A letter from Papaw — First light on the ridge. Ruth's Bible on the kitchen table where I set it down last night.

Was hunting the small screwdriver in the sideboard drawer — the one with the yellow handle, the one Earl hasn't managed to walk off with yet — and my hand went in past the batteries and the rubber bands and hit leather. Pulled it out. Mama's Bible. The spine held together with the tape I put on it in '81 and never redid.

But it wasn't Mama's I was holding first. Ruth's was tucked inside it. Her little one, the one she carried in her purse to church. Spine cracked, ribbon frayed, a bulletin from a Sunday I don't remember folded at the Psalms. I don't know how it got in that drawer. I don't know how I didn't know it was there.

Sat down at the table with them both.

Got to remembering something Brother Wallace said once, at a supper in the church basement, forty years back. A man had been there we all knew was hurting. Sat through the whole meal without a word, then got up and went out to his truck. Somebody at our table said what a shame, why won't he talk to anybody. Brother Wallace set his coffee down and said this — I remember it plain because he didn't often say a thing sharp:

"A man too proud to ask has already asked. He just done it in a language nobody agreed to speak. He's standing out at that truck with the hood up. There ain't a thing wrong with the truck. Now — one of you get up and go out there. He can't come back in on his own. He's waiting on somebody to walk out and stand next to him and not say a word about why. That's the only way he knows how to be found. You leave him out there, that's on you, not on him."

Then he went back to his ham.

Nobody at the table said anything for a minute. Then Earl's daddy — Earl wasn't but a boy then — got up and went out to the parking lot. Didn't come back for a while. Neither of them ever said what passed between them, and I never asked.

I say grace at this table every morning and nobody hears it but Hank and whatever's listening. Said one this morning that wasn't the usual. Won't write it out. It wasn't for writing.

Going to put Ruth's back in her drawer where it belongs. Mama's stays on the table a while.

Love,