A letter from Papaw — Shed door open, dawn light just coming up on the tackle box in the corner.

Going to tell you something I have not told a soul.

That screen door spring — the one Ruth mentioned before she got sick — I could fix in ten minutes. Got the part in a drawer. Had it a decade.

Went out to the shed this morning looking for a wrench and stood there instead. My brother's tackle box is still in the corner where he set it down in '78. I have not opened it. I could not tell you today what's inside. Rusted hooks, a knife he liked, whatever a man puts in a tackle box when he thinks he's coming back for it Saturday.

Told Ruth I'd fix that spring. Told her twice. Then I didn't, and she got sick, and I still didn't, and now she's four years gone and the door still slaps behind me every time I come through it.

I whistled a bit of a song walking back to the house. One my brother used to whistle. Couldn't tell you the name of it if you paid me.

Here's the thing I'm sitting with: the tackle box in the corner and the spring on the door are the same weight in this house. Not fixing a thing is a way of keeping it. I have been keeping that door loose for eleven years, and I know exactly what I'm doing.

The mill closed in '06 and it stands there yet. Some things you leave standing on purpose.

Going to leave the wrench where it is.

Love,