A letter from Papaw — Monday

Coffee maker clicked before it brewed again this morning. I stood there in the dark listening to it the way you'd listen for somebody coming up the drive. Four-thirty. Nothing else awake but the refrigerator and me.

Got me thinking about Ruth. Not the big things. The way she'd come down ahead of me sometimes, when she couldn't sleep, and I'd hear her through the floor. Folding dish towels on the kitchen table at five in the morning. She folded them in threes. Ran her hand down the crease every time, like she was settling something.

I went looking for a screwdriver after the coffee finished and pulled the wrong drawer. Found a photograph instead. Her and the kids out on the porch, summer, I don't remember which year. Her hair was still dark in it. I sat at the table and looked at it a long time and then I put it back where I found it. Some things you don't need to keep out where you can see them. You just need to know which drawer.

There was a stretch after she went where I didn't know what I believed anymore. I'd sat under Brother Wallace for forty years and I couldn't have told you on a Tuesday what any of it meant. I didn't quit going. I just sat there. And I came home and made the coffee, and I fed Hank, and I went out and looked at the truck, and I did it the next day too.

I remembered her laugh this morning. Through the screen door, summer evening, somebody must've said something funny on the porch. I don't remember who. I remember the screen door.

The coffee got cold while I was sitting there. I poured it out and made another pot.

Hank wants out.

Love,