching our fish and meat and food. How would your sheenywife like a nice white cock up her ass?' "

Doug stared, stunned. "You don't think I --"

"Oh, you're telling me you didn't do it?"

"Of course I didn't!"

Todd looked down at the paper, reading. " 'Why don't I feed your wife some real knockwurst?' "

"Todd . . ." Doug said.

The storekeeper spat on the ground at Doug's feet. The expression on his face was one of intense hatred, a hatred borne of betrayal, and Doug knew that there was nothing he could say or do that could repair the damage that had been done, that could convince the storekeeper he had had nothing to do with this.

"Baby!" someone in the crowd yelled. "Crybaby!"

Doug looked up to see who had made the comment, but the faces all seemed to blur together. He noticed now that although the people were silent, they were by no means passive observers. There was anger on several faces, along with the ugly ignorant shadow of bigotry.

"Jewpussy," a man yelled.

"Go back to where you came from," a woman called.

Todd dropped the letter in the back seat and got into the car. He started the engine, put on his seat belt, and looked up at Doug. "I expected better from you," he said. "I hope you're happy."

"I'm on your side," Doug said, but the car was already backing up, turning around. Someone in the crowd threw a rock, and the rock hit the back fender of the departing station wagon, bouncing off. The car pulled onto the street, rounded the corner, and was gone.

Doug looked into the empty store and saw only the reflection of the crowd in the mirror. He saw faces he didn't know on people he knew. He saw people he didn't want to know at all.

He turned around.

"You're on his side?" a man said, demanded.

Doug held up his middle finger. "Fuck off," he said. He walked slowly back toward the car.

35.

Tritia lay staring up into the darkness, needing to go to the bathroom but afraid to get out of bed. He was out there, she knew. Somewhere close. She had heard earlier the low quiet sound of his engine approaching and then cutting off, but she had not heard it start up again. She knew she should wake Doug, but he'd been so tense lately, under so much stress, and had had such a difficult time falling asleep that she didn't want to disturb him.

Upstairs, Billy's bed creaked as he shifted restlessly in his sleep. He had been nervous and anxious the past two days, ever since they'd left him home when they went to the store, and she was worried about him. He was becoming ever more secretive. Once again, something was bothering him that he refused to discuss with them, and though she was trying to be patient and understanding, it was hard not to feel frustrated with his lack of cooperation.

The pressure between her legs increased. She would have to go to the bathroom soon. There were no two ways around that. And she would have to decide whether or not to wake Doug. He snored softly next to her, his breathing rough and irregular, and she found herself thinking for some reason of sleepapnia , a disease in which the sleeping brain forgot to work the involuntary functions of the body, and a person stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating and he never woke up.

Stop it, she told herself. You're just being crazy.

The pressure increased yet again. She recalled with terrifying clarity the dream she'd had the night before. A dream in which she'd gone into the bathroom to take a bath and had lain in the warm sudsy relaxing water only to find that the mailman's body was beneath her. A hand had reached up from the bubbles to silence her scream as his burning organ entered her from behind.

She reached over and cautiously nudged her husband. "Doug?" she said softly.

"What?" He jerked awake, instantly alert, instantly on the defensive.

"I'm afraid to go to the bathroom alone," she said apologetically. "Would you come with me?"

He nodded, and even in the dark she could see the circles under his eyes.

He stumbled out of bed, pulled on his robe, and they walked to the bathroom together. From the kitchen came the low sound of the refrigerator humming.

Tritia reached around the corner, found the switch, and flipped on the bathroom light. Sitting on the covered seat of the toilet was a white envelope.

"Oh, I left that there," Doug said quickly, picking it up, hiding it. But Tritia knew instantly with a feeling of terror that he had never seen the envelope before. She had been the last person to use the bathroom, just before going to bed, and there had been no mail in the bathroom at all.

_He'd been inside the house_.

"Check Billy," she ordered, running down the hall, through the kitchen.

She was panicked, gasping for breath. She saw in her mind her son's empty bed, covers thrown aside, an envelope on his pillow containing a ransom note . . . or something worse.

_Billy's nice too Billy's nice too. . . ._ They ran crazily, Doug following her lead, up the steps to the loft.

Where Billy, alone, was fast asleep.

She had never really understood what a sigh of relief was, though she had read the phrase often enough in novels, but she breathed a sigh of relief now, an exhalation of the air she had been holding in her lungs as she prepared herself for the worst. Her eyes met Doug's, and both of them began silently searching through the loft to make sure the mailman wasn't hiding anywhere.

The loft was empty.

They combed the rest of the house, carefully searching the closets, the cupboards, under the beds. Doug checked the windows and the locks on the door, but everything was as it should be. Finally, satisfied that the house was clean, that there was no one there, they returned to the bathroom.

Doug put a reassuring hand on Tritia 's shoulder.

"What the hell's the matter with you?" she demanded, pushing his hand away, turning on him.

He stepped back, surprised by her sudden fury. "What?"

"I said what the hell's wrong with you? You're all gung ho about going to the police and trying to get them to do something about the mailman, but when he comes in our own house when we're asleep and leaves a letter on the goddamned toilet, you pretend like you left it there and nothing's wrong."

"I didn't pretend like nothing's wrong."

"What did you do, then, huh?"

"I just didn't want to scare you."

"Didn't want to scare me? Didn't you think about our son at all? What if the mailman was still in the house? We all could've been killed."

"I wasn't thinking right, okay?"

"No, it's not okay. You endangered all of us. You didn't want to scare me?

I'm already scared. I've been scared all summer! But I'm not some helpless little nitwit who has to be protected from what's going on.Goddammit , I at least expect you to treat me like an adult."

"You'll wake up Billy," Doug said.

"The mailman was in our house!" she screamed. "What do you expect me to do? Whisper?"

"We don't know that he was here. The door's locked, the windows are all closed --"

Tritia slammed the door to the bathroom, almost hitting his nose. He stood in the hall, furious with her, wanting more than anything to go back into the bedroom and crawl into bed and leave her alone in the damn bathroom. That would scare her enough to teach her a lesson. But as angry as he was, he was more afraid. She was right. They were in danger. The mailman had been inside their house, had invaded the one sacred spot where they had always felt themselves to be safe, had entered their fortress against the outside world. He stood there with his ear to the bathroom door, hoping he wouldn't hear the sound of anyone but Tritia .

The toilet flushed and she came out a few seconds later. "Let me see the letter," she said.

He took the envelope from the pocket of his bathrobe. "Maybe we shouldn't touch it," he suggested. "It might be evidence --"

Tritia ripped it open. The envelope was addressed to her, and inside was a sheet of white paper on which was written, in a flowery feminine hand, a single word: Hi Tritia began to tear the paper into little shreds.

"Hey," Doug said. "Don't do that! We need --"

"We need what?" she screamed at him. "This?" She continued to rip the letter. "Don't you know how he works? Don't you understand yet? Are you that stupid? He can't be caught. He can't be touched. The police will come and there'll be no fingerprints, no sign of forced entry, no proof of anything.

Nothing for them to go on!"

Doug stared at her, saying nothing.

"He knows what he's doing, and he doesn't do things that will allow him to get caught. Even this letter doesn't mean a damn thing unless it has his fingerprints on it or we can prove that it's his writing."

She was right and he knew it, and the knowledge made him feel both angry and helpless. Tritia continued to tear the letter into increasingly tinier pieces, her hands working faster, more nervously, as tears escaped from beneath her eyelids and rolled down her cheeks. He reached out to grab her hands, to stop them, but she pulled away. "Don't touch me."

He moved closer still, putting his arms around her, pulling her close. She struggled. "Don't touch me," she repeated. But her struggles became progressively weaker, her protestations less adamant, and soon she was sobbing in his arms.

It was not yet eight, but Doug knew the post office would be open. He knew the mailman would be there -- if he had returned from his nighttime rounds.

The Bronco sped over the asphalt past the Circle K, past the bank, past the nursery. They had not slept last night after they'd gone back to bed, but they had talked, discussing in whispered voices their fears and feelings, their thoughts and theories. Nothing had been resolved, nothing had been solved, but both of them felt better, safer, more secure.

Doug's anger, however, had not abated one whit, and with the coming of the dawn he had taken a shower, eaten a quick breakfast, and told Trish to stay home and guard Billy. He was going to confront the mailman, and he wanted to do it while he was still mad enough not to be afraid. She had sensed this, understood this, and had not argued with him. She'd simply nodded and urged him to be careful.

He pulled into the parking lot of the post office. The only other vehicle in sight was the mailman's red car, and he parked right next to it. He got out of the Bronco and walked toward the glass double doors. They were being targeted, he and Trish and Billy, though he did not know why. Everything else at least fit together, made a kind of perverse sense. Ronda and Bernie had been killed because they were rivals;Stockley had been done away with to shut him up; the dogs had been murdered because, as everyone knew, mailmen hated dogs.

But no such reasons or rationalizations could be found for the mailman's unceasing harassment of Doug's family and friends. Of course, other people in town were being harassed too, but not as subtly, not as purposefully. Doug knew what was going on, and the mailman knew that he knew and was playing games with him. The horrors were gradually increasing in intensity and proximity, moving in concentric circles toward he and Billy and Trish at the center.

The doors were open and Doug stepped into the post office. The morning chill had not penetrated the inside of the building. The temperature of the stale humid air felt as though it was in the high nineties. He walked up to the front counter, refusing to look at the twisted and repugnant wall posters. The floor felt wet and sticky beneath his feet.

The mailman emerged from the back, smiling. As always, he was wearing his full uniform. As always, his voice was smoothly plastic. "How may I help you, Mr.Albin ?"

"Knock off the shit," Doug said. "We both know why I'm here."

"Why are you here?" The mailman's smile widened.

Doug leaned forward. "Because you're threatening my family. Because you came into my house last night and left us a note."

"What kind of note?"

"You know damn well what kind of note. It said, 'Hi.' "

The mailman chuckled. "That is pretty threatening."

Doug clenched his fist and held it up above the counter. "You can stop the innocent act. There's no one here but me and you, and we both know you broke into my house last night."

"I did no such thing. I was at home all evening with Mr. Crowell." The look on the mailman's face was an obvious parody of bruised innocence.

"And where is Mr. Crowell?"

The mailman grinned. "Unfortunately, he's sick today."

"I want you to stop it," Doug said.

"Stop what?"

"This. Everything. Just get the hell out of Willis, or I swear to God I'll make you get out."

The mailman laughed, and this time there was a harshness under the false nicety. His eyes, hard and blue and dead, bored into Doug's, and his voice, when it came out, had none of its usual calculated blandness. "You can't make me do anything," he said, and his tone made Doug's blood run cold.

Doug backed up a step. He realized that for the first time he was seeing the true face of the mailman, and he had to resist the instinctive impulse to flee. The fact that he had been able to goad the mailman into dropping his cover scared him much more than he ever would have thought. He shouldn't have come here alone. He should have brought Mike or Tim or another cop. But he refused to let the mailman sense his fear. He held his ground. "Why are you harassing my family?" he asked, and his voice came out strong, assured. "Why are you picking on me?"

"Because you know," the mailman said.

"I don't know anything."

"Because you complained."

"A lot of people have complained."

"Because I feel like it," the mailman said, and the random callousness of that admission, the utter lack of reason, struck Doug as the truth. He stared into those cold eyes and saw nothing. No passion, no feeling, nothing. Evil was not hatred, he thought. Evil was this.

The mailman smiled, and his voice was filled with an ugly undercurrent of threatening sexuality. "How's the little woman, little man?"

"You bastard!" Doug struck out at the mailman, but the mailman stepped easily back, avoiding the blow. Doug, thrown off-balance, fell against the counter.