Excerpt from novel in progress

By Rebekah Anderson

April 19, 1934

Dear Son—

I am obliged against my wishes to write to inform you of the death of your former wife, Lillian Kaufman Botts. I asked your sister Ona to write you and she told me to do it my damn self. Your sister Ula as you may know is living in Boston with her new husband and I wrote to her and asked her to write you and I also wrote to your brother in Virginia but after they received my letters they wrote to each other and decided together, so your brother says in his letter, that on an occasion such as this, I should be able to overcome our differences and write to you as your father. Now you know that I am not much of an overcomer of differences, but seeing as how you are my son, and you would want to hear this news, I agreed with him and set down to write this letter. It took me many times to write it without getting into why I am angry with you. Your sister made me promise that I would not. Many times I had to tear up my letter and start again. I tell you all this so you will know why it has taken so long for word to get to you as Lill passed earlier this year during the winter.

It is of particular relevance I suppose that this letter should come from me as I am the one who found her and held her hand while she went to the great beyond and so I am better equipped than anyone, excepting maybe the woman herself, to tell you the circumstances surrounding her death. I cannot say her passing was peaceful and though I think she may have become a better person in the moments of her death, in her regular life she lived like a woman who would not deserve a peaceful passing. You know I am a man who sees others get their justs, and though I know there was a time when you loved her and though I know there will be a time when I will get my justs as well, I can say of her that she was not a woman who I would expect some mercy from the Almighty for.

Her fella wasn’t with her and I thought you might find some comfort in that fact. And in the moments before she passed she seemed subdued, more than any other time I saw her when she spent a regular day. Not that I would expect you would wish her to be alone—she was with me, by accident, of course, and I suppose if there’s one thing to be thankful for is that before she left she had a reminder of you by me being there and doubtless her last thought was of you and maybe she was even sorry--she looked sorry but in a moment like that it’s hard to tell what someone is thinking—about the way things happened between you two.

You know that I am forthright and so I will say, even though if your mother were still with us she would tell me it’s wrong or bad luck to speak ill of the dead, that I never thought she was a good choice for you. A woman should be sweet and not want to see too much of the world. That’s how your mother was, and she was the best wife a man could want. I know people in town say I never deserved her and they’re right. I didn’t. Not one day did I ever do anything worthy of having her. But that’s how a good wife lives, son. She stays a good wife even if she’s married to a drunken, banjo picker like me.

No one ever thought it was your fault she left. I know maybe you did. And maybe she did too. But nothing you could have ever done made her right to leave you. If your mother could put up with my noise and my antics, then Lill could put up with worse. She liked to think she was so tough, coming around the tavern with us and staying out late dancing. She was a fun gal, I will say that of her. But she had a bewilderment in her eyes that did not bode well. Why you thought to marry her instead of just go around with her, I never understood.

She reminded me of a buck I once found in the woods up by Meyers Falls. I was marking trees for the mill one afternoon and came upon a buck standing in the woods. It was a big son of a bitch. Five points. As I came up the trail it didn’t seem to notice me even though it was looking right at me. It seemed almost like it was daring me to come up to it, like it didn’t give a damn that I was getting closer. Then I must have kicked a rock or something, because all of a sudden it took off like a shot with no particular direction and plowed right into a tree stump. Its own force knocked it back on its haunches and it looked around with that same bewildered look I would see sometimes in Lill. I figured out then that the buck was blind and I ran back to my buggy and grabbed a rope. It was still where I’d seen it and since it couldn’t see what I was doing I was able to loop a lasso around its head. That thing kicked and bucked like the devil, and I was afraid to get too close to it in case it gorged me with its antlers so I tied it up out there and went all the way home to get my rifle. It was almost dark by the time I got back and the buck must have tired itself out while I was gone because it was lying down in the grass like a fawn, staring out into space. I almost didn’t have the heart to shoot it. Its eyes were so blank and almost digging into the darkness. I didn’t have the heart to let it run loose like that either, so I did it. I shot it. It was the loudest shot I can remember hearing. The buck just lay all the way down with a thump, real peaceful.

That buck could have fed a family for a year but when I cut it open, the insides were all covered with something white, almost like it had been stuffed with cotton. And the meat was full of tumors. Whatever was making that animal blind was killing it slowly. What I’m trying to say, son, is that sometimes a creature wanders confused because it’s not well on the inside. And in my opinion that’s how it was with your Lill.

There isn’t much to say about the accident, really. It happened before I got there and there was no one else involved. It was early January and the roads were iced over. She must have hit a patch of ice going around a turn and flipped over. When I got there, her car was upside down on the side of the road. The windshield was gone and I tried to pull her through, but her neck was broken and she screamed when I tried to move her. Her face was so full of blood I didn’t recognize her at first but she started whispering and even though I couldn’t understand what she was saying something about the way she moved her lips made me realize who she was. Then I noticed she was wearing the fur collar she had made from the fox you shot for her.

There was no way to get her out of the car. I told her I was going for help and she seemed to understand but when I tried to leave she starting screaming again. It didn’t look good for her so I sat with her holding her hand through the empty windshield waiting for a car to come by. She was gone by the time help arrived.

I hope you will not take this news too hard. You were as good to her as you knew how to be and you should have no regrets in regards to Lill. As for the other matters between us, those you should have regrets for, but that is another letter and I’m too close to the end of this one to rewrite it this time.

Your father