Bentley Little: The Mailman

THE MAILMAN

by Bentley Little

1

It was the first day of summer, his first day of freedom, and Doug Albin stood on the porch staring out at the pine-covered ridge above town. It wasn't technically the first day of summer -- that was still three weeks away. It wasn't even his real first day of freedom -- that had been Saturday. But it was the first Monday after school ended, and as he stood at the railing, enjoying the view, he felt great. He took a deep breath, smelling pine and bacon, pollen and pancakes, the mingled odors of woods and breakfast. Morning smells.

It was cool out and there was a slight breeze, but he knew that that would not last long. The sky was a deep navy blue, devoid of even a single cloud, and by noon the temperature would be well into the nineties. He scanned the horizon.

A hawk circled lazily overhead, moving in ever-widening circles away from its point of departure. On the ridge, he could see the thin gray line of a single campfire rising into the air above the line of trees. Closer in, small animals flitted about, stirred into hyperactivity by the breeze: rabbits, squirrels, hummingbirds, quail.

Although he had arisen with the sun the way he did every Monday morning, he had done so out of choice not out of necessity, and the pressure of impending work that usually marred his mornings was absent. He didn't have to rush to get dressed, he didn't have to speed through his breakfast and read only the headlines of the newspaper. He didn't have to do anything. The whole day was before him and he could do with it as he pleased.

The front door opened behind him and he glanced around, hearing the sound of the latch clicking.

Trish stuck her head out from behind the screen. "What do you want for breakfast?"

He looked at her wild hair and her still-sleepy visage, and he smiled.

"Nothing. I'm not hungry. Come on out here with me."

She shook her head dully. "No. It's cold. Now, what do you want? You can't skip breakfast just because you're on vacation. It's --"

"-- the most important meal of the day," he finished for her. "I know."

"Well, what do you want? French toast? Waffles?"

Doug breathed deeply, smelling other breakfasts from other homes. "Eggs,"

he said. "And bacon."

"Bran cereal," she told him. "And wheat toast. You've eaten enough cholesterol lately."

"Then why did you even ask me?"

"It was a test. You failed." She closed the screen door. "After you're through communing with nature, please come inside. And shut the door behind you. It's freezing this morning."

He laughed. "It's not that cold," he said.

But she had already closed the door, and he stood alone on the porch, looking out across the acres of ponderosa pine at the rocky crags of the ridge on the other side of town. The thin trail of campfire smoke had grown larger, dissipating, a gray stream in the blue ocean sky. He took another deep breath, hungry for summer, longing to breathe in that delicious freedom, but something had changed and the odors on the breeze brought with them something bittersweet, a vaguely familiar fragrance that awoke within him a subtle sense of loss he couldn't quite place.

The mood gone, he turned away from the railing. A hummingbird buzzed his head on its way to the feeder next to the kitchen window as he walked inside the house. Trish had already started breakfast and was busily cutting up slices of homemade bread for toast. She had relented a little on the bran cereal, but not much, and an open cardboard cylinder of oatmeal sat next to the pot on the stove. A pitcher of orange juice stood on the counter next to her. She looked up as he entered the room.

"Wake Billy up," she said.

"It's summer," Doug said. "Let the boy sleep if he wants. It's vacation time."

"I don't want him wasting his whole day sleeping."

"His whole day? It's six-thirty."

"Just get him up." She returned to her bread, carefully slicing the round loaf into thin equally small pieces.

Doug walked loudly up the stairs to the loft of the A-frame, hoping his exaggerated footsteps would awaken the boy. But Billy's still feet were sticking out from under the sheet at the head of his bed, and his head on the pillow at the wrong end of the mattress was covered and unmoving. Doug walked across the rug, stepping over the underwear, socks, shirts, and pants strewn over the floor. Sunlight was streaming through a crack in the green curtains, a wedge of brightness illuminating the posters of rock stars and sports figures on the slanting woodroofwalls . He pulled the covers off his son's head. "All right, bud spud. Time to get up."

Billy moaned incoherently and reached groggily for the sheet to pull over his head.

Doug kept the sheet out of reach. "Rise and shine."

"What time is it?"

"Almost nine."

One eye opened to squint at the watch hanging by a string from the sloping wall above his bed. "It's only six. Get out of here!" He reached again for the sheet, this time more aggressively.

"It's six-forty-five actually. Time to get up."

"Okay. I'm up. Leave!"

Doug smiled. The boy took after his mother. Trish was always a bear when she first woke up: silent, uncommunicative, nasty. He, on the other hand, was exactly the opposite. He was, as one of his old roommates had put it, "disgustingly cheerful" in the morning, and he and Trish had long learned to stay out of each other's way the first half-hour or so after waking.

He let Billy reclaim the sheet, and although the boy instantly hid his head, he knew he was awake and would soon be coming down.

Doug walked downstairs, offering a parting "Get up," which received no response. He sat down at theformica counter that separated the living room and the kitchen and that they used as a breakfast table.

Trish, stirring the oatmeal, turned around. "What are your plans for today?"

He grinned. "It's summer. I have no plans."

She laughed. "That's what I was afraid of." She turned off the burner on the stove and moved over to the cupboard from which she withdrew three bowls. "I thought you were supposed to get that boy up."

"He is up."

"He's not at the table, and I don't hear any noise upstairs."

"Want me to go up there and get him?"

She shook her head. "I'll do it." She moved into the living room and looked up at the railing of the loft. "Time to eat," she called out. Her loud voice had an edge of anger in it, whether real or not Doug was unable to tell.

"Breakfast is ready."

A moment later, they heard the sound of feet hitting the floor and two minutes later Billy was coming down the stairs.

After breakfast, Trish went out to work on the garden. Billy finished watching the _Today_ show, then took off on his bike to practice motocross moves in the forest. There was a bike tournament coming up at the end of July, and he wanted to be in it. "Be careful," Doug called from the porch as the boy pedaled furiously down the dirt path that wound through the trees toward the hill, but Billy either didn't hear him or didn't intend to be careful and didn't say anything back.

Trish looked up from her weeding. "I don't like him riding that bike the way he does."

"It's okay."

"It's not okay. It's dangerous. He's going to break an arm or leg someday.

I wish you wouldn't encourage him."

"I don't encourage him."

She smiled teasingly. "Come on, don't tell me you don't feel a little macho thrill every time he goes careening off into the underbrush?"

" 'Careening off into the underbrush?' "

"All right, Mr. Teacher. It's summer. Quit lecturing."

He chuckled. "Those who can, teach."

She playfully stuck her tongue out at him, then returned to her weeding.

Doug went back inside and turned off the television. He stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, thinking. There were a few things he had to take care of this morning, some correspondence he'd let slide through these last two weeks of finals and graduation, and he figured he'd better get them out of the way before settling down to some serious non-work. He was going to give himself a week off before starting his big project for the summer: the storage shed. It had been three years now since he'd first promised Trish he'd build a storage shed in the back yard to house their tools and firewood and extraneous garbage, and though each June he'd sworn that he was going to build the shed, somehow he had never actually gotten around to it. This year, however, he had finally broken down and bought a prefab construction kit. This year, he was going to do it. He figured he'd spend this week reading, lounging about, and just relaxing. Knowing his ineptitude with tools and his incompatibility with manual labor, the storage shed, which theoretically should be a one- or two-week project, would probably take all summer, and he wanted to make sure he enjoyed at least part of his vacation.