Rain-soaked Letters

Heya Ruthie,

I think I got some no good news for you. But it’s still news. At last, I know. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Couple months. Plus two weeks. Hope you don’t hate me for it. I know I said I'd write when I got down to the Smoky Mountains, but things have just been... Well, a little rough. See, money doesn't flow down here the way I thought it would and I just wanted to wait until I had something to send back to you and your Ma.

Well, I've got something.

Before I get into it though, you gotta promise, do it right now, that you’ll write me back. Promise you’ll tell me all about your mutt dog Kips that bites my ankles. Tell me about the house, every leak it’s sprung, all the drafts, and where the mice are sleeping cus I know you’re keeping ‘em around, Ruthie. You always do.

Hell, even tell me about the weather.

I promise I’ll listen this time.

Now, don't you go calling this blood money and don't tell your Ma where I got it from. Want to leave a good impression on that lady and you know how she feels about me. “Stellar, but broke” were her words, weren’t they? Ambitious and stupid too. Don’t think I’ll deny that much longer. Tell the money's from the coal mines or something. Picking apples. She'll like that one.

She’s like you though. You know that? She’s just like you. And I know she wouldn’t like this one bit. Just like you won’t.

I'm going to war, Ruthie.

Leaving in the morning. Done my training, signed my papers, and can’t back out.

I’m going to war. And you both will get thirty dollars each month that I'm gone. I've set it all up already. I’ve included the sixty from the last two months of training. Should help you both a bit.

I'm sorry, Ruthie.

Real sorry.

There's no point in asking how you are. Not now, right?

I know your Ma's sick and not getting better. And I know you don't have the money to fix it. I know you spend your pennies on ways to help her out, cus you’re a good girl like that. Money's hard to come by these days and I... Well, I've been no help. But this’ll help you. I know it will. Sixty bucks, Ruthie.

A trip across the pond’s worth sixty bucks, isn’t it?

Please don’t hate me, Ruthie.

No one’s ever liked me but you. No friends. No other lovers. Nothing. I know I said I had lots, but I didn’t. I never did. No one ever saw me like you did.

So please don’t hate me, Ruthie. Please.

I’d take it for you, I’d take anything for you, but Mama's gun ruined my soul already and I don't think I can handle you hating me. Remember when we were little kids and she dropped it on the kitchen floor? It went off and shot Pa right through the chest. Dropped him dead. You were the only one who cried, Ruthie. Little neighbor girl Ruthie with the moral compass.

That’s when I fell in love with you.

I fell in love because you cried over a bastard. He wasn’t even worth calling a man and my mother wasn’t much better, but you put on your nice pearls for her funeral too. You held my hand when nobody looked. Do you remember that? I do. You smiled at me and it was like flying.

You’re so good, Ruthie. I’ve got to be half as good as you. I’m gonna marry you and spend every day of my life trying to be as good of a soul as you are but first…I’ve got to make a small change of career.

Cus I can’t do anything for you like this. Broke. Futureless. You deserve the world, Ruthie. So, I’m gonna go out and get it myself. It’s got to be this way. There’s no money down here and I…I want to give you a pretty dress, Ruthie. A good dress that you’ll hang up after our wedding and look at every day till you die.

My heart aches knowing I can’t help you. It aches knowing I can’t fix our little world. This…this is something I can do. I can fight. I can give you money. I can come home, Ruthie. My heart…no, my soul…cannot take knowing that while I putz about trying to scrounge up change, you’re suffering alone. I’m doing this for us, for you, for the future, Ruthie.

So if you’re gonna hate me, hate me gently, because my soul doesn’t have much left.

I'm real sorry.

This'll make you cry, won't it?

I hate making you cry. I don't do it very much though so maybe you'll forgive me for this. You'll forgive me, won't you? Oh, it’ll take time, I’m sure. But promise… No. You don’t need to promise that.

It’s all right if you don’t, Ruthie. I’m a young idiot just like your Ma says which means there’ll be plenty of time for you to forgive me for making you cry.

It’ll be the last time, I swear.

So, let it all out. Scream at me. Plan a way to get your revenge. You can even glue my hands to my pants if you want and make me look the part of a fool. I wouldn’t care. Just promise you’ll be here to yell at me when I get back.

They tell me it won’t take too long, ‘specially with all the folks signing up right now. I’ve…already done most of my training and I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. I just kept thinking that if I got a letter from you, I’d chicken out.

And you don’t deserve to love a coward.

Ruthie, I love you.

I’ll tell you one thousand times. Every day. Every night. I’ll tell you until I can’t speak and then I’ll write it on the walls. I’ll carve it into the floor of the house I build for you. I’ll carve it into the goddamn beams just so you never have a chance to forget it.

Remember that when you want to curse me.

And write me back, won’t you?

I love you, Ruthie. I love you. I love you. I love you.

Ash

***********************************

Heya Ruthie,

I’m a good pen pal, see, writing you before you even wrote me back. The only way to make a woman know she’s loved is to keep showing her, isn’t that right? You told me that under your Pa’s pear tree. Then you slapped me for trying to kiss me. You kissed me anyway.

Been thinking a lot about that pear tree.

It’s cold here.

Spring isn’t nice the way it is on your farm. Spring here is cold and ruthless. Cruel. There’s the promise of more fighting and people dying and… It doesn’t matter, Ruthie. I’ve got a picture of you in my pocket and a tin full of cigarettes to keep me warm. And I’ve got that memory of you under the pear tree.

I love you Ruthie.

Don’t you forget that.

Coming home soon,

Ash

***********************************

Dear Ash,

Dearest Ash,

To my dearest love,

Ash,

To my ghost,

Ma's dead.

And I think part of me is too.

She died the morning I got your letters.

I got them both, Ash, right at the same time. Postman knocked and I went out. He had a parcel for me too. Took no more than five minutes with my chatting but when I went back inside, Ma was dead.

It turned out, so were you.

She loved you so much. “Stupid as a puppy, that boy,” she’d say, but she had that far-away look that she wore when she talked about Pa. You were the one, Ash, and she knew it like any mother does.

And you're dead now.

The package the postman gave me wasn't worth the small talk. I didn't know what was in it. If I had... I wouldn't have smiled.

They gave me your tags and that picture of me that you carried around. God, I don’t know why they did it. It’s covered in…

Blood. The last moments of your life. Where you probably called for your mother or worse, for me. Did you call for me? Were you looking at the picture of me when you died?

They gave me your cigarette case.

It looks a little different from when you had it. I can hold it up to the sky and see the stars right through the hole. And you know, I can’t help but wonder if there was some of that sky stuck in you.

Ash... How could you?

How could you leave me here? How could you think this was what I wanted, money over you alive in my arms? How could you go and die like that? You’re my heart! And I hate you. I hate you so much that I can't hate you at all.

It’s been warm here.

The sun came out after all the cold and snow and it’s stayed out. You’d love it. Kips keeps running around, eating grass. He’s looking for your ankles to bite. Spring is still warm here. The tulips are coming up right next to the daffodils.

I took the mice outside yesterday. They’ve been an extra mouth to feed for four months. It's warm enough now for them to live outside again.

God, Ash. Why do I have to do this? Why am I pretending that you’re not dead?

Kips is getting fatter by the day. Spring couldn’t come soon enough. I think Ma was slipping half of her meals to him. Especially in the last three weeks when you were…

Off getting killed.

How long have you been dead?

How long have I been dreaming of a ghost?

Busy making a new life for us.

You’re not a coward, Ash. I’ve never thought that of you. Foolish sometimes, yes. And reckless when it came to love, but you’re no coward and I could never hate you.

I don’t hate you, Ash. Do you hear me? I don’t hate you.

Maybe this will be proof enough. Wherever you are in the sky above, follow the sun up from the eastern horizon until you catch that mid-morning glow that always hits the pear tree and look for me.

Do you see?

I bought the dress, Ash. It’s a pretty number with just enough lace to be elegant. It has sleeves that fall like rain and a neckline that would make you blush. Ash, it’s everything we wanted. It’s all our dreams wrapped up in a pretty white bow.

The moment I got your letter and that blown-open cigarette tin, I went shopping because there was something else in that parcel. Mone. For Ash Donovan’s widow.

You told them I was your wife.

And I’m happy to be. Even like this, I’m happy to have been yours.

I forgive you, if you think you need it. But I don’t think you do. Ash, what is there to forgive? How could I hate you? You, who are kind and gentle and unable to hold back tears at a limping bird. You, who made my world bright when it had only been bleak. You, the neighbor boy who collected rocks for me and sang songs when I scraped my knees.

Ash, I love you.

There is no hating you gently. There is no hating you at all.

But I will love you Ash, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And I will do that without any gentleness at all.

Fly high my ghost.

I love you,

Ruthie