Tritia turned around. The mailman was smiling kindly at her, and she thought for a second that she and Doug were wrong, they'd both been paranoid, there was nothing wrong with the mailman, nothing unusual. Then she moved forward and saw the hardness of his mouth, the coldness of his eyes, remembered the creek, the letters.
And the night-time delivery.
The mailman continued to smile at her, although it was really more of a smirk than a smile. "May I help you?"
She was determined to remain strong and confident, to not show her fear.
"I'd like to speak with Howard."
"I'm sorry," the mailman said. "Howard went home sick this morning. Is there something I can help you with?"
The words he spoke were innocent enough, straightforward enough, but there was something about the way he said them that made her flesh creep. She shook her head, beginning to back slowly out of the office. "No, that's okay. I'll come back later when he's in."
"He may not be in for a while," the mailman said.
Now both his words and his manner had taken on a distinctly threatening edge, though he continued to hold his plastic smile in place.
She turned to go, her skin prickling with cold despite the oppressively warm air.
"You're nice," the mailman said, and his voice took on a sly suggestive quality.
She whirled around, feeling both the anger and the fear coursing through her veins. "You stay away from me, you slimy son of a bitch, or I'll have you in jail so fast your head will spin."
The mailman's smile grew wider. "Billy's nice too."
She stared at him, unable to think of a retort, the words reverberating in her head to the rhythm of her furiously pounding heart, _Billy's nice too Billy's nice too Billy's nice too_, the fear, now on the surface, taking control, no longer something she could contain. She wanted to run from the building, hop in the car, and take off, but some inner reserve 6f strength came to her rescue and she said coldly, "Fuck you, I'm going to the police." Walking slowly, assuredly, confidently, she left the building and got into the Bronco.
But she did not go to the police. And it was not until she was well off the highway and almost to the first crossing that she had to pull over and park the car until she had stopped shaking enough to continue driving.
19
Billy was watching TV when Lane came over. Well, not really watching. The television was on and he was looking at it, but it was merely background to him, white noise and white light. He was thinking about Lane. Ever since the other day at The Fort, his friend had seemed altered, different. It was nothing he could put his finger on, no change in outward action or appearance, but the difference was more profound and more disturbing than the schism he had sensed when he and Lane had argued over the letter, much more than the seeds of a gradual drifting apart. No, this was something else. He and Lane had gone down to the dig yesterday, had helped unearth an extremely well-preserved group of primitive cooking utensils, and Lane had acted, for all intents and purposes, the same way he always had. But there was a new secretiveness to his manner, a not-quite-definable quality that made Billy extremely nervous. Lane reminded him of a man he had seen in a movie, a man who had for years been killing young children and burying their bodies in his basement, waiting patiently for the right time to spring his secret on the world, to proudly announce his deeds to everyone.
But that was stupid. There was no way Lane could be harboring such a horrible secret. Still, his friend seemed changed in a way he found impossible to understand.
He reminded Billy of the mailman.
That was what it came down to, really. There was no resemblance at all, not in actions or attitude, but on some gut level, he had made the connection and it stuck. He was not simply worried about his friend, he was afraid of him.
Lane's familiar shave-and-a-haircut knock rattled the screen, and Billy called for him to come on in. Lane was dressed in old jeans and a black rock T shirt. He had combed his hair differently than usual, parting it in the middle, and it made him seem older, harder.
"Hey," Billy said in greeting, nodding at his friend.
Lane sat down on the couch. He was grinning hugely, a sincere grin of happiness that for some reason struck Billy as wrong and unnatural, and he looked toward the back of the house. "Your mom here?"
Billy shook his head.
"Too bad."
Billy tried not to let his puzzlement show. When had Lane ever expressed disappointment that a parent was absent from either of their houses? On the verge of adolescence, eager to prove their adulthood, both of them ordinarily tried to avoid parents as much as possible.
The two of them stared silently at the TV for a few minutes. Finally, Billy swung his feet off the coffee table and stood up. "So what do you want to do?" Lane shrugged noncommittally, a gesture that somehow rang false.
"Want to go down to the dig,aee what's happening?"
"Why don't we check out The Fort?" Lane said. "There's something I want to show you."
Billy agreed, though he was not at all sure that he was ready to see what his friend wanted to share with him. He walked outside and around the side of the house, where his dad was sitting on the porch, reading. "We're going," he announced.
His father looked up from his book. "Who's 'we?' And where are you going?"
Billy reddened a little, embarrassed by this verbal recognition of his not-yet independent status. "Me and Lane," he said. "We're going out to The Fort."
"Okay."
"See you later, Mr.Albin ," Lane said.
The two boys walked across the slatted and recently stained two-by-fours to the front of the house, stepping off the porch and moving past the garden.
They followed the path through the green belt, into the trees, and the house was lost from sight. Small branches and dried pine needles crackled beneath their feet. "So what is it?" Billy asked. "What do you want to show me?"
Lane smiled enigmatically. "You'll see."
They reached The Fort, hopping easily up on the roof and shimmying down through the trapdoor into the Big Room. Lane strolled casually into the HQ, sat down, picked up a _Playboy_, and began thumbing through it. Billy grew angry. He knew that his friend was drawing out the tension, making him wait, wanting him to beg to see whatever it was he wanted to show him, but he refused to give Lane the satisfaction. He remained in the Big Room, pretending to straighten one of the posters on the wall.
Lane tired of the charade first, and he put down the magazine, standing up. "I got a letter back," he said simply.
"From that woman?" Billy was surprised.
Lane smiled, a cunning, knowing smile that should have been conspiratorial but was not. "Want to see it?"
Billy knew he should say no. The smug self-satisfied expression on his friend's face was so unlike Lane that it seemed almost frightening, particularly in the dim half-light of the clubhouse. That smile had awakened within him a growing feeling of dread, but he found himself nodding assent.
Grinning, Lane handed over the envelope.
Billy took out the letter, unfolding it slowly. Lane's eyes were on him, hungrily taking in every move, studying his face as if waiting for a reaction.
He pulled open the final fold and felt his stomach contract as if it had been hit with a softball.
His mother, completely naked, sitting in a chair with her legs in the air and her pubic area thrust outward, was grinning up at him from the Polaroid photo attached to the letter. He could clearly see, even through the blurred focus, the glistening folds of her wet vagina, the tiny puckered hole of her anus. The handwriting on the letter was not that of his mother, but his eyes focused anyway on an underlined phrase in the middle of the page: