A letter from Papaw — Before light. Drawer half-open, the good pen wandered off again.

Went hunting a fuse in the front room drawer and came up with my time card from the mill. Thirty-two years old, my name typed at the top, the corner soft where my thumb used to sit.

There was a foreman my last decade on the line I could not stand. Won't say his name. Wrote me up for a thing I didn't do and knew he was doing it. I carried that for twenty years easy. Carried it out to the Ford in the mornings, carried it into the gas station off the highway when I filled up, carried it on the drive when the radio went to static in that stretch past the old dairy and there wasn't nothing to think about but him.

He died in '11. I read it in the paper and waited to feel something and didn't.

Here's the funny part. Man's been in the ground fifteen years and I was still turning it over on the drive to Asheville a while back. Ballgame on, bottom of the fourth. Radio went to static and there he was in my head like he'd bought a ticket.

I heard my own self say out loud in the cab, well, that's about enough of him. Turned the dial till I found the gospel hour. Didn't forgive him. Didn't need to. Just quit hauling him.

Tires on the gravel now — that'll be Earl. Time card's going back in the drawer.