9 Letters (4 page)

“Yeah,” I said,
looking over the paper she’d handed me.

“Are you a vet?” She
looked up from the forms when she asked me that.

“What?” I got
confused. “No, I’m not a vet. I’m a contractor.
Well, I’m tending bar right now, but I’m a contractor.”

“I mean a veteran,”
Rae said. She was smiling again. She had a beautiful smile. “We’ve
got a veteran’s discount.”

“I can’t say I am,”
I said. “You? You a vet?” I put on my best smile, hoped
it looked charming and sincere.

Rae laughed a little. “No,
I’m a technical writer. I just volunteer here.” She
turned her attention back to the paperwork. “It’ll be
$150,” she said. “Because he’s all grown up.
Puppies are more. That includes the harness and leash and bowls and
everything...”

“Yeah,” I said. I
still couldn’t believe I was doing this. “I get to take
him home today?”

“You get to take him home
today.”

She showed me how to put on the
harness, and we walked him out to the truck. I opened the passenger
door, and he hopped up onto the passenger seat like he’d spent
his whole life there.

“I don’t know,”
I said.

“Look, you’ll be
fine. Dogs aren’t that fragile. Just...” Rae looked at
me, right at my eyes. “Just love him.”

King was already drooling all
over the passenger seat of my truck.

“What if we don’t get
along?” I asked. A dog is like a girl you can’t break up
with, my brother had told me. What if…

“Here’s my number,”
Rae said. She wrote it down not on the forms she’d given me,
but on a separate piece of paper. “If you need anything, just
call.”

I took her number and put it into
my back pocket. It was probably just professional courtesy. I didn’t
know if I wanted it to just be professional courtesy.

“Thanks,” I said.

“And yes,” Rae said,
“you can bring him back. We’ll still be here. But just do
me a favor and try.”

I could try.

The first thing the damn dog did
when it got in the house...

I’d barely got the harness
off, with its fiddly little clips that weren’t made for fingers
like mine, and I turned around to hang up the leash and harness on
the coat rack by the door. That’s when my phone rang—I
checked the screen, saw it was my mom making her weekly check-in
call, and as I picked up and said hello I heard a heavy thump behind
me.

“Hey, sweetie,” my
mom crooned. “How you holding up?”

“Uh, the usual I guess,”
I said as I turned around, searching for the source of the sound.
“Well, shit.” The jade plant by the back door was on its
side on the floor, dirt all over the hardwood, and King was just
sitting there next to it drooling.

“Luke? Everything all
right?”

“Yeah, but I gotta go. My
dog just made a mess all over the floor.”

“Your
what?
”

“Love you, Mom. I’ll
call you back.” I hung up.

We had these talks all the
time—the kind of heartfelt, difficult conversations where she’d
try to subtly check in on me and see if I felt like coming back to
church, or else she’d speak in uplifting platitudes and I’d
try to pretend I was getting better. I think it hurt both of us.

“Get away from there,”
I commanded King. Instead of listening, he sniffed at the dirt and
then flopped himself happily down onto it. “Git, now,” I
tried again, to no avail. Guess I would have sounded more like I
meant it if I hadn’t been laughing so hard. Not really a “this
is so funny” laugh, more of a “what the hell am I doing
with a dog” laugh. Thanks a lot, Rae. Thanks a lot, Emily. The
two of them, they were conspiring against me.

But it’s just dirt. And
jade plants, well, the reason I still had a jade plant anyway is
because it’s the only damn plant that survived those dark
months when Emily was in the hospital and those darker months when
she first went into the ground. That jade plant had outlived my
marriage, and it was probably going to outlive King and me both.

I set the pot upright, but didn’t
sweep up the dirt on the floor. It’s just dirt. I’d get
it later. Not like anyone was going to see it.

King was on the couch, drooling
into the cushions, looking cozy enough. I wasn’t really angry,
I just wasn’t sure it was going too well, whether he’d
really be comfortable here, if he’d feel safe. And then I
realized—I was worried about King, which meant I wasn’t
bothering to worry about me.

The Royals didn’t have
another game for a couple days, but the White Sox were up against the
Orioles in Baltimore. I wouldn’t normally root for Chicago,
right, because they’re in the same division as us. But no one
was around to see my treachery, and watching Chris Sale strike people
out was always worth doing. Even better, he did it left-handed, like
me. Well, like I used to.

King moved over to let me down on
the couch, without me even asking, and he started off sort of bored
and slobbery. But by the time LaRoche knocked one into the stands in
the third inning, I was cheering and King was howling louder than me.

After the game, I went for a
shower, and when I came out, my dog was lying curled up at the foot
of my bed. Snoring. I gave his head a pat, and he breathed in happy.
I smiled. It felt good to take care of something.

The second letter sat there
waiting for me, like a prize. Almost a punishment. I had half a mind
to just not open it. Not today. Not when I was doing okay. I wasn’t
ready to fight back tears again, not really. But I knew I was going
to open it. I knew there wasn’t anything on God’s Earth
that was going to come between me and opening that letter. I’d
earned it, by getting King.

The sun was starting to get low
in the sky, casting its rays in through the sliding back door and
lighting up the wood flooring spectacular. I was getting hungry.
After the letter, I was going to get some of that deer out from the
garage. Some for me, some for King. A dog like King needs a meal that
lives up to his name, especially on his first day.

Hell,
I
needed a meal like that.

I sat down on that chair, picked
up the second letter. Took a deep breath. I didn’t want to
overthink it. Overthink anything, you’ll lose your nerve. Got
my folding knife out, cut it open at the top. That’d be my
ritual about it. Folded the knife shut, put it away. Another deep
breath. Took a shot of whiskey. Took out the letter. Unfolded it.

Emily had scented it. It was that
perfume she wore, the one she never let me know what the name of was.
I’d spent half a day once at the mall looking like the crazy
man in blue jeans and a ball cap, trying to describe the scent to the
woman at the perfume counter so I could get her a bottle for her
twenty-first birthday. I’d given up and gotten her a stuffed
bear. That wasn’t one of my best present-giving years, I have
to admit. But she’d been buried with that bear and its “I
love you” stitched across the belly. Guess it really is the
thought that counts.

Hold it together, Jesus, you
haven’t even read the letter yet.

“Not to criticize, Luke,
but you’re a slob. An adorable slob, but still. A slob. So I
want you to clean the house. Go through the closet, fill up a trash
bag with everything you don’t wear and take it down to
Goodwill. Neaten things up. Get the wet towel off the end of the bed,
put it in the hamper at least. I can’t imagine how many empty
cans of beer are sitting on the table by the couch.”

The answer to that was only two,
I thought with a sort of half-pride. Only two right now.

“Put on some music while
you work. Something we used to like. Don’t torture yourself,
don’t put on the stuff we played at the wedding or anything,
and don’t play nothing too sappy. Put on something we listened
to when we were happy. Anyway, the first step to feeling better is to
start taking care of yourself. Yourself, your truck, the house. Clean
out the clutter.”

I looked around. Yeah, the place
was a mess. Bachelor pad. No, that wasn’t right. A bachelor pad
was an apartment that had never been inhabited by a woman. This was
worse. It was the house of a happy couple, overlaid with the house of
a tragic couple, overlaid by the house of a bachelor-in-mourning.
There was a candy jar by the door full of stale candy, and the keys
to the garage were lying in it.

“I could go on, but I think
you get the idea. Your specific task is to clean the house. But do
yourself a favor and go above and beyond on this one. Make it like a
place you’d live in if you were happy. Clean the gutters. It’ll
do you some good to do some real work. Clean the toilet—my
heavens, I bet you’ve never cleaned the toilet.”

I hadn’t.

“I hope you like your new
dog. Rescues can give you hell, a little, but you’re tougher
than any old mutt and I bet you’ll get along great. I bet I’ll
be able to see the look on your face, I bet I’ll be looking
down on you and see you grinning with that dog.”

I liked the idea of that. I’d
never been so sure heaven was as literal as that, and I wasn’t
really sure about anything at all anymore. But even if it was just a
pretty image, I liked it. I liked the idea of her up there having to
be nice to my granddad, having to thank him for the house. I liked
the idea of her looking down on me and smiling.

I liked that idea so much I
started smiling, but then there were those tears creeping up on me a
little bit again. Not as bad as the first letter. Glad Mike wasn’t
around to see me. My older brother probably would have punched me on
the arm. And he’s the only man alive I’d let get away
with it, too.

“That’s it, my love.
There’ll be more in the next letter. I love you madly, even
still.”

No signature except her perfume.
What was that smell?

Alright, the house was a mess.
There was no denying that.

First thing, I found the broom
and the dustpan. Which took me awhile. Last time I’d cleaned,
I’d been on a bender, and apparently drunk me had thought the
broom belonged in the downstairs half-bath and the dustpan belonged
under the sink in the master bathroom.

It took me a minute to disconnect
the good speakers from the TV, hook them back up to the stereo. I
plugged in my phone, set it to play Hank Williams—the
classics—and Lee Brice—something good and modern. I
cranked it up loud enough to hear in every corner of the house.

I swept up the dirt from the
potted plant while King stared at me indignantly.

“I know you put that dirt
there on purpose,” I told him, “but I’ve gotta pick
it up.”

I moved from there to the rest of
the ground floor, sweeping. It felt good. Sure, I swept at work, at
the end of the night, but this was more fulfilling.

The sun was down, so after I
finished a quick surface-level clean, I put the dustpan and broom
away in the broom closet and went out to the garage for a hunk of
venison. That went into the cast iron—Emily had loved cast
iron. I started some frozen vegetables next to that, and King started
begging but I knew better than to reward him for that.

I was drooling as bad as King by
the time the meat was done. Medium-rare, or as close as I could get
while hungry and out of practice and working from game meat instead
of something from the butcher.

“Sit,” I told King.
He didn’t know what that meant, or maybe he didn’t care.
I held up a chunk of deer and tried again.

“Sit,” I said, slower
this time.

That got his attention, and he
sat. He ate out of my hand, licked his lips. Then he looked up with
those mournful eyes, that creased brow, his glance darting back and
forth between the pan and my face.

“Okay, but just one more,”
I said. He ate the next piece, just as happy, and then I sat down on
the couch—I didn’t want to disturb my altar of letters on
the kitchen table—to eat.

I was just starting to lick my
fingers with the last of it when my phone rang. It was Maggie. The
ring cut through Hank Williams’ crooning and out the speakers,
since my phone was plugged into the stereo. Damn.

“What do you think, King?”
I asked.

King just kind of stared at me.

“Good call,” I said.

I answered anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hey Luke.” There was
bar noise in the background. “Guess I should thank you for the
extra work.”

“Sorry about that,” I
said. I even meant it. Wasn’t right that she’d had to
fill in on short notice because I let my temper get the best of me.
And it’s not like I could afford to miss much work myself.

“It’s alright,”
she said. “But it’s kind of slow tonight and Warren’s
going to let me out early, let Jake tend bar. Monday night, the kid
can handle it.”

I knew where she was going with
this. King must have too, because he nestled up to me, protectively.

“Anyway, I was thinking,
wondering, I don’t have nothing else to do tonight since I
thought I was going to be working all of a sudden and now I’m
not, and I know
you
don’t have nothing else to do tonight...”

I almost cut her off. I’m
not totally sure why I didn’t. Maybe because part of me wanted
her to ask, because part of me wanted to be tempted. It felt good to
be wanted, even by the wrong person for the wrong reasons.

“Anyway I was thinking you
could come over to my place, watch something, or go out and get
drinks.”

“I can’t,” I
said.

“Why not?” she asked.
She was irritated. I can’t recall the last time I’d
turned her down. If ever. “Got some other date?”

“I’ve got to stay
home and clean my room.”

“Okay, whatever,” she
scoffed. “If you don’t want to go out, you could just say
so.”

Maggie hung up on me.

I looked down at my phone, stared
at the little “call ended” screen. A month earlier—hell,
a few days earlier—I would have called her back. But this time
I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see her at all.