A letter from Papaw — Rain on the tin over the porch since sometime in the night. Still coming.

I'll say something now I've been chewing on all week and haven't put words to.

The Ford wouldn't start Monday. Wouldn't start Tuesday. Wouldn't start Wednesday. Fifty-some years around engines and I stood in the drive Thursday morning with the hood up like I'd never seen one before. Turned the key. Nothing. Turned it again. Nothing. Cussed at it. Turned it a fourth time like the truck was going to change its mind because I was getting sore.

Went inside. Sat at the table. Reached for the mug — same one, handle gone dark where my thumb sits, hairline crack down the side I'm not throwing out — and drank cold coffee because I didn't want to make more.

Finally propped the phone on the fender and pulled up that fellow who films himself working on trucks. Watched him do the thing I was trying to do. Watched him do it slower than I would have. He stopped in the middle to wipe his hands on a rag and talk about something else for a minute, and I stood there in the drive waiting on him to come back to the bolt. And I did wait. Didn't rush him through the video. Didn't skip ahead. Stood there with the rain coming and let a stranger on a phone take his time.

Truck started Friday afternoon.

Here's the confession, and I'll say it plain. I've had that kind of patience for a stuck bolt my whole life. Waited on Earl to finish a thought that took him twenty minutes to get to. Waited at the post office while the clerk hunted my stamps out of the drawer she keeps them in and asked after Hank. That kind of waiting I can do standing on my head.

What I never got the hang of was sitting across from a person who wasn't ready to talk yet. Ruth, some nights. One of the kids, more than once. I'd feel the quiet come up and I'd fill it — ask a question, change the subject, get up for a glass of water. Anything but sit there and let them get to it.

A bolt'll come loose when you work it slow. A person will too. I knew the one and not the other, and there ain't a video for the second one.

Going to write a letter with the good pen before Earl walks off with it again.

Love,