A letter from Papaw — Before light. Coffee maker clicking in the dark.

Listen to me.

Stood at the counter this morning waiting on the coffee. It clicks before it brews — always has, some little tick in the mechanism I've never bothered to look at. I stood there in the dark listening to it and I thought about the door.

The door up here has never been locked. Not when Ruth was living, not since. Earl walks in without knocking. The neighbor boy came up the drive Monday with his candy bars. A fella I hadn't seen in six years pulled in one Sunday to ask about a chain saw and stayed for supper. That's just how it goes. You put the pot on when you hear tires.

Ruth hung a bird feeder off the side porch the second summer we lived here. I still fill it. She used to stand at the kitchen window watching them come in — cardinals, mostly, and the little brown ones I never learned the name of — and she'd say the birds knew where the seed was and told each other. I laughed at her. She was right. They come in a stream all summer and every one of them tells the next.

Kudzu's got the back fence again. I could cut it back. I did once in '96 and once around the time Ruth got sick. Otherwise I let it come. It doesn't hurt anything and the deer bed down in it — I see them at the tree line at dusk, the does mostly, standing where the fence used to be a fence. They come because nobody chased them off. That's the only reason anything comes anywhere.

I'll tell you what I want to say, and I'm only going to say it the once. Fill the bird feeder. Then keep filling it. You'll never see most of what comes to it and you won't know whose morning you made and it doesn't matter — the seed is in the feeder or it isn't, and a life is the difference between those two.

It's going to be hot today. Ninety-five on the ridge, they said on the radio last night, and I believe it — the air didn't cool off overnight the way it usually does. Hank's already found his spot on the linoleum.

Going to go fill the feeder before the heat sets in.

Love,