Letter #3

Subject: It was so good to hear your voice!                                              

Date: January 5th, 1976

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8:14 pm

Dear Simba ...

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            Sunni Hamilton paused over the computer keyboard suddenly. Wondering if she was right to place this additional burden on her husband’s shoulders? Being a man he wasn’t likely to understand that she was just ‘venting’ and would attempt to give her reasons and solutions, then be annoyed when she didn’t take them.  Still, she missed him with a queer ache she couldn’t quite define, since he was only absent from her physically. She x’ed out the words, turned off the computer and returned to the low reading lamp she’d moved nearer to the fireplace despite Cathy Baker’s illogical fear that a snapping ember would leap out and land on the musty fabric of the shade and set the whole cabin on fire. Pulling her comforter up over her legs, she pulled the laptop writing desk over her knees, wiggling her toes to make sure her toes would stay covered.

            Laird sighed deeply, and she reached down to scratch his ears. They’d gotten him as a ‘cell dog’ because Black Labradors were usually destroyed, even after they were trained, and she’d felt as sorry for the three year old dog as she did the heavily tattooed man who’d cried inspite of himself when he realized his beloved friend had found a home after all. She couldn’t imagine a finer or more loyal breed to be with children, especially when her allergies to a dog with a thick coat forbid them the Golden Retriever mix Lionel had his heart set on. His namesake had died decades ago, a purebred an small boned Valley Collie bred by the Sannyonson’s. This nondescript but deeply loyal dog ate from a handmade ceramic bowl with someone else’s name on it, and he didn’t seem to mind. In some ways he reminded her of Esther MacCafferty; steadfast, uncomplaining, and loyal! Simply taken for granted because she was always there whenever she was needed by someone in her adopted family.  She took out the fullest pad of yellow lined legal paper she had left in her briefcase and began to write the same thoughts in longhand. It helped a little to see the words forming, and she knew she owed a letter to her father’s publisher, now ‘her’ publisher, but she feared to write while she was in such confusion internally.

            As if to postpone telling him what was really troubling her she started out by describing the surprisingly cozy stone and clapboard house built by the freeman brothers Guff and Sam, which they had been forced to sell to great-grandfather Woodrow Harkness for a greenback dollar to avoid being lynched by a mob of angry white settlers who wanted the land for themselves. They lived on it free and clear, even after the terrible ordeal of the Golden Couple, Jonathan and Cleo, who died in the locked bedroom behind her rather than be sold into a slavery they didn’t deserve and certainty hadn’t been born into.

            “   But Life comes full circle, doesn’t it?   “  She mused out loud, earning a sign of response from the full sized black dog stretched out beside the recliner.

            “   They were the children of the Plantation in Jamaica that breed slaves for sale to high class establishments, and because their great-grandmother was an Islander, they were ‘Black’.  “

            ‘   But so am I!  ‘

            The inner muse shocked her motionless.

            It was a long time before she could make herself look away from the dancing flames and record what she was thinking, but this time it was to her publisher, outlining some of the family history that was to accompany the new and rare photos rejected by the original editors who put together her father’s first book a decade ago, plus her plans for flying out to interview some of the now aging vets from the Korean War whose photographs and stories Beau had painstakingly collected.

            “  Daddy was right. They have been forgotten. Except for that Army doctor TV show. Especially now with another war fought in Viet Nam!  Maybe I can be a poet like him, or Nana Webb?   “

            Laird woke with a start at the sound of her voice, pulling on his sore hip. With a sigh he stood to his feet and shook himself, and when that hint was too subtle he stood by the closed door of the cabin and whined gently to get her attention.

            As the petite woman rested her shoulder against the century old wood of the doorsill she looked out at the silvered moon resting lightly on the fog from the river where it meandered past a grove of trees old when only the Indians lived here and tracked through on moccasins that only bent the grass.

            ‘  How old is old? How long is forever? Have things always been like this? Will it ever change?  ‘

            A fragment of the movie she saw about Jesus struck her from an unguarded moment of memory. They didn’t even know there was going to be an America two thousand years in the future. Much less that She’d been around, proud and strong for two hundred years? What would it be like two thousand years from now if Jesus tarried? Sunni was grateful when the old black dog limped into view, shaking the dew off his coat as he moved back as quickly as he could  to lay beside the warmth of the dying fire. It allowed her to slam the door on thoughts she wasn’t ready to face.