A letter from Papaw — Porch, late afternoon. Earl just left.

Earl came by to borrow the long extension cord and stayed three hours. Sat on the porch step the way he does. Talked about his back, the job, his boy in Charlotte, the price of a tire. I half-listened. Watched a wasp work the eave.

Got me thinking about Ruth.

She used to fold the dish towels in threes. Run her hand down the crease, set them in the drawer, do the next one. Forty-one years of that. I asked her once why she didn't just fold them in halves like a sensible person and she laughed at me through the screen door — she was on the porch with a glass of tea, it was a summer evening, I can hear it — and said halves don't fit the drawer.

There was a stretch — late, maybe the last year or two — where she'd sit down in the middle of folding. Set the towel in her lap. Stare at the window a minute. Then pick it up and finish.

I never asked her what she was doing in that minute. I think now I know.

She wasn't tired of the towels. She loved the towels. She was tired in her bones from a day, and she knew the difference, and she sat the minute she needed to sit and then she finished what she was doing.

I found a photograph of her last week in a drawer. She's holding a dish towel. I don't know who took it.

Earl's coming back tomorrow for the cord. He forgot it on the step.

Going to feed Hank.

Love,