Tritia walked up the porch steps and slammed the door behind her.

"Anyway,"Hobie said, "I don't like the new guy."

"I don't either."

"Weird sucker. He's so pale. And that red hair. Shit, I wouldn't be surprised if it was dyed. He is kind offaggoty -looking."

"Well, I don't know about that . . ." Doug said, his voice trailing off.

He wasn't sure what he thought, he realized. He had no concrete beliefs about the mailman, only an unfounded dislike, a strong sense of unease sharpened by impressions gleaned from a few random meetings. He was not usually given to such impulsive, instinctive judgments, and he was a little surprised at himself.

Ordinarily, he prided himself on giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, on believing only the best about a person until shown otherwise. His negative opinion of the mailman, however, had been born fully formed; he had experienced an instant dislike of the man without knowing a single fact about him.

_Dislike and fear._ And fear, he admitted. He was, on some level, for some reason he could not quite understand, afraid of the mailman. And that too had been instant.

Hobiepulled open the door of the pickup and hopped onto the ripped seat.

He dug into the right front pocket of his Levi's and pulled out his key ring.

"Well, Igotta be going. You're coming with me to the meeting, though, right?"

"You got it."

"All right. We'll kick some butt." He slammed the door, grinning, and started the engine. "I'm onpoon patrol tomorrow and Friday, but I'll give you a call before Monday."

"Okay," Doug said. "Have fun."

"I will,"Hobie said, pulling his mirrored shades from his T-shirt pocket, putting them on. "You bet I will." He backed up quickly and swung about on the road, turning the truck toward town. He waved once, a short swipe of his hand above the cab of the pickup, and then was gone.

Doug walked back up the steps.

"Kick some butt," Billy said, putting down his BB gun.

"Don't you repeat that," Tritia called from inside.

"You heard your mother," Doug said. He tried to make his voice sound tough, but he couldn't help smiling. He pushed open the screen door and walked into the house, picking up the mail from the top of the table where he'd put it down. He glanced at the envelopes in his hand.

Again there were no bills.

5.

The next day Doug received a letter from Ford informing him that, due to the outcome of a lawsuit the company recently lost to a consumer-rights organization, the warranty on their Bronco's power train had been extended for another year. There was also a two-dollar rebate check from Polaroid and a letter to Billy from Tritia 's mother, with a five-dollar bill in it.

The day after that, the mail consisted of a letter from Doug's mother to Billy -- the letter contained a one-dollar bill: she was richer than Tritia 's mother but cheaper -- and a subscription to the Fruit-of-the-Month Club from an anonymous donor "on this, the occasion of your birthday." The accompanying card was addressed to Tritia , but her birthday was not until January. Doug's was closer, in October, but it was still several months away.

"Who coul4 have sent us this, and why?" Tritia wondered, looking at the small box of red delicious apples.

Doug didn't know, but he didn't like it. He was also starting to worry about the bills. It had been exactly a week since Ronda had killed himself, and while he could not really find any fault with the man who had taken his place _John Smith_ -- he did not think it natural that they had received no bills or junk mail in that time. There was something suspicious and unsettling about that. It was strange enough that it had happened once, but for the exact same thing to occur day after day . . . Well! Mail, by its very nature, was neither all good nor all bad. It carried indifferently messages both positive and negative, filtering nothing, making no distinctions. The odds against something like this occurring were probably astronomical.

Besides, he knew that both his water bill and Exxon bill came due at this time each month.

If he didn't get those bills by Monday, he told Trish, he was going to go in and have a talk with Howard.

"Stop being so paranoid," she said. "Jesus, if you're bored, start cleaning up that trash in the back of the house. Start working on your storage shed. Do something useful. Stop thinking up bizarre conspiracy theories."

"What bizarre theory?" he asked. "Some of our mail is obviously getting lost. I'm just going to talk to Howard about it."

"Don't give me that. You've had it in for that new mailman since the moment you laid eyes on him."

She was right, although he had never come out and said as much. He had not, in fact, talked to her at all about the mailman, not specifically, though he had talked about the mail and obviously must have telegraphed to her his thoughts and opinions. What worried him as much as the lack of bills and junk mail, however, was the sheer amount of letters and positive correspondence they were receiving. Under normal circumstances, they did not get this much good mail in a month, let alone in a few days, and that was not something which could easily be explained, which had an alternate, obviously rational explanation.

There were too many factors and variables involved. This was not something that could be attributed to theincompetency of a postal worker.

He remembered seeing the mailman carefully sorting the letters he took from the mailbox.

"I'm going to call Howard," he repeated.

Howard himself called the next day, ready to take them up on their dinner invitation. Trish answered the phone, and while Doug knew immediately who it was from the sympathetic tone she adopted and from the sudden understanding in her voice, he did not mention anything about the mail. The postmaster was going through a difficult period, and he did not want to make it even more difficult.

He would bring up his complaint next week if nothing had changed, and he would bring it up in a business rather than social environment.

Trish set up a date and Howard agreed to come over on Saturday for roast and potatoes.

"You know what?" Doug admitted to Trish that night before they went to bed. "I think I'm actually starting to miss all that junk mail. I used to toss most of those ads and flyers out without reading them, but now that we don't get them anymore, I feel like we're cut off from society. It's almost like not getting a newspaper. I feel like I'm not up on what's current."

Trish rolled over and turned off the light. "Shut up about the mail," she said. "Go to bed."

6.

Lane Chapman lived in a large three-bedroom house on the top of the hill, above the flattened ruins of the oldAnasazi village. The house was modern, all wood and glass and angular corners, and the inside looked like something out of a magazine: white throw rugs on white Mexican tile floors, overstuffed white couches, track lights with framed art posters on otherwise bare white walls.

Billy stared at the two-story structure as he walked up the paved drive to the front steps. He admired the house, appreciated it, but he didn't like it. It seemed cold, more like an art exhibit than a home, and the two boys usually spent most of their time at theAlbins ' small but comfortable A-frame.

Although he would never tell this to Lane, Billy also found his friend's parents cold and aloof. Mr. Chapman was hardly ever home, but when he was, Lane stayed well out of his way. He seldom smiled, swore often, and did not like to waste his time talking to kids. Billy was not even sure Mr. Chapman knew his name, though he had been his son's best friend since kindergarten. Mrs. Chapman was always home, but there was something false about her unwavering smile, something phony about her constant niceness. Lane, he knew, adored his mother, but Billy was not sure the feeling was reciprocated. Mrs. Chapman seemed about as warm and responsive as her precious white furnishings.

Before moving here to Pine Top Acres, theChapmans had lived just down the way from Billy's family in a prefab log home that Lane's dad had built and that he used as a demonstration model for his contractor's skills. Now theChapmans had an unlisted phone number, and the only people allowed into the house were those few who had been invited.

Billy pressed the doorbell and heard the familiar musical chime sound dully from the depths of the house. A few moments later, Lane was at and out the door.

"Come on," he said. "Let's hit the road. My dad's home and he's pissed. He just lost a contract toGagh and Sons, and he's in a bad mood. He's threatening to take me to Crazy Carl again."

Billy laughed. Crazy Carl was the town's oldest barber. A World War II vet, with pictures of the Big One all over his tiny shop, he considered it his patriotic duty to make sure every boy's hair was cut to a length he considered acceptable. No matter what style was requested, Carl would inevitably shave the hair down to a uniform butch. Once, years ago, Billy's dad had taken him to Crazy Carl and had told the old man to just trim a little above the ears. Carl had shaved him almost completely bald, and he had been the laughingstock of his classroom for weeks. Neither he nor his dad had ever gone back again.

"He's not serious, is he?" Billy asked.

"Hard to tell with my dad. He's always threatening to send me off to military school or something." He shook his head. "I'm getting tired of this crap. I swear to God. I'm hitting the road when I'm eighteen, and if my old man tries to stop me, I'll deck him."

Billy hid his smile. Lane was always talking about how he was going to "deck" his dad or "beat his ass." Last week, when they'd found a lottery ticket on the ground, Lane had said that if they had the winning numbers he was going to leave home and send a truckload ofdogshit to be dropped on his father's car.

Lane's plans and pronouncements were always funny, but there was something sad about them too, and Billy was thankful that he didn't have his friend's parents.

Lane looked around the drive. "Where's your bike?"

Billy nodded toward the edge of the road. "I left it back there. I thought maybe your brother was sleeping. I didn't want to wake him up." The last time he'd come over, he'd called out for Lane instead of knocking on the door or ringing the bell, and Lane's mother, smiling as always, had come out and told him in a polite voice edged with steel that he had awakened the baby.

Lane laughed. "You think your bike was going to wake him up? The doorbell's louder than that."

"Did I wake him up again?"

"No. He's fine. Stop being such a pussy. What do you think my mom's going to do? Beat you?"

It was possible, Billy thought, but he said nothing. He walked down the drive to the bush where he'd stashed his bike while Lane got his own wheels, and soon the two of them were speeding down the road.

Although the land at the top of the hill had been open for development for over two years, few of the acre lots had sold and even fewer had been built upon. There was theChapmans ' house; Dr.Koslowski's house; the house of Al Houghton, who owned Pine Top Acres; and a few expensive vacation homes built by people who never used them. Other than that, the flattened hilltop was home to only trees and rocks and bushes.

Billy and Lane pedaled down the paved road past the dark wood and stone of the doctor's rustic residence. The view from here was spectacular. To the left was the town, white wooden buildings and brown shake roofs peeking up from between summer green trees, and the rugged ridge beyond. To the right was the forest, stretching toward the horizon in an alternating pattern of hill and valley, hill and valley, broken only by the cleared spaces and tiny jumbled patterns of increasingly far-off towns.

They sped along the road. Their plan today was to check out the Indian ruins at the bottom of the hill. A team of archaeology students from ASU had arrived yesterday for their annual summer workshop, and they hoped to be invited to join the exploration.

They had discovered the dig last summer while practicing motocross jumps and maneuvers on the maze of barely perceptible trails that branched outward from the forest service road that dissected the narrow valley. They had seen, from far off, moving swaths of color amid the forest green and had ridden up to investigate. The dig had already been under way for a month by the time they'd arrived, and the sight that greeted their eyes amazed them both. Fifteen or twenty men and women were digging with tiny trowels in square shallow holes precisely outlined with sticks and string. Many of them were examining small rocks and pieces of pottery, dusting the objects off with small black brushes.

In the center of the meadow, next to a battered pickup truck, were rows of bones and skulls and Indian grinding stones. Around the perimeter of this activity, a low stone wall had been partially unearthed.

The two of them had stood with their bikes at the edge of the meadow until someone had spotted them and yelled, "Hey!" Then they'd taken off, pedaling fast and furiously away from the site.

But they had returned the next day.

And came back the day after that.

Gradually, like wild animals, they grew used to the archaeology students, and the students grew used to them, and one day, finally tamed, they had gathered the courage to walk into camp.

It had been an eye-opening experience. The two of them had hung around, trying to stay out of everyone's way, until the professor in charge let them chisel out some arrowheads from the hard-packed ground. It had been fun and rewarding, and although they hadn't been able to keep any of the artifacts they'd unearthed, they had both decided then and there that they were going to be archaeologists when they grew up.

The road curved down and they found the trail that led off the pavement through a vacant lot into the forest. Billy jumped the small embankment, Lane followed, and then they were through the lot and into the trees. The trail wound through the underbrush, following the path of a long-dead stream, running down the hill to the valley below. They sped over the sandy earth. Small lizards scattered out of the way of their onrushing tires; birds flew up from the surrounding bushes, squawking into the air. Finally they reached the bottom of the hill, and Billy turned into his stop, sliding across the dirt. Lane skidded to a halt next to him. From off to their right came the faint sounds of conversation and rock music, and they swiveled their bikes around, heading toward the sounds.

Although the low stone outlines ofAnasazi buildings stretched across the entire floor of the valley, the university team concentrated on only one small section at a tune. Last year, the students had been digging at the north end of the tiny valley, near the meadow, but this year it sounded as though they had given up on that idea and were trying to look for artifacts on the heavily forested south end.

Billy and Lane were at the site almost before realizing it, and they quickly stopped at the edge of the small clearing. Folding tables and chairs had been set up underneath various trees, and on them were piled books and boxes and assorted work tools. The carpet of brown pine needles that ordinarily covered the ground had been cleared and flat bare dirt shone through, broken in spots by square shallow excavation holes. Bright-blue and red tents were set up about the area, though not enough for everyone to sleep in. The students themselves were grouped around their professor, a baldingmiddleaged man with an Abe Lincoln beard and a prospector's tan.

The boys parked their bikes in the bushes and walked slowly and shyly forward. A few of the students' faces were familiar from last year, but most of them were new and Billy and Lane weren't sure what kind of reaction they were going to get.

The eyes of the men and women shifted focus from the professor to the two boys trekking across the rough ground. The professor turned to see the new center of attention, and a smile of recognition crossed his face. "I was wondering when you were going to show up," he said. His voice was cracked and hoarse. "Ready to work?"

"That's why we're here," Lane said.

The professor laughed. "Glad to have you aboard. I'm sure we'll be able to find something for you to do." He turned to face his class. "Those of you who are new to our extension course, meet Lane . . ."

"Chapman," Lane prompted.

"And Billy . . ."

"Albin."

"Right." The professor was about to add something else when his attention was drawn to the other end of the clearing. Pressing forward, Billy followed his gaze. He saw movement in the underbrush. A man. A man with a blue uniform and a thin white face.

And bright red hair.

The mailman stepped into the clearing from the other end. He had obviously been walking through the trees and bushes all the way from the control road, which cut across the valley at its southern tip, but his postal uniform was free from all traces of dirt, there were no small dead leaves or branches in his hat, and the gold buttons on his jacket shone brightly, unscratched. He held in his hand a single envelope.

"Dr. Dennis Holman?" he asked in his smooth low voice.

The professor nodded.

"I have a letter for you." He handed the envelope to the professor, then glanced purposefully over at Billy. There was the same suggestive smile on his face that Billy had seen that day by the mailbox, and he felt both sickened and scared. His heart was pounding, and he glanced over at Lane to see if he had noticed, but Lane's attention was focused on a braless woman in the front row of students.

Billy forced himself to stare only at the professor, trying to ignore entirely the creepy insinuating look of the mailman.

Dr. Holman opened the letter and quickly scanned its contents. "Our funding came through," he announced to the assembled group, holding up the letter. "The university has decided to go ahead with our research project."

There was a spontaneous and only partially tongue-in-cheek cheer from the students.

The professor, grinning, nodded at the mailman. "Thanks," he said. "That's the best news I've gotten all semester."

"Glad to be of service," the mailman said.

Ordinarily, Billy thought, that would have been the man's cue to leave, but he showed no intention of doing any such thing. He clasped his hands behind his back and stood there calmly, looking around the camp, taking everything in.

His face was purposefully neutral, carefully expressionless, but there was an underlying smugness, an indefinable something that manifestedkself in his attitude and that gave Billy the feeling that he was passing judgment on all he surveyed -- and that he was happy it did not live up to his standards. He was silent and expressionless, but Billy could tell that inwardly he was gloating.

The mailman's eyes scanned the faces of the students, lingering on none of them, then landed once again on Billy.

Billy was sweating. He could feel twin trickles of perspiration slide in winding paths from beneath his armpits down his sides. His forehead, too, was sweaty, and he wiped it with a palm. It was hot out, but not that hot, and he swallowed hard, wanting to escape, to run, to get the hell out of here. But he could not move. He was frozen in place by that gaze, by the unnatural promises behind that superficially benign smile, so utterly powerless to react that he could not even glance over at Lane.

The mailman nodded at him, a nod of recognition and acknowledgment, a nod that said "I know what you're thinking," then turned away and strode back through the forest the way he had come.

"We got our funding," the professor enthused. "We finally got our funding!" He was holding up the letter proudly. "Now we'll really be able to make some progress."