The Collection

by Bentley Little

  "We'll help you in any way we can, sir," the postmaster said.

  Jack shook his head. "Forget it," he said. He turned and strode toward the door. "Forget I even came by."

  The next day he received no mail at all, though looking out the window, he saw the dwarf happily walking down the other side of the street, delivering to other homes. The next day, the same thing. Jack stayed on the porch the following afternoon, and before he knew it the little man was walking up his sidewalk, whistling, holding a fistful of letters, a cheerful look on his cruel hard face. Jack ran inside the house, locked the door, and dashed into the back bathroom. He sat down on the toilet and remained there for over an hour, until he was sure that the dwarf was gone.

  Finally, he washed his face, opened the bathroom door, and walked down the hallway to the living room.

  The mail slot opened, two letters fell through, and the slot closed. He heard that low, rough laugh and the quick steps of the dwarf running off the porch.

  The gun felt good in his hands. It had been a long time. He had not held a pistol since Vietnam, but using firearms was like riding a bike and he had forgotten nothing. He liked the weight against his palm, liked the smooth way the trig­ger felt against his finger. His aim was probably not as good as it had once been—after all, he had not practiced for al­most thirty years—but it would not need to be that good at the close range at which he planned to use it.

  He waited behind the partially open curtains for the mail­man.

  And Charlie stepped up the walk.

  Jack shoved the pistol in his waistband and yanked open the door. "Where is he?" he demanded. "Where's the god­damn dwarf?"

  The mailman shook his head, confused. "I'm sorry, sir. I don't know what you're talking about."

  "The dwarf! The little guy who usually delivers the mail!"

  "I'm the mailman on—"

  Jack pulled out the gun. "Where is he, goddamn it?"

  "I—I d-don't know, sir." The mailman's voice was shaking with fear. He dropped the letters in his hand and they fluttered to the walk. "P-please don't shoot me."

  Jack ran down the porch steps, shoving his way past the mailman, and hopped into his car. With the pistol on the seat beside him where he could easily reach it, he drove up and down the streets of the neighborhood, looking for the small man in the tiny blue postal uniform. He had been driving for nearly ten minutes and had almost given up, the lure of the pistol fading, when he saw the dwarf crossing the street a block and a half ahead. He floored the gas pedal.

  And was broadsided by a pickup as he sped through the closest intersection, ignoring the stop sign.

  The door crumpled in on him, a single jagged shard of metal piercing his arm. The windshield and windows shat­tered, harmless safety glass showering down on him, but the steering wheel was forced loose and pushed through his chest. In an instant that lasted forever, he felt his bones snap, his organs rupture, and he knew the accident was fatal. He did not scream, however. For some strange reason, he did not scream.

  From far off, he heard sirens, and some part of his brain told him that Charlie the mailman had called the police on him, though he knew they would be too late to do any good. Nothing could save him now.

  He moved his head, the only part of his body still mobile, and saw another man staggering dazedly toward the side­walk.

  And then the dwarf appeared. He was wearing street clothes, not a postal uniform, but he still had on a mailman's hat. There was a look of concern on his face, but it was a false expression, and Jack could sense the glee behind the mask.

  "I'll call the paramedics," the dwarf said, and his voice was not low and rough but high and breathless. He patted his pockets, and Jack suddenly knew what was coming next. He wanted to scream but could not. "Do you have a quarter for the phone?"

  Jack wanted to grab the pistol but could not move his hands. He tried to twist away, but his muscles would not work.

  The dwarf smiled as he dug through Jack's pockets. A moment later, he pulled away from the wreckage. He held up a silver coin, dulled by a streak of wet red blood.

  Jack closed his eyes against the pain for what seemed like hours, but heard no noise. He opened his eyes.

  The dwarf laughed cruelly. He put the quarter in his pocket, tipped his hat, and walked down the street, whistling happily, as the sirens drew closer.

  Monteith

  How well can one person really know another? It's a question that has been asked often and one that has been addressed by numerous writers over the years. This is my take on it as a child of the suburbs, some­one who grew up in the 1960s, when husbands went off to work each morning and wives stayed home.

  ***

  Monteith.

  Andrew stared at the word, wondering what it meant. It was written in his wife's hand, on a piece of her personal­ized stationery, penned with a calligraphic neatness in what looked to be the precise center of the page. There was only the one word, and Andrew sat at the kitchen table, paper in hand, trying to decipher its meaning. Was it the name of a lover? A lawyer? A friend? A coworker? Was it a note? A re­minder? A wish?

  Monteith.

  He had missed it totally on his first trip through the kitchen, had simply placed his briefcase on the table and hurried to the bathroom. Coming back to pick up his brief­case afterward, he'd seen the note but had not given it any thought, his brain automatically categorizing it as a telephone doodle or something equally meaningless. But the preciseness of the lettering and the deliberate positioning of the word on the page somehow caught his eye, and he found himself sitting down to examine the note.

  Monteith.

  He stared at the sheet of stationery. The word bothered him, disturbed him in a way he could not quite understand. He had never read it before, had never heard Barbara utter it in his presence, it set off no subconscious alarms of recog­nition, but those two syllables and the aura of sophisticated superiority that their union generated in his mind made him uneasy.

  Monteith.

  Did Barbara have a lover? Was she having an affair?

  That was the big worry, and for the first time he found himself wishing that he had not gotten sick that afternoon, had not taken off early from work, had not come home while Barbara was out.

  He stood up, hating himself for his suspicions but unable to make them go away, and walked across the kitchen to the telephone nook in the wall next to the door. He picked up the phone, took the address book out from underneath, and began scanning the pages. There was no "Monteith" listed under the M's, so he went through the entire alphabet, the entire book to see if Monteith was a first rather than last name, but again he had no luck.

  Of course not, he reasoned. If Monteith was her lover, she would not write down his name, address, and phone number where it might be stumbled across. She'd hide it, put it someplace secret.

  Her diary.

  He closed the address book and stood there for a mo­ment, unmoving. It was a big step he was contemplating.

  His jealous imagination and unfounded paranoia was about to lead him into an invasion of his wife's privacy. He was about to break a trust that had existed between them for fif­teen years on the basis of... what? Nothing. A single am­biguous word.

  Monteith.

  He looked back at the table, at the sheet of stationery on top of it.

  Monteith.

  The word gnawed at him, echoed in his head though he had not yet spoken it aloud. He was still thinking, had not really decided what to do, when his feet carried him into the living room ... through the living room ... into the hall... down the hall.

  Into the bedroom.

  The decision had been made, and he strode across the beige carpet and opened the single drawer of the nightstand on Barbara's side of the bed, taking out the small pink diary. He felt only a momentary twinge of conscience, then opened the book to the first page. It was blank. He turned to the next page—blank. The next—blank.

  He flipped quickly through the pages,
saw only blank-ness, only white. Then something caught his eye. He stopped, turned the pages back.

  In the middle of the middle page, written in Barbara's neatest hand, was a single two-syllable word.

  Monteith.

  He slammed the book shut and threw it back in the drawer. He breathed deeply, filled with anger and an undefinable, unreasonable feeling that was not unlike dread.

  She was having an affair.

  Monteith was her lover.

  He thought of confronting her with his suspicions, asking her about Monteith, who he was, where she'd met him, but he could not, after all the discussions, after all the argu­ments, admit to snooping. After all he had said over the years, he could not afford even the appearance of invading her privacy. He could not admit to knowing anything. On the other hand, maybe she wanted him to learn of her indiscre­tion, maybe she wanted him to comment on it, maybe she was looking for his response. After all, she had left the sta­tionery on the table where he was certain to find it. Was it not reasonable to assume that she had wanted him to see the note?

  No, he had come home early, before he was supposed to. If this had been a usual day, she would have removed it by the time he returned from work, hidden it away somewhere.

  Andrew's head hurt and he felt slightly nauseous. The house seemed suddenly hot, the air stifling, and he hurried from the room. He did not want to go through the kitchen again, did not want to see that note on the table, so he turned instead toward the back of the house, going through the rec room into the garage, where he stood just inside the door­way, grateful for the cool darkened air. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, but the air he inhaled was not clean and fresh as he had expected. Instead, there was a scent of decay, a taste of something rotten. He opened his eyes, reached for the light switch, and flipped it on.

  A dead woodchuck was hanging from an open beam in the far dark corner of the garage.

  Andrew's heart skipped a beat, and he felt the first flutterings of fear in his breast. He wanted to go back into the house, back to the bedroom, back to the kitchen even, but, swallowing hard, he forced himself to move forward. He crossed the open empty expanse of oil-stained concrete and stopped before the far corner. This close, he could see that the woodchuck had been strangled to death by the twine which had been wrapped around its constricted throat and tied to the beam. Hundreds of tiny gnats were crawling on the animal's carcass, their black pinprick bodies and clear miniscule wings moving between the individual hairs of the woodchuck and giving it the illusion of life. The insects grouped in growing black colonies on the white clouded eyes, swarmed over the undersized teeth and lolling tongue in the open mouth.

  Bile rose in Andrew's throat, but he willed himself not to vomit. He stared at the dead animal. There was something strange about the discolored lower half of the carcass, but he could not see what it was because of the angle at which it hung. Holding his breath against the stench of rot, he took another step forward.

  A section of the woodchuck's underside had been shaved and an M carved into the translucent, pinkish white skin.

  Monteith.

  Was this Monteith? Gooseflesh prickled on Andrew's arms. The thought seemed plausible in some crazy, irrational way, but he could think of no logical basis for such an as­sumption. A woodchuck named Monteith? Why would Bar­bara have such an animal? And why would she kill it and mutilate it? Why would she write its name in her diary, on her stationery?

  He tried to imagine Barbara tying the twine around the woodchuck's neck in the empty garage, hoisting the squirm­ing, screaming, fighting animal into the air, but he could not do it.

  How well did he really know his wife? he wondered. All these years he'd been kissing her goodbye in the morning when he left for work, kissing her hello at night when he re­turned, but he had never actually known what she did during the times in between. He'd always assumed she'd done housewife-type things—cooking, cleaning, shopping—but he'd never made the effort to find out the specifics of her day, to really learn what she did to occupy her time in the hours they weren't together.

  He felt guilty now for this tacit trivialization of her life, for the unspoken but acted-upon assumption that his time was more important than hers. He imagined her putting on a false face for his homecoming each evening, pretending with him that she was happy, that everything was all right, while her lonely daylight hours grew more confining, more depressingly meaningless.

  So meaningless that she'd turned to animal sacrifice?

  He stared at the hanging insect-infested woodchuck, at the M carved on its underside. Something was wrong with this scenario. Something was missing. Something did not jibe.

  He spit. The smell was starting to get to him, he could taste it in his mouth, feel it in his lungs, and he hurried out of the garage before he threw up, opening the big door to let in the outside air. He took a series of deep, cleansing breaths as he stood at the head of the driveway, then walked over to the hose to get a drink. He splashed the cold rubbery-tasting water onto his face, let it run over his hair. Finally, he turned off the faucet and shook his head dry.

  It was then that he saw the snails.

  They were on the cracked section of sidewalk next to the hose, and they were dead. He squatted down. Barbara had obviously poured salt on three snails she'd found in the gar­den, and she'd placed the three dissolving creatures at the points of a rough triangle on the sidewalk. Two of the shells were now completely empty and had blown over, their black openings facing sideways, the drying mucus that had once been their bodies puddled on the concrete in amoeba-like patterns, but the third snail had not yet dissolved completely and was a mass of greenish bubbles.

  With a safety pin shoved through its center.

  Andrew pushed the third shell with a finger, looking more closely. The pink plastic end of the safety pin stood out in sharp relief against the brown shell and green bubbling body. He stood. He'd never had any great love for snails, had even poured salt on them himself as a youngster, but he had never been so deliberately cruel as to impale one of the creatures on a pin. He could not understand why Barbara would make a special effort to torture one of them, what pleasure or purpose she could hope to gain from such an ac­tion.

  And why had she placed three of them at the corners of a triangle?

  Between the woodchuck and the snails, there was a sense of ritualism emerging that made Andrew extremely uncom­fortable. He wished he'd never seen the stationery on the table. He wished he'd never followed up on it. Always be­fore, he had phoned ahead prior to coming home. Even on those few occasions when he had left work ill, he had tele­phoned Barbara to let her know he was coming home, be­lieving such advance notice an example of common courtesy. This time, however, he had not phoned home, and he was not sure why he hadn't.

  He wished he had.

  Monteith.

  Maybe it wasn't the name of a lover after all. Maybe it was some sort of spell or invocation.

  Now he was being crazy.

  Where was Barbara? He walked out to the front of the house, looked up and down the street for a sign of her car, saw nothing. He wanted to forget what he had seen, to go in­side and turn on the TV and wait for her to come home, but the knot of fear in his stomach was accompanied by a mor­bid and unhealthy curiosity. He had to know more, he had to know what was really going on—although he was not sure that this had any sort of reasonable explanation.

  The thought occurred to him that he was hallucinating, imagining all of this. He'd left work because of severe stom­ach cramps and diarrhea, but perhaps he was sicker than he'd originally believed. Maybe he didn't have a touch of the flu—maybe he was in the throes of a full-fledged nerv­ous breakdown.

  No. It would be reassuring to learn that there was some­thing wrong with himself instead of Barbara. It would re­lieve him to know that this insanity was in his mind, but he knew that was not the case. His mental faculties were at full power and functioning correctly. There really was a muti­lated woodchuck in th
e garage, a triangle of tortured snails on the sidewalk, an empty diary with only one word on one page.

  Monteith.

  Were there other signs he had missed, other clues to Bar­bara's ... instability? He thought that there probably were and that he would be able to find them if he looked hard enough. He walked around the side of the garage to the back yard. Everything looked normal, the way it always did, but he did not trust this first surface impression and he walked past the line of covered, plastic garbage cans, across the re­cently mowed lawn to Barbara's garden. He looked up into the branches of the lemon tree, the fig tree, and the avocado tree. He scanned the rows of radishes, the spreading squash plants. His gaze had already moved on to the winter-stacked lawn furniture behind the garage before his brain registered an incongruity in the scene just passed, a symmetrical square of white tan amidst the free-form green.

  He backtracked, reversing the direction of his visual scan, and then he saw it.

  In the corner of the yard, next to the fence, nearly hidden by the corn, was a small crude hut made of Popsicle sticks.

  He stared at the square structure. There was a small door and a smaller window, a tiny pathway of pebbles leading across the dirt directly in front of the miniature building. The house was approximately the size of a shoebox and was poorly constructed, the globs of glue used to affix the crooked roof visible even from here.

  Had this been made by one of the neighborhood kids or by Barbara? Andrew was not sure, and he walked across the grass until he stood in front of the hut. He crouched down. There were pencil markings on the front wall—lightly ren­dered shutters on either side of the two windows, bushes drawn next to the door.

  The word Monteith written on a mailbox in his wife's handwriting.

  Barbara had made the house.

  He squinted one eye and peered through the open door.

  Inside, on the dirt floor, was an empty snail shell impaled by a safety pin.

  He felt again the fear, frightened more than he would have thought possible by the obsessive consistency of Bar­bara's irrationality. He stood, and his eye was caught by a streak of purple graffiti on the brick fence in front of him. He blinked. There, above the Popsicle-stick house, on the brick fence wall, half-hidden by the grape vines and the corn stalks, was a crude crayon drawing. The picture was simple and inexpertly drawn, the lines crooked and wavering, and he would have ascribed its origin to a child had it not been for the subject of the illustration.