The mailman looked up and stared directly at him.
Doug glanced away, pretending as though he had been scanning the street and his gaze had accidentally landed for a second on the mailman as he'd looked around. But in the brief moment that their eyes locked, he had the unmistakable feeling that the mailman had known he was watching and that that was precisely why he had looked up at that moment.
You're being stupid, Doug told himself. The man had glanced in his direction. That was all. It was a perfectly ordinary occurrence, a simple random event. There was nothing strange or sinister about it. But when he looked again at the mailman, he saw that the man was still staring at him and that there was a disdainful half-smile on the pale thin lips.
Doug quickly opened the car door and got inside, feeling vulnerable, exposed, and slightly guilty, as if he had been caught watching someone undress.
He wasn't sure why the mailman's gaze made him feel that way, but he didn't want to stay here and analyze it. He started the car and backed up. The only exit from the Circle K lot was right next to the mailbox, and he hurriedly sped across the asphalt, hoping to pull immediately onto the road. No such luck. The highway was filled with cars and campers coming down from the lake, and he was forced to sit there and wait for an opening. He concentrated on the traffic, looking only to the left, but he could see out of the corner of his eye that the mailman was staring at him, still and unmoving. Then the line of traffic ended and he swung out onto the road. He could not resist the impulse and glanced out the passenger window as he drove by.
The mailman, smiling, waved at him.
4
Billy was on the porch when the mailman came by. There was no warning as there had been with Mr. Ronda, no loud motor or squealing brakes. There was only the quiet purr of a new engine and the soft dry crunch of tires stopping on dirt. Billy put down his BB gun and glanced over at the new mailman, curious, but the windows of the red car were tinted, the interior dark, and all he could see was a thin white hand and the sleeve of a blue uniform reaching out from the driver's window to put a stack of letters in the mailbox. There was something about the sight that bothered him, that didn't sit right. In the darkness of the car he thought he could see a shock of red hair over a pale indistinct face. The mailman did not look friendly like Mr. Ronda. He looked somehow . . . inhuman.
Billy felt a slight chill pass through him, a distinctly physical sensation, though the temperature was already well into the eighties. The white hand waved to him -- once, curtly -- then the car was off, sailing smoothly and silently down the road.
He knew he should go out and get the mail, but for some reason he was afraid to. The mailbox and the road suddenly looked awfully far away from the safety of the house and the porch. What if, for some reason, the mailman decided to turn around and come back? His dad was in the bathroom at the back of the house and his mom was over at the Nelsons'. He would be stuck out there by himself, on his own.
Knock it off, he told himself. He was just being stupid. He was eleven now, almost twelve, practically a teenager, and he was afraid to get the mail.
Jesus, how pitiful could a person get? It wasn't even night. It was morning, broad daylight. He shook his head. What awuss !
Nevertheless, he was scared, and for all of his self-chastisement he had to force himself to walk down the porch steps and up the gravel driveway.
He walked slowly past the pine tree in which they'd hung the bird-feeders, past the Bronco, over the culvert, and was at the edge of the road when he heard the car's quiet engine. His heart pounding, he looked down the road to see the mailman's car backing up quickly toward him. He stood rooted to the spot, wanting to run back onto the porch but knowing how foolish he would appear.
The car pulled to a stop next to him. Now Billy could see clearly the black interior of the new car.
And the white face of the mailman.
In his chest, Billy's already racing heart shifted into overdrive. The mailman's face was not ugly, not scary in any conventional way, but his skin seemed too pale, the features on his face too ordinary. His hair, by contrast, was so garishly red as to appear artificial, and this juxtaposition seemed to Billy somehow frightening.
"I forgot to deliver a letter," the mailman said. His voice was low and even, smoothly professional, like the voice of a game-show host or news commentator. He handed Billy an envelope.
"Thanks," Billy forced himself to say. His own voice sounded high and babyish.
The mailman smiled at him, a slow, sly insinuating smile that made Billy's blood run cold. He swallowed hard, turning and walking back up the driveway toward the porch, concentrating on keeping his feet moving at an even pace, not wanting the mailman to sense his fear. He kept waiting to hear the car shift into gear behind him, to hear the wheels on the gravel as the mailman pulled away, but there was only silence. He stared straight ahead at the windows of the house, but he saw in his mind the creepy smile of the mailman, and it made him feel dirty and slimy, as though he needed to take a bath.
He was suddenly aware that he was wearing shorts, that the mailman could see the backs of his legs.
He reached the porch and walked directly to the door, pulling it open and walking inside. Only now did he turn to peek through the screen door at the mailman. But the car was not at the foot of the drive, and there was not even a cloud of dust where it had been.
"What're you looking at there, sport?"
He jumped at the sound of his father's voice. "Nothing," he said immediately, but he could tell from the look on his father's face that he wasn't going to buy that story.
"What's the matter? You seem a little jumpy."
"Nothing's wrong," Billy repeated. "I just went out to get the mail." He handed over the envelopes he'd been holding.
The expression on his father's face changed from puzzlement to what looked like . . . understanding?
But at that moment there was the sound of tires crunching gravel outside.
They both looked out the window.Hobie Beecham's dented white pickup had just pulled into the driveway, andHobie himself was hopping out of the cab.
"Okay," Doug said, nodding at Billy. He put the envelopes down on the table and pushed open the screen, walking out onto the porch.
Hobiewas striding across the driveway with his patented redneck swagger.
He clomped loudly up the porch steps, adjusting the baseball cap on his head. "I was gonna come by yesterday," he told Doug, "but I was on crotch watch." He grinned, taking off his mirrored sunglasses and putting them in the pocket of his Parks and Recreation T-shirt. "It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it."Hobie taught auto shop and driver'sed at the high school, but during the summer he volunteered to work twenty hours a week as a lifeguard at the public pool. He was a fair swimmer but certainly no trained lifeguard, and Trish had often wondered aloud why they'd accepted him at all, since it was well known that he spent more time ogling the mothers from behind his sunglasses than he did supervising their kids. She was prejudiced against him, but she had a point, Doug thought.Hobie was big, loud, andunredeemably sexist. Proudly sexist.
Billy, in the doorway, laughed, already feeling better. He liked Mr.
Beecham.
"You didn't hear that," Doug told him.
Hobieshook his head, chuckling. "They'restartin ' 'emyoung these days."
Billy picked up his BB gun and went to the opposite end of the porch, aiming at the aluminum can he had placed on a tree stump in the green belt, the incident with the mailman already beginning to fade into memory.
Doug andHobie walked inside, andHobie took off his baseball cap. He sat down, uninvited, in the nearest chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead. "Got anything cold to drink in here?"