Sincerely,
AK
Monday, October 5
Dear Little Jo,
I meant to write before that if you ever get a chance you should watch a turkey buzzard fly. From the ground you can’t see its ugly face or its naked scalp. You don’t care about its filthy diet. It climbs the wind and tilts itself across the clouds. I mean it gets far enough away and what it is is magnificent.
I’m aware that I keep coming back to these topics that have nothing to do with anything. These letters I’m writing are starting to feel like one long ongoing letter in my head. I should tell Jo about that time I saw the Red Eft, I’ll think, or, I forgot to tell Jo that these birds actually look magnificent in the sky.
And then I’ll read one of your letters and think, People have no idea what I’m like. I mean the gap between what people see and what’s actually in my head sort of shocks me when I read your letters. I guess everyone has this gap. It’s just that they don’t come face-to-face with it very often. It’s a shock to hear that people are still talking about stuff that happened last year.
That party. My breakup with Teresa. I mean it wasn’t even a breakup. Not in the way you hear about breakups, where there’s arguing and someone or both people are heartbroken afterward and going around saying things about each other to their friends. Bron was probably right. Teresa’s parents were really serious about her grades. They probably didn’t like that I was failing my classes.
That’s not what Teresa told me though. She said it was because they didn’t like me fighting. She said her mother thought I needed counseling and unless I would go talk to this psychotherapist her mother knew through work, Teresa wasn’t allowed to date me anymore. I felt bad about it for a while. You probably wouldn’t remember Teresa but she was a calm, gentle person. She looked great in blue. I mean she knew she looked great in blue, so when she wanted to dress up she wouldn’t wear makeup or do anything special to her hair. She would just wear something blue. That’s what she was like. Sort of low-key like that compared with other girls.
The whole thing happened because once after school we were watching TV at her place and her dad came home from work early and asked what happened to my face. I never would have gone over that day with my face bashed in if I thought her dad might come home from work so early and see me.
Sincerely,
AK
Tuesday, October 6
Dear Kurl,
I owe you an apology, I believe. While I was reading your last letter, I found myself becoming desperately sorry for recounting that gossipy conversation we had about you in Basement Records. It must have been agitating in the extreme for you to read about how these personal experiences of yours have stayed in the gossip archive after all these months. It must have been painful to read. To your immense credit, you didn’t express any anger about it, just a mild surprise. My letter must have also made Bron and Shayna and me look like shallow and even vindictive people, which we are not—or at least, I’d really like to believe we are not.
I questioned myself about why I laid out the conversation for you like that, with so much effort to remember Bron’s and Shayna’s exact words and so little consideration for how it might feel for you to read those words. The truth is, Kurl, that I burn with curiosity about you but am too cowardly to ask you questions about yourself directly. My motivation in relating that record-store gossipfest was one hundred percent selfish: I wanted to know which version of the story you would tell if I provoked you into telling it. And I confess I was gratified to read what you wrote about Teresa, your perspective on her and the reasons for your breakup. But what a roundabout, dishonest way to seek the information! In the future, Kurl, if something piques my curiosity, I solemnly swear to ask you about it rather than try to trick you into writing about it.
And on this same subject, you asked if I mind that you “keep coming back to these topics that have nothing to do with anything.” No, I don’t mind. Quite the opposite: I want more, please.
I looked up the Red Eft last night—not the science, but the mythology. Did you know it’s also called the Fire Salamander? It was once believed to be unharmed by burning. Apparently Fire Salamanders were seen after Pompeii, after Hiroshima, walking around in the flames. Sometimes they glowed so brightly they made people blind. I’m not sure why, Kurl, but reading these marvelous facts about your creature made me suddenly so happy that I laughed aloud. You can ask Shayna. My bedroom door was ajar, and my sister heard me laughing and asked what was so funny. I didn’t tell her, because somehow it felt like a secret—like I’d discovered some kind of arcane, secret knowledge—and this made me even happier.
Yours truly,
Jonathan Hopkirk
PS: I don’t know if you pay attention to these things, but they’re running a talent contest at school called Lincoln Idol, and Shayna’s audition tape got picked for the live competition. Somehow she has talked me into serving as her backup band. Even accounting for familial bias, it’s my opinion that Shayna Hopkirk is seriously talented. She’d like nothing more than to quit school and join the Decent Fellows, and it’s a point of increasing friction between her and Lyle that he hasn’t let her sing with the band in the last couple of years, though she was pulled up onstage for cute little duets and solos frequently enough when she was younger.
Anyhow. The show is tomorrow at 6 p.m., if you want to sit in the back row looking stony-faced and not clap for us, Kurl. I believe you have English in the morning, so I’ll be sure to put this letter in the box first thing. You’ve been dropping by Ms. Khang’s room to check for mail even when you don’t have English class, haven’t you? So have I. When we’re writing letters off schedule like this, I can never be sure when a new one will show up. It gives me something to look forward to at school besides being tossed around by the butcherboys.
Thursday, October 8
Dear Little Jo,
I had to help with a roof after school yesterday. All the rain the last couple of weeks has put us behind schedule. By the time we wrapped up it was almost seven, so I figured I’d probably missed the talent thing at school.
But Sylvan got it into his head that I had to attend this particular extracurricular event. I tried saying, Never mind, it’s no big deal, but he started telling me how he’s been worried about me since football dried up.
You’re all bunched up under your skin, he said.
What’s that supposed to mean, I said.
You’re like a dog in a cage, he said, biting your own fur and bashing your head against the bars.
Okay, okay, I’ll go, I said, just to get him to stop with the dog comparison.
So I guess I did exactly what you predicted, Jo. Snuck into the back row of the auditorium. I took a seat next to a man with partly gray, shaggy hair and a black cowboy shirt. One of the many dads in the crowd, right? Could have been anybody.
A couple minutes later, after this group of rappers finishes up onstage, it’s intermission, and the guy next to me turns and offers me his hand and says, Hi there, I’m Lyle.
Of course it’s Lyle. Now that the lights are on this guy looks exactly like you, Jo. The cowboy shirt is unbuttoned and under it he’s wearing this T-shirt that says GOT GRASS? with the word grass in blue letters. No way I would have worked out that little inside joke if you hadn’t mentioned in one of your letters that it’s bluegrass music your dad plays.