Dead Echo

  Chapter 16: A Day in the Life

  Jester Johnson turned the mailtruck off Highway 27, left onto Samane Street. This was always the last stop (it was the closest to home) and when he chanced a look at his wristwatch, he found he was almost an hour ahead of schedule. For some reason, or none at all as the case may be (he didn’t choose to wrestle over such things in his mind; there was simply not enough room), if there was to be a light day on a mail route that day should be Tuesday. This was Tuesday. Okay, but an hour? He remembered when he looked at the passenger side seat. His cooler sat right where he’d put it this morning, safely strapped in with the seatbelt, as if to save the sandwiches in case of an accident.

  He’d forgotten to eat.

  His mind had been wandering lately, disquietingly so. He’d not been able to shake the terror of whatever he’d seen in the bog (whatever had chased you, his mind was quick to supply). No, no, he told himself. Not that. Whatever you thought you saw. Nothing really, just a trick of the light, swamp gas. He pulled over to the side of the road near the ditch and let the Jeep idle. Tried to shut out the voice by looking out the window. The temperature hung in the upper 70s without the slightest hint of humidity (there was supposed to be a front moving in from the north this evening) and the clouds were fat and lazy overhead. A black rabbit emerged from behind a shard of broken culvert no more than twenty feet away and began nibbling in fits and starts at a clump of clover which did a pretty good job of hiding it. The sight (seemingly unreasonably) reminded him again of the cooler sitting on the passenger seat. He’d already organized most of the stuff for tomorrow last night (all the circulars and fliers and bills and leaflets) and didn’t see himself with a lot to do this evening. But this freedom from duty did little to right his unease. He’d not been sleeping well. No, not since the…incident. His attack of panic after seeing something that wasn’t there, that simply couldn’t be there in the first place. He knew that now, would be prepared to swear it the gospel, but it didn’t put him any closer to explaining what the hell had happened. He wrote it off as some weird anomaly, a compromising mix of signals. Scratch that, he told himself. Tried to write it off. So far he wasn’t having any great success. “Lunch,” he said aloud, trying to clear his mind. He nodded and pushed the Jeep back into first gear. Nestled over to the right was one of the ponds the developers had neglected to fill. Beside it crowded a nice little copse of oak and pine at one end. A dusty four-wheeler track crossed the ditch just ahead and it was no problem to get the Jeep back there as long as it hadn’t been raining. He’d done it plenty of times before.

  Jester smiled, armed now with this plan. It was a good day for a picnic, sunny skies, clean sharp air. Maybe it would serve to calm the irrational swirl of thoughts. Regardless, it couldn’t hurt. He drove down the slight decline and crossed through the ditch on the four-wheeler trail. It was bumpier than it looked but the pond was no more than seventy-five yards from the avenue and the shade from the copse a beacon. He parked the Jeep in the shade of the oak and pine cluster, snapped both seatbelts loose, and grabbed the cooler. Walked over to the closest oak and sat down at its base. From here he could see the pond just fine. He took out both ham sandwiches he’d made this morning and looked inside the cooler to make sure the melting ice or pickle juice (he had a pickle in a Ziplock bag) hadn’t gotten to the chips. No, they were fine. He unwrapped the first sandwich and ate it in silence, getting a little show from two, angry bluejays fighting over some shiny piece of something. The pond was peaceful, every once in a while its surface breaking in an expanding circle, him watching as it slowly rode back to invisibility. Soon, he was done with everything except the pickle and he didn’t much want it anyway. He flung it out in the grass and leaned back hard against the oak, stretched out both arms, yawning gigantically. Oh yes, much better! Nothing really like a little impromptu picnic to get the old blood pumping. He piled his trash into the cooler and stood up, shuffled over to the Jeep, and placed it inside. Because this was a rural route most of the mailboxes were on poles by the street and all he had to do was drive by and stuff em full. Only today he didn’t feel that impersonal; his legs were restless. He wanted to walk, needed it. After all, this was the last portion of his route and he was still forty-five minutes or so ahead of schedule. Also, all he had to do when finished was head back to his house and…

  No, he didn’t like the focus of this last line of thought. The day was too gorgeous, and by God, it was going to stay that way. Besides, there was one sure cure for sleeplessness and that was exercise. Maybe he hadn’t been getting enough of it lately; maybe that was all it was. He nodded at the thought. Sure enough. He shoved the seat forward and regarded the last few remaining stacks of mail. The neighborhood was not all that big, compared to some he had to deal with, only about a hundred or so houses pitched along a couple of back-to-back rectangles. Yeah, he’d walk it today. What the hell.

  He flipped the seat upright and got inside. He didn’t intend on leaving the Jeep back here (there was an old tree house spanning the distance between two of the trees and boys would be boys), and he put the key in and turned the ignition. No, he’d pull out to Samane and make a right on Willow at the corner of the open area where the tree house and pond were. Willow only ran back a little way (four lots, and these only on one side) to a rusty metal swinging gate secured with chains and a huge padlock. Past the gate was a seldom-used track that trailed back into the woods and connected up with any of the multitude of trails back there, one of which where Patsy Standish had thought she’d seen the two ghostly forms blocking the roadway days before. He’d start delivering from there and if he got tired or fell too far behind all he’d have to do was walk back to the Jeep and wheel around the rest of the neighborhood like he usually did. He had an old Walkman (he couldn’t believe it still worked but was damned if he was going to throw it away) he used when he walked. Had an assortment of Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, George Clinton, even a little Beatles to keep things rolling, and he rooted around until he found something suitable. Ahh, yeah. Stevie Wonder, Hotter Than July. He slotted the tape home, pulled on the earphones, and grabbed the pouch he’d placed the remaining mail in.

  He smiled. What a day, he thought again, and started on his way.