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Back THE MAILMAN Save as PDF
Chapters (57)
  1. DEDICATION
  2. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  3. 1
  4. 2
  5. 3
  6. 4
  7. 5
  8. 6
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  10. 8
  11. 9
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  57. 55

Doug grabbed Tritia’s hand and squeezed it tight.

48

They drove to the meeting together. Tritia had wanted to stay with Billy, but Doug said he needed her for this and she agreed to go along. They would return to the hospital afterward.

They had both stayed with Billy the night before, and although he was plagued with nightmares so powerful that twice Doug had to wake him up, he was unsedated, and in the morning he was lucid and cognizant of what was going on. He even made specific requests for breakfast, and by late afternoon he seemed almost like his normal self.

Dr. Maxwell got in touch with a friend of his in Phoenix, a psychiatrist specializing in childhood trauma, and he agreed to drive up and see Billy tomorrow.

Maybe things would be okay.

They drove past the post office on their way to the meeting. The character of the small building had changed completely from the days in which Howard Crowell and Bob Ronda had happily worked behind its doors, from the days in which the entire town had purchased stamps and dropped off mail between its walls. The staid nondescript structure now appeared decidedly malevolent. The windows had been smashed, their openings hastily covered up with irregular lengths of board nailed from the inside. Piles of ripped and dirty envelopes, as well as broken pieces of the mail-sorting machine, were scattered over the concrete steps. In a defensive line directly in front of the post office a row of rural mailboxes had been placed upside down, the metal boxes on the ground supporting their inverted posts.

On top of the posts were nailed the severed heads of town dogs, the animals’ glassy eyes staring, unseeing, toward the street.

The dogs’ headless bodies, ten or fifteen of them, littered the small parking lot.

Doug shivered as he and Trish sped by. The mailman was inside there, he knew. Probably peeking out at them. He felt suddenly nervous. Maybe he shouldn’t have made Tritia come. Maybe he should have had her stay with Billy.

No, Billy would be all right. The hospital staff and Dr. Maxwell would look after him.

The street in front of the school was already jammed with cars. Someone had opened the gym and turned on the lights and people were filing in. Doug and Tritia parked on a side street and walked, rather than trying to find a closer parking space. They were greeted at the door by Mike, who told them that everyone who could would be there. The police had combed the town for two days, spreading the word.