Tritia fixed him with a no-nonsense stare. "Finish eating your dinner,"
she said.
Billy groaned. "I don't --"
A rock crashed through one of the front windows, glass shattering explosively, muffled not at all by the closed curtains. There was the sound of another rock hitting hard against the outside wall.
"Fucker!" someone yelled angrily. The voice was that of an adult male, not a child, not a teenager.
Doug quickly pushed back his chair, knocking it over as he scrambled around the table toward the front door.
"Don't!" Tritia yelled. Her face was white with fear.
Billy, too, looked scared, and Doug could feel his own heart pounding within his chest, but he rushed to the door anyway.
Another rock hit.
"Fucker!"
And then there was the sound of flying gravel, a pickup peeling out and speeding away.
Doug pulled open the door and ran onto the porch in time to see the taillights of a truck disappearing between the trees. There was still a cloud of dust in the drive. He looked down. At his feet on the porch were several rocks approximately the size of softballs. Although only one had hit the window, two of the others had hit the wall and had been thrown with enough strength to make small splintered indentations in the wooden front of the A-frame. How the hell had someone been able to drive close enough to the house to throw rocks this size and not be heard?
From down the road in the silent forest, he heard the sound of triumphant whooping and hollering, growing fainter as the .truck sped farther away.
"What was it?" Tritia stood in the doorway, trembling, holding Billy's shoulders.
"Idont know."
"Why?"
"Why do the Nelsons think we killed their dog? Why did Todd think I was persecuting him?" Doug looked at his son. "You don't know who did this, do you?"
Billy shook his head, still frightened.
"I didn't think so. Come on. Let's go inside." He herded Tritia and Billy through the door, then closed and locked it behind him. Tomorrow, he'd have to find someone to replace the window. He glanced around the front of the living room. In the candlelight broken shards and bits of glass glittered on the chair and part of the couch. They would have to rearrange the furniture in case something like this happened again. He didn't want Tritia or Billy hit by a rock or cut by a stray piece of glass.
His muscles were still tight, knotted. Although he wanted to know who had thrown the rocks, who had been in the truck, he found himself strangelyunangry with the men involved. He was beginning to see the people of Willis as either victims or puppets, manipulated by the controlling will of the mailman. It was the mailman he blamed for everything, from the deaths of dogs and people to racial attacks to utility failures, and that worried him a little. His attitude seemed too close to that of classic paranoia for him to feel entirely comfortable with it. But, farfetched as it sounded, he knew it was the truth. He was not ascribing an omnipotence to the mailman he did not possess; he was merely recognizing an existing situation. He would not be at all surprised to learn that the mailman had orchestrated everything to occur in such a manner that it would engender within him exactly the sort of doubts he was harboring now. He shook his head. He really was getting paranoid.
Tritia was already clearing the dinner dishes. They had not finished, but no one felt like eating right now. Doug walked over to help her. Even Billy took his plate to the kitchen, though he normally would not be caught dead voluntarily doing any sort of labor connected with the family.
A car drove by on the road, stereo blasting, and all three of them tensed as they waited to hear whether it would turn into their drive. The car continued down the road, the sounds of the engine and stereo fading. They looked at one another silently, then continued to clear the dishes.
The curtain covering the broken window blew inward with the light night breeze.
41
After breakfast, Doug called around trying to find someone who would replace the window. Harmon's carried the glass, but there was no one available to do the installation. IfHobie were here, he would have known how to install the window, but Doug was not even willing to attempt it. Aside from the simplest and most necessary household chores, he was incompetent at manual labor. The shed was one thing -- it was designed for construction by people like himself and came with simple step-by-step instructions -- but the window was something else. He called several handymen listed in the phone book, but two did not answer and one refused to perform the work. The only man who would even consider doing the job said the labor would cost $150, and he would not be able to get to it for another two weeks.
Doug was tempted to just board the damn thing up and hang a picture of a window in front of it.
He made some more calls, then went back to the original handyman, whose price had now gone up to $175, apparently as punishment for daring to shop around and try to find someone else.
He hung up the phone and felt Tritia 's hand on his shoulder. He turned around. She was dressed in jeans and a nice blouse, and her purse was over her shoulder. "Do you have the keys?" she asked.
"Where're you going?"
"Irene's. I'm worried about her. I try to call and there's never any answer, and after what happened toHobie . . ." Her voice trailed off, not needing to finish the sentence.
Doug pulled the keys from his pocket. "I'll go with you."
"I think it's better if I go alone. She's not really up to seeing people right now. I don't even know if she'll see me. You just stay here with Billy."
Doug's eyes met hers, and she saw worry in them, concern. "It's dangerous out there."
"I know. I'll be careful."
"Why don't I drop you off and park down the road? You can --"
"No," she said firmly. She took the keys from his hand. "Don't worry. I
can take care of myself. I'm just going to check on her and be right back. You won't even notice I'm gone."
"Why don't you have the police check on her? She's an old frail woman, tell them you think she might have slipped and fallen in the bathtub. They'll do it." "No," Tritia said. She gave him a quick kiss. "I'll be back in twenty minutes."
"The car's almost out of gas, but there's enough for you to get there and back. Don't buy any. I'll get it later."
"Okay," she said.
Troubled, he watched her get in the car, back up the drive, and head through the trees toward town.
Something was wrong. Tritia felt it the instant she stepped out of the car. The atmosphere was changed, strangely and indefinably altered. The air was still, even the birds and insects quiet, as though some vast invisible soundproof barrier had been placed over the property. The house itself seemed empty, abandoned, though nothing physical appeared to have changed. She shivered. Death hung over Irene's house. She knew it as surely as she knew today was Tuesday. She pushed the thought from her mind. She was just being foolish.
Superstitious. She forced herself to walk across the dirt to the front door.
Peering through the lace curtain, she saw no sign of movement.
She knocked on the door. "Irene!"
Her voice died flatly, without even the faintest hint of an echo.
Still no movement inside. Something was definitely wrong. She knocked harder, rang the bell. "Irene!"
What if the old woman really had fallen down and had broken something and couldn't move? What if she had had a heart attack or a stroke?
What if the mailman had gotten her?
"Irene!" Tritia rattled the doorknob, but it was locked as usual. Worried now, she moved around the side of the house to the back door, weeds scratching her bare ankles. The back door was unlocked and she pushed it open carefully. A
bad sign. Irene always locked both doors.