He reached The Fort and quickly clambered up the forking branches of the tree, swinging himself onto the roof and opening the trapdoor. He dropped into the Big Room and stood there for a moment, looking at the old metal ice chest that they had turned upside down and made into a chair. The ice chest had been given to them by Mr. Ronda, who, when he had seen them sorting through a pile of garbage at the side of the road, had offered to give them the ice chest as well as a few pieces of plywood paneling he had at his house. He’d brought the materials by the next day, leaving them next to the mailbox.

Billy thought of Mr. Ronda’s kind face now, of his blue laughing eyes, of his thick white beard. He had known the mailman all his life. He had seen him every day until he had had to go to school, and had seen him every Saturday, holiday, and summer after that. When he had needed rubber bands for a school project, Mr. Ronda had saved rubber bands for him, delivering them along with the mail each morning. When he had done a report on the post office, Mr. Ronda had taken him on a tour. Now the mailman would never help him again, would never drive by to drop off the mail, would never talk, would never smile, would never live.

He felt his eyes filling with tears, and he moved through the curtains into the HQ. He wanted to feel sad, but he didn’t want to cry, and he forced his mind to think about something else for a minute. He would come back to Mr. Ronda in a while, when he was ready.

He sat down on the rug and picked up the top Playboy. He flipped through the thick magazine until he came to the first pictorial. “Women in Uniform,” the headline read. His eyes scanned the page. There was a woman straddling a fire hose, wearing only a red fireman’s hat and a red slick raincoat. Underneath that photo was a picture of a topless woman with large breasts wearing a police cap and licking the rounded tip of a nightstick. His eyes moved on to the next page. Here was a nude woman wearing nothing but a smile and the hat of a mailman. One hand clutched a group of sorted letters; the index finger of her other hand hung from the bottom lip of her pouting mouth.

Billy felt something stir within him. He pressed down on the rising lap of his jeans.

Was this the way the new mailman would look?