"What are you laughing at?" Lane demanded.
"I bet she doesn't know you're eleven years old."
"I'm old enough," he said defensively. "Besides, I already sent her a letter back."
"You what?" Billy stared at him.
"Read the end of the letter."
Billy turned the paper over. His eyes flew down the page to the last paragraph:
. . . Maybe we could get together some time. I think we'd have fun. If you send me $10, I'll send you some intimate pictures of me and my sister, along with our address. I sure hope I hear from you soon. I'd love you to come and visit me.
Billy shook his head, looking up from the letter. "What a dick. Can't you tell it's just a rip-off to get your money?" He pointed toward the Xeroxed photo. "They probably cut this out of a magazine."
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. Besides, look at where that P.O. box is. New York. Even if she does send you her real address, what are you going to do? Go to New York?" He handed Lane the letter. "You didn't send ten dollars, did you?"
Lane nodded. "Yeah," he admitted.
"That was dumb." He looked at his friend curiously. "Where'd you get the money anyway?"
Lane glanced away. "My old man."
"You stole it?" Billy was shocked.
"What am Igonna do? Tell him I want ten dollars to send to Tama Barnes so I can get her pictures and address?"
"Youshouldn't've stole it."
"Fuck you. My old man has plenty of money. He didn't even notice it was gone."
Billy looked down at the open magazine on his lap, saying nothing. He and Lane often fought, often argued, often insulted each other, but there had been something else in his friend's voice just now, a hardness, a belligerence, a seriousness that said this was not a subject for argument, at least not for their usual temporary playful form of argument.
They were silent for a while, the only sound in The Fort the quiet whisk of turning pages.
"You're probably right," Lane said finally. "I probably won't get anything. I probably won't even get my pictures. But who can tell?"
"Yeah," Billy said.
"I bet she has a nice beaver, though."
Lane's voice was normal again, but underneath the superficialities something had changed, something that could not change back, and Billy somehow knew that this mundane moment was a turning point in their relationship. He and Lane might never again be as close as they had been, or even as close as they were now. It was a sad realization, a depressing discovery, and though Lane soon tired of looking at the _Playboys_ and wanted to ride down to the dig and see what was happening there, Billy convinced him to stay in The Fort, as if by remaining within its boundaries they could stop the change from occurring and freeze everything exactly as it was now.
The two of them remained within the HQ for the rest of the morning, talking, looking at the pictures, reading aloud the party jokes, like the friends they had always been and had thought they always would be.
15
The entire town was talking about The Suicides. For that was how they thought of them now. The Suicides. In big capital letters. It had been easy in the aftermath of the funeral and the outpouring of public sympathy for Bob Ronda's family to focus on the mailman's life rather than his death, to dwell on his good points. But the fact remained that he had killed himself. He had blown his brains out with a double-barreled shotgun and had, in the process, pushed his wife over the edge of sanity and let down an entire town that had loved him, cared about him, believed in him.
And now Bernie Rogers had done it as well.
It was all Doug and Tritia heard about at the grocery store. The Suicides.
Willis had had suicides before --Texacala Armstrong had shot herself last year just after her husband had been finally taken by cancer -- but the deaths had been isolated and understandable: people dying of disease, people who had recently lost a loved one, people with no hope. Never, in anyone's memory, had there been two suicides within two weeks of each other. And by seemingly normal people for no good reason.
The bizarreness of the coincidence was not lost upon anyone, and shocked grief was mixed with both morbid curiosity and superstitious fear as people talked in hushed whispers about what had happened. Even the worst gossips in town seemed to approach the subject reverently, as if suicide was a communicable disease and by not trivializing or sensationalizing the deaths they could somehow vaccinate themselves against it.
The afternoon before, after returning from the meeting, Doug had told Tritia about Bernie Rogers, about seeing the body, about his suspicions. She, in turn, had told him about the call from Ronda's wife and about the letter from Howard, although she still, for some reason, could not bring herself to tell him of her nocturnal experience with the mailman. He wanted to go immediately to the police, to explain to them that he thought the mailman was somehow behind or responsible for both deaths, but she convinced him, after a heated name-calling argument, that as a teacher and supposedly respected member of the community, he could not afford to damage his credibility by making wild accusations. He still had the envelopes they'd retrieved from the creek, but he realized that everything else was entirely unsubstantiated and required not only a tremendous leap of faith but also a belief in . . . what?
The supernatural?
Maybe he was crazy, but he didn't think so, and he knew that behind Tritia 'slogical arguments she didn't either. He still thought he should go to the police and tell them what he knew, or what he suspected, but he was willing to hold off for her sake. She was right. News spread in a small town, and if he happened to be wrong, if the mailman was just a normal man with pale skin and red hair, he would forever be branded a nut. In the back of his mind, though, was the nagging thought that someone else might be in danger, that by remaining silent and passive he might allow something else to happen, and he was determined to keep his eyes and ears open for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary, and to report everything to the police if he suspected that anyone was going to be hurt or injured. Or killed.
They moved up and down the aisles of the store, Tritia going through the coupons, reading aloud from the shopping list, Doug taking the items from the shelves and putting them into the cart.
"Mr.Albin !"
Doug put a box of cornflakes into the cart and looked up. A tan young woman wearing tight shorts, a tight T-shirt, and no bra waved at him from down the aisle. She smiled, radiant teeth lighting up her pretty face. He knew she was an ex-student, though he could not immediately place her, and he tried desperately to connect a name with the face as she walked up the aisle toward him.
"Giselle Brennan," she said. "Composition. Two years ago. You probably don't remember me --"
"Of course I remember you," he said, and now he did, although he was surprised at himself. Giselle had been one of those fringe students who had shown up for class only when she felt like it and had barely eked out a C for the semester. Not the type of student he ordinarily remembered. "How are you doing?"
"Fine," she said.
"I haven't seen you around for a while."
"Yeah, well, I moved to Los Angeles, worked as a temp in a law office while I went to school part-time, but I didn't really like it much. Los Angeles, I mean. Too crowded, too smoggy, too everything. I'm back here visiting my parents right now." She smiled brightly at him. "The place seems to haveweirded out since I left."
Was it that obvious? Doug wondered. Could even an outsider sense it?
Giselle gestured toward Tritia . "Is this your wife?"
"Yes. This is Tritia ."
Tritia nodded politely. "Hello."
"Hi." Giselle beamed. "You know, your husband's a really good teacher. I
bet you're really proud of him. I never liked English much -- I was always more of a math person -- but I sure enjoyed his class."