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 extent.
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.