The Mailman

by Bentley Little

  Billy struck out again, but this time Lane was prepared. He punched Billy hard in the stomach, and Billy went down, doubling over, clutching his midsection.

  Lane scrambled up the rope, through the trapdoor. "I'mgonna show this to everyone," he said. "Maybe otherpeople'll want to try your mom too."

  And Billy lay crying on the ground as he heard his ex-friend's footsteps run over the twigs and leaves toward home.

  20

  Doug crouched on the porch, looking through the telescope at the trees on the ridge. Tonight would be a full moon, and he had brought the telescope outside so he could see the craters. They had gotten the telescope for Billy last Christmas, and the boy's interest in astronomy had waxed and waned since then in cycles roughly corresponding to those of the moon. The last time he'd used the telescope the high-powered setting had seemed somewhat blurry, and he'd asked his dad to check it out, but Doug had not had a chance to do so until now.

  He focused the eyepiece until he could see the individual needles of a pine tree atop the ridge. Billy was right. The magnified view was a little blurry, but it probably wasn't enough to hamper anyone's enjoyment. They would still be able to see craters fairly clearly.

  He swung the telescope over until he was looking at the Ridge Road. It was after seven and the sun was setting fairly fast. The dirt road winding up to the top of the cliff appeared orange in the fading light. He was about to use the telescope to look at something else when he saw movement at the bottom of his field of vision.

  A red car moving slowly up the road.

  Doug's heart skipped a beat.

  The mailman was driving up to the top of the ridge.

  A wave of cold passed over him. Ridge Road ran parallel to the highway through town before swerving up to the top of the cliff and unceremoniously dead-ending in an empty field strewn with boulders. The road intersected Oak right next to the school and was used as a lovers' lane by many of the high schoolers, but no one lived on top of the ridge.

  There was no place on its summit to deliver mail.

  The car passed over the top and Doug looked up from the telescope, standing. Even with his naked eye, he could clearly see the road from here, a light slice curving through the darkness of the ridge. He could not make out the detail he could through the telescope, but he would have no problem seeing a car go up or down the road.

  He stared, waiting.

  Waited, staring.

  The sun sank lower in the west, throwing the face of the ridge into shadow until he could no longer differentiate between trees and cliff and road.

  Although he would have no trouble seeing the mailman's car descend if its lights were on, there was no way he'd be able to spot the car with its headlights off.

  He had a gut feeling, however, that the mailman was still up there on top of the ridge and would be for some time.

  What could he be doing? Doug opened the screen door quickly and sneaked inside the house before the bugs hovering near the porch light could follow.

  Tritia was putting away the last of the dinner dishes and Billy was already upstairs.

  "I'm going to cruise down to Circle K," Doug announced.

  Tritia closed the cupboard. "What for?"

  He had no lie handy, but his voice didn't falter as he made up an excuse on the spur of the moment. "I just had a sudden urge for a candy bar. You want one?" She shook her head. There was a suspicious look on her face, but she said nothing.

  "Big Hunk!" Billy called from upstairs.

  "What if they don't have any?"

  "Reese's!"

  "Okay." He turned back toward Tritia . "Anything for you? Granola bar maybe?"

  "No." She was quiet for a moment and looked as though she was about to say something, but she remained silent.

  "I'll be back in fifteen minutes or so." Doug opened the screen door and stepped out, closing it behind him.

  Tritia followed him onto the porch. "Be careful," she said quietly.

  He turned to look at her. She knew something or sensed something. He could tell she was worried. He wanted to talk to her, to let her know what he was going to do, but somehow the words wouldn't come. He nodded, saying nothing, and walked down the steps to the Bronco.

  He drove quickly, once he was out of eyesight and ear-shot of the house, eager to get over to the ridge, though he had the feeling the mailman wasn't going anywhere.

  It was strange. The mailman had never, to Doug's knowledge, been seen shopping, buying gas, eating, or doing anything other than official postal work.

  It was hard, in a town this small, to remain completely to oneself, to remain a mystery, and before this, he would have thought it impossible. Even if a person was pathologically antisocial, his neighbors would notice his comings and goings, his personal habits, and would report to their friends, who would report to their friends, and so on until the entire town was informed of his movements.

  A small town was no place for an individual who craved anonymous privacy, no place for a recluse. But the mailman seemed to be pulling it off.

  Now, however, he had the opportunity to see the mailman after hours.

  And Doug had the feeling he was doing something other than postal work.

  He swung onto the highway and sped through town, braking to thirty-five just before the speed trap next to the bank. He turned off on Oak and followed it to the Ridge Road, hands growing increasingly sweaty on the steering wheel.

  There were no streetlights here and the road was dark. He slowed to a crawl as he reached the top of the ridge, not sure of what he would find, not wanting to give himself away.

  The land at the top was fiat, tall grass and weeds punctuated by boulders of various sizes but without any significant foliage to hide behind. He cut the headlights and pulled to the side of the road, turning off the engine so as not to attract attention to himself. He was scared, but he had to go through with this. He rolled down the Bronco's window. The moon in the east was starting to rise, casting long shadows on theridgetop . The road, he knew, ended just a mile up ahead, and unless the mailman had left while Doug was driving over here, he was somewhere in between these two points.

  Doug sat in the car for a few moments longer, gathering his courage, giving his eyes time to adjust to the gloom. There was a slight breeze blowing, a wispy, barely perceptible current of air that animated the blue-lit grass stalks and whispered sibilantly. Only . . . only there was another noise besides the wind whispers. A low faint murmur coming from somewhere up ahead, rising and falling with the tides of the breeze.

  The mailman.

  Goose bumps rippled down Doug's arms. Slowly, carefully, quietly, he opened the car door and got out, closing it softly. He began walking forward, keeping to the side of the road, grateful he was wearing dark clothes that would allow him to blend in with the night.

  The ridge was not entirely flat, he saw now. It appeared so from a car, but walking, he noticed that a slight rise continued imperceptibly forward, the grade just enough to shield the center of the ridge from view.

  The murmuring grew slightly louder.

  Doug continued walking. His keys and change were jingling in his pants and he put his hand in his pocket to muffle the noise. The road curved slightly, the land leveling off, and he came to an abrupt stop, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. The mailman was about half a mile directly ahead of him, off the road, in the middle of the field. Even from here, he could see the lithe thin figure dancing madly amid the rocks and boulders, arms flailing with wild abandonment. He knew who it was without moving closer, but he wanted to be near enough to see everything, and he left the road, ducking through the grass, creeping forward, the fear a palpable presence in his body. Behind him, the moon was rising, full and bright, throwing the top of the ridge into phosphorescent relief, casting a soft light on the entire scene.

  He moved silently forward. The sounds grew louder. The mailman was chanting something. At first it sounded like a foreign language, so strange and alien were its rhyt
hms and cadences. But, listening closer as he approached, Doug realized that the words of the chant were English.

  "Neither rain nor snow nor sleet nor hail. . . ."

  He was chanting the motto of the Postal Service.

  The skin on the back of Doug's neck prickled, peach fuzz standing on end.

  He crept behind a large irregularly shaped boulder and peeked out from behind its bulk. The mailman was leaping in the air, twirling joyfully, not following any steps or preplanned moves, dancing wildly and impulsively. This close, Doug could see that the mailman was dressed in his full postal uniform: shoes and pants, shirt and cap. Brass buttons glinted in the moonlight. Blue-blackness was reflected off the spit-shined shoes.

  Doug's mouth was dry and cottony, his heart pounding so loudly that he was sure the mailman would be able to hear it. He had known there was something odd, something strange, something evil about the mailman. But he realized now that he was in far over his head. The mailman's dance was spontaneous and celebratory and could very well have had something to do with witchcraft orsatanism , but he had an intuitive feeling that the dance was related to something much worse, something much more primal and unfathomable, something he did not and perhaps could not understand.

  The mailman stopped chanting and grinned crazily, perfect teeth seeming, to glow in the moonlight, staring raptly up at the sky as his legs moved in impossible steps, his arms mirroring each foot movement. He began to chant again. The Postal Service motto.

  The mailman had been dancing for at least the five minutes that Doug had been watching, dancing at full throttle, using all of his strength and all of the energy at his disposal, but he showed no signs of tiring. Indeed, he did not even appear to be sweating.

  Doug had no doubt that the mailman could keep this up until dawn.

  He began backing away the way he had come, retreating behind the boulder, into thegrassFor a second, he thought he saw the mailman look directly at him and laugh, but then he was running, hurrying through the grass and down the road to the Bronco.

  He turned around without flipping on his headlights and sped down the Ridge Road toward home.

  He had forgotten all about Billy's Big Hunk and his supposed trip to Circle K, but neither Tritia nor Billy said anything to him when he arrived back, and he knew that they knew he'd been lying.

  In bed that night, he stared up into the darkness, listening to Tritia 's deep even breathing and to the sounds of nocturnal nature. Somewhere near the house a cricket chirped tirelessly, and from the trees in back came the intermittent hooting of an owl.

  Usually, he had no trouble falling asleep. He had needed a lot of rest as a child, and even as an adult had always been able to dive into dreamland soon after hitting the sheets. But tonight he lay awake with his eyes closed through Carson, through Letterman, then got up to turn off the TV, thinking perhaps that the noise was keeping him awake, though it had never bothered him before. But the outside noises also seemed to shut off at the same time as the television, and as he lay there in bed, staring up into the darkness, he imagined he heard on the slight breeze the sound of distant chanting.

  21

  Hobiewas awakened by the noise of clanking metal, and it took his sleep numbed brain a moment to identify the sound. His mind was still half-trapped in hisdreamworld , a wonderful place where there was a gigantic swimming pool and he was lifeguard and all the women swam naked. He had taken off his trunks and was just about to join one blond lovely on a beach towel when the noise had intruded on his sleep and returned him to the real world.

  The sound came again, a metal clanking, and this time he recognized it.

  The lid of the mailbox. He frowned, glancing over at the alarm clock next to his bed. Jesus, it was three in the morning. Why the hell was his mail being delivered at three in the morning?

  He pushed off the covers and started to get out of bed when he suddenly stopped himself. How had he been able to hear the opening and closing of the mailbox lid? The mailbox was at the far end of the trailer, and the sound it made could be heard only when standing right next to it. And how had the sound woken him up? He was a heavy sleeper and ordinarily he slept through the night without awakening. Even his alarm usually had a difficult time rousing him.

  He felt a sudden chill, and he quickly stood up and put on his robe.

  Something strange was going on here. If the mailman was still outside, he was going to ask that queer little son of a bitch . . .

  How had he known it was the mailman?

  The chill grew, coldness creeping up his spine. It was such a bizarre thought to begin with, why had he assumed -- no, _known_ -- that the mailman had just made a delivery in the middle of the night? Why hadn't he thought that vandals were tampering with his mailbox? That kids were dropping eggs in there?

  Hobiewalked out to the living room in the front of the trailer. He was not a timid man, but he had to force himself to move forward across the carpet.

  What he really wanted to do was return to bed and hide his head under the covers.

  He opened the door. The street was empty. Moonlight shone on the hoods of his cars in the front yard. He put his hand in the mailbox and withdrew an envelope. It was thick, stuffed. He closed and locked the door behind him, turning on the lamp in the living room and looking at the envelope in the light.

  There was no return address, but the postmark was Vietnam.

  _Vietnam?_

  He examined the postmark more carefully. It was dated June 4, 1968.

  A cold sweat broke out on his body. The temperature in the trailer seemed at once too cold and too hot, and he sat down heavily on the couch, staring at the envelope in his hand, not having the nerve to open it.

  Vietnam. 1968.

  It wasn't possible. A letter could not have been lost for over twenty years and then found and delivered. Could it? He fingered the envelope nervously. Maybe Doug was right. Maybe it was the mailman himself doing this, sending these fake letters to people. Why else would he be delivering them in the middle of the night?

  But why would he do such a thing? What could he possible hope to gain? It was a felony to tamper with the mails. If he got caught, he would go to prison.

  Hobietore open the envelope.

  Four photos fell out. As before, they were before and after shots. An Oriental girl, fourteen or fifteen, head and vagina shaved bald, on all fours in a dark and dirty room. The same girl, legs amputated and propped in back of her head, face screaming with agony and terror. An even younger girl, possibly Asian, possibly white, tied spread-eagled to stakes embedded in the dirt, dark green jungle behind her. The same girl, eviscerated, eyes wide and unseeing, mouth frozen in arictus of tortured pain.

  Hobiefelt his bowels contract. The fear was strong within him. His palms were sweaty, his hands shaking, and the paper rattled noisily as he held up the letter, but he forced himself to read it:

  Bro, Things here are getting pretty hairy. We're out of the cities and into the villages. The damn jungle is really thick, green everywhere as far as you can fucking see. Even the sky's starting to look kind of greenish. We don't know where the VC is or when they're going to attack. It's a tense scene. Everything here makes you jump. We've been waiting on edge for something to .happen just like we were told, but the sergeant decided that the best defense is a good offense and the other day we went out on our own. You can see the pictures. A

  guy named Mac took them and developed them. It was a VC village. The men were, all gone, but their wives and daughters were there and you know what they wanted. Lots of good healthy American dick. We couldn't just leave them, though.

  They'd be able to tell the others which way we'd gone, so after we were finished with them we silenced them. You can see the pictures.Gotta go. You can tell Dad, but don't tell Mom. I'll write her a letter when I get a chance.

  Dan Hobiestared at the letter a long time after he'd finished reading it. It was from Dan. There was no doubt about that. Even after all these years, he still reco
gnized his brother's handwriting. But the hardness, the insensitivity, the casual approach to raping and killing, that was something entirely unlike Dan.

  He found himself thinking for some reason of a time when he was eight or nine and he and one of his friends had been pouring salt on a snail, watching it dissolve. Dan had seen them and had burst into tears, crying for the snail and its now fatherless family, and it had taken both their mother and father to console him.

  Hobiewanted to cry now, out of sadness for the loss of his brother, which even this tentative connection made once again real and immediate, and out of sadness for the change that had occurred within the boy before he died, a change that neither he nor his parents had ever seen.

  What would Dan have been like had he come back?

  Hobieput down the letter and scooped up the photographs. His gaze fell upon the eviscerated pubescent. The fear which had receded for a moment returned full-force, and he quickly reached over and turned on the lamp next to the couch,, clicking the switch until the bulb was on the third and highest wattage.

  The light successfully evaporated the shadows in the room but could do nothing to dim the shadows stalking him from within.

  He'd had enough of this. Doug was right. Something was definitely screwy here, and tomorrow morning he was going to go over to the post office and find out what it was. Find out why he was getting twenty-year-old letters and photographs, and why they were being delivered in the middle of the fucking night. He'd demand that Howard do something, and if the old man didn't want to, well, then, he'd damn well better have his insurance paid up.

  Hobiefolded the letter and put it back in the envelope, shoving the pictures in with it. Half of him wanted to crumple up the letter, rip the photos, and throw the whole thing away, but another part of him wanted to save it all, to keep this last memento of Dan, and he put the envelope on the coffee table. He'd think about it later, decide what to do in the morning.

  He was about to get up, turn the light off, and go back into the bedroom when he heard the sound of footsteps shuffling outside the door. Fear flared within him, and he sat unmoving, afraid even to breathe. A low metal clanking told him that the mailbox had been opened and closed.