DAWES HOLDS UP A HAND to halt the supply truck as it pulls up in a growl of gravel just outside the front gate. She rolls open the entrance and waves it through. The driver gives her a smile through the window but already he can tell, just from her brown deputy’s uniform and her refusal to smile back, that something’s wrong, something’s up, and he’s going to wish he never got out of bed this morning.
It’s a small delivery truck, with Texas plates and a cargo box that’s covered in graffiti. Dawes walks around the back and slaps loudly on the rear door as the driver disembarks to open up. Greta, who normally receives this truck alone every week, at least for the drop-off of bar supplies, stands just behind Dawes. She’s fidgeting nervously with her rings.
“You have a manifest?” Dawes asks the driver.
“Sure—you mean, like, what? Invoices?” he says. “I got a list of what’s aboard.” He grabs a clipboard from the cab and walks over and hands it to her. There’s a sheath of pink and yellow carbon papers clipped haphazardly to it. Dawes looks them over as he rolls open the back door of the truck. Inside, it’s half-full with crates of food and stacks of cardboard boxes.
Dawes looks the driver over—he’s a yokel-for-hire who’s been conscripted by the Institute from some nearby backwater town to do the weekly supply runs from Amarillo. Dawes flips through the carbon papers, then looks up and catches Greta giving the driver a look that says, Stay cool. The driver, for his part, looks nervous as hell. Dawes hoists herself into the back of the truck and quickly counts the boxes inside, checking the contents against what’s listed on the clipboard. There’s a crate of softening mangoes, a crate of browning bananas, a crate of bruised apples—the usual haul for the produce section of Spiro’s general store. There’s two cardboard boxes containing plastic-wrapped t-shirts, socks, and undergarments in various sizes, listed on the invoices as “sundries.” There’s an open box with a few used paperbacks, romances mostly, along with a small pile of local newspapers bundled together with twine, some of them a few weeks out of date and already yellowing. There’s a plastic crate full of assorted liquors, the bottles separated by cardboard dividers.
“Not too much produce this time around,” the driver calls into the back of the truck. “Refrigerator truck’s only available once a month. So no dairy on this haul. In case you were hoping for some cream in your coffee.” He turns to Greta. “But don’t worry, I got your bottles. Two of everything, just like you asked. Should hold you till the end of the month, at least.” He stands rocking with his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans, while Dawes says nothing, just keeps counting. The driver gives Greta a look like, What’s with the third degree? but Greta just watches Dawes.
“I should probably get those mangoes to the shop before they spoil,” the driver says loudly. “Though feel free to grab a couple for yourself. I hear they’re a hot commodity, likely won’t last too long.” Dawes ignores him, though she notes an increasingly anxious edge to his voice.
She checks the invoices again. Eighteen boxes. Then she counts the boxes again.
Nineteen boxes.
There’s a box marked MALLOMARS on the top of one pile that’s been opened already and then taped up sloppily. If the commissary has ever carried Mallomar cookies, she’s sure she would have noticed. Out here, indulgences are rare and valued, and they don’t tend to go undetected.
She pulls out a penknife, then pauses, blade open, and calls back to the driver, “You mind?” Right away, she knows from his face that she’s found something he didn’t want her to find.
The driver doesn’t answer, just glances nervously at Greta, who looks resigned to whatever’s coming next.
Dawes slices the tape on the box and opens the box flaps.
Inside, there are letters. Envelopes. Postcards.
Mail.
“I don’t—” says the driver, but Greta hushes him with a bejeweled hand placed gently on his arm.
Dawes steps out of the back of the truck into the road, holding the box of mail. She puts the box down on the rear gate of the truck and starts fishing around in it, pulling out a handful of envelopes and shuffling through them. All are hand-addressed to real names, names she doesn’t recognize: Eduardo Figueroa. Anthony Mancuso. Theresa Benedict. And all of them are addressed to the same P.O. Box in Abilene, where they were presumably picked up and brought here. No return addresses on any of them.
She peers inside the box again. Shakes it. Maybe a dozen letters in all, plus a small paper-wrapped package.
Dawes looks up at Greta. “You know about this?”
Greta steps toward her, her face set defiantly. “So we run a little mail. People need some kind of contact. It’s not humane otherwise.”
“So you know who all these people are? These names?”
Greta shrugs.
Dawes looks down at the envelope in her hand. Figueroa. Her mind swims—it doesn’t make any sense. Because even if these envelopes are addressed to the real names of people who live in the Blinds, how does Greta know who those people are? What’s more, how do they know who they are? And how do people on the outside know that they’re here to send them mail?
She’s about to ask Greta these questions, and when she holds up one of the envelopes as proof, that’s when she spots it. On the back of the envelope. A photograph. A small, smiling snapshot, like a passport photo. Taped to the back.
She recognizes Eduardo Figueroa. He’s Spiro Mitchum.
Dawes drops the envelope back in the box and starts turning over the others. They all have photos stuck on the back, of people she recognizes from the town. Doris Agnew. Ginger Van Buren. Marilyn Roosevelt, the librarian.
“How do people out there know these people are living here?” says Dawes.
“I don’t ask a lot of questions,” says Greta. “I just deliver it. If it’s got a photo, and I know the person, I drop it off. Trust me, we get a lot of mail addressed to people I’ve never seen before, people who never lived here, as best I know, and I’ve been here since day one. I think some people find out about the P.O. Box and just send letters in hopes that a person they’re looking for might be living here. And sometimes they’re right.”
“Who sends this mail?”
“Relatives. Friends. Old neighbors,” says Greta. “You might not remember the world, but the world remembers you. Sometimes the world even takes some pains to track you down. Let you know you’re not forgotten.”