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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
  9. 7
  10. 8
  11. 9
  12. 10
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  57. 55

“I’m not crazy,” Doug said as they rounded a curve, and before she could figure out what the hell he meant by that enigmatic remark, she saw what they had brought her here to witness. Her heart gave a small leap in her chest as she stared at the envelopes, seemingly thousands of them, scattered about both sides of the creek, on the rocks, on the trees, in the weeds, in the mud. It looked almost like a fairy-tale land, this section of the creek, a place that had been either blessed or cursed by magic. She stood rooted to the spot, water coursing over her tennis shoes and ankles. The sight before her was so crazy, so wrong, that she did not know what to think. She looked over at her husband. She had caught his fear, she realized, and though it was not a pleasant feeling, at least she knew she was not alone. The two of them stood next to each other, holding hands. Billy, in front of them, was silent, and she knew from the expression on his face that he too understood that something here was definitely not right.

“There’s no road to this spot,” Doug said. “He had to walk here, to carry all those sacks, however many there were.” He pointed up at the cliff beside them. “I figure he dropped them from up there. It’s the only way they could be so scattered and the only way they could get into those top branches.”

“But why?” Tritia asked.

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.”

A slight breeze stirred the trees, several envelopes falling from the branches on which they were perched into the creek, and the three of them stood there, silent, unmoving, as the envelopes swirled around their legs and continued downstream.

10

Doug tried to call Howard after they returned home from the picnic, but he wasn’t at either his house or the post office. Or, if he was, he wasn’t answering the phone. Doug let the phone ring fifteen times before hanging up. “That mailman’ll be fired for this once Howard finds out,” he told Tritia. “It’s a federal offense to tamper with the mail. He’ll probably go to prison.”

He hoped the mailman would go to prison.

They had picked up several envelopes from the creek and had brought them home. They’d looked for mail addressed to themselves but hadn’t been able to find any, so they’d settled for envelopes addressed to people they knew. The rescued mail was still in the car. He was planning to show it to Howard as proof.

Doug spent the rest of afternoon trying to call Howard, trying to read, trying to listen to the radio, trying to start on the storage shed, but he was anxious, hyper, and could not seem to settle down enough to concentrate on any one thing.