“I don’t have to do anything. I take my mail directly from the mailbox to the garbage can, no stops in between.”

For the first time, the mailman seemed to Doug at a loss for words. He shook his head as if he didn’t understand what Doug was saying. “But you have to read your mail,” he repeated.

Doug smiled, realizing he had hit a nerve. “I don’t read my mail. My wife doesn’t read her mail. We don’t look at it at all. We don’t even look to see who it’s from or who it’s addressed to. We just throw it away. So just stop wasting your time and leave us alone.”

“But you have to read your mail.”

Giselle walked into the office from the back.

“Just leave us alone,” Doug said to the mailman. He turned and strode out of the building. He was trembling, shaking, as he walked out to the car.

He thought he heard the mailman say something to him as he left, but he didn’t hear what it was and wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

36

Doug drove through the night shirtless, his hair still uncombed, wearing only his Levi’s and a pair of tennis shoes. He had driven this route a thousand times, but now he seemed to be moving in slow motion, the Bronco putting along at a pitifully inadequate speed. He hit the steering wheel as hard as he could, angry at the car and at himself. The horn bleated, and he almost drove into a tree as he turned a corner too sharply. He slowed down as much as he dared, but he had to get moving. He’d already taken far too long. The Bronco bumped onto the pavement as the dirt road ended, and he pressed down on the gas pedal.

He’d been scared a lot lately and he’d thought he’d reached the limit of terror, that he’d been as frightened as he could be, but when he’d picked up the phone from a sound sleep and heard Hobie’s panicked high-pitched voice screaming of blood and virgins while in the background the static of a police radio crackled, he knew that fear had no limit. It was bottomless, and he just kept sinking deeper and deeper into it.

He saw the police lights from far down the street, a twin red-and-blue pulsing against the trees and houses of the neighborhood. The cars and the ambulance were directly in front of Hobie’s house, so he had to park several houses away. He slammed the car door shut and ran down the cracked and dirty sidewalk. A gang of bathrobed men and women, neighbors, mingled about behind the yellow ribbon used to cordon off Hobie’s trailer, and he pushed his way through them to reach the driveway.

“Hey!” a policeman yelled at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”