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82
Last letter first
10 October
My Dearest Mary,
Maybe it would be better if we were all of us leaving at once. All of us would be busy with dismantling the place. No one with time or energy to spend of thinking about what is to come. What and who is left behind. What is left for me of our old life back at home. How strange to be in the day before the actual day one has longed for every minute. Everyone wishes me well or cries or just a wave from the mechanic, depending on the relation, but each at some point go back to their lives here. They have to. I’m the one who gets to leave.
I supposed I always thought that me and the boys would be leaving together. Celebrating and making plans for meeting up again back home. But it never went that way with the others. A drink at least at the water hole was how it always went and that was that. You wished you were going too. And we talked of how I would travel to this one’s home town or that one. And he would say he would, and write, and we meant it. Or to go to his country if he could not get away. Like old Sergent always said, “Could go either way. Either way it could go.” But we did make plans.
Is tomorrow tomorrow? My invisible Mary has that look on her face. We have been saying good-bye or not saying it all week. I have moved her for a while from my pocket to the shelf as I get things packed up and taken care of, settled accounts and such. May as well get used to that. How I wish you could meet her, the one I know from this side of the page. The little statue. You think you know her, but you can’t. All you know of the days we’ve spent together is what I’ve been able to tell you in the letters. How she was with me or would come to me where no one else could. It was always you of course. But the invisible you from the letters and the little statue.
I’m not the first to go. So now I know why they look the way they do. I’ll be leaving the boy and Joseph and Sergent and all the others. The whole world, as bad as it is, it isn’t all bad. But my Mary of letters may be the most for my tired heart to take. I tell her that when I wave good-bye to her from the dock I will see you finally again and we embrace just as we dreamed. I will make myself remember to look. To see her on the ship that carried me home and I promise to wave good-bye. Then it is the ship that carries her home.
I have the little statue of her and already it is not the same. But it is all I can take with me.
See you soon My Love,
Your Leo
~
Sam folds the letter and places it back in the envelope. Slides the envelope back on to the top of the stack held together with string. In the chest he finds a little wood carving painted in blue and white. It is a rough carving of a woman with her arms by her sides in long garments from her head to her feet. Her hands are turned open and to the front. The paint and wood are worn smooth at the edges. It is two and a half inches tall. And Sam brings it to his left breast but there is no pocket there. Because he is still in his bed clothes. Places it standing on the floor.
There is a small soft book, tan leather covering and no writing. Sam moves to sitting with his back against the trunk. The book has an envelope inside. The envelope is crudely made and no writing on the outside. Nothing inside but a slug. A flat disk like a coin size made of lead or pewter. There is no writing on it. But it is worn smooth so maybe it had markings on it once he thinks. It must have. But there is no mark on either side. Empty as the envelope. He places them beside the statue. The thin leather cover is made to protect the book which has lost its original cover. The first remaining page he reads, army manual … instructions for officers … regimental company commanders … subsistence and quartermasters … cavalry units … 1864 …
There is a noise at the window but he doesn’t see anything and turns the first pages … table of contents … basic cold weather survival … clothing, camp … equipage … horses … forage …
The noise at the window again but Sam sees nothing. He places the book on the floor boards and pushes himself up goes to the window. His breath fogs the glass pressing against it the right side of his face against the cold glass looking far to the left side of the house and he wipes away the wet fog with his right hand Smack! Startling Sam to jumping away from the blue-black bird has flow to the glass again and she drops away. She flies back and smacks the window again but hovering there with difficulty looking at Sam and then flying off. The half mile over snow he watches her with his left hand over his forehead for the bright sun is lighting up all the snow and the air he can barely see that she flies straight away. All the way to the tree line she escapes within the standing wood.
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