9 Letters (27 page)

“Hey, Luke,” Mike
said. He stood up when I walked in, and I went to join him. We sat a
few pews back from the front. We sat side by side. Which is an easier
way to talk to a man, to be honest. I’d rather meet the Lord’s
eyes, where He was looking down at me from a painting on the wall,
than my brother’s. That’s the way of the world.

“I was pretty hard on you
when we were kids,” Mike said.

I didn’t say nothing to
that.

“I know I was hard on you.
It made you strong, though. I don’t think that’s why I
was doing it, I can’t claim it was as noble as that. But that’s
what it did. It made you strong. One of the strongest people I know.”

“I used to feel strong,”
I said.

“And then you went through
something harder than anyone since Granddad Cawley did. You buried
your wife, just when everything was starting. Most people alive
today, they aren’t strong enough for that. And you know what?
On their own? There’s no one alive or ever has been who is
strong enough for that.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You don’t have to go
through any of this on your own. I don’t think you
can
.
I think it’ll kill you. Not because you’re weak. No
brother of mine is ever going to be weak, not after what I put you
through. But because you’re human. You’ve got people who
care about you. Mom, Dad, me. God. Life is hard. It’s not fair,
it’s never seemed fair. But He’s with you. He’s
always with you. He got His people through the black plague. He got
His people through World War II. Not all of them alive, that’s
not what God does. But He got them through it, spiritually. You can
lean on Him. That’s what He’s there for.”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Let me guess. You weren’t
sure, all growing up, if He was real. You went to church because you
loved the rest of us and it wasn’t worth putting up a fight.
Then Emily died, and you either hit upon the idea that it was God’s
fault or that God didn’t exist.”

I shrugged. That was pretty much
exactly what had happened.

“Most people don’t
know God until they need Him. Until they
really
need Him. Like you do now. It’s not that He’s abandoned
you. It’s that He’s been there for you, all along. And
now is when you need Him. Now is when you can find Him. Prayers don’t
save men dying on the battlefield, not more than once a generation.
Prayers save the men who survive the battlefield. Will you pray with
me?”

“Alright,” I said.

We knelt, clasped our hands, and
prayed.

King was waiting for me when I
walked in the door. Not eager to go out or anything, just waiting for
me. Watching the door. Worried.

Even my dog was worried about me.

I cut my arm something vicious
digging those letters out of the trash, buried as they were under
broken glass. But I got them out, set them on the table, cleaned the
glass off of them. I couldn’t get the blood off them, but I
managed to only stain the first two, which I’d read so often I
could quote them from memory. Then, and only then, I went upstairs,
found the first aid kid, and started cleaning and dressing the wound.

It was on the top of my right
arm, up near the elbow. Just deep enough that it might scar a bit.
But after all of that, I still didn’t have health insurance,
and to hell with paying out of pocket at the emergency room. I knew
enough to know I hadn’t done any major damage, so I put on
butterfly bandages and wrapped it up good.

Back downstairs, I sat down on
the chair, felt its weight beneath me. I sorted the letters out, the
seven read ones on the left, the two unread ones on the right. I
picked up the eighth letter, then reached down for my knife. It
wasn’t there.

I might have lost it drunk. I
might have left it at Rae’s. It might just be in my other
pants. It didn’t matter. The ritual didn’t matter. What
mattered was the letter.

I ripped the envelope open,
carefully.

“This next one, this isn’t
a task. Well, it is and it isn’t. It’s something I’ve
got to tell you. You sitting down? You should be sitting down for
this. Because this is going to come as a bigger surprise than it
should. And you need to hear it.”

I was sitting down.

“It’s not your fault.
It’s not your fault I’m dying. Well, dead, by now. I
don’t care what you think in your sweet and lovely and stupid
head. You’re my husband, and I love you madly, but that doesn’t
make you my keeper. I made a decision not to go to the doctor. I made
it on my own. I didn’t even tell you I was worried, because I
didn’t want you to worry. It was the wrong decision, so yes,
however stupid you are, you’re not as dumb as me. Here’s
your task: forgive yourself. You have to forgive yourself. This one
is as much for me as it is for you. You’re a good person. Hell,
you’re the best husband I ever had. Sorry, my sense of humor is
getting worse. I think it’s dying. You’re the best
husband I could have had. The kind of man who would have gotten into
my business, made me make different decisions? That’s not the
kind of man I wanted. I wanted someone gentle enough to love me,
strong enough to fight off the world. I found that man. I found Luke
Cawley and I love him with everything I’ve got and there’s
not a single, solitary cell in my body that has anything but love for
you.”

My chest was tight, and I read
the last sentence blinking back the sting in my eyes.

“If only you could see you
like I see you.”

Tears ran down, they just poured
down my face. I didn’t have time to compose myself, I didn’t
have time to curl up on the couch or sit in bed or go in the shower
or anything like that. I just sat in that chair, at the table we’d
shared food at, and I cried. King sat at my feet, leaned against my
knee, and when I finally could I reached down and set a hand on his
head.

My eyes were raw and sore, they
hurt worse than the cut on my arm. I shook so hard, for so long, that
by the time stillness came over me it was a curious sensation all its
own.

The first birds started singing
outside before I got up from that chair. Numb, I made my way up the
stairs and collapsed into my bed, into the oblivion of sleep.

You don’t bring flowers
twice in a row. They don’t work the same way, twice in a row,
at least not for apologizing.

I didn’t bring nothing but
my sincerity.

It’s about a twenty minute
drive to Rae’s place, but I went slow, took side streets. I
thought I was going to take that extra time to run it over in my
head, everything I was going to say to her. But I didn’t. I
didn’t want to think it over. I didn’t want to plan it
out. I would just say what I would say.

Instead of thinking, I just
watched Kansas City. All those years I’d been in denial about
living in the city. Like my true home was out in the country, like I
didn’t belong where I was. Bullshit. I love the city. I love
all the people everywhere. I love how many different lives are lived
in the city. I love all the different scenes and communities and
types of people all living in the same place, taking their dogs to
the same dog parks. Going out on the town to the same town.

I needed to learn to accept who I
was. Where I was. Single, widower. Bartender. Homeowner. Dog owner.
Volunteer. Terrified wreck.

I didn’t know how to fix my
life, sure. I could fix a lot of things, but I couldn’t fix my
life. Lives aren’t like houses. You can’t paint over your
problems. There’s no rustoleum for life. But a car is either
running or it’s not, pretty much. A life? It’s amazing
how banged up your life can get and keep running. I was proof of
that.

Or you could take good enough
care of yourself and drop dead long before the odometer racked up
enough miles. Emily was proof of that.

Life wasn’t like houses. It
wasn’t like cars. They don’t need fixing, not in the same
way. They just need you to keep going.

I was going to keep going.

I parked out in front of Rae’s.
It was noon or something—I hadn’t checked my phone all
morning, but it felt like noon. I opened the gate on her fence,
walked into her yard. Her fence, her fence wasn’t like a life.
A fence like that, it could use fixing. Hell, it could use being torn
down and built back up wholly new.

I knocked on the door. Waited.

No answer.

I knocked again.

Waited.

It must have been five minutes
later when the door opened a crack. Her body language made it
clear—we were going to be having a conversation with me still
outside. I wasn’t coming in. Her hair was an uncombed mess, she
didn’t have on any makeup, and she was wearing pajama pants
with ice cream cones on them and a baggy t-shirt for an animal rescue
place in Illinois. How was she still so beautiful?

“I don’t want to hear
it,” she said.

I just looked at her, just let
her keep talking.

“I’m not signing up
for another relationship with another guy who just treats me badly.”

“That’s fair,”
I said. “I’m not going to—”

“No, I mean it, I don’t
want to hear it. Maybe it was a mistake, opening up to you. Thinking
I could trust you. And yeah, I messed up. You had a right to be
upset. But I can’t handle you just shutting me out like that. I
can’t handle angry. I can’t handle it if you’re
just like every other man I’ve ever met, I guess. We coulda
talked about it, maybe, but I don’t want to talk about it
anymore. We’re both better off just going separate ways.”

I hung my head. Words weren’t
going to work for me. They’ve never worked well for me.

“See you later, Luke,”
she said. Then, gently, she closed the door with me still standing on
her stoop, my head down in shame.

Maybe I’d lost her. I hoped
I hadn’t. Maybe I had.

But I could show her I cared,
even if I couldn’t say it right.

So I left. I walked back out
through that gate, took a look at her busted-up fence, and I got an
idea. Got in my truck and drove away.

An hour later, I was back with
tools and wood. It was a quiet enough street, there wasn’t much
traffic, so I backed my truck up against the curb and blocked half
the street. Got out, took a length of nylon rope and tied a rewoven
eight on one end, looped it around the trailer hitch on my truck. The
other end I lashed to her fence.

Got in the truck, put it in
first, and crawled forward. Once I’d worked the slack out of
the line, the engine put up just the slightest bit of fuss before it
ripped the whole front of her fence right out of the yard. That felt
good.

I got out of the truck to unhitch
the rope, and Rae was out in the yard, shouting.

“What the hell is wrong
with you?”

I opened the tailgate, so she
could see the pickets stacked up inside. She walked closer, curious,
though she kept her distance from me still.

“I’m building you a
new fence,” I said.

While I was talking, I untied the
rope, coiled it, stored it back in the tool box. The next step,
logically, would be to start demolishing the fence I’d ripped
out, but I knew better than to start swinging a sledge around Rae
just then. Instead, I started pulling out the pickets and rails,
sorting things on the edge of her lawn.

“I thought it’d be
nice for Muffin to be able to be outside again, spend time in the
yard without running away. Maybe run around with King, if you’d
have him. King would miss the hell out of Muffin if they couldn’t
hang out.”

She stared me down for a good
long moment, but then, like breathing out, her anger left her body.
She relaxed. She was still distant, but she wasn’t furious. I
had a chance.

“I’m sorry,” I
said. Took a breath.

She nodded. She wanted me to keep
talking.

I guess it was going to take
words after all.

“I was scared,” I
said. “I saw you looking into my past, and it scared me.”

“I’m sorry too,”
she said. I didn’t need her to say more. Because she said it
like she meant it. “I’m scared too.”

“I’m scared as hell,”
I said. “All the time. But you know what would make me happy?”

“What?”

“I’d be awfully happy
if you and I could be scared together.”

Whatever was left of her
resistance fled from her body and I could see the tears welling up
behind her eyes.

“We could try that,”
she said.

“One thing I don’t
get,” I said to Juan, the florist, “is why every flower
shop in town closes at 5pm. You’re the only place open later,
and you close at six.”

It was autumn, and outside the
shop, leaves floated on the afternoon winds. It was also about five
minutes to five, and this guy was doing me a favor by staying open.

“When you think about my
average customer, who are you thinking about?” he asked. He was
an elderly fellow, as thin as a nail with steel-gray hair. An old,
faded anchor was tattooed on his forearm. Navy man, I assumed.

“Businessman, on his way
home from work. Grabbing flowers for his wife.”

He shook his head. “That’s
what people think, but that’s not it. Businessmen grab a bundle
of roses from a street vendor or the grocery store. My average
customer is the housewife. Doing the kind of work that no one ever
notices, the work of keeping her place beautiful. Which means more
than roses. It means lavender and daffodils and lilies. It means all
the flowers people don’t think about.”

“Alright,” I said.

“So what’s the
occasion? I don’t see you in here much anymore, but I remember
you used to come in twice a week at least.” He paused, weighed
his words. “Your wife was a good woman. Glad to see you back in
here.”

I nodded, but his comments didn’t
hurt. I was still in Carhartts and had leather gloves sticking out of
the pockets of my jacket. I’d told Morris I had to get back to
Kansas City early. He’d grumbled a little—the place we
were building was about 3/4 done and we all wanted to get it finished
and inspected and the family moved in before the cold came in. But
Heartland Habitat could work without me, however much everyone there
grumped and moaned that they couldn’t. They’d get on
without me for half a day.