A letter from Papaw — Before light. Time card on the kitchen table where I left it last night.

Was hunting a stamp in the junk drawer yesterday and pulled the whole thing out on the floor. My hands did that — got tired of holding the weight and let go without asking me. Batteries, a flashlight, three pens that don't write, and my time card from the mill in an envelope I don't remember putting it in.

Sat down on the linoleum with it. Punched in at 6:58 most mornings for thirty-odd years. Never read the instructions on the clock. Nobody did. You walked up, you put the card in the slot, it stamped the time. That was the machine and that was the friendship between me and it.

The phone the kids gave me came with a booklet thicker than my mama's Bible. I know because I measured them, one Sunday, out of spite.

Went out to the shed after and stood at the pegboard. Every tool's got its outline drawn in marker so I know at a glance what Earl walked off with. The saw's outline's been empty two years. I don't need a manual to read that wall.

Here's what I'll say plain. That time card had two words on it — my name and a slot — and it did right by me for thirty years. The phone's on its third year of asking me if I meant to say what I said, and I still don't know its name.

Going to put the drawer back together before Hank walks through it.

Love,