Doug reached over Tritia 's body and hung up the phone. After a second's thought, he took it off the hook.

"What is it?" Tritia asked groggily.

Doug said nothing but simply stared into space, and a moment later she had again fallen asleep.

He did not sleep until morning.

40.

The funeral was short and sparsely attended.HobieBeechain had not been the most popular man in Willis during the best of times, and the mailman's successfully slanderous framing of the auto-shop teacher had obviously taken its toll onHobie's already low popularity rating. As Doug stood next to the open grave, he found himself wondering if anyone would have shown up even if the murder hadn't occurred. The mailman's continued psychic assault on the town seemed to have drained a lot of the energy from people, had made them less social, angrier, less trustworthy. He wondered if even Bob Ronda could draw the crowd today he'd been able to draw a month ago.

That was a strange way of looking at it, to see a funeral as a popularity contest in which final judgment was passed on a man's life by the number of people who attended, by the size of the crowd. But it was also strangely appropriate since many people did judge the worth of others by the quantity of their social relationships. Particularly in a small town like Willis. A man could be rich, famous, successful, but if he lived in Willis and he wasn't married, if he stayed home alone on Friday nights instead of going out with friends or family, there was definitely something wrong with him.

And there had always been something wrong withHobie . He'd admitted it himself, many times. Making friends, as he was fond of saying, was not his major goal in life. Doug found himself smiling, though his eyes were moist.Hobie had been loud, obnoxious, iconoclastic, and fiercely independent. He was who he was, and if someone didn't like it, that was their problem.

He had also been a good friend and a damn fine teacher, and Doug thought that if all of the students whomHobie had taught and befriended, had helped and counseled over the years, were still in town the cemetery would have been full.

He looked over at Tritia . No love had ever been lost between her and Hobie, but she was crying now, and more than the coffin in the ground, more than the gathered mourners, more than the carved tombstone, her tears made him realize that his friend was really and truly gone.

Doug looked into the sky as the tears rolled down his own cheeks, trying to think of something neutral, something unconnected with death, so he would not start sobbing.

Billy was taking it really hard. This time, they had sat him down and discussed it with him and left it up to him whether or not he wanted to attend the funeral. He had almost said yes because he felt obligated, felt he might not be showing how much he cared if he did not attend, but Trish had assured him that they did not expect him to go, that it was not required, thatHobie , wherever he was, would understand, and Billy had elected to stay home. There was no sitter for him this time and both of them worried about leaving him alone, but he promised to keep all the doors locked, the windows shut, and to remain upstairs until they returned. Doug told him that it was all right if he watched TV downstairs or made himself food in the kitchen, but Billy declared with an adamancethat surprised them both that he would not go downstairs until they returned.

The morning, appropriately enough, was overcast, funereal. The storm season was upon them, and the weather from now until fall would be characterized by the dichotomous extremes of dry heat and cold rain. Doug said a few words over the casket, as did several other teachers, and then the nondenominational minister began his eulogy and consecration. Before the minister had finished, light drops of rain were falling, and by the time the graveside service was over it had turned into a real downpour. No one had brought umbrellas, and everyone ran through the cemetery to their cars or trucks.

Doug thought of the cars and car parts sitting inHobie's yard and wondered what would happen to them.

He and Trish were the last to leave the gravesite, and they walked slowly between the stones, even though the rain was coming down hard. They watched Yard Stevens' Lincoln pull out of the parking lot, following the small line of vehicles heading down the road.

Hobie'sparents had not come, although Mike said they had been notified and were the ones who had made all the arrangements, and Doug found himself wondering if perhaps they had missed their son's funeral due to amixup in the mail. It was entirely possible that they had received a letter from the funeral director telling them that, due to scheduling conflicts,Hobie's funeral had to be put back a day, and that they would arrive in Willis tomorrow to find that everything was over, their son buried, services finished.

"He killed him," Doug said aloud. "He killed him as surely as if he put a bullet to his head."

"I know," Tritia said, squeezing his hand.

Doug was silent for a moment as they walked. His shoes sunk in the mud.

"Let's leave, he said. "Let's get the hell out of this town." He looked at her.

"Let's go."

"Permanently or for a vacation?"

"Either."

"I don't know," she said slowly. "It doesn't seem right to just abandon everyone here."

"Abandon who?"

"Everyone. Our friends."

"The ones that are dead, the ones that are crazy, or the ones who've disappeared?"

She turned on him. "What's the matter with you?"

"Nothing's the matter with me. I just want to get out of here so we can get our lives back together while we still have lives."

"And who's going to stop him?"

"Who's going to stop him if we are here?" Doug ran a hand through his wet hair. "In case you haven't noticed, we haven't exactly sent him packing. Hell, we're batting 0 for 0 here. We haven't done a damn thing. Maybe if we leave things'llcalm down."

"And who'll be here to fight him?"

They stared at each other through the thin wall of rain between them. Doug glanced down the hill toward the post office and saw that the flag was flying mockingly at half-mast.

"We can't leave," Tritia said gently. "We have a responsibility here."

"I'm tired of responsibility."

The rain died, cut abruptly off as though a spigot in the sky had been turned, but wetness continued to run down Doug's face, and he discovered that he was crying. Tritia reached out to him, tentatively, touching his cheek, his forehead, his chin. She moved forward and put her arms around his back, drawing him close, holding him, and they stood like that for a Longlong time.

For dinner they had chicken tortilla crepes. The meal was one they all enjoyed, and Tritia had spent much of the afternoon preparing it, but none of them seemed to have much of an appetite and they picked silently at their food, lost in separate parallel thoughts.

The electricity went out again in the middle of the meal, and Tritia picked up the matches and lit the candles she had placed on the table. The power had been going on and off so often lately that she now kept candles and flashlights in each room of the house for backup sources of light. It was getting to be almost second nature. If this ordeal was teaching them anything, it was teaching them to be self-sufficient, teaching them that they did not really need all the amenities they'd always thought they'd needed in order to survive. She wondered how some of the other, older people in town were getting along. Her family, at least, had had a head start -- she had always made food from scratch and over the years had implemented many of the independent natural living suggestions she'd learned from _Mother Earth News_ -- but adjusting might be a little more difficult for some of the other residents of Willis.

The reason for these constant outages was obvious: the mailman wanted to break down their resistance, to make sure they knew that nothing could be relied upon, nothing was safe. The security blanket of civilization was one that he could rip off at will, exposing their helpless nakedness, and doing so was something he clearly enjoyed. Exactly how he accomplished the blackouts, how he brought about the cessation of water and gas and phone service, was still not known. She and Doug had talked to people at the offices of each of the respective utilities until they were blue in the face, but the answers they received were vague and inconclusive, having something to do with fines and penalties, work orders and correspondence.

Paperwork that had gotten fouled up through the mail.

According to a representative for the town's department of water and power, it could not provide services because _its_ water and electricity had been cut off at the source -- the Salt River Project in Phoenix. The project had said, alternately, that the department had not paid its bills and that its quota of services had already been provided. Cited as proof were invoices received through the mail.

But the representative assured Doug and Tritia that the problems would soon be solved, and water and electricity restored.

The man at the phone company, the same manager Doug had talked to before, was even less specific and promised nothing.

It was ironic that the people who were probably having the least difficulty adapting to these circumstances were the ones living on the outskirts of the town, those who normally lived in the most primitive conditions. Now, with their wells and septic tanks and butane generators, their lives were going on as normal, while the rest of them ate cold food and took cold showers and lit candles for light.

"I hope this doesn't last all night," Tritia said.

Doug took a bite of his tortilla crepe. "It probably will."

Billy dropped his fork, and it fell loudly onto his plate. He had hardly eaten anything, had merely cut up and smeared and played with his food.

Tritia fixed him with a no-nonsense stare. "Finish eating your dinner,"

she said.

Billy groaned. "I don't --"

A rock crashed through one of the front windows, glass shattering explosively, muffled not at all by the closed curtains. There was the sound of another rock hitting hard against the outside wall.

"Fucker!" someone yelled angrily. The voice was that of an adult male, not a child, not a teenager.

Doug quickly pushed back his chair, knocking it over as he scrambled around the table toward the front door.

"Don't!" Tritia yelled. Her face was white with fear.

Billy, too, looked scared, and Doug could feel his own heart pounding within his chest, but he rushed to the door anyway.

Another rock hit.

"Fucker!"

And then there was the sound of flying gravel, a pickup peeling out and speeding away.

Doug pulled open the door and ran onto the porch in time to see the taillights of a truck disappearing between the trees. There was still a cloud of dust in the drive. He looked down. At his feet on the porch were several rocks approximately the size of softballs. Although only one had hit the window, two of the others had hit the wall and had been thrown with enough strength to make small splintered indentations in the wooden front of the A-frame. How the hell had someone been able to drive close enough to the house to throw rocks this size and not be heard?

From down the road in the silent forest, he heard the sound of triumphant whooping and hollering, growing fainter as the .truck sped farther away.

"What was it?" Tritia stood in the doorway, trembling, holding Billy's shoulders.

"Idont know."

"Why?"

"Why do the Nelsons think we killed their dog? Why did Todd think I was persecuting him?" Doug looked at his son. "You don't know who did this, do you?"

Billy shook his head, still frightened.

"I didn't think so. Come on. Let's go inside." He herded Tritia and Billy through the door, then closed and locked it behind him. Tomorrow, he'd have to find someone to replace the window. He glanced around the front of the living room. In the candlelight broken shards and bits of glass glittered on the chair and part of the couch. They would have to rearrange the furniture in case something like this happened again. He didn't want Tritia or Billy hit by a rock or cut by a stray piece of glass.

His muscles were still tight, knotted. Although he wanted to know who had thrown the rocks, who had been in the truck, he found himself strangelyunangry with the men involved. He was beginning to see the people of Willis as either victims or puppets, manipulated by the controlling will of the mailman. It was the mailman he blamed for everything, from the deaths of dogs and people to racial attacks to utility failures, and that worried him a little. His attitude seemed too close to that of classic paranoia for him to feel entirely comfortable with it. But, farfetched as it sounded, he knew it was the truth. He was not ascribing an omnipotence to the mailman he did not possess; he was merely recognizing an existing situation. He would not be at all surprised to learn that the mailman had orchestrated everything to occur in such a manner that it would engender within him exactly the sort of doubts he was harboring now. He shook his head. He really was getting paranoid.

Tritia was already clearing the dinner dishes. They had not finished, but no one felt like eating right now. Doug walked over to help her. Even Billy took his plate to the kitchen, though he normally would not be caught dead voluntarily doing any sort of labor connected with the family.

A car drove by on the road, stereo blasting, and all three of them tensed as they waited to hear whether it would turn into their drive. The car continued down the road, the sounds of the engine and stereo fading. They looked at one another silently, then continued to clear the dishes.

The curtain covering the broken window blew inward with the light night breeze.

41.

After breakfast, Doug called around trying to find someone who would replace the window. Harmon's carried the glass, but there was no one available to do the installation. IfHobie were here, he would have known how to install the window, but Doug was not even willing to attempt it. Aside from the simplest and most necessary household chores, he was incompetent at manual labor. The shed was one thing -- it was designed for construction by people like himself and came with simple step-by-step instructions -- but the window was something else. He called several handymen listed in the phone book, but two did not answer and one refused to perform the work. The only man who would even consider doing the job said the labor would cost $150, and he would not be able to get to it for another two weeks.

Doug was tempted to just board the damn thing up and hang a picture of a window in front of it.

He made some more calls, then went back to the original handyman, whose price had now gone up to $175, apparently as punishment for daring to shop around and try to find someone else.

He hung up the phone and felt Tritia 's hand on his shoulder. He turned around. She was dressed in jeans and a nice blouse, and her purse was over her shoulder. "Do you have the keys?" she asked.

"Where're you going?"

"Irene's. I'm worried about her. I try to call and there's never any answer, and after what happened toHobie . . ." Her voice trailed off, not needing to finish the sentence.

Doug pulled the keys from his pocket. "I'll go with you."

"I think it's better if I go alone. She's not really up to seeing people right now. I don't even know if she'll see me. You just stay here with Billy."

Doug's eyes met hers, and she saw worry in them, concern. "It's dangerous out there."

"I know. I'll be careful."

"Why don't I drop you off and park down the road? You can --"

"No," she said firmly. She took the keys from his hand. "Don't worry. I can take care of myself. I'm just going to check on her and be right back. You won't even notice I'm gone."

"Why don't you have the police check on her? She's an old frail woman, tell them you think she might have slipped and fallen in the bathtub. They'll do it." "No," Tritia said. She gave him a quick kiss. "I'll be back in twenty minutes."

"The car's almost out of gas, but there's enough for you to get there and back. Don't buy any. I'll get it later."

"Okay," she said.

Troubled, he watched her get in the car, back up the drive, and head through the trees toward town.

Something was wrong. Tritia felt it the instant she stepped out of the car. The atmosphere was changed, strangely and indefinably altered. The air was still, even the birds and insects quiet, as though some vast invisible soundproof barrier had been placed over the property. The house itself seemed empty, abandoned, though nothing physical appeared to have changed. She shivered. Death hung over Irene's house. She knew it as surely as she knew today was Tuesday. She pushed the thought from her mind. She was just being foolish.

Superstitious. She forced herself to walk across the dirt to the front door.

Peering through the lace curtain, she saw no sign of movement.

She knocked on the door. "Irene!"

Her voice died flatly, without even the faintest hint of an echo.

Still no movement inside. Something was definitely wrong. She knocked harder, rang the bell. "Irene!"

What if the old woman really had fallen down and had broken something and couldn't move? What if she had had a heart attack or a stroke?