 
### DEAR VIRGIL

By

JoAnne Soper-Cook

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

JoAnne Soper-Cook on Smashwords

Dear Virgil

Copyright © 2012 by JoAnne Soper-Cook

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

*****

I would like to thank Carla Moretti for her unfailing kindness and support and her encouragement for this project. I'd also like to thank Jennifer LeClaire and Anne Sharp, whose enthusiasm for these characters drove me to write this novella.

### DEAR VIRGIL

October 25

Dear Virgil,

I suppose you may think it strange to receive a letter from me but I don't have anybody else to talk to so I figured I might as well talk to you. Things have changed since you left. You have probably heard that, well, I don't got a job no more. I been clearing out my house and getting ready to put it on the market. I don't rightly know if it's gonna sell or not. Things ain't too good around these parts but I suppose, Lord willing and the creek don't rise, somebody might want it.

I got enough saved up to live on till I find something else. Don't know when that will be or if there's even anything in my area of expertise, such as it is. I thought about coming up North but, well, you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks and I reckon I am just far too set in my ways to learn something new at this stage of my life. It's a funny thing, you know: people look at me and they think I'm a lot older than what I am. You know, Virgil, I am forty-four years old. I say that to myself sometimes because I don't even believe it. I catch sight of myself in the mirror in the morning when I'm shaving and I look at myself and see the gray hairs and the lines under my eyes and I think how the hell did I get so old? I try and think back and I don't remember a time when I was ever young. You ever get that feeling, like you been here forever and you about a million years old, and there's nothing you gonna see that can shock you because you seen it all? Yeah, I suppose you know what that's like. I ain't gotta tell you nothing about it.

The girl that we were concerned with when you were here – I don't believe I need to mention her name and I would rather not, seeing as how you never really know how many pairs of hands a letter might pass through – well she done took herself up to Biloxi and had that baby as far as I know. Well, you know what happened to him. Last I heard he was in the death house. It looks pretty certain he's gonna get the chair unless his sentence is commuted or the governor sees fit to pardon him and I don't see that as very likely. Especially considering that the man he killed was so very, very important. Funny thing is, I got a letter in the mail from him about a week or so after they took him away. It didn't say too much, only that he didn't blame either of us, me or you, that maybe it was his own fault, and he repeated the same thing he said that night, 'I didn't mean to kill him'.

They went ahead with all their plans. The foundations for the new building went up last week. Don't rightly know what it's gonna look like when it's done but I think if they keep going the way they got started it ought to be okay. It's a good thing too, because there is just nothing in this town for anybody. Maybe after it's all said and done the new building is a good thing.

Well, like I said, I got my house on the market and I got all my stuff in boxes, getting ready to just put it somewhere in storage I guess. I was thinking I might take a little vacation for myself seeing as how I got all this time on my hands right now. I suppose if worst was to come to worst I could go back to what I used to do before. I don't know if I ever mentioned it to you but yeah, I was a prison guard before I got this job and I suppose I might as well go back to that. It's something I know how to do. You know what I mean? I don't rightly know but anyway there it is.

I expect it's starting to get cold where you are. I never was one for the cold, myself. Took a trip to Delaware a few years ago and that was in December. I just about froze myself to death. I can't rightly say whether I liked it or not; I didn't stay there long enough to find out. Soon as I could get out of there I lit out like my ass was on fire. I guess you could say I was the proverbial fish out of water.

I wasn't too surprised when they let me go. As you recall, the mayor himself told me it was gonna be kind of hard to keep me in my job. He was right. Soon as the whole business was done, soon as the killer was caught, tied up, trussed up, sent away, well, they didn't have no more use for me. I came home one afternoon and there was a letter in my mailbox. You credit that? He didn't even do me the delicate courtesy of telling me to my face, no sir. They put a letter in my mailbox, sent through the postal service and everything. He could not even call me on the telephone and say 'Guess what? We ain't gonna need you no more.' No sir, he sent me a letter in the mail. Just a couple lines about how they no longer required my services but it was kind of a slap in the face if you know what I mean.

Anyway that same night after I got the letter, I was just cleaning up my supper dishes and there was a knock on my door. I thought maybe it might be some neighbour kids playing a joke, seeing as how it's getting close to Halloween and you know what kids are like. I went out and well there was S-. I said "Boy, what the hell are you doing here?" He never come to my house. Ain't nobody comes to my house. He said "Do you mind if I come in?" I said no, come on in, and I offered him a beer but he wouldn't have but a coke. It was the first time I ever remember having any kind of refreshment in his presence. It's not that I never took to the boy, you understand, but you know how it is when you're in charge. You got to keep yourself separate. I always prided myself on staying separate, keeping myself out of trouble, don't get involved, don't stick my nose in nobody else's business. You know the drill. Yeah, I am pretty sure you do. I kind of got the feeling, if you don't mind me saying, that you are the same kind of man yourself.

We just sat there for a while not saying anything so I asked him if there was anything in particular he came to say. It was so quiet you could hear the suds fizzing in the kitchen sink. (You remember I said I was doing the dishes when he came by.) He said, you ain't started packing yet. That kind of took me. I said to him, what the hell kind of thing is that to say? He said no, that's not what I meant, I heard about it. I think it's a rotten thing what they done to you. Well didn't that just knock me for a loop. I never, ever cultivated any kind of friendship with anyone in this town. It is not my place and it is not my job and they made it known to me from day one that they did not want me here, that I was not what they wanted, they just liked the old chief just fine and saw me as somebody who was trying to take over where it wasn't my place. So I told him it was right decent of him to say it and he asked me wehre I was gonna go. I said I didn't know and he said when I figured it out maybe he could go with me. I told him that was a damn fool notion if I ever heard one. I told him he was born here, he was brought up here, but that's not right. He said his Daddy was an itinerant preacher. He told me him and his momma came here when he was just a boy and his daddy died under what the police department called 'suspicious circumstances' but they could never make nothing stick. It's amazing what you find out about people.

Well, I guess I better get this in the mail. I hope this finds you as well as expected.

Yours truly,

Bill

October 27

Dear Virgil,

Lately I have been giving much thought to where I might possibly work after I am done here. I suppose I might look for something in Arkansas or Tennessee or maybe even Texas but I expect a Texas lawman requires a certain set of skills that I do not possess. Maybe I could get a job in the police force up there. Wouldn't that be a right hoot and a holler? I would fit in real good up there, I am sure. You think I might need to air up my car tires before I hit that great Northern road? What all y'all think if I showed up? Tell me, Virgil, what have I gotta do to get myself run out of town?

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm too good to come up North and work. Well, maybe. Maybe I don't rightly know what you're thinking. But that's just it: it ain't North or south or east or west or any other goddamn direction on the compass where I don't fit. I just plain don't fit and Lord knows maybe it's too late now to do anything about that. I know that I have never, ever been nobody's yes-man. I have never been the type of man that says yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. I always acted on my own conscience and I always followed the dictates of my own mind. I guess in this world it's some kinda crime to have a back bone. I expect you know what I am talking about. There's a lot of people down here think I'm too good for the job I had, that maybe I shouldn't be doing nothing except maybe slaving away in the cotton sheds or something of that sort.

Bill

October 29

Dear Virgil,

Apparently just receiving a letter in my mail box was not humiliation enough. I am required, it seems, to submit an official resignation on police department letterhead. You can just imagine my exclamation of surprise when I received this news. I came very, very close to calling up the Mayor and telling him exactly what he could do with his letter of resignation. I was able to restrain my temper. Maybe being around you has rubbed off on me. Don't that make you feel proud? You actually taught me something. I am sure that makes you feel right good inside, don't it?

I used the typewriter at the police department and typed out a real nice letter telling them how much I had appreciated and enjoyed serving their fine town. It took me a long time to type it because I can only type with two fingers. I expect you know how to type. You know how to do most things. Then I handed it in and told them that I would be leaving at the end of the week and that I would have my desk cleared out at the end of the day. This is the same desk with the busted leg that has never been fixed no sir no matter what. The air conditioner has still not been oiled and the gate leading into the back of the station has finally fell off its hinges completely.

I also told them with as much dignity as I could muster that I would appreciate reciving any monies do me up to and including that date. The Mayor said that of course that would be the case and then he shook my hand and wished me all the best.

Virgil, you never saw such a fake smile in all your life. This was the man who intimated certain truths to me regarding yourself and my conduct towards you during your stay in our fine town.

So I guess that's it now. I am no longer employed by this town. They can kiss my big white ass for all I care, begging your pardon. Not much I can do about it now, the die has been cast as they say and by next week I will be out of my house because believe it or not it has been sold. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I didn't spect that damn thing would ever sell. I guess it just goes to show how wrong a person can be about some things.

I have decided to take myself a vacation trip with a little of the money I have saved. I have not decided where to go just yet so if you have any suggestions as to where I might go, please include them in your return correspondence. I realize, given the way our acquaintance was in the beginning, that there might be any number of places you could tell me to go, many of them a lot hotter than it is down here.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 12

Dear Virgil,

Your suggestion that I take a vacation up North was bold but I can see your reasoning. Just as you came South to expose yourself to my culture maybe it might be a nice idea for me to come North and expose myself to yours. At any rate one or both of us is going to end up exposed, so I have cast my die as I was saying before and have bought myself a ticket on the train to your fine city.

Please do not think that I intend to impose myself on you or that I will have any expectations in any way. I do not. I assure you I would not presume on any hospitality that I might imagine exists as a result of friendly feelings between us. No, I am merely coming as you suggested to expose myself to Northern culture and to see what all y'all are so high and mighty bragging about that seems so superior to what we have down here.

I will be arriving on 2l November. I have been told it can be very cold in your area in November so I have taken the precaution of packing a suitcase full of warm winter clothes. As I do not in fact own any winter boots or mittens I believe I will be obliged to purchse same in your fine city. If you could recommend a store that sells gentlemen's attire where I could acquire these items of clothing I would be most obliged to you.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 19

Dear Virgil,

This will come to you by way of telegram as I am now on the train, on my way to your fine city. I have retreated to the club car to draft this message to you, mainly to escape the attentions of a certain lady who is under the impression that, being a bachelor and unattached as I am, I might necessarily wish to attach myself to her. As you know, Virgil, I have never been married. You once told me that you have never been married yourself but that you had come close to it. At the time I did not pursue this matter with you nor did I ask you what exactly you mean.t. I remember at the time we were having this particular discussion you were expounding to me about certain theories that you had about our 'murderer' and the identity of said person so therefore I did not think it appropriate to introduce the topic of matrimony only in a most passing fashion which you will recall I had done.

As I was saying this lady has been trying to attach herself to me. During the train ride up here she has made a practice of telling me every minute detail about her life as if she and I were intimates. I believe she is from one of your Northern cities in which case I can see why she is as direct as she is and does not understand the very southern concept of discretion. However I found her attentions bordering on vulgar when, at one point during our journey she attempted to seat herself in my lap. I was obliged to remove the lady but I fear I may have used too much force because she ended up on the floor which brought the conductor who asked me if I in fact had any problem with the lady in question. I assured him I did not. I apologized for my use of force but during the motion of the train which, as it was going over the trestle –

Oh hell, Virgil, she sat in my lap and I do not wish to discuss it any further.

There will be a slight delay in my arrival in your fine city. Not because of the lady seating herself in my lap or of any impropriety which I have NOT seen fit to address but because the train was unavoidably detained by a late traveller that did not reach the gate in time. We were obliged to wait for him in Mobile until said gentleman could reach the train and board without any unnecessary and undue haste. Therefore the time of my arrival which I had written to you in my Letter is not as originally stated eleven thirty in the evening it is now five minutes after midnight. I will not actually arrive until tomorrow. I do appreciate your offer to collect me at the train station and thank you in advance for your considerable kindness.

Bill

October 30

Dear Virgil,

What I have seen so far of the countryside above the Mason-Dixon Line which, as you know, is the imaginary line which divides the North from the South, has been most salutary. I see that people up here favor much the same sorts of houses that we do down South although I do not believe all y'all spend quite so much in air conditioning as you do in heating.

As I move further North the temperature of the air outside the train begins to cool and I can see a marked difference in the feeling of the season as it would be in Mississippi. You may think this very strange that I have lived my entire life and have never, ever been above the Line but until right now I have never seen any reason to venture any further North than I had already gone. Therefore, you can undoubtedly understand why seeing your fine landscape as I am now it is such a strange thing to me. Most people I have met on the train have been very nice, with the exception of that lady who, as I said, had earlier tried to sit in my lap. Many of the people I have met are in fact Northerners returning from the South to their homes in the North and they enjoy hearing me speak because, as many of them say, I have such a fine, 'genteel' Southern accent. You may agree, Virgil, I am a lot of things, but when it comes to gentility I am not. I think they are perhaps being gracious and polite or trying not to hurt my feelings by calling me an ignorant redneck.

The other thing that I feel, Virgil, on my way North, is something that I never did expect to feel, something I have felt at many junctures in my life but now I find myself as surprised by it as I have ever been. That emotion, Virgil, is fear. I will admit: I am a Southerner, born and bred and I understand that certain of my attitudes and my points of view may be uncomfortable or possibly unpleasant for people who do not come from the South as I do. However, I am given to understand that some quarter is given in life to those who, not having experienced certain things, seek to broaden their knowledge by experiencing these things for themselves. Therefore, Virgil, I am afraid, having never been North before, not knowing what to expect as a Southerner venturing into unfamiliar territory. I hope you do not find this too amusing, that a man such as myself, who has dedicated himself to law enforcement and who has had truck with all kinds of hardened criminals, degenerates, illiterates and scumbags, should find himself a little bit scared at the idea of going North.

Yours truly,

Bill.

October 3l

Dear Virgil,

It is funny how certain people in your life become a habit. Just the other day something happened when I was out and I said to myself, 'I must tell Virgil about this. He will not believe it'. I was very much looking forward to having a conversation with you about this particular incident and then I remembered that you weren't here no more, that you had gone back North and we wouldn't be having that conversation, at least not in person. The thing was, I didn't expect – I ain't good at saying what I think. You know, I ain't good at saying what I think. When it comes to saying something like, reaming somebody out, or telling them the stupid things they done wrong, I don't have a problem with it. When it comes to defending myself, I don't got a problem with that either, but when it comes to saying to somebody, 'well, you know, I think that under a different set of circumstances or in a different part of the world or a different time, you and I might have been real good friends.' I can't say it. It just seems to stick in my throat. Part of me thinks that maybe it's a dumb thing to say and I shouldn't even be saying it.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that, even though you ain't around anymore I sure do think about it sometimes and, for what it's worth, maybe if we had met in a different time or a different place, we would have been friends.

Yours truly,

Bill

P.S. The picture on the front is of a hotel in Savannah, where I once stayed during a policemen's convention or retreat or some damn thing a couple years ago. Mostly they were talking about Jesus and God and how you want to be a good policeman and serve the Lord. I only went because I thought it was gonna tell us about law enforcement. Anyway the food's real good and I thought that if you was here then you could teach them a thing or two about the law because I always said you knew a lot of things.

Nov. l

Dear Virgil,

I was driving my car the other morning and noticed that I have an unfortunate tendency to stick my neck out and bob my head like a turkey whenever I am at a stop sign.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 4

Dear Virgil,

Everybody always says that absence makes the heart grow fonder and I suppose in a way I can see that being true. If someone is absent in any real and physical way, then they tend to change in the imagination of the one left behind. By this I mean that their faults get smaller and their good points grow. Suddenly, instead of being irritated or annoyed at them for some stupid thing they might have said, all you can think about is how they could calm you down when you were mad, or that they remembered you like your coffee black with two sugars, little things like that. I only mention coffee because right now the young feller has come around with refreshments as we are soon drawing into the main station in your fine city, and I have accepted a cup for myself. I am not a big coffee drinker, seeing as how it's just too damn hot where I come from to drink coffee. My mother always drank coffee when she was coming down off a bender and I remember being little and seeing her fill up the percolator with coffee grounds and hot water. I couldn't have been much more than three because I remember sitting on the kitchen floor and she was wearing a flowered dress with stockings but the garters had broke and so the stockings were sagged around her ankles. She was almost always smoking a cigarette, at least in my imagination I remember her that way. I can recall thinking how pretty she was, even with her hair all mussed up and no lipstick on. She was young and she had curly dark hair that she used to tie back behind her neck, sometimes with a shoelace if that's all she could find. You know how your momma gets busy and she just wants to put her hair up out of the way, well she used to do that. I used to miss her an awful lot when she was away but I knew she didn't want me crawling all over her, so I'd try and hold back with my affections when she came home. One of the things I remember about momma is how she'd have to have her coffee first thing in the morning as soon as she got up. It's the first thing she'd head for as soon as her eyes were open.

There is another kind of absence, though, where the heart is not only made fonder but is also a bit resigned. I think you know, in your unique situation, what I mean. This is the kind of thing where the absent party has been gone for such a long time, or is gone somewhere far away, so far away that he cannot easily return, at least not for a while. The heart in this case resigns itself to the absence of the missing party and in this case, Virgil, the fondness is tinged with quite a bit of regret.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 5

Dear Virgil,

I have just woken up and opened the curtains in my hotel room, and I am looking out the window with the air of a man who has newly awakened to a world entirely changed before his eyes. In any direction all I can see are buildings, each of a similar construction and height and which form the whole of my surroundings, excepting the occasional older construction which gives a nice relief. To say that your city is different is quite an understatement and while I have been in larger cities before (such as New Orleans, Louisiana, for example) I have never seen such a profusion of glass and brick.

Some people say that where a man lives can influence him as a person. I would have to agree in principle. These solemn gray buildings I see before me are reminiscent of you, Virgil, in your suit and tie and with your shoes always shined, such a sober gentleman as I never did see. These buildings reserve their judgment till the last, as you do, and seldom become emotionally involved in anything, which again is like you. I recall expressing surprise when you evinced anger and resentment towards a certain wealthy gentleman of my hometown, who you felt had wronged you. I agree that he did wrong you and you were completely within your rights to feel and to behave as you did. It is funny now to think that my own actions, or rather my refusal to act, is what got me fired in the first place. Sometimes there is no way of knowing what people want and even if you give it to them, they end up resenting you for it.

Yesterday evening, after I had checked in to my hotel and put away my things, I took myself out for a walk around the neighborhood to see what I could see. Now, I can hear you cautioning me against this, in which case I would remind you that I am a police officer and am capable of taking care of myself. Nevertheless, I was careful to keep to well-lighted streets and to always be aware of my surroundings. Imagine my shame if I should get rolled like a common drunk in your fine city and then have to explain myself when I get back home.

I was struck by how people here are in such a hurry, or seem to be. Where are they all going, Virgil? And why are they so intent on getting there so quick? Almost every single person I saw was hell-bent for leather, head down and shuffling along with nobody saying anything beyond what was absolutely necessary. It seems an awful lonely way to live if you ask me, everybody going their own way or trying to. Don't nobody ever notice that all y'all are going in the same direction. I found myself caught up in a crowd of people on the sidewalk, Lord knows where they were headed, but I had no choice but to go along with them anyways, there being scarcely any room for me to turn around even if I wanted to. Everybody was walking the same speed, not too fast or too slow, and when they come to a crossing they'd all stop and wait and then when the little figure come on the box they'd all rush across, all together in a big bunch. It was kind of like one of them Holiness meetings, where they jump around and shout when they all got the Holy Spirit and one of them just sets the others off, like. We all went along till the smaller street flowed into a bigger one and there was a lot more traffic and a lot more noise than we get back home. Some of the people went into a restaurant that was there and I went along with them. It was a cafeteria type place, where they had pictures of all the food posted up on placards along with the prices and you could choose what you wanted to eat. I got me some kind of a meat sandwich and a Coke and picked me a piece of lemon pie from the cooler. All in all, it wasn't a bad meal. I sat down by the window and watched all the traffic go by and the people all walking in lockstep and nobody spoke to me but I didn't mind too much. I expect you know the place: it is very long and low, with a lot of windows in the side that faces the street. The name of it is written up in neon letters on the outside but I'll be damned if I can remember what it is.

After I left the diner I walked back in the direction I had come, against the tide of humanity if you will, towards my hotel but I had somehow gotten turned around and what I had assumed was familiar territory was anything but. I stopped to try and figure out where I was but the streetlights were none too bright, I can tell you, and it was hard to make things out. I kept trying to remember where I had turned to get to the restaurant but I couldn't make out any of the street signs. A man in a plaid hunting jacket or I guess it looked like a hunting jacket and a cap asked me where I was going. I gave him the name of my hotel and he said I was a long way from there. He said I needed to go back the way I came but I said that was the problem, I could not find the way I came.

The way he looked at me was very odd, Virgil. I don't know if I can adequately describe it. He put his hand on my arm, which was strange you will admit because one thing I have noticed about you Northern folks is, you don't like to touch each other. He looked into my face and then he nodded his head and smiled at me. 'You are going the wrong way' he said. I told him that obviously yes I was going the wrong way seeing as how I was lost. He said 'You aren't lost. You are just going the wrong way' so then I thought he must be one of these crazy people you see in the big cities. I told him thank you and then he said something I didn't quite catch and he reached out and touched me on the top of my head. Now don't you think that's a curious thing for a man to do? I remember being at a revival meeting once when I was just a young man. I had recently come out of the Army and I was wondering what to do with myself. They had brought this famous preacher and his wife and her sister in for a week of special tent meetings, singing and preaching and in the afternoons they would go down to the river for baptizing. I never did get dipped myself although S- did, I remember it plain as day. He was and is deathly afraid of water and I recall watching him going down the river bank, just a young boy. It's a beautiful thing, Virgil, a water baptism. I don't expect you ever thought of me as a religious man and indeed I am not but some things, Virgil, are sacred. Yessir, they plunged him down and brought him up and his face was shining. He was so happy. He had been redeemed, you see. That's how we were always taught to think about it. First of all there is the acceptance of Salvation which I'm sure you understand as well as anybody but then you must be baptized in water. S- had always been a very good boy, what with going to Sunday School and attending church regular, reading the Scriptures. When they brought him up out of that water he had been redeemed. You could see it in his face, that shine was there. I expect it wore off later on, but right then you could see it. Anybody with eyes could see it. It struck me most powerfully that an experience like that could change a man and change him completely. Everybody wants redemption but most of us are never gonna get it. I expect you know that now. Redemption, Virgil, and there I was at that revival meeting and this famous preacher's wife was singing and clapping and it occurred to me that if she prayed for me then something unusual might happen. Something holy might happen to me. I might be redeemed. So I gathered up my courage and went to her. We was all standing around the altar, singing and praising the Lord. I touched her arm and she turned to look at me and I leaned in and said, Excuse me Miz Walker, because that was her name, Lolly Walker, Excuse me Miz Walker if you could lay hands on me and say a special prayer for me I would be awful grateful. I'm feeling the presence of the Lord here tonight and it's mighty powerful.

I will never forget the look in her eyes. I have never seen such flat malevolence before. It was like I was interfering in something she was doing and she hated me for it. The look was chilling me to the bone, Virgil, almost like I had been taken and dipped in icy cold water. She was a middle-aged lady and she had a skinny face, one of those faces with the lines beside the nose that look like they been cut with a knife. She had a thin, mean-looking mouth and the kind of blue eyes that got little tiny pupils, pointy-looking eyes if you take my meaning. She came towards me with her hands out and she clamped them hands down on my skull and I swear to Almighty Jesus it was like having cold water poured down my neck. The whole time she's praying she's staring into my eyes and I cannot look away. It was like a noise inside my head and everything around me was far away, and nothing anybody said sounded sensible, but it was like they was all under water. My heart started pounding fit to burst and I felt real sick, like I was gonna vomit.

I hung around for a little while after but it was like everything was wrong now. I watched them all dancing around and singing and shouting and it just seemed fake to me, like they was all putting on a big show or something, acting it out for each other and everyone trying to be holier than everybody else. I went outside and walked until I couldn't hardly hear them anymore, until the door of the tent was just a little gash of light in the darkness. I went back the way I had come, Virgil.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 7

Dear Virgil,

Did you ever notice that the more you try to please some people, the more you end up making them mad? This seemed to be the case with myself recently, where I found that, when I was going back through the old records of my work with the police department, I found some open cases so I decided, being a conscientious sort of person as you know me to be, that I would forward this information to the police department just in case they felt they wanted to assign an officer to pursue these matters. Well, what did I get back for my trouble? I got a nasty letter in the mail telling me that obviously I had not done my job during my tenure with the police department because if I had, then all of these cases would be closed instead of outstanding. It was written to me by the Mayor himself and he said something like, 'this reinforces my opinion that we ought never to have hired a man of your experience', meaning that I had none or at least none that he felt it worthwhile to speak of.

You can just imagine how I felt. I said to myself, 'well Bill you can let this piss you off and ruin your entire day or you can just shrug it off and let the bastards fall where they may'. Well, you know me, it kind of pissed me off for a few minutes but then I decided it was just as well to let bygones be bygones. Some people it just doesn't matter how much you try to please them, there is nothing you can do that is any good. It doesn't matter how hard you work or how much effort you put in to something, it don't make no nevermind. You can burn the midnight oil and you can work yourself right into the grave but it ain't never gonna please them, simply because They is They and you is you.

The other thing that I would say further to this matter is that some people, when they are having a bad day, they can't help themselves. They just got to pass it on to everybody else, so if something in the way of misfortune happened to them, then they got to pass it on down the line to you and make you feel it, too. I don't know why that is, exactly but I guess they figure misery loves company. Anyway it reinforces my own decision that I did the right thing by leaving. Hell, if they hadn't fired me I maybe would have quit anyway. Well, that is easy enough to say when you ain't got no bills to pay but me, like everybody else, I got bills and I got things coming due that I gotta take care of.

You have probably also noticed, as I have, that when you are a certain kind of person you don't fit. I alluded to this before in one of my earlier letters, that it does not matter how hard you work or how hard you try, you don't fit. They ain't gonna let you forget it. You can try as hard as you like and you can work ten times as hard as everybody else but a lot of time that is what you got to do. It still don't matter. They are not going to let you have a look in. They are not going to let you get a toehold. They are never, ever let you forget that you are a certain kind of person and they are a certain kind of person and there is nothing you can do to bridge that gap.

It's almost like they got their boot on your neck and they got some kind of vested interest in keeping you down, making sure you don't get too high and mighty or too above yourself or start thinking like maybe you got a place in the world and maybe they ought to move over and let you have what is rightfully yours. I am thinking that you particularly, Virgil, know what I am talking about. It's been that way with me all my life. I don't know how much you know or how much gossip you have heard but well, I did not exactly have no bed of roses growing up.

Now, I ain't saying it because I want anybody feeling sorry for me. No pity for me, no thank you. The fact of it is, though, I never did know who my daddy was. Growing up it was just me and my mother and my mother well, she had her weakness just like any other human being. Her weakness as you probably know Virgil was the bottle. Momma did not care how the day started as long as there was a bottle of something at the end of it. She always made sure that she had a drink of something and if that meant leaving me there and going out to get a drink, then that was what she would do. I do not blame her; she could not help herself. People like that, they're sick. They got some kind of sickness, some kind of something inside of them all the time grinding away and grinding away like a set of teeth, grawing at 'em, gnawing and festering till they can't stand it no more. If she wasn't drinking then she was crying and I woulda rather seen her drunk as a skunk than crying her eyes out. But people around these parts, well, they don't like to let you forget a thing like that. You grow up a certain way, you had a certain kind of momma or maybe your family went on the Relief because they had to, they like to remind you of it, just in case you forget where you come from. They figure well, if that is how you started out then who the hell are you to get above yourself. They like to make sure and keep that boot on your neck so that if you start getting somewhere in the world they be standing right by to smush you back down.

I know you understand what I mean.

The problem, Virgil, as you probably know, is that some of us folks, well, they might smush us down but we ain't gonna stay smushed down, you read me? We don't much like the view from down there and the more they push us down, the more and the harder we push back and before you know it we got a total and complete tug of war going on. They trying to push us down and we trying to push back up. Are you surprised to hear somebody like me talking about something like this to you, Virgil? I expect you only ever thought to hear such talk from people like your own self, or maybe you don't have them kinds of prejudice. Do you?

Yours truly,

Bill

November 11

Dear Virgil,

Did you ever notice that the people that you help, you know, these poor people who got nobody else to speak for them, they sure do appreciate what you can do for them. They got no power to help themselves and they damn well don't got any to help you but they sure appreciate anything you can do for them. On the other hand, people who got lots of power, they don't need you to do nothing for them but if you do and then later when they are in a position to help you, a lot of the time they plain don't bother.

It is up to them. They can help you or they cannot help you as fancy takes them. They are beholden to nobody except maybe the Lord above and even then I got my doubts. I guess the way it is, when you are in our business is that you help people, not because of what they can do for you but because of what you can do for them. You know, a lot of the time you are the only person who can speak for them. You are the only person who is there to put out a hand when they really need one because there ain't nobody else gonna do that for them. These big boys, these fat cats, do you think they give a hoot about these poor bastards down here? They don't care. It is nothing to them. Any of these guys, well they grew up glad-handing before they were even out of the womb. As far as they are concerned it is the way the world works. A little bit of money in the right direction, grease a few of the right palms and boy howdy, everything you want just comes rolling in your door, but these other poor people, the ones we end up helping, they got no money, they got no power, they got nobody. Sometimes they get to feeling frustrated and angry and it's hard for them to say exactly what's bothering them because they ain't got a fancy education. A lot of the time they are real grateful for what we do for them even if they can't say it. I dunno, it kind of makes me feel right proud that I am doing it. If I don't do it, there is nobody else gonna do it and maybe someday I'll need somebody to do for me.

I know for me, doing this kind of work is like making restitution, you know after you confess your sins and you ask Jesus and God to forgive you and then you got to make everything better. I guess maybe I am trying to balance it out or something. Maybe if I make enough restitution, when it comes to my turn and the end of my life, maybe the Lord above might forget some of the things I done. It's like every time I help somebody else I am confessing something, that I ain't perfect, that I made a hell of a lot of mistakes. Every time I help somebody or talk somebody down out of a window or off a ledge or take a gun out of some young person's hand or keep somebody from hurting somebody else it's like I'm saying 'yeah, I'm guilty too and this is how I'm trying to fix it.'

It's a funny thing about sins, Virgil. We don't just confess our own. We confess everybody else's too, you ever notice that? When a man is lying on his deathbed if he is lucky or lying on the cold ground if he is not, he ain't just confessing his own sins. He is confessing other people's sins, too. Maybe that's all part of it. Maybe that's the kinda sort of thing we got to do to lighten the load on our souls at the end of the day.

I expect you know what I mean.

Yours truly,

Bill

November l5

Dear Virgil,

Have you ever, to your knowledge, found yourself at a particular juncture and wondered how the hell you got there? This morning I got up early and took myself to that particular park which you had previously mentioned, the one that is at the top of the hill and which looks out over the city. I didn't mind the climb too much, even though there was frost on everything and I could see my breath out there in front of me but I stopped several times to look. The view, as you promised, is amazing and it struck me how, until you're up above something you can't see the whole of it, can you? All you ever get to see are the bits and pieces of it, passing glimpses, like riding in a fast car with the lights going and the siren hollering all to Jesus and back again. You don't never get to see anything but the smallest part of it when you pass through it that way but if you get up high enough then you can see everything there is to see, and take your time in the looking. I expect you know what I mean.

I have been walking around your fine city a lot lately, visiting all the places you told me I should visit, stopping now and then to take the measure of the place and look around me. There are streets in your city, Virgil, that gather themselves to run from here to Kingdom Come but then they end, quickly and without any kind of ceremony whatsoever and I have stood there on these streets and wondered. It don't seem right that something should just end, with no kind of warning. But things do. They end every single day. Why, I remember years ago, a situation when I was a young police officer assigned to a nighttime patrol in a dangerous part of a certain Southern city. We had received word that a young man was driving dangerously and so my partner and me, we hit the siren and the lights and went to see what was going on. We found the car, run up into a tree, and the driver standing in the middle of the road with a gun in his hand, not pointed at us but at himself. He shouted out, 'You come any closer and I'm gonna do it. I swear to God I'm gonna do it'. We must have spent close to an hour talking him out of what was obviously a very bad decision and in the end he did what we told him to, and put the gun down on the ground. So you'd think that was it, he was out of danger. No sir, no way. Just as he put the gun down a big sedan jumped the curb on the other side of the road and came barreling toward him. Hit him so hard it threw him into the air and he was dead before he even came down. The driver was an old lady who had a heart attack while she was on her way back from church. She survived.

Now you explain that one to me. I'll be waiting to hear your reply.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 2l

Dear Virgil,

I have noticed that the character of a city is often reflected in the character of its inhabitants. I may have mentioned this to you before. I noticed it particularly today, as I decided to do some more walking around your fine city. I found myself on a long, straight stretch of road along which were situated a great many examples of fine architecture as it is interpreted up here. This long, straight stretch of road seemed like to stitch two parts of the city together, running from There to Here almost like a train line might do back home. Like us, you favor churches and great temples of industry (as my granddaddy liked to call them) but yours are dressed in pale, cold stone.

It is a cold day today, clear and cloudless, with a pale autumn sun hanging low in the sky. I have noticed that around here in your city even when the sun is out this time of the year it isn't very warm, so I took the necessary precaution of bundling myself up. I wanted to be prepared for any weather contingency as might arise. I must have walked for perhaps an hour, an hour and a half. I saw lots of buses and cars go by, people walking together. I stopped into a diner to get a cup of coffee to warm myself before I continued my excursion. One thing I noticed as I was going into the diner, there was a man there ahead of me and he was also going in. Now, where I come from we would hold the door so that the person who is coming behind us would not be struck by it, should it chance to close unexpectedly. This gentleman did not extend me this courtesy. He merely barged in through the door and left it to swing in my face, something which I thought was extraordinarily rude and I was on the point of saying something to him. Then I remembered that I am a guest in this city so I would be better off holding my tongue. I also recalled something you said to me that night we ate supper together, that unless I wanted to talk with my fists sometimes it's better to keep my mouth shut. This is a lesson I fear I may need to learn.

I noticed as well that when I started to engage the other patrons of the diner in conversation they were not inclined to pass the time of day. I said good morning to a gentleman who was seated at the counter, as I was, and he shot me such a look you would not believe it. It was full of spite and venom, and he moved down two stools away from me, as if I had contaminated him by speaking to him. Now, I am not saying that everybody in the South is friendly and neighborly but we are courteous to speak when someone addresses us directly. I can see why you exhibited such unnatural reserve when first you came to our city. It was because you had lived here in this Northern city for so long that you had become accustomed to the way people are up here. Thus you had forgotten all about your natural friendliness towards your fellow man as is right and proper.

I did have one person speak to me, however. I was standing on a street corner waiting for the light to change when a little old lady with a shopping cart full of junk pulled up and stood beside me. She looked and looked and finally she said 'you ain't from around here, are you?' and I said 'no ma'am, I'm from the South.' And she said 'what's a Southern boy like you doing all the way up here?' And I said 'well ma'am, I come up here on a mission of understanding I guess you could say.' She said it was interesting and asked me what led me to this. I said 'well ma'am I knew somebody one time who came to visit me in my city' and then I thought about it a little more and I was forced to correct myself. That isn't quite right. I had a very good friend, someone who taught me an awful lot, come to visit me in my city and while he was there he showed me some things that I never stopped to think about before but if I had I would have certainly agreed with his assessment of the situation. At first I didn't like him very much and I thought that if I was gonna be friends with anybody it sure wouldn't be somebody like this guy. I thought that he came down to my city with his fancy Northern education and his expensive clothes and he was figuring to tell me and mine what was what and how things was gonna work. That's what I told her. I said 'ma'am, the more I got to know him, the more I understood that he wasn't trying to tell me nothing, the things that he was talking about, they were just common sense and anybody with a brain in his head, well, he'd be able to see that what my friend was talking about was just people treating each other like people. Not being so mean to each other. Not cutting each other out at every opportunity or using something about a person as a small excuse to treat them like garbage. I reckon Virgil was trying to tell me and tell us that maybe we shouldn't be so nasty to each other. Maybe we should try and be more Christian like it says in the Bible. Maybe we ought to try and treat each other the way we want to be treated and ma'am, I am not a religious man, no sir I am not. I was raised Baptist but that is as far as it goes. I ain't religious. I don't go to church. I don't preach nothing to nobody that they don't already know but I think that was the kind of thing that he was saying and if so, well, that makes sense to me.

As soon as I started talking she looked at me and said 'I bet I know who you're talking about'. I thought she was crazy. I figured there wasn't no way in a city as big as yours that a woman like that could know anything about you, about anybody. I thought she was just some crazy old woman with a cart full of junk but she said 'no, no, you listen here, son. I know him. I know who you're talking about. When I was a young woman, when I was first married, me and my husband we lived right around the corner from this friend of yours, his mother and father. I saw him grow up. I remember when his mother brought him home from the hospital all wrapped up, you couldn't see nothing except this little angry, screwed up face.' I said 'yeah, that sure sounds like him. That sure sounds like Virgil, that angry part'

She said 'let me tell you something about him. His parents brought him up different from a lot of kids around here. His daddy worked in a factory, made shoes, made all kinds of shoes, made work boots, them kind with the real thick rubber soles that you wear when you're doing work outside. His momma, well, sometimes she cleaned houses for the rich folk and sometimes she took in laundry. I never saw such a hard working woman as his momma. Do you know he had a brother?'

I said 'why no, ma'am I did not know that'.

She said 'oh yeah he had a younger brother, Virgil did, by the name of Auston. He and Auston, they sort of were close. Auston looked up to Virgil and they grew up being really close together. Virgil was probably five years older than him so he would have been in high school when Auston was still just a little boy. Oh yeah I know him, I remember him. As good as Virgil was, as good and kind and decent as his parents made him, well, his brother Auston, he was bad. He was just the opposite. I don't know what happened to that boy. I don't know where he went wrong but he did.' She said 'I bet Virgil never told you about Auston, did he?' I said no ma'am, he did not. It kind of never come up.

'When Auston was twelve and Virgil was seventeen, Auston and some of his little friends decided it might be fun to hold up a candy store, so they did,' she said. 'Except the owner had a shotgun under the counter and damned if he didn't just up and blow Auston's brains out.'

That kind of stopped me cold. This was something you and I never discussed before. I said 'ma'am, do you mean that he killed him?' 'oh yeah,' she said, 'he splattered that boy all over the back wall. Virgil's daddy was working a double shift at the factory and Virgil didn't want his momma to have to face that. So after the police came and cleaned up the mess he went to the morgue to identify his brother's body. He insisted that his brother have a closed casket because there was no way he wanted his momma looking at that. I know what he saw. My boy Wilbur, he was there. He was a friend of Auston's. He saw it. He said that shotgun blast damn near took Auston's head right off his shoulders, like splattering a pumpkin.'

I understand why you never mentioned anything to me. I know what it's like to carry that kind of sorry around with you for years and years, and it lying festering in your guts, carrying it with you everywhere you go. People see you on the street. People look at you and you think, 'Do they know? Does she know? That guy over there in the window of the diner having a cup of coffee, does he know? Does he know what my brother did? Does he know what happened?' Shoot, I remember when, no, wait that's another time. That's another time.

She asked if you had ever mentioned Auston to me and I said that no, you never did. I didn't really have no way of telling her that the only time you and I ever really talked was the night you came to my house for supper and we sat all night talking. Yeah, talking is what we did that night.

Sometimes I wish we'd had a bit more time to talk, you know what I mean? I wish we'd talked a bit more. I wish I could have kept you there in that room. We'd still be there now. I keep going over it in my head and saying if only, if only I had kept you there in that room and in my house behind shuttered windows and a locked door. If only I had kept you there till morning. If only you had never left. But I expect it don't make no nevermind now.

I been walking down this long, long road in your town, Virgil. I been walking first with the sun on my back and I been walking with the sun in my face. I am walking and it is all going past me and I keep asking myself, is this the name of the street? Is this what they call it? Is this the place where it happened? Is this the place? And then I'll walk another block and I'll say is this the place where it happened over here right next to this tree? Is there where it happened? What about here in front of this church? Is this maybe where it happened? Or over there, by the playground where those boys are tossing that ball around, is that the spot?

The fact of the matter is, Virgil, I just don't know.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 24

Dear Virgil,

Lately I have been thinking a lot about loneliness. You will remember the discussion that you and I had that night you came to my house for supper, when I asked you if you ever got lonely. You will remember that your reply to me was quite singular and caused what some might consider a rift or a disquisition between our two selves. However, I prefer to think of it as the opening of an opportunity to discuss a lot of things that, if you hadn't responded the way you had, we would have never discussed.

Today I continued my walking tour of your fine city. It was even colder than the last time I went for a walk. I believe that the further I go and the deeper I penetrate your city, the colder it gets. A person of a literary bent would no doubt say that there is some sort of a metaphor but I prefer to think of it merely as weather.

Well as I said I took another walk today in the opposite direction or rather perpendicular to the direction I had gone before. Like many other cities yours also has sections that are rather poor and the people who live there often do not have decent work or other means of support, or else they have jobs that do not pay very much, such as pumping gas. I know this because during much of my high school career I also pumped gas and kept the till for a man in my hometown, name of Ricky Strike, who didn't have the sense the good Lord gave to goats but who managed to get along nevertheless. Ricky Strike paid me whatever he happened to have lying around in the pockets of his dirty green work pants, least that's what it seemed like to me. It was hard enough trying to keep body and soul together, me with no daddy and my momma being the way she was. It wouldn't have hurt him one bit to pay me more than he did but I guess some folks are just immune to the suffering of others, don't you think?

I was very interested to notice as I walked into this particular part of your city how the characteristics of the people that lived and worked there changed. I believe you may know what I am alluding to. It is that one thing that stands as the difference between us and which you commented on many times unfavorably to me while you were in my city. The further I went in this particular direction, Virgil, the more people I saw who resembled you and not so many who looked like me. This caused me some small consternation, I don't mind telling you. I wondered, as a stranger in a strange place often does, if these people intended to do me any harm. I couldn't conceive of their intentions being friendly or benign and I can't rightly say why. At first as I walked I just kept my eyes straight ahead and did not engage the glances of others, but the more I walked, the more I noticed I was subject to a certain kind of gaze. I began meeting their eyes with my own, as a way of letting them know that I saw them and I was not shrinking from their way of looking at me. But this caused a peculiar sort of prickle deep down inside of me. I felt like I was engaged in something that was maybe not appropriate. It occurred to me that under certain circumstances, my gaze could be taken as an offence. I didn't mean it that way of course. As you know, where I come from, when somebody looks at you, you look back at them. Normally in the South this sort of thing is taken at face value. Somebody looks at you and you look back at them and say 'good morning' and go on your way.

This was not the case in your city and I began to feel distinctly uncomfortable. I felt a prejudice, dare I say it, in their eyes, and this annoyed me. You will recall that this is a very tender subject between you and I, especially considering the circumstances of your visit to my city.

I have to say, after walking for about an hour, I began to feel some distinct level of threat. I will not be so crass as to say I was afraid for my life but I received the distinct impression that, unless I picked up my feet and was quick about my business, there were some in the area who might take serious issue with my presence. This made me stop and think quite a bit about the topic of our last discussion. I hadn't done anything to make these people angry with me. I was merely walking down the street in their city, minding my own business, not looking for an argument and not giving anybody any reason to dislike me. But there it was, staring me in the face. Now what do you think about that?

As I was walking I noticed that more and more people stopped to look at me as if wondering what I was doing in the area. People started to gather on the side of the road and as I went by they began making up little groups and kind of muttering to each other, sort of quiet like. I heard them say things like 'what's he doing here? Don't he know this ain't his part of town?' It was a very unusual sensation. I didn't like it. I am not a stupid man, but I reckon there are times when my accent and my way of being in the world causes certain people to think about me in a particular way. Every time I open my mouth if I'm north of the Mason-Dixon line and somebody hears my accent, my IQ drops about a hundred points and they put me down as nothing but a big, dumb cracker whose momma and daddy were probably brother and sister. Right away there's a flag on my back. You know what I mean? Like it's that simple. Like the whole damn thing ain't a lot more complicated than who did what back when and whose great-great-granddaddy took a notion to horsewhip some sense into somebody.

Now I know what you're gonna say. Goddammit, I can just about hear you saying it, but just hold on a minute. Just you hold on. I expect you know the kind of preconceptions I am talking about, but so do I. Trust me, so do I.

Anyway, the more I walked and the more people there were lined up looking at me, the more nervous I got. By this time I was very uncomfortable and thinking that maybe I had made a mistake and I should have picked some other direction in which to take my walk. Maybe I shouldn't have gone in there in the first place and I started to feel like even being out there where folks could see me was dangerous and bad. I felt like maybe I was infringing on the rights of these good citizens. You know what I mean? Just by being where I was and looking the way I do, I was causing trouble. I was out and I shouldn't have been out. Maybe I didn't have no business and maybe I didn't have no right walking in this part of town. Maybe I should have taken my walk somewhere else. At one point, Virgil, I decided that I would need to seek safety because what I felt from these people was in no way friendly. I honest-to-god felt like my personal safety might be at stake.

I ducked into a little store, thinking to buy myself a Coke and catch my breath. Well, I went up to the counter and I didn't see anybody in this store who looked like me. No sir, there was nobody in this store who looked like me at all and I felt like everybody that was in there was looking at me like they were judging me. They were thinking the same thing as all them people on the street, 'what's he doing in here? What'd he come here for? He don't need to come in here.' I was most definitely being scrutinized by these people. So I went up to the lady at the counter and I said 'excuse me ma'am, I would like to buy a Coke.' There were two young men standing over by the ice cream cooler and they looked at her and then all three of them kinda sized me up. One of the young men said something to the other. I couldn't rightly hear what it was they said, but they looked at me and laughed. I don't mind telling you that by then I felt pretty scared. No sir, I don't mind telling you that at all. I thought, well shit, where the hell am I gonna go if they decide to, I don't know, keep me from leaving, push me up against the wall, take out a gun or a knife, there ain't nothing that I can do. I don't reckon that I got any choice here. I knew they were all looking at me and they were asking themselves what is a boy like him doing in a place like this? I kept my eyes down. I ain't never backed away from anybody's gaze in my life but I kept my eyes down. I kept myself polite and I drew on my best manners and I said 'ma'am, if you don't mind I sure would like to buy a coke. How much do y'all charge for a coke around here?' And she said 'well that will be twenty-five cents for a large one' and I said 'thank you ma'am, that would suit me right good. I sure would like to have a large one if you don't mind' so I paid her and I took it and I opened it and those young gentlemen they were watching me the whole time and I was scared. It felt like there was something dark. No, I beg your pardon, that is not what I meant. It felt that there was something unpleasant about to happen then. It could go either way. If somebody said something or somebody laughed at the wrong time or if I made a mistake and said the wrong thing, then I felt like it was just gonna erupt and the whole thing was just gonna bust wide open and there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it. I thought well, there is the door. If worse comes to worst then I can bolt out of there. If worse comes to worst I can, well hell, what can I do? I kept thinking two words the whole time I was there, Virgil. I kept thinking 'us' and 'them'. I said to myself 'it's us and it's them. It's me and it's them. I'm here in this part of a northern city, looking the way I look and talking the way I talk and they know that I don't belong here' and my guts were turning to water, let me tell you.

I knew there was nothing I could do and there was nowhere that I could go. If I wanted to make a break for it, run away, if I wanted to somehow escape there wasn't a damn thing I could do. After I paid for my coke I said 'thank you, ma'am and I hope all y'all have a very good day' and I almost made it to the door. Almost. I was maybe two steps away from the door when one of the young gentlemen by the entrance stood in my way. He put his body right in my way and he said 'excuse me'. That's what he said, kinda uppity and sarcastic. He said 'excuse me I wonder if I might have a word with you' and I said 'sir, I beg your pardon but I don't want no trouble. I just come in here to buy a coke'.

Now he didn't touch me. He didn't lay a hand on me. He just kind of backed me up against the wall and he just stood there looking at me and he didn't say nothing. I found that really strange. He didn't say nothing at all. There was a lot of different things he could have said but he decided not to say anything at all, like I wasn't worth it and he didn't want to waste no breath on me. I don't rightly know. I ain't never claimed to know what's going through a man's mind. You know, Virgil, before I got this job, the job I used to have, the job I had when you met me, I was a prison guard. I believe I told you that. Yes, I do believe I did. I spent a lot of years knocking some pretty big guys back into line, making 'em behave, even breaking heads if that's what I had to do. Spent some time keeping things together in the death house, too. Now that's the place where a lot of things can change. No doubt you've heard of death row conversions, some no-good old scumbag finding Jesus while they're waiting for the electric chair. Lot of times you're working a shift on a holiday weekend or during Christmas or whatever and you find yourself passing time with these men, some of it late at night or early in the morning. Regular days, they ain't so bad because even in the death house there's things to do, stuff to take your mind off what's gonna come. Well, I suppose it gotta come to all of us someday, ain't that right? But maybe sitting there hour after hour and day after day thinking about things, it's like listening to a chilly wind come howling around outside your house and knowing that it's waiting for you. I expect ain't nobody alive don't worry about what it's like to die, like stepping off a cliff. That's what it was like for the men I knew up there, anyways. Weren't none of them saints, not one. These were men who'd raped and murdered, who beat old people to death with baseball bats, one guy who ran down some little kid in the street just for the hell of it. The real dregs of society as they say. Human trash. Some of them were like me, come from the same sort of place as I did. Some of them looked like you. That's the funny thing, though, ain't it? In the end it don't much matter, any of that stuff. It's like that fellow says in Shakespeare, about how if you poke something in him he's gonna bleed like the rest of us. We all bleed red, don't we? And now you're shaking your head because you never thought I knew the works of Mr. Shakespeare. Do you see what I mean? Everybody thinks they know. Everybody does it. We're all just like each other. We all do the same damn thing over and over.

There's lots of guys up there in the death house that like to act big, being loud and showing off, making out like they ain't scared of nobody. The real funny thing is, when you talk to them, they want to talk about regular stuff. Ain't none of them wants to talk about what it's going to be like or how they're gonna do it. Hell, they know how it happens. They know they're gonna take that last walk and it's gonna be the longest walk they ever take and the last chance they ever get to talk to anybody else. Once they strap you in and once that door slams shut behind you, well. That's that. They know what's coming. A lot of them are curious, you know. They want to see the whole situation before, see what the set-up is, how it's going to happen. You know, you can't allow that sort of thing to go on. There are rules. I can't imagine wanting to see such a thing myself. Just knowing that I was going to die in its hideous machinery would be enough, knowing that it exists, that it's there and in a span of hours or days I will be led to it and I will never come out alive. I suppose that is the sort of mood that leads so many to find God or whatever. I don't know that God visits the death house much. Leastways I never saw him there.

Yeah. No big wonder I'm talking about this now, huh?

When that young man held me there in front of that door there was a time, a space of several moments where I knew what he thought of me and I knew what I thought of myself. Somehow, without even saying a word he made me feel ashamed. You know what I mean? He made me feel ashamed of myself and hell, I never did nothing to him. Just went in there and bought myself a coke. I went in there to get away from the crowds of people outside who were watching me as I passed, like a condemned man on his way to the electric chair. It ain't no kind of revelation. The sky didn't crack open and there weren't no angels singing but when he stepped aside and let me leave I thanked him, and I meant it. I said 'thank you, sir. Thank you very much, sir. Y'all have a good day, sir'. I was still saying thank you as I went out. When the door closed behind me I could hear them laughing and I knew they were laughing at me.

Yours truly,

Bill

November 25

Dear Virgil,

The whole thing with being laughed at, you have to understand. I want to make it clear so that there is no confusion there and it don't seem like I'm trying to give myself airs.

I don't get laughed at. I am not a man who is subject to the laughter of others. Like I said to you in my last letter, I used to be a prison guard. You understand that is the kind of profession, the kind of job where you gotta make damn sure that they know you are the authority. You are the authority because if you let on for one minute that you are weak, them boys will rip you to shreds. You know it. I know it. I ain't kidding. That's how prison guards get killed every day. Every day people get killed. You cannot ever let your guard down and so I don't. I am the law. I enforce it. I embody it. That is who I am.

It wasn't always that way. I kind of think, well, I don't know. I don't like to suppose knowledge where none necessarily exists but seems to me like maybe you figured that much out about me. That's okay. I don't mind somebody like you knowing. No, not somebody like you. It's you I don't mind knowing. I reckon there are things about me that you done figured out that nobody else did and that's fine because I know there's stuff about you that I figured out that nobody else could see on account of that shell you got built up around yourself. It kind of puts us on an equal footing, don't you think?

There was a time in my life, when I was a much younger man, when my family and where I grew up and the way I spoke, a lot of different things led me into being a laughing stock. I don't think I need to go into no big story. We all got our history. I got mine and you got yours. It's all there. When I walked out of that store and those young men laughed at me and I could hear them laughing, the woman behind the counter and the young girl down there stocking the shelves, the one thing that sort of burned through me like I had acid instead of blood was shame. You know, the kind of hot shame you feel that makes you want to dig a hole in the ground and pull it in after yourself. That's what I felt. You know, Virgil, I honest to God hope that I never, ever, at any time in our acquaintance gave you cause to feel ashamed and if I did I am heartily and completely sorry and I beg your forgiveness. I don't think that any man, anywhere, ever ought to feel ashamed of who he is, where he comes from or what he stands for. I think it is some kind of crime against god, against man, against nature, against everything that stands for decency to make somebody feel ashamed of being who he is, ashamed of something that he can't help.

Something occurred to me today when I got back to my hotel, after I had sat myself down and had a cup of coffee and a bite to eat. I started thinking about some of the things that have happened to me since I been in your fine city. You know how people talk about 'unanswered prayers' and how the Lord works in mysterious ways and sometimes the unanswered prayer is the best one because it's better for you if you don't have whatever it was you were praying for, well I'm sure you've heard of that. I found myself lately thinking not so much about unanswered prayers as unasked questions. The questions you don't ask, of course, are the ones you never get answers to. I found myself wondering if there were questions that maybe you wanted to ask me that you never got around to asking and that I never got around to answering.

I know there's questions I wanted to ask you because really, when you talk about the sum total of a relationship or a friendship or a commonality or a coming-together or whatever the hell it was, for us there was just a span of days when you and I knew each other and there was just that one night that we talked and talked and talked. There's questions that I never got the chance to ask. There's a lot of questions I never got the chance to ask. For example, the first time you met me, the first time you and I ever clapped eyes on each other, do you remember? When you walked into my office? Did you hate me? Did you look at me and think that this man right here is the sum and total of everything that I hate, the sum total of all my oppression? Did you think that? Did you automatically mark me out as your enemy? Did you assume before I'd even uttered a word that you and I would hate each other? Did you? I often wonder about that. I often think that if I'd had the chance to ask, that is one of the questions I would have asked for sure.

Another question that I wanted to ask was, that night we were talking and I asked you about loneliness, what did you think I was asking, really? Did you think I was asking you for something? Or did you know what I was asking for? Because you know and I know the outcome of that particular discussion. You know and I know the answer to that question, the answer you gave, the answer that I gave, the responses that we both were primed to make and we did. Did that surprise you? Later on, when we were at the train and I called you back for that one moment, that one last moment, because I knew I would never see you down here again, what did you think when you turned around? What did you think I was gonna say? And what did you think of the things I didn't say? Maybe we already said them.

I am trying not to dwell in regret. I am trying not to be that sort of man. I am trying not to be the sort of man that my upbringing and my parents and the daddy I never knew and the momma who drank herself sick and left me alone for days at a time when I was just a little bitty baby and I am not saying this so you'll have pity for me because you know me and I am not interested in that. I think every single one of us is walking around with a gaping wound and every single one of us walks and talks and thinks and acts out of that wound. That wound, that great big gaping hole, that rip or whatever the hell it is, that is the thing what tell us what to do and it tells us how to be. I know what mine is and I thought I knew what yours was but I was wrong. I thought I understood the nature of your wound but I don't. That's my unasked question. That's the question I wanted to ask and I never got the time to ask it.

Exactly what is the nature of your wound, Virgil? What bruise is it that you're carrying on your soul? You wanna tell me that? Can you tell me that? Or would you rather make an excuse, pretend it don't matter because you're above all that. Your education and your intelligence somehow protect you from feeling anything that don't make sense to you. If you could tell me that in one word, two words, three, a handful, what would you say?

Yours truly,

Bill

December l

Dear Virgil,

Well I guess you heard I got another job. I was kind of surprised that they managed to track me down all the way up here but they did. It seems that a while ago I applied for a position in prison administration but I completely forgot about it. I assumed another equally skilled candidate had been given the job. You can imagine my surprise when the desk clerk at my hotel told me there was a telegram for me from the prison system in Arkansas. When I read it up, lo and behold as they say, they were offering me the job. It certainly puts my mind to rest because even though I haven't said much about it, I was thoroughly worried about how I would keep body and soul together.

I remember you once jokingly told me that you could find me a position in your police department at which I remember the two of us had a very good laugh. It isn't that I don't appreciate the gesture but as I once told you before I can't imagine myself living up here. Not that there is anything wrong with it, mind you. From what I have seen of it, yours is a very fine city but I would be a fish out of water up here.

The beauty of this job is I will only be involved in prison administration at the furthest possible remove as the position is that of a consultant, so I will not be required to enforce the law as such. Believe it or not that is a relief to me. There comes a time, Virgil, as I am sure you know, that you get tired of dealing with the scumbags and the drug dealers and the whores. You just want something different for yourself. I think what happens after a while is you get so used to scumbags and prostitutes and murderers, thieves and pickpockets and swindle men that you become hard inside. Everything that you were used to feeling don't mean nothing to you no more and you sort of look at the world as being an awful place, an evil place where people do horrible things to each other. I allow that is definitely true but thinking that way does take a toll, don't you think? You get so used to bottling up your feelings that pretty soon after five or ten or fifteen, twenty years you get to the point where you can't feel nothing at all. So when some reason comes along for you to feel something, when some person comes into your life who makes you feel something that you ain't felt for a long time, maybe you get to thinking that the life you been leading and the profession that you been involved in, maybe it's been nibbling away at you, just gnawing away at you.

You realize it's time to do something different so you can still have some nerves and some sensitivity left, while you can still feel. The really funny thing about it is you never know where you gonna end up in your life. I think sometimes the way you feel about things can surprise you. Some days you can be going along, it's just a ordinary day and you don't think much about it until somebody comes along and makes you think different. Like they're waiting for you to say something, open the door. Maybe they ain't the kind of person you think and maybe they already got a picture formed of you. They know before you even open your mouth, before you say anything at all, that you are a certain kind of man and you can't make them not think it.

It's like misjudging the depth of water you're diving into, you know what I mean? When I was a kid there used to be this swimming hole roundabout where I lived. You'd go down the road a piece, about a quarter mile and there was this muddy hole where the river ran in and made a pool for itself. Us kids would all go there and cool off because you know how hot it gets. I remember there was this one kid, Randal Something his name was, decided he was gonna show off to everybody because he'd been taking swimming lessons for his self, down at the YMCA and well his daddy owned the local hardware store and they all thought they were la-di-dah.

So he decided he was gonna give us the benefit of his education. There was a rock kind of sticking out over the swimming hole and he kind of climbed up there and got himself all ready and by this time there was a large crowd of kids gathered around to watch. There wasn't much going on. There never was. This was a chance to see something, you know? They all stood around and he's up there saying 'I'm gonna show all y'all how it's done' and he decides he's gonna do a swan dive. That's the dive he's gonna do. One of the kids there watching asks him if maybe he should check and see how deep it is but Randal, he don't need no advice from the likes of us. He been trained, you see, by the finest instructors in the state of Mississippi. He knows how to dive so we all better watch him and learn something. So he lined his self up and he started forward, swinging his arms and bringing them up over his head. You can sort of guess what happened next. He figured this was the deepest part, where the river done made a pool for itself but you know, that spot, it wasn't more than three feet deep. He his hard on the top of his head. You gotta understand, he was diving from a rock that was about thirty feet up and he hit so hard that it broke his neck. No big surprise there.

We all sitting there watching him and after a bit the bubbles stopped coming up and Lucy Brown's older brother Jeb, he said, 'Maybe he ain't gonna come up' so Jeb and Joe Bob Pryor and Joe Bob's brother Rodney, they waded into the swimming hole and drug him out. He was all but dead but somebody ran up the road and called the ambulance but it wasn't no good. He was dead, because he misjudged the depth of the water.

Now his problem was, he looked at the water and he figured it was a lot deeper than it was. That's kind of like some people. You meet them, and they're all educated and they're dressed good and they talk the fancy educated talk and everybody thinks 'well my my my if I talk to this person he's gonna tell me something I really want to hear'. Then you talk to them and they don't tell you nothing and maybe they ain't very nice or maybe they say nasty stuff about other people. Then there's some other people and you meet them and you think well, this person right here is gonna be shallow as ditchwater. Shoot, he's ignorant. I can't talk to him.

Except sometimes you talk to him and you figure some things out. He knows a lot more than you ever thought but he been looking into you, too, just like you been looking into him. Sometimes when you think it's deep, a thing is actually shallow and I think it works the other way around too. You can know somebody their whole life and never, ever plumb their depths, you know what I'm saying? You never get to the bottom of how they feel about you. Maybe they never get around to telling you. Maybe you don't never get around to telling them. Maybe it's one of them things where all y'all are sitting around in somebody's front room and you ask him a question and there's a lot of different ways he could answer. He could try and be smart, give you the benefit of his education, he could display his own brand of ignorance which essentially is him thinking he's better than you and everybody else except maybe the good Lord above or, and this is very rare, I've found, he could answer you honestly, right from the bottom of his soul where ain't nobody ever gets a look in, not even him.

You ask him this particular certain question and you ain't meaning anything by it. All the armor that you done built up on yourself over the years it just all falls away. It's all gone. There's nothing between you and him and you're just asking him the kind of question that you ain't never in your life asked nobody. Now the way I see it, he's got a moment when he can be any number of things. He can decide how he wants to answer you and wonder of wonders, he answers you honestly. Now that's what you call deep.

Once you open yourself up you're like some old house with all the windows and doors uncovered, everything wide open so the wind can blow through. Sometimes that feeling comes when somebody asks if you're afraid to die or did your momma smack you around when you was little or do you think you could love somebody like me. The answers of course are yes, yes and yes. But you can only give that answer when you're wide open, with everything uncovered and no matter how deep and wide the walls that you thought were there between you, they don't matter no more. Suddenly there's a door that you never saw before and it's pointing you a certain way. It's like a big sign telling you to go in here, here is where you need to go, now go on. The conversation that you have just had is the thing that is pointing the way, it's the door but it's also the sign that shows you how to get there.

So you're there in front of this door and you stop and look around you for a second. You know that once you go through this door you can't back up and go some other way. You can't say 'oh no this ain't the door I want to go through, I want to go through that door over there'. No sir. You can't say that you don't feel up to going through any doors today. You kind of step back and you look and you think about what you're going to do. You think about it real hard because you know that what's on the other side of that door is gonna change you like you never thought. It is gonna make a whole different man of you and the very first time that you are together with someone in that honesty that you just made, it is so powerful a thing. It's like the calm after a real bad rainstorm or early, early in the morning on a summer day or Jesus rising from the dead. You know it's like the stone's been rolled away from the grave and you can't never look at the world in the same way again. It ain't possible. Because them eyes that you had before, they're gone. You got new eyes now. It's a completely different morning in a completely different place and you're waking up and seeing this other person lying next to you on the pillow and saying 'well hi, good morning'.

You're smiling because this is the strangest damn thing that ever happened to you. But it ain't strange in a bad way because you know that something real unusual has happened, something real special and you are there in the middle of that honesty. You are right there and it's like getting a drink of water after being thirsty for a long time. Hell, you know all the things they call it. I don't gotta recite them for you. You see, that's the thing about that sort of conversation, Virgil. It leads you into that honesty and the honesty leads you into something rare, incredibly unusual, something that you didn't know you wanted, that you didn't know you needed. If you did know you were trying not to know it. Knowing it meant there were certain things about yourself that you had to understand and accept and acknowledge and by god you ain't gonna do that. But you can't deny the gift of that honesty, the gift of that knowledge, the gift that comes to you when you enter into that with another person.

I expect that's something else I never said thank you for. I expect it's something I ought to have been grateful for while I had the chance but I sure do thank you for allowing me to understand things about myself that I always suspected. Being the kind of person I am and coming from where I do, you honestly think there was any hope in hell of that ever happening? I mean, come on. You know what it's like down here.

Yours truly,

Bill

December 3

Dear Virgil,

It's a funny thing about honesty, though. Once you start having one of these chats, it leads you into a place where words are so absolutely unnecessary. It takes you into a place beyond words. Now I may not seem like a particularly educated individual to you but I read. I especially like the works of Mr. Shakespeare and Mr. John Keats and Mr. Thomas Stearns Eliot. I remember there is a particular phrase from one of Mr. Eliot's poems that has always stuck in my mind. It keeps coming back to my mind whenever I think about our conversation, and the way me and you both decided to just lay ourselves bare, the way we talked and where that talking took us.

I don't rightly remember what poem it's from, but he says something about 'till human voices wake us and we drown'. I have often thought on that, like you might do with a Bible verse, 'till human voices wake us and we drown'. Now I ain't no English teacher and I certainly am not a poet but I think what Mr. Eliot was trying to say there was that until somebody points it out to us, until somebody says 'this is this and that is that' it's like a baby that's not even born yet, just floating along in the womb, all innocent. As soon as that human voice points a thing out to us, as soon as somebody says 'this is this and that is that' we don't know no different. I think that is kind of what he is trying to say there about human voices waking us up and making us drown by telling us this is what the world is all about and you are expected to do this because you are this sort of a person and you come from this part of the world. And some other man he is expected to do that because he comes from there, that's when we start drowning. That's when the water we been floating in, it all floods in and we start to drown. That's the end to our blissful ignorance.

That is the thing about being in that place beyond words, that place where your honesty takes you. You don't need nobody to tell you. You don't care what this thing is called. You are not interested in the labels anybody might care to slap on what you are doing. It feels more right than anything and it is more than just the pleasures of the flesh. It is more than just sating the appetites of the body.

You know there was a time a while ago, when I was a very young man and new to the police force. I was probably younger than S- if that's possible but not quite as dumb. Well that's not fair. He ain't dumb.

I was new and I remember at the time I was investigating a case of arson that took place on the property of this widow woman who lived just outside of town. Now when I say 'widow woman' I don't mean she was eighty years old and all wrinkled up, no sir. She was the young widow of a man who'd owned this big factory up near Melton. She was beautiful. Well, what can I say? She invited me into her place and we spent the night together. One thing she told me that I never quite understood at the time but I do now is 'you underestimate the debt of pleasure that you owe yourself'. There is a certain amount of pleasure that the body needs in order for the soul to be satisfied and if we don't give it to ourselves we are gonna try and find that satisfaction in other ways, ways that maybe ain't so good for us, ain't so good for other people.

Remembering the words of Mr. Eliot also brings to mind a phrase from Mr. John Keats. I don't rightly recall which piece of poetry it's from but he is talking about his head being pillowed on his love's breast and hearing the 'fall and swell' of her 'tender taken breath' and how he cherishes that. When you pass through the door into that place without words I think that is kind of where you are. You exist in each other's eyes and in each other's breath and there is a sense of wonder and discovery that you never expected. It takes you by surprise. I know it's strange to hear me talking about this sort of thing. I am not exactly what you would call a romantic. I mean nobody would ever look at me in my capacity as chief of police and think that I was anything other than what you see on the surface, so it's interesting and unprecedented.

I guess this is just part and parcel of what meeting you did to me. It makes me wonder what meeting me might have done to you.

Love,

Bill

December 5

Dear Virgil,

I did as you told me to and went to visit the police department. The young man at the desk was most helpful in guiding me to where I needed to go and he knew enough to leave me alone once I had arrived at my destination. I know you will probably laugh when I tell you this but for me it had the quality of visiting a religious shrine. I hope that last bit there will make you smile. I hope it does.

As I suspected you are a great deal sloppier in your personal habits than you have ever led me to believe. The contents of your desk drawers are absolutely abhorrent and the floor underneath your desk, well, do not even get me started. I think a good, thorough cleaning with a dust rag and a mop would do your area a power of good. It's a funny thing what you can find out about a person by looking at his work area. I noticed, for instance, that your desk blotter is set perfectly square in the center of your desk and that you have sorted your pens and pencils into separate cups. Your paper clips and all the rest of it, elastic bands, forms, reports, file folders and so on are all loose in your desk drawer. It looks like something went in there and blew up. However, I managed to find the envelope that you had told me about, just as you described, a brown large envelope stuffed full and taped shut in the right hand side of your lower desk drawer. I also found half a bottle of bourbon in there of a very superior quality. I hope you do not mind but I have appropriated it and will take it with me when I go.

The men with whom you work are all of a very good sort and they speak about you with something approaching reverence. Seeing how you think you are so much smarter than everybody else, they must be at least as smart as you or else better able to hide their annoyance. I admire men who can do that. It is not a quality I have ever been able to perfect in myself and no doubt you remember the day I chewed you out about your arrogance and your great big head. They displayed your arrest record for me and I am not afraid to tell you I was impressed. I expect that will make your head swell some more. I took some time and explored the building from top to bottom, even the little Records room where they keep all sorts of things, useful and otherwise. Did you know that your winter overcoat is hanging in the cloakroom still? I will ask if I can take it with me when I leave, since I do not think it's a good idea to leave such a handsome piece of clothing in the open where anyone can take it. I like the stately interior of the police building and I can see how you would enjoy working in a place like this.

I was once fortunate enough to visit a great cathedral up North in one of your Yankee states. The interior was all dark wood, beautifully carved, and those gorgeous stained glass windows that Baptists like us can only scoff at. There was a smell of beeswax in the air, no doubt from the hundreds of candles people had lit at the votive altars set around the sanctuary. You could put a dollar in the poor box and that gave you the privilege of lighting a candle for someone who had died. Until now I have never understood that custom, being raised a Southern Baptist but this afternoon after I left your precinct I walked awhile and found myself in the great basilica of your city. Luckily the doors were open and I did not think anyone would mind if I went inside and just sat for a while. Something I will tell you that I don't think you ever realized before, I like the way churches smell inside. I don't go to church no more myself. Hell, I ain't been inside a church since my momma died and that was years ago. The few times I am ever inside the walls is in my capacity as chief of police, which as you know, don't apply no more. I can tell you there is nothing worse in this world than attending the funeral of someone who was killed on your watch, someone you have sworn to protect but who, for one reason or another, slipped through your fingers. Even worse than that is having to stand up in the church or beside the open grave of someone you have shot and killed. The eyes of their family seem to look right through you, Virgil, straight to your marrow. It's an awful feeling.

At any rate I sat for a while in the church, looking around at how beautiful it was and smelling the insides of it, all hymnals and beeswax, them big candles up there dripping the sweet smell of it in the air. Say, do you remember that day me and you took a drive up to Parson's Ridge? Just up there past Fowler's Mountain, up Red Creek way. We were finally getting to the end of that god-awful summer, so it was cool in the mornings and the air was hazy and there was mist in the hollow, inching its way across the valley like a thread of white cotton. You said I was wrong about old Mrs. McCabe's chickens being killed by foxes and so I told you I would prove it to you and we drove up there. I came by your place and picked you up and we headed out of town and drove up into the hills, not saying very much. I can recall it like it was yesterday. You weren't wearing a tie and I made some comment and I remember you snatched the front of your shirt together like some fussy old maiden lady. It was a white shirt as I recall, but then I don't seem to remember you wearing anything else.

On the way back we stopped in and I bought sandwiches and cold bottles of Coke and we parked and walked up to the top of the ridge. Must have been about the middle of September and colder in the night time, so all the mosquitoes were gone by then. We took the blanket out of the car and sat down on it and had us a right picnic up there. I remember I turned to say something to you and you looked at me like you was just seeing me for the first time in your life. It was so uncommon a look that I remarked on it. I think I asked you if I had dirt on my face or something. You said no, that wasn't it and I asked, how come you're looking at me like that? You said nothing, it's nothing. You crumpled up your sandwich paper and you said, you're just like everybody else, aren't you? I didn't quite know what to make of that. I wasn't sure what you meant. You were smiling, though, so it couldn't have been something bad. It had to be something good.

How come days like that are the exception rather than being the rule, Virgil? How come all the good stuff gets tangled up with the bad? I try and keep the memories of the good all hid away, in some place nobody else can get at, a place nobody knows about but no matter how hard I try, the bad always manages to get in. It's like having a really great dream but then you wake up and it hits you that it ain't real. Why can't it be real? Why is life so weighted down with the common and the everyday?

I thought about lighting a candle when I was sitting there in that great big church but I never did. I never did.

Love,

Bill

December 7

Dear Virgil,

I will admit I was quite surprised to find a key in the envelope. You didn't say nothing about a key. However, I am most interested in obeying your orders and suggestions to the letter so I will do as you said. I had no trouble finding my way to the address you had written on the envelope. If anything my walks around your city have shown me how to find things. I wasn't quite sure what to expect so I guess you could say I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of your surroundings. This is a very fine and handsome building in which you have your apartment. The doorman was nice enough to let me come up, once I had explained to him the purpose of my visit.

Strange thing about it, Virgil, sitting here in your living room and looking around at the things that you have in your home, as well as the things you have in your refrigerator (yes I looked) is an odd thing. You go into somebody else's house and it's always a bit strange and you think well, this is their house, it ain't my house but I don't feel that way about your place. I know it sounds ridiculous, maybe you think I am making it up but this is the truth. I did as you said, I came in and made myself comfortable. I hung up my coat and I kicked off my shoes and I lay back on your couch for a while and listened to some of your record albums and I felt right at home. I do thank you for extending this kindness to me. I really do. Considering everything that we have been through together, it don't surprise me of course but the fact that you do it at all is very nice and I do thank you for it.

I was thinking while I was lying there listening to some of your record albums about how people are always talking about how hard it is to say goodbye and you know if you leave somebody to go on a trip or if you're visiting some place and you get on the train to go back to your own home, how hard it is to say goodbye. A lot of people don't realize that sometimes it is just as hard to say hello. I guess I better explain what I mean by that. It's like you remember I told you my momma raised me all on her own and I never knew my daddy. Well that ain't precisely true. I never knew my daddy for most of my life and for pretty much all of his but towards the end of his life, when he was getting ready to meet his Maker and fixing to die I did meet him. Momma had never said who he was. She never gave any indication who the gentleman might be, what his name was, what he did for a living, where he lived, if he was still alive. She only ever told me that I looked like him. So I knew that I had retained some aspect of my daddy's features. She said I resemble him a great deal in the way I talk and the way I carry myself.

When I was thirty-five I was working at a small police department in the mountains in Tennessee. The sheriff was young but he was real nice and the people were nice but there wasn't much crime, just the usual drunk drivers, teenagers making asses of themselves. I was sifting through some files that had to do with a case I was working on at the time. I came across a file. I don't know what made me look but we never do until after the fact. Something made me pick that file up and open it, and go over the contents very carefully. Now you will understand this particular file had nothing to do with the case I was working on. It just happened to be filed close by in the filing cabinet. So I was curious. I picked it out and had a look-see. You know sometimes people say well, once you look at something you can't take it back. You know, you can't unsee it. You can't unlook at it. Once you looked at it, you did it and that's it. You gotta deal with the consequences of having looked. Well the upshot of it was and I am sure by now you know where this is headed, but the file I was holding in my hand was about my daddy. There was nothing too serious. He had a string of car thefts and passing bad checks. It was kind of strange because I knew what his name was and I saw his picture and there was no denying that he was my daddy. We looked exactly alike. The file had his current address in it and his telephone number, how old he was and where he'd been living all his life and of course the dates and places all added up. Even though my momma was long gone by then I knew this was my daddy.

So when I had a break I went into the little room where everybody went to eat their lunches and I picked up the telephone and I dialed his number. A man answered and I asked if this was Mister So-and-So and he said yes it is. I said I'm Deputy So-and-So from the Such-and-Such police department. He said, 'shit I thought I fixed up them warrants. He told me he was gonna fix my warrants'. I told him it had nothing to do with warrants, this wasn't that kind of call. I guess I should have known by then what I was up against, but you know how it is, sometimes you're just dumb enough to think you can handle it, whatever 'it' is. I thought about hanging up the phone right then and there and just forgetting about the whole damn thing. No sense in reopening old wounds, right? I can imagine what you'd say about that. You always were the sort to go plunging in where angels fear to tread and all that. I told him, 'I think you might be my daddy'. I explained who I was and told him when I was born and where. There was a long time where he didn't say nothing at all and I figured he was gonna maybe hang up on me. I guess I had it coming all right, but he asked me what my name was and said that maybe we ought to meet up, just for old times' sake. I didn't know what old times he was talking about but I was trying to be civil so I didn't say nothing.

Later on that week I drove up to Butlerville and waited in this little roadside diner for a while. I remember it was raining real hard and I was thinking that it'd be a miracle if anybody got through, on account of the flash floods and them having to close the roads and such. I waited maybe an hour, maybe a little more, but he never did show up first nor last. I drank the last of my coffee and left some money on the table for the waitress and went on out. We were in a space between rainstorms and there was a little ray of sun peeking out between some clouds, lighting everything up real pretty. I'd driven up in the patrol car, seeing as how I didn't have a car of my own. I was saving up for one, though. I had it all picked out. I had just unlocked the door when I heard somebody call my name. I didn't turn around and he called to me again. 'Bill!' He didn't shout real loud but he didn't have to. 'Bill, it's me. Remember I said I'd come and meet up with you?' What did I do? What would you do? I know what you'd do. You'd turn around and wait till he got close enough for you to tell him what was what and then you'd get in your car and drive away like you didn't have a care in the world. You wouldn't let him get nothing on you. You wouldn't let him think he could say anything that would get to you, no sir. No sir. I got in and I locked the door and then I turned the key and I didn't look back, not even once. Not even once. I found out later that he had died of cancer in some state hospital over near Chalkville.

Love,

Bill

December 9

Dear Virgil,

While I was familiarizing myself with the contents of your apartment, I found myself remembering another phrase from literature. I don't rightly remember which book or story it's from but this one is by Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald and he is talking about two young girls who want to come onto somebody's hotel balcony to wave goodbye to a sailor or a soldier going off to war. One of the girls takes off her underthings and rips them into a flag and uses them to wave at the young men who are leaving on a ship, going to the front. Fitzgerald says, 'Oh say can you see the tender color of remembered flesh?'

I found myself thinking on this particular phrase as I lay down in your bed tonight. You did say in your instructions that I was to make myself at home and to avail myself of whatever facilities I might want. I will admit to indulging a little bit of my personal perversion in that I slept in the altogether, Virgil. I wonder how this piece of news will affect you when it reaches you. Maybe you might not care. Or maybe you might care a great deal. I trust you know what I am talking about.

At any rate the sheets on your bed are very nice. I do not know what you wash them in but the sheets and the pillowcases remind me of that cologne you used to always wear, do you remember the one? I used to say to you that it made you smell like you been rolling around in the Mississippi mud but I was only kidding. It was real nice. So I suppose in that way it kind of smells like you. The whole thing about meeting my daddy is that sometimes life gives you something unexpected. I had no idea when I went to work that day that I was going to be paging through the files and come across a folder with his picture and his name. I had no idea what way that whole thing was gonna go. It's real funny though, because I went out there to meet up with him but I never so much as saw his face. I knew I couldn't bear to look at him. I couldn't bear to look in his face. Maybe I expected he'd say something like, 'shit, you're Mavis's boy, ain't ya?' or maybe he'd make like he didn't know me at all. I find myself wondering how it would go if we met, but I never saw him. I never did see him at all.

I think a lot of the time we go through life believing the things other people told us. Like we're tall or short or thin or fat because we take after some relative we ain't never met, and we smile a certain way because our daddy smiled like that. So we put together a picture of ourselves that we get from everybody else and there comes a time when it's just us alone, staring into the mirror and wondering who the hell we are.

Bill

December l4

Dear Virgil,

When I left Mississippi to come up here I did so knowing that I had no home to come back to. The person I was back there, when we knew each other, he don't exist no more. I expect he's hung up in some cupboard somewhere along with the old clothes and worn out shoes. Now I ain't feeling sorry for myself, in case that's what you're thinking. To be honest, I have been living in your place because I got nowhere else to go but you will remember you said for me to do that as there is time left on the lease. It was right there in the instructions. You are the kind of man who thinks of everything. I never thought I would end up north of the Line but here I am. I won't pretend this is an enjoyable pursuit because I expect you can see right through a lie like that. It is freezing cold here, Virgil, and there ain't nobody here who knows me, nobody I can talk to if I took a notion to talk to anyone at all. I don't expect I would, because the only thing I'd ever talk about is you. It's like you're underneath my skin, living behind my eyeballs, floating in my blood. If I press my fingertips together I can feel you, right there. Now don't you think that'd drive a man to taking a drink? Speaking of which I have been imbibing liberally this evening so you will forgive me if this letter is a bit incoherent. I have been trying to moderate my words but I can only keep it up for so long.

Damn you, Virgil. Ain't that a horrible thing to say to somebody? I mean it, though. God damn you. God damn you. Because you see I been doing a little bit of homework while I'm biding my time here in your fine Northern city, while I am roaming around the streets at night, watching and listening to accents that sound to me like some foreign language. I have been reading some of your books, Virgil, and last night I came across a story where a man turns into some kind of big bug or maybe he was a bug all along and nobody noticed, not even him. Everything he thought he knew about, well, it don't make no sense to him. That's kind of how I felt tonight when I was out walking. I go out walking a lot, Virgil. It helps me to pass the time away. I walked a long ways from the apartment building where your home is and found myself next to a little park. I guess I must have been thinking real hard because I don't remember how I got there. You know how that is, sometimes your feet don't know what your mind is thinking? I never was this absent minded before, I don't know. Maybe I am getting old. Anyway I was standing there looking at this little park and it was cold and starting to snow. It was a real pretty kind of snow, just drifting down real soft and slow, not making much of a sound and there was hardly anybody around seeing as how it was real late. I know what you are going to say, that I shouldn't be walking alone late at night in the city but I can take care of myself. In the middle of the park, right next to this gazebo thing or whatever you call it, there was a big stone slab with all these names carved on it, some kind of memorial for the local boys who died in the war. I was in the war, did you know that? I was young. I made it all the way to sergeant before the Armistice was signed and I got shipped back home. I managed to see something of the world, France and Italy, mostly. I don't regret it. Lot of guys from my hometown didn't make it back alive. And here was this big slab with all these names carved into it and as I was reading it I realized that these boys hadn't made it home. They were still over there somewhere, maybe buried in Germany or France or maybe blown to bits or drowned in the ocean. You know these were the ones who get swimming pools named after them or bowling alleys and such. I remember seeing something like this in the building where your office is, only instead of a stone it was a wall, just this whole wall of photographs, pictures of these dead men. All these cops who gave up their lives in the course of their duty, all these police officers who got in the way of something, who probably didn't move fast enough to avoid what was coming at 'em. The pictures on this wall, seemed like they went on for miles, I mean just miles and miles. The whole damn thing stretched from the door down the hallway and past everything, all these pictures and their names. I asked the sergeant at the desk and he told me what I wanted to know. I had to walk a long ways till I found it but it was there all right. It's the kind of situation where you maybe start asking yourself what if. What if I'd kept him there with me, what if I'd refused to let him leave, what if. Seems to me it don't make no nevermind. A train got tracks it runs on and there ain't a damn thing can stop it once it gets up steam. These pictures of those dead cops, they're behind this wall of glass so nobody can't touch them but this memorial in the park there, it's stone and it don't matter so I took my gloves off and put my fingers in the dents the letters made. I stood there a good long while with the snow falling down around me, touching the letters, tracing them with my fingers. I wasn't thinking anything but there was like this roaring in my head, just a wall of noise moving forward. You know those tidal waves they have over in those Oriental countries? You see it on the news sometimes, this wall of water moving forward and something gets in the way of it, it just plows it under and keeps right on going. It was like that. It was just like that.

Bill

December 25

Dear Virgil,

This morning I got up early and I went outside while it was still dark, while the skin of night was lying on the city, and I walked. I don't think I ever did so much walking in my life till I came up here, a place I don't even know and yet I been walking it.

When I think back to those days last summer it seems like something I only dreamt about, like you weren't real, like you never spent those weeks working right there by me, like you never even got off that train. There are times I still think it, like when I'm walking by myself so early on Christmas morning, walking in a city I never knew about. Your city will never feel like home to me, Virgil, but it feels like somewhere I know. I think by walking so much I imprinted myself all over it, put some part of me down like I was laying track and I would suggest that it has put some part of itself into me.

I sat up late last night, drinking the last of your fine whisky and listening to the radio. I remember the music we had during the War, all those great bands, Bix Beiderbecke and guys like Bing Crosby, the Dorsey brothers. It was good music and them songs, they talked about fun stuff but they never tried to hide the truth. We all knew we was going out to get killed. There was never any question of that. Shoot, when I signed up I was fifteen years old and I didn't know shit from Shinola but I understood that Uncle Sam, he owned my ass, and maybe he might take a notion to send me out somewhere I'd be like as not be blown to Kingdom Come. There it was, right in front of us and nobody could deny the truth. Most of us that were shipping out that day, we weren't gonna come back home. Everybody knew that. Yeah, when we landed in England and seen the kind of damage the Krauts already did we understood the way it was gonna be. This wasn't some guy singing a song about sitting under apple trees. This was real. I knew it.

I was thinking about the war this morning while I walked, watching lights come on in windows and the world start itself up again. You know they told me where to find you in the cemetery downtown but I ain't had the guts to go there. I found the street, though, where the whole thing happened, and I wonder what you thought you were doing up in Ogden Street all by yourself in the middle of the night. I know what the file says, what got written down in the official report but I want to know what you thought you were doing. Were you trying to be a hero? Did you go there because of the kind of neighborhood, the people who were living there? Maybe it reminded you of when you were a kid, is that it?

That sergeant, the same one who showed me where your picture was at, up there on that wall, he said it was an ordinary call out and anybody could have gone. He said you volunteered to go, that you wanted to. Is it because you grew up in a slum yourself? Is that why? Because maybe you figured you had something to prove?

I went to Ogden Street and I stood right there on that spot and I tried to imagine what you were thinking that night when you was standing there. You had your gun. You had a badge. You got the call and you went out all by yourself because there was a snowstorm and a lot of the guys were tied up elsewhere, and anyway, it was gonna be an easy call, right? I wonder if your blood is there underneath the snow, a dark stain on the sidewalk. I wonder that a lot and sometimes I can almost see it, a spreading patch of red, your precious life. The house was boarded up. Still, she didn't need no wide open window to shoot you from. She found a little hole in the wood, a hole just big enough to put the barrel of a gun through and that's where she did it. Right there, on that spot, is where you died.

It's where you died. Not right away and not all at once because you were there by yourself and there was nobody you could call. Damned if anybody in that neighborhood was inclined to help a cop, even if he is a black man. So you lay there and you bled awhile and by the time the ambulance got there you was all about gone. They buried you two or three days later, downtown, in that pretty little cemetery I was telling you about.

I keep trying to think up the right thing to say but I ain't never been real good with saying what I feel. I've lived my life by always pushing in, throwing my weight around, being the big man, the one who shouts the loudest. The closest I ever got was that night you came to my house and we had supper and started talking about loneliness. You sat and watched me while I drank straight bourbon to try and make the sleep come, the same way I did every night. I remember you were smiling and at the time I figured you was laughing at me but I don't think so anymore.

I go over it almost every day. If only I had kept you there. If only I hadn't put you on that train. If only I had found some way to make you stay with me, not to go back up north and get yourself killed. I replay our conversations in my head, stopping and starting them again, looking for an opening, so place where I could have set my foot in and said 'don't go' or 'I think you ought to stay'. I ain't decided if there was a place like that. If I find it out I will surely let you know.

I have notified your landlord about the apartment and put the furniture into storage like you asked me. The rest of it, well, I guess it don't matter too much anymore. The key I will leave inside the mailbox and he already knows it will be there cause I told him. I wired S. and told him I am coming back and he offered to meet me at the station and drive me to my new place up in Arkansas. I told him there was no need for him to drive all that way but he said he has some leave coming and he would like the opportunity if I am so inclined. I think I might tell S. about me and you. It's time I told someone and he is the closest thing that I got to a friend.

If only I had kept you by my side, you might be alive. Of course I'm giving myself airs, thinking I could keep you safe. I think there's grooves set out in the ground for every one of us and from the day we're born we ain't got no choice but to run in 'em. That's just the way it is. Ain't nothing anyone can do to change it. It's just sometimes two sets of train tracks might run up against each other or cross over and that's alright, too. This leads me into saying what I ought to have said to you that night. You are the best and wisest man that I have ever met and I think you ought to know that. The rest of it I think you know without me having to say anything at all.

I will miss you every day I am alive.

Love,

Bill

THE END
