The Best of Connie Willis

A LETTER FROM THE CLEARYS

There was a letter from the Clearys at the post office. I put it in my backpack along with Mrs. Talbot’s magazine and went outside to untie Stitch.

He had pulled his leash out as far as it would go and was sitting around the corner, half-strangled, watching a robin. Stitch never barks, not even at birds. He didn’t even yip when Dad stitched up his paw. He just sat there the way we found him on the front porch, shivering a little and holding his paw up for Dad to look at. Mrs. Talbot says he’s a terrible watchdog, but I’m glad he doesn’t bark. Rusty barked all the time and look where it got him.

I had to pull Stitch back around the corner to where I could get enough slack to untie him. That took some doing because he really liked that robin. “It’s a sign of spring, isn’t it, fella?” I said, trying to get at the knot with my fingernails. I didn’t loosen the knot, but I managed to break one of my fingernails off to the quick. Great. Mom will demand to know if I’ve noticed any other fingernails breaking.

My hands are a real mess. This winter I’ve gotten about a hundred burns on the back of my hands from that stupid woodstove of ours. One spot, just above my wrist, I keep burning over and over so it never has a chance to heal. The stove isn’t big enough and when I try to jam a log in that’s too long that same spot hits the inside of the stove every time. My stupid brother David won’t saw them off to the right length. I’ve asked him and asked him to please cut them shorter, but he doesn’t pay any attention to me.

I asked Mom if she would please tell him not to saw the logs so long, but she didn’t. She never criticizes David. As far as she’s concerned he can’t do anything wrong just because he’s twenty-three and was married.

“He does it on purpose,” I told her. “He’s hoping I’ll burn to death.”

“Paranoia is the number-one killer of fourteen-year-old girls,” Mom said. She always says that. It makes me so mad I feel like killing her. “He doesn’t do it on purpose. You need to be more careful with the stove, that’s all.” But all the time she was holding my hand and looking at the big burn that won’t heal like it was a time bomb set to go off.

“We need a bigger stove,” I said, and yanked my hand away. We do need a bigger one. Dad closed up the fireplace and put the woodstove in when the gas bill was getting out of sight, but it’s just a little one because Mom didn’t want one that would stick way out in the living room. Anyway, we were only going to use it in the evenings.

We won’t get a new one. They are all too busy working on the stupid greenhouse. Maybe spring will come early, and my hand will have half a chance to heal. I know better. Last winter the snow kept up till the middle of June and this is only March. Stitch’s robin is going to freeze his little tail if he doesn’t head back south. Dad says that last year was unusual, that the weather will be back to normal this year, but he doesn’t believe it, either, or he wouldn’t be building the greenhouse.

As soon as I let go of Stitch’s leash, he backed around the corner like a good boy and sat there waiting for me to stop sucking my finger and untie him. “We’d better get a move on,” I told him. “Mom’ll have a fit.” I was supposed to go by the general store to try and get some tomato seeds, but the sun was already pretty far west, and I had at least a half hour’s walk home. If I got home after dark I’d get sent to bed without supper and then I wouldn’t get to read the letter. Besides, if I didn’t go to the general store today they would have to let me go tomorrow and I wouldn’t have to work on the stupid greenhouse.

Sometimes I feel like blowing it up. There’s sawdust and mud on everything, and David dropped one of the pieces of plastic on the stove while they were cutting it and it melted onto the stove and stinks to high heaven. But nobody else even notices the mess, they’re so busy talking about how wonderful it’s going to be to have homegrown watermelon and corn and tomatoes next summer.

I don’t see how it’s going to be any different from last summer. The only things that came up at all were the lettuce and the potatoes. The lettuce was about as tall as my broken fingernail and the potatoes were as hard as rocks. Mrs. Talbot said it was the altitude, but Dad said it wasn’t, either, it was the funny weather and this crummy Pikes Peak granite that passes for soil around here. He went up to the little library in the back of the general store and got a do-it-yourself book on greenhouses and started tearing everything up and now even Mrs. Talbot is crazy about the idea.

The other day I told them, “Paranoia is the number-one killer of people at this altitude,” but they were too busy cutting slats and stapling plastic to even pay any attention to me.

Stitch walked along ahead of me, straining at his leash, and as soon as we were across the highway, I took it off. He never runs away like Rusty used to. Anyway, it’s impossible to keep him out of the road, and the times I’ve tried keeping him on his leash, he dragged me out into the middle and I got in trouble with Dad over leaving footprints. So I keep to the frozen edges of the road, and he moseys along, stopping to sniff at potholes, and when he gets behind, I whistle at him and he comes running right up.

I walked pretty fast. It was getting chilly out, and I’d only worn my sweater. I stopped at the top of the hill and whistled at Stitch. We still had a mile to go. I could see the Peak from where I was standing. Maybe Dad is right about spring coming. There was hardly any snow on the Peak, and the burned part didn’t look quite as dark as it did last fall, like maybe the trees are coming back.

Last year at this time the whole peak was solid white. I remember because that was when Dad and David and Mr. Talbot went hunting and it snowed every day and they didn’t get back for almost a month. Mom just about went crazy before they got back. She kept going up to the road to watch for them even though the snow was five feet deep and she was leaving footprints as big as the Abominable Snowman’s. She took Rusty with her even though he hated the snow about as much as Stitch hates the dark. And she took a gun. One time she tripped over a branch and fell down in the snow. She sprained her ankle and was frozen stiff by the time she made it back to the house. I felt like saying, “Paranoia is the number-one killer of mothers,” but Mrs. Talbot butted in and said the next time I had to go with her and how this was what happened when people were allowed to go places by themselves, which meant me going to the post office. And I said I could take care of myself and Mom told me not to be rude to Mrs. Talbot and Mrs. Talbot was right, I should go with her the next time.

Mom wouldn’t wait till her ankle was better. She bandaged it up and we went the very next day. She wouldn’t say a word the whole trip, just limped through the snow. She never even looked up till we got to the road. The snow had stopped for a little while and the clouds had lifted enough so you could see the Peak. It was really neat, like a black and white photograph, the gray sky and the black trees and the white mountain. The Peak was completely covered with snow. You couldn’t make out the toll road at all.

We were supposed to hike up the Peak with the Clearys.

When we got back to the house, I said, “The summer before last the Clearys never came.”

Mom took off her mittens and stood by the stove, pulling off chunks of frozen snow. “Of course they didn’t come, Lynn,” she said.

Snow from my coat was dripping onto the stove and sizzling. “I didn’t mean that,” I said. “They were supposed to come the first week in June. Right after Rick graduated. So what happened? Did they just decide not to come or what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, pulling off her hat and shaking her hair out. Her bangs were all wet.

“Maybe they wrote to tell you they’d changed their plans,” Mrs. Talbot said. “Maybe the post office lost the letter.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said.

“You’d think they’d have written or something,” I said.

“Maybe the post office put the letter in somebody else’s box,” Mrs. Talbot said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said, and went to hang her coat over the line in the kitchen. She wouldn’t say another word about them. When Dad got home I asked him about the Clearys, too, but he was too busy telling about the trip to pay any attention to me.

Stitch didn’t come. I whistled again and then started back after him. He was all the way at the bottom of the hill, his nose buried in something. “Come on,” I said, and he turned around and then I could see why he hadn’t come. He’d gotten himself tangled up in one of the electric wires that was down. He’d managed to get the cable wound around his legs like he does his leash sometimes and the harder he tried to get out, the more he got tangled up.

He was right in the middle of the road. I stood on the edge of the road, trying to figure out a way to get to him without leaving footprints. The road was pretty much frozen at the top of the hill, but down here snow was still melting and running across the road in big rivers. I put my toe out into the mud, and my sneaker sank in a good half inch, so I backed up, rubbed out the toe print with my hand, and wiped my hand on my jeans. I tried to think what to do. Dad is as paranoiac about footprints as Mom is about my hands, but he is even worse about my being out after dark. If I didn’t make it back in time he might even tell me I couldn’t go to the post office anymore.

Stitch was coming as close as he ever would to barking. He’d gotten the wire around his neck and was choking himself. “All right,” I said, “I’m coming.” I jumped out as far as I could into one of the rivers and then waded the rest of the way to Stitch, looking back a couple of times to make sure the water was washing away the footprints.

I unwound Stitch like you would a spool of thread, and threw the loose end of the wire over to the side of the road where it dangled from the pole, all ready to hang Stitch next time he comes along.

“You stupid dog,” I said. “Now hurry!” and I sprinted back to the side of the road and up the hill in my sopping wet sneakers. He ran about five steps and stopped to sniff at a tree. “Come on!” I said. “It’s getting dark. Dark!”

He was past me like a shot and halfway down the hill. Stitch is afraid of the dark. I know, there’s no such thing in dogs. But Stitch really is. Usually I tell him, “Paranoia is the number-one killer of dogs,” but right now I wanted him to hurry before my feet started to freeze. I started running, and we got to the bottom of the hill about the same time.

Stitch stopped at the driveway of the Talbots’ house. Our house wasn’t more than a few hundred feet from where I was standing, on the other side of the hill. Our house is down in kind of a well formed by hills on all sides. It’s so deep and hidden you’d never even know it’s there. You can’t even see the smoke from our woodstove over the top of the Talbots’ hill. There’s a shortcut through the Talbots’ property and down through the woods to our back door, but I don’t take it anymore. “Dark, Stitch,” I said sharply, and started running again. Stitch kept right at my heels.

The Peak was turning pink by the time I got to our driveway. Stitch peed on the spruce tree about a hundred times before I got it dragged back across the dirt driveway. It’s a real big tree. Last summer Dad and David chopped it down and then made it look like it had fallen across the road. It completely covers up where the driveway meets the road, but the trunk is full of splinters, and I scraped my hand right in the same place as always. Great.

I made sure Stitch and I hadn’t left any marks on the road (except for the marks he always leaves—another dog could find us in a minute. That’s probably how Stitch showed up on our front porch, he smelled Rusty) and then got under cover of the hill as fast as I could. Stitch isn’t the only one who gets nervous after dark. And besides, my feet were starting to hurt. Stitch was really paranoiac tonight. He didn’t even take off running after we were in sight of the house.

David was outside, bringing in a load of wood. I could tell just by looking at it that they were all the wrong length. “Cutting it kind of close, aren’t you?” he said. “Did you get the tomato seeds?”

“No,” I said. “I brought you something else, though. I brought everybody something.”

I went on in. Dad was rolling out plastic on the living room floor. Mrs. Talbot was holding one end for him. Mom was standing holding the card table, still folded up, waiting for them to finish so she could set it up in front of the stove for supper. Nobody even looked up. I unslung my backpack and took out Mrs. Talbot’s magazine and the letter.

“There was a letter at the post office,” I said. “From the Clearys.”

They all looked up.

“Where did you find it?” Dad said.

“On the floor, mixed in with all the third class stuff. I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

Mom leaned the card table against the couch and sat down. Mrs. Talbot just looked blank.

“The Clearys were our best friends,” I said. “From Illinois. They were supposed to come see us the summer before last. We were going to hike up Pikes Peak and everything.”

David banged in the door. He looked at Mom sitting on the couch and Dad and Mrs. Talbot still standing there holding the plastic like a couple of statues. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“Lynn says she found a letter from the Clearys today,” Dad said.

David dumped the logs on the hearth. One of them rolled onto the carpet and stopped at Mom’s feet. Neither of them bent over to pick it up.

“Shall I read it out loud?” I said, looking at Mrs. Talbot. I was still holding her magazine. I opened up the envelope and took out the letter.

“‘Dear Janice and Todd and everybody,’” I read. “‘How are things in the glorious West? We’re raring to come out and see you, though we may not make it quite as soon as we hoped. How are Carla and David and the baby? I can’t wait to see little David. Is he walking yet? I bet Grandma Janice is so proud she’s busting her britches. Is that right? Do you Westerners wear britches or have you all gone to designer jeans?’”

David was standing by the fireplace. He put his head down across his arms on the mantelpiece.

“‘I’m sorry I haven’t written, but we were very busy with Rick’s graduation and anyway I thought we would beat the letter out to Colorado, but now it looks like there’s going to be a slight change in plans. Rick has definitely decided to join the Army. Richard and I have talked ourselves blue in the face, but I guess we’ve just made matters worse. We can’t even get him to wait to join until after the trip to Colorado. He says we’d spend the whole trip trying to talk him out of it, which is true, I guess. I’m just so worried about him. The Army! Rick says I worry too much, which is true, too, I guess, but what if there was a war?’”

Mom bent over and picked up the log that David had dropped and laid it on the couch beside her.

“‘If it’s okay with you out there in the Golden West, we’ll wait until Rick is done with basic the first week in July and then all come out. Please write and let us know if this is okay. I’m sorry to switch plans on you like this at the last minute, but look at it this way: You have a whole extra month to get into shape for hiking up Pikes Peak. I don’t know about you, but I sure can use it.’”

Mrs. Talbot had dropped her end of the plastic. It hadn’t landed on the stove this time, but it was so close to it, it was curling from the heat. Dad just stood there watching it. He didn’t even try to pick it up.

“‘How are the girls? Sonja is growing like a weed. She’s out for track this year and bringing home lots of medals and dirty sweat socks. And you should see her knees! They’re so banged up I almost took her to the doctor. She says she scrapes them on the hurdles, and her coach says there’s nothing to worry about, but it does worry me a little. They just don’t seem to heal. Do you ever have problems like that with Lynn and Melissa?

“‘I know, I know. I worry too much. Sonja’s fine. Rick’s fine. Nothing awful’s going to happen between now and the first week in July, and we’ll see you then. Love, the Clearys. P.S. Has anybody ever fallen off Pikes Peak?’”

Nobody said anything. I folded up the letter and put it back in the envelope.

“I should have written them,” Mom said. “I should have told them, ‘Come now.’ Then they would have been here.”

“And we would probably have climbed up Pikes Peak that day and gotten to see it all go blooey and us with it,” David said, lifting his head up. He laughed and his voice caught on the laugh and kind of cracked. “I guess we should be glad they didn’t come.”

“Glad?” Mom said. She was rubbing her hands on the legs of her jeans. “I suppose we should be glad Carla took Melissa and the baby to Colorado Springs that day so we didn’t have so many mouths to feed.” She was rubbing her jeans so hard she was going to rub a hole right through them. “I suppose we should be glad those looters shot Mr. Talbot.”

“No,” Dad said. “But we should be glad the looters didn’t shoot the rest of us. We should be glad they only took the canned goods and not the seeds. We should be glad the fires didn’t get this far. We should be glad…”

“That we still have mail delivery?” David said. “Should we be glad about that, too?” He went outside and shut the door behind him.

“When I didn’t hear from them I should have called or something,” Mom said.

Dad was still looking at the ruined plastic. I took the letter over to him. “Do you want to keep it or what?” I said.

“I think it’s served its purpose,” he said. He wadded it up, tossed it in the stove, and slammed the door shut. He didn’t even get burned. “Come help me on the greenhouse, Lynn,” he said.

It was pitch-dark outside and really getting cold. My sneakers were starting to get stiff. Dad held the flashlight and pulled the plastic tight over the wooden slats. I stapled the plastic every two inches all the way around the frame and my finger about every other time. After we finished one frame I asked Dad if I could go back in and put on my boots.

“Did you get the seeds for the tomatoes?” he said, like he hadn’t even heard me. “Or were you too busy looking for the letter?”

“I didn’t look for it,” I said. “I found it. I thought you’d be glad to get the letter and know what happened to the Clearys.”

Dad was pulling the plastic across the next frame, so hard it was getting little puckers in it. “We already knew,” he said.

He handed me the flashlight and took the staple gun out of my hand. “You want me to say it?” he said. “You want me to tell you exactly what happened to them? All right. I would imagine they were close enough to Chicago to have been vaporized when the bombs hit. If they were, they were lucky. Because there aren’t any mountains like ours around Chicago. So if they weren’t, they got caught in the firestorm or they died of flash burns or radiation sickness, or else some looter shot them.”

“Or their own family,” I said.

“Or their own family.” He put the staple gun against the wood and pulled the trigger. “I have a theory about what happened the summer before last,” he said. He moved the gun down and shot another staple into the wood. “I don’t think the Russians started it, or the United States, either. I think it was some little terrorist group somewhere or maybe just one person. I don’t think they had any idea what would happen when they dropped their bomb. I think they were just so hurt and angry and frightened by the way things were that they just lashed out. With a bomb.” He stapled the frame clear to the bottom and straightened up to start on the other side. “What do you think of that theory, Lynn?”

“I told you,” I said. “I found the letter while I was looking for Mrs. Talbot’s magazine.”

He turned and pointed the staple gun at me. “But whatever reason they did it for, they brought the whole world crashing down on their heads. Whether they meant it or not, they had to live with the consequences.”

“If they lived,” I said. “If somebody didn’t shoot them.”

“I can’t let you go to the post office anymore,” he said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“What about Mrs. Talbot’s magazines?”

“Go check on the fire,” he said.

I went back inside. David had come back and was standing by the fireplace again, looking at the wall. Mom had set up the card table and the folding chairs in front of the fireplace. Mrs. Talbot was in the kitchen cutting up potatoes, only it looked like it was onions the way she was crying.

The fire had practically gone out. I stuck a couple of wadded-up magazine pages in to get it going again. The fire flared up with a brilliant blue and green. I tossed a couple of pinecones and some sticks onto the burning paper. One of the pinecones rolled off to the side and lay there in the ashes. I grabbed for it and hit my hand on the door of the stove.

Right in the same place. Great. The blister would pull the old scab off and we could start all over again. And of course Mom was standing right there, holding the pan of potato soup. She put it on the top of the stove and grabbed up my hand like it was evidence in a crime or something. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there holding it and blinking.

“I burned it,” I said. “I just burned it.”

She touched the edges of the old scab, like she was afraid of catching something.

“It’s a burn,” I shouted, snatching my hand back and cramming David’s stupid logs into the stove. “It isn’t radiation sickness. It’s just a burn!”

“Do you know where your father is, Lynn?” she said as if she hadn’t even heard me.

“He’s out on the back porch,” I said, “building his stupid greenhouse.”

“He’s gone,” she said. “He took Stitch with him.”

“He can’t have taken Stitch,” I said. “He’s afraid of the dark.” She didn’t say anything. “Do you know how dark it is out there?”

“Yes,” she said, and went and looked out the window. “I know how dark it is.”

I got my parka off the hook by the fireplace and started out the door.

David grabbed my arm. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I wrenched away from him. “To find Stitch. He’s afraid of the dark.”

“It’s too dark,” he said. “You’ll get lost.”

“So what? It’s safer than hanging around this place,” I said and slammed the door shut on his hand.

I made it halfway to the woodpile before he grabbed me again, this time with his other hand. I should have gotten them both with the door.

“Let me go,” I said. “I’m leaving. I’m going to go find some other people to live with.”

“There aren’t any other people! For Christ’s sake, we went all the way to South Park last winter. There wasn’t anybody. We didn’t even see those looters. And what if you run into them, the looters that shot Mr. Talbot?”

“What if I do? The worst they could do is shoot me. I’ve been shot at before.”

“You’re acting crazy, you know that, don’t you?” he said. “Coming in here out of the clear blue, taking potshots at everybody with that crazy letter!”

“Potshots!” I said, so mad I was afraid I was going to start crying. “Potshots! What about last summer? Who was taking potshots then?”

“You didn’t have any business taking the shortcut,” David said. “Dad told you never to come that way.”

“Was that any reason to try and shoot me? Was that any reason to kill Rusty?”

David was squeezing my arm so hard I thought he was going to snap it right in two. “The looters had a dog with them. We found its tracks all around Mr. Talbot. When you took the shortcut and we heard Rusty barking, we thought you were the looters.” He looked at me. “Mom’s right. Paranoia’s the number-one killer. We were all a little crazy last summer. We’re all a little crazy all the time, I guess, and then you pull a stunt like bringing that letter home, reminding everybody of everything that’s happened, of everybody we’ve lost…” He let go of my arm and looked down at his hand like he didn’t even know he’d practically broken my arm.

“I told you,” I said. “I found it while I was looking for a magazine. I thought you’d all be glad I found it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll bet.”

He went inside and I stayed out a long time, waiting for Dad and Stitch. When I came in, nobody even looked up. Mom was still standing at the window. I could see a star over her head. Mrs. Talbot had stopped crying and was setting the table. Mom dished up the soup and we all sat down. While we were eating, Dad came in.

He had Stitch with him. And all the magazines. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Talbot,” he said. “If you’d like, I’ll put them under the house and you can send Lynn for them one at a time.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t feel like reading them anymore.”

Dad put the magazines on the couch and sat down at the card table. Mom dished him up a bowl of soup. “I got the seeds,” he said. “The tomato seeds had gotten soaked, but the corn and squash were okay.”

He looked at me. “I had to board up the post office, Lynn,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you, that I can’t let you go there anymore? It’s just too dangerous.”

“I told you,” I said. “I found it. While I was looking for a magazine.”

“The fire’s going out,” he said.

After they shot Rusty I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere for a month for fear they’d shoot me when I came home, not even when I promised to take the long way around. But then Stitch showed up and nothing happened and they let me start going again. I went every day till the end of summer and after that whenever they’d let me. I must have looked through every pile of mail a hundred times before I found the letter from the Clearys. Mrs. Talbot was right about the post office. The letter was in somebody else’s box.