The Mailman

by Bentley Little

  That's his only power."

  The sound of the crowd was different this time, louder, less argumentative, hopeful. They wanted to believe. Next to him, Tritia held his hand. She looked up at him and smiled. "No mail!" she yelled. "No mail!" She began to chant in a cheerleader cadence. "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"

  It was picked up by Mike and by some of the people in the front rows. Two of the school's real cheerleaders took up the cause, lending their considerable vocal talents to the chant, and from elsewhere in the audience the other cheerleaders followed suit.

  "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"

  The sound grew, spread, and soon the entire gym was filled with the echoing reassuring sounds of theimpromtu cheer.

  "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"

  Never before had Doug experienced such a sense of community, such a spirit of cooperative togetherness, such a willful optimism. For the first time, he really and truly believed that they might have a chance to put a stop to this nightmare. He grinned at Tritia , and she grinned back.

  The lights in the gym flickered.

  "Stay calm," Doug ordered. "Don't panic!" But his voice was lost in the cry of the crowd, in the thump of stamping feet.

  A moment later the electricity went off for good.

  But no one seemed to notice and the people of the town continued to chant.

  "No mail! No mail! No mail! No mail!"

  49

  In the morning Doug awoke to see outside his window a winter wonderland.

  The sight was beautiful. It had snowed during the night, and ground and porch, trees and bushes were all completely covered with pure glorious white.

  Only . . .

  Only the air was warm and humid, the sky cloudless, and the ivory blanket that covered the world outside seemed smoothly even, strangely symmetrical.

  He opened the back door and looked down.

  The ground was not covered with snow.

  The ground was covered with envelopes.

  He stood there stunned. The envelopes had been placed, facedown, end-to end over everything, their flat edges fitting perfectly against the side of the house in a straight line and continuing over the back porch, over the storage shed, over themanzanita bushes and the trees. The enormity of such an effort was overwhelming, and the fact that it had been completed in one night, directly outside his house while he had been sleeping undisturbed inside, was terrifying.

  He was glad that Trish had spent the night at the hospital with Billy. He would not have wanted her to see this.

  Gingerly, Doug bent down and picked up the envelope nearest the door, turning it over. It was addressed to him from his mother. He picked up the one next to it, addressed to him from his father. The one next to that was from his Aunt Lorraine.

  He had the feeling that the mailman had grouped the envelopes in a specific order and that, if he made the effort to trace the pattern, he would find that the lineage of his life spread outward from that point in the return addresses of the letters.

  Doug stood up. He'd thought at first that the whole town had been covered by mail, but he saw almost instantly that past the white blanket covering his own trees was the natural green of real nature. He slipped on his sandals and stepped onto the back porch. The paper crinkled beneath his feet, but he continued forward, determined to see how far the mailman had gone. When he came to the first bush, its leafy shape entirely hidden by the back-to-back envelopes that domed its true form, he extended a cautious hand, curious to see how the envelopes had been attached together.

  The dome collapsed.

  A house of cards. The mailman had used the envelopes to construct a house of cards, balancing them one on top of the other with no adhesive until they covered the bush.

  He walked across the white ground to the first tree, touching it.

  The tree covering, too, collapsed in a rain of letters.

  In the house the phone rang, its jangling loud in the early-morning stillness. He knew it was probably Trish calling, but he still hurried forward through the bushes and trees, away from the house, starting off letter landslides as he ran. He had to see how far this extended.

  He was not surprised to discover that the white blanket stopped at the exact edge of his property line, that the straight sides of the carefully placed envelopes marked a perfect border around the irregular shape of his land.

  He dashed back to the house, experiencing a perverse sense of pleasure as the envelopes crunched beneath his feet. The phone was still ringing, and he ran into the bedroom, picking it up as he fell back onto the bed. "Hello?" he said.

  "Letters," the mailman sang in a cruel parody of a Las Vegas lounge singer. "We've got letters!"

  Doug hung up the phone, his hand suddenly sweaty. His heart was pounding, and not just with the exertion of running. He lay there for a moment, breathing, thinking, then picked up the phone again to dial Mike.

  "Letters," the mailman sang through the receiver.

  Doug hung up. The mailman was staying on the line, keeping it open, not letting him make or receive calls.

  Fine, Doug thought, his mouth set in grim determination. If the mailman wanted to play hardball, hardball was what he was going to get.

  He unplugged the receiver. First he would drive to the hospital, see Billy and Trish. Then he would go to the police station. Then he would go to the hardware store and buy some extra garbage cans.

  Then he would come back here and rake the yard and throw away all of that fucking mail.

  Tritia said that she'd stay at home tonight if Doug wanted, keep him company. Billy was feeling better, she said, and wanted to be alone, didn't want his parents hovering over him every second of the day like he was some kind of baby. But Doug insisted that she remain with their son, telling her that it was important for the boy that she be with him. She said that in that case it was important for both of them to be there, but he told her that he and Mike had a strategy meeting to conduct. They had things to discuss and plan out. She should stay at the hospital.

  It was a wise decision, for the next day the property was again covered with mail, although the pure white envelopes of the previous morning had been replaced by an odd assortment of strangely shaped packages, poorly wrapped parcels and filthy postmarked bundles. As before, every inch of ground was covered. The mailman had somehow managed to fit the pieces of this motley collection together like some giant jigsaw puzzle, finding complementary curves for the sides of bent boxes, finding corresponding accordion sides to match mishandled packages.

  Doug opened the door and stepped outside. The smell hit him immediately, a rancid fetid odor of rot and decay. Through the ripped corner of one of the packages nearest him he saw a bunch of moldy grapes. The package was addressed to Tritia , obviously one of her Fruit-of-the-Month Club deliveries. Next to that was an irregularly shaped, awkwardly wrapped object covered with postage stamps that could only have been a cat. Blood had soaked through the brown butcher paper. It too was addressed to Tritia .

  Doug surveyed his property, a feeling of dread settling over him.

  Obviously his plan wasn't working. The whole town was supposed to be ignoring their mail, sending and receiving nothing, and according to Mike, everyone was complying. Yet still the mailman had enough power to do this, to manufacture or gather together hundreds of packages of perversities and within the space of a single night arrange them over his entire property. How could they even hope to fight a being who could pull off something of this magnitude?

  But maybe that was the point. Maybe that was why this whole scene had been staged. Maybe that's what the mailman wanted them to think. Maybe the mailman was scared and on the ropes, using everything he had, trotting out his big guns in an effort to demoralize them and bully them into submission.

  Or maybe, Doug thought, his disposal of the envelopes yesterday had given the mailman an energy boost. It was possible that _any_ action involving mail, even its disposal, empowered the mailman to a certain exten
t.

  He immediately retreated into the house, threw on his clothes, grabbed his keys, and drove into town to talk to Mike. He asked the policeman to have his men tell everyone that, no matter what happened, they were to leave their mail untouched, not burn it, not throw it away, not do anything with it. Let it pile up if they had to, but don't touch it.

  Doug practiced what he preached, leaving the packages in his own yard and spending the night at the hospital with Tritia and Billy. When he returned home the next afternoon, the yard had been cleared. All of the packages were gone and nothing had been left to take their place.

  Doug smiled. That, he was certain, had been a tactical error on the mailman's part. The stench and the disease accompanying the rotting fruit, animals, and whatever else had been in the bundles would have eventually forced him to clean his yard, thereby granting the mailman more power. Instead, the mailman had been forced to expend power in order to remove the packages.

  The signs were subtle, but they were there.

  The mailman was getting scared. He was getting sloppy.

  He was slipping.

  They just had to wait him out.

  50

  The days were long. The nights were longer.

  The utilities had been off since the day after the packages had disappeared, and both Doug and Trish smelled from not bathing. For meals they had sandwiches and barbecues, drank warm beer and Cokes. During the interminable days, they waited on the porch, trying to read but not reading, or went to the hospital to sit with Billy. The hospital had its own self-powered emergency generators, and while they were not allowed to use the rationed water or spend the night in semi-air-conditioned comfort due to the new overcrowded conditions, at least they had the satisfaction of knowing that Billy was being taken care of.

  The psychiatrist who had come up from Phoenix told them after an afternoon-long meeting with Billy that he was a healthy and extremely well adjusted young man and that with the proper counseling he should be able to recover nicely.

  At night Doug's fitful sleep was disturbed by dreams. Dreams in which Willis was a ghost town and all of the buildings were made from mail. Dreams in which Tritia lay naked and beckoning on the bed, covered head to toe with canceled stamps. Dreams in which Billy wore a Postal Service uniform and grinningly accompanied the mailman on his hellishly appointed rounds.

  The gas in the Bronco was getting low, but Doug couldn't help driving into town to check with the police. Each night the mailman came, delivering mail, depositing it now in the mailbox, and Doug kept thinking that with no visible progress someone was going to crack, was going to accept a letter or, worse, send one. But Mike andTegarden said each time that as far as they could tell, the dam was holding.

  The sixth day passed.

  The air-conditioning was shut off in the hospital to save the generator fuel, but the windows were open and a slight breeze cooled Billy's room. The two of them played Monopoly while Tritia watched, then Tritia and Billy played Parcheesi while he watched.

  How thin was the veneer of civilization, Doug thought. How little it took to send them scurrying back to the caves. It was not laws that separated man from beast. It was not reason. It was not culture or government. It was communication. Communication made possible the niceties of modern life, ensured the continuation of society. A breakdown in communication, particularly in this global age when so much depended on the proper relay of correct information, left people feeling lost and helpless, resulting in an arrest of the normal rules of behavior, paving the road for chaos.

  But he was waxing pretentious again. He found himself doing that often, even aloud, which annoyed the hell out of Tritia . He should have learned by now to save those sorts of ruminations for the classroom and not to inject them into real conversations.

  The classroom.

  How far away school seemed, how quaint and innocent. He tried to think of when school was going to be starting, but though he thought it was pretty soon, he wasn't sure. He realized he didn't know what date it was.

  He left Tritia at the hospital while he went to the police station to see what was happening. On the way, he passed by the Circle K, and he slowed down as he saw the mailman opening the blue mailbox in front of the convenience store.

  The mailbox was completely empty and he slammed the metal door shut angrily. He looked bad, Doug thought. He had always been thin, but now he seemed gaunt, almost skeletal. His pale skin was bleached nearly bone-white, and there was no differentiation in color between his lips and the rest of his skin. Even his once fiery red hair seemed faded and lackluster.

  Doug's heart leapt hopefully in his chest. It was working. He had been right. The mailman might be able to substitute mail, even to generate mail, but to do so he had to have other mail coming in. He smiled to himself. Mail, he thought, could be neither created nor destroyed.

  Doug watched the mailman stand. He seemed weak, frail. All they had to do now was wait him out.

  The mailman suddenly turned toward him and grinned, eyes fastening sharply and instantly on his own, as though he had known exactly where Doug had been watching the whole time. The effect of those perfect teeth in that skeleton face was horrifying. A comic-book monster come to life. The mailman reached into his bag and pulled out a handful of envelopes, fanning them like cards, offering them to Doug. But Doug pressed down on the gas and sped past the Circle K not looking at the mailman, heart hammering in his chest.

  His fear did not survive the trip to the police station. He ran inside.

  For the first time, he had something to tell them, good news, and when he described what he had seen, the policemen cheered.

  "No mail," Mike said, grinning. "No mail! No mail!"

  The others took up the chant.

  "No mail! No mail! No mail!"

  51

  TrilAllison stood in front of the living-room window with his sons, watching as the mailman's red car pulled in front of their driveway. Annie stayed in the kitchen, refusing to look, afraid to look.

  The car came to a full stop and the mailman got out. He looked extraordinarily thin, almost emaciated, and even from here,Tril could see the bony fingers emerging from the drooping uniform, could see the haggard gauntness in the pale face.Tril's hands tightened on the windowsill. He was scared, but he was also exhilarated, horrified and at the same time thrilled. It was working. The English teacher had been right. Without any mail to deliver, John Smith was losing his strength. He was dying.

  Through the window, he met the mailman's gaze, and for the first time in a long while he did not look away.

  The mailman moved over to the wooden mailbox and opened the hinged door.

  Out spilled envelopes, white and manila, thin and stuffed, large and small: the untouched mail that had been delivered over the past few days. The mailman looked up again at the house, andTril could see in the white skeletal face a ferocious rage, an expression of pain and hate so raw and unfettered that both boys moved back from the window, too frightened to watch.

  ButTril watched.

  He watched as the mailman angrily picked the envelopes off the dirt and shoved them back into the box. Watched as he brought more mail from the car and shoved it in as well. Watched as he slammed shut the mailbox door.

  The mailman moved around to the driver's side of the car. He glared at the house and mouthed somethingTril could not make out before getting in and driving off in a cloud of dust.

  Trilwaited a few moments to make sure he was not going to return, then looked back at Annie, at his sons, picked up the hammer and nails, and went outside to nail the mailbox shut.

  Hunt James pulled into the six-space parking lot in front of the building he shared with Dr. Elliott. He had come here to tape up the mail slot in his office door, to make sure that the mailman would not be able to deliver anything to his business address. He strode across the faded and broken asphalt and stepped onto the short sidewalk. In the window of the dentist's office, next to the familiar "No UPS today" sign, he sa
w a hastily lettered square of white cardboard that said "NO MAIL EVER!"

  Good idea, Hunt thought. He used his key to open the door to his own office and flipped on the lights. He strode purposefully across the carpeted floor. From his secretary's desk, he took a thick black felt-tipped pen and a sheet of typing paper as well as a roll of masking tape. Smiling to himself, he began to write.

  The mailman drove by the house three times before stopping. David Adams grinned to himself as he saw the red car brake in front of the house. He had dug up the mailbox, had filled in the post hole, and had dumped the whole thing into the back yard. Later, after breakfast, he would cut up the post for kindling and smash the mailbox itself.

  The mailman got out of his car and, letters in hand, walked straight up the driveway toward the front door.

  David quickly locked the screen door, shut the real door and pulled the curtains, still grinning. The mailman was getting pretty damned desperate. He looked like hell, and he was even delivering mail in the daytime. They had the bastard on the ropes now.

  There was a knock at the door. "Mr. Adams!"

  David said nothing, did not move.

  Another knock. "Mr. Adams!"

  David did not respond.

  "I know you're in there," the mailman said. He knocked again, loudly, more forcefully. "Mr. Adams? I regret to inform you that you are in violation of federal statute. Since you do not have a post-office box or drawer, you are required by law to have either a mailbox or mail slot at your place of residence so that mail can be properly delivered. If you do not have a mailbox or mail slot, you are interfering with the daily operation of the federal government and, as such, can be prosecuted."

  David smiled. There was a hard edge to the mailman's voice and more than a hint of desperation.

  "I know you're in there," the mailman repeated. His voice took on a sly tempting quality. "I have things here that I know you'd like to see. Darla's last letter. A letter from her lover. This is good mail today, Mr. Adams. Good mail." David said nothing, though he wanted to scream at the son of a bitch;