The Mailman

by Bentley Little

  Come out and play.

  He backed quickly away from the window, closing the drapes. The second the curtains closed, he knew that it had been a stupid thing to do. Now he was trapped in here, helpless, blinded, unable to see what was going on outside. He almost opened the drapes again, but immediately dropped the cord. What if the mailman had sneaked up onto the porch and was standing right in front of the window waiting for him, grinning at him? What would he do? What could he do? He had seen the mailman move in the direction of the house the second before the curtains closed. Or had he? He couldn't remember.

  His eyes darted toward the back of the house, toward his parents' bedroom.

  The drapes there were open, but the windows faced the forest. He would not be able to see anything other than trees.

  And the mailman, if he sneaked around from that direction.

  Billy ran upstairs. There was no door on the loft stairs, they simply came up through the floor, but his baseball bat was there and he could use that to protect himself if he had to. He picked up the bat and searched for something he could drop on the mailman's head if it came to that. He found several heavy old toys that he hadn't touched in years, and brought them with him to the bed. He gripped the bat tightly, waiting, ready to swing, listening for the sound of anything unfamiliar within the house.

  But the only sound was the constant rain and he heard nothing else until his parents pulled into the drive an hour later.

  34

  Doug walked out to the mailbox. It had been quite a while since he'd actually looked at the mail, and he was more than a little curious to see what sort of letter the mailman was sending these days. For the past week or so, he had gotten up before Trish or Billy awoke and had dumped the mail directly into the outside garbage cans, making sure he buried them deep under the kitchen sacks and bathroom trash so they wouldn't be accidentally taken out of the can by a hungry dog or rambunctious skunk or raccoon.

  Still, he was curious. It felt good to know that he was resisting the mailman's constant temptation, that whatever Postal Service pranks had been planned for he and his family had been successfully thwarted, but he could not deny that there was something inside him, that same stubborn something that had always made him do exactly what authority told him not to do, which made him now want to open up the mail and see what was inside, though he knew it was the dumbest move he could make under the circumstances.

  He thought ofHobie and Irene, who had both stopped answering their doors or their phones.

  His feet crunched in the gravel. He reached the foot of the drive and opened the mailbox. Inside was a single envelope addressed by computerized mailing label to "Occupant." Doug removed the envelope and slammed shut the box.

  He was still debating with himself whether to throw it away or look at it when his hands ripped open the sealed paper. He withdrew the contents of the envelope -- a professionally typeset brochure and two photographs.

  Nude photographs.

  Of Tritia .

  His mouth felt suddenly dry, his legs weak. He turned over the brochure and began to read. "Hi," it said. "My name's Tritia , and I want to be your very special friend. As an introduction to the Ranch Club, I am sending you two photos of myself, to show you what you get by taking advantage of our introductory offer. By night I am a wife and mother, but by day I am anything you want me to be. Your hot slut. Your love slave . . ."

  He couldn't read any more. Breathing heavily with anger, revulsion, and trembling fear, he looked at the two photos. In one, a rear view, Tritia was bent over the back of a couch, offering to the camera a perfect shot of her whiteuntanned ass.

  Only . . .

  Only it wasn't Tritia . The cheeks were too firm, and too round, the buttocks of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. He looked closer.

  The small birthmark she had on her lower back was missing as well, and the fingers were too short and stubby. He looked at the other photograph, this one of Trish seated in a wicker chair, legs spread, eyes closed as she fingered herself. The breasts were wrong, he noticed. The size was about right, but Trish's nipples were much darker, much more prominent.

  He tore up the photographs, tore up the brochure, tore up the envelope.

  The mailman had obviously pasted photographs of Trish's head onto someone else's body, although he did not know how or where the mailman could have gotten a hold of pictures of Trish. The photos were done well, flawlessly executed, with no visible seams, and would probably fool anyone else but him. But what was the point? Why go to so much trouble?

  Maybe it wasn't just for him. Maybe the mailman had sent the same brochure, the same photos, to other people in town. Maybe other men were right now staring at the false body of his wife, reading the mailman's fake words, fantasizing, planning.

  He pushed the thought from his mind as he walked back toward the house.

  He threw the torn scraps of paper into the garbage before going inside.

  The town had seemed nearly abandoned the other day when they'd gone to the store, with very few cars on the street, very few people visible anywhere, so Doug was more than a little surprised to see a crowd gathered in the parking lot in front of the deli. He had been planning to go to the hardware store, to pick up some more flashlight and radio batteries before they were all sold out, but he pulled into theBayless parking lot when he saw the crowd. He parked next to a gray Jeep Cherokee and got out. The group of people standing in front of the deli was fairly quiet and fairly still, but there was something threatening about them as they stood in a rough semicircle around Todd Gold's station wagon.

  Doug moved forward. He recognized the faces of several students and several adults. They appeared to be waiting for something, and although there was nothing unusual in either their individual expressions or stances, merely being part of the crowd made them seem menacing.

  Todd came out of his store, carrying a large white box. He put the box into the open rear of the station wagon, next to a score of others that had already been packed. He slammed shut the hatch. Doug pressed through the group of people to the front as the deli owner angrily waved the onlookers away. "Get the hell out of here. Haven't you done enough already?"

  The crowd stood dumbly, silently watching as he went into the store, emerged carrying several sacks, then closed and locked the now empty deli. "Get out of here," he yelled again. He dropped one of the sacks on the ground as he took out his car keys.

  Doug reached him just before he opened the front door. "What is it, Todd?

  What happened? What are you doing?"

  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 store
keeper 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 f
ingerprints 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.