Ever,

These letters are often all that get me through week to week. Even if it’s just random

stuff, nothing important, they’re important to me. Gramps is great, and I love

working on the ranch. But…I’m lonely. I feel disconnected, like I’m no one, like I

don’t belong anywhere. Like I’m just here until something else happens. I don’t even

know what I want with my future. But your letters, they make me feel connected to

something, to someone. I had a crush on you, when we first met. I thought you were

beautiful. So beautiful. It was hard to think of anything else. Then camp ended and

we never got together, and now all I have of you is these letters. S**t. I just told you I

have a crush on you. HAD. Had a crush. Not sure what is anymore. A letter-crush? A

literary love? That’s stupid. Sorry. I just have this rule with myself that I never throw

away what I write and I always send it, so hopefully this doesn’t weird you out too

much. I had a dream about you too. Same kind of thing. Us, in the darkness, together.

Just us. And it was like you said, a memory turned into a dream, but a memory of

something that’s never happened, but in the dream it felt so real, and it was more,

I don’t even know, more RIGHT than anything I’ve ever felt, in life or in dreams. I

wonder what it means that we both had the same dream about each other. Maybe

nothing, maybe everything. You tell me.

Cade

~ ~ ~ ~

Cade,

We’re pen pals. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever be. I don’t know. If we met IRL (in real

life, in case you’re not familiar with the term) what would happen? And just FYI,

the term you used, a literary love? It was beautiful. So beautiful. That term means

something, between us now. We are literary loves. Lovers? I do love you, in some

strange way. Knowing about you, in these letters, knowing your hurt and your joys,

it means something so important to me, that I just can’t describe. I need your art,

and your letters, and your literary love. If we never have anything else between us,

I need this. I do. Maybe this letter will only complicate things, but like you I have

a rule that I never erase or throw away what I’ve written and I always send it, no

matter what I write in the letter.

Your literary love,

Ever

It’s always the hands that mess me up. I can never get the fingers right, somehow.

It’s something about the proportions between the knuckles, and the way the

fingers are supposed to curve when at rest. I had an entire sketchbook full of failed

attempts.

Even at that moment, in the passenger seat of Dad’s F-350, I was sketching out

another attempt. My tenth so far, and we weren’t even to Grayling yet. This one was

the best yet, but the middle knuckles of the last two fingers looked awkward, like

they’d been broken.

Which gave me idea. I glanced over at Dad, who was driving with his left hand,

the right resting on his thigh, fingers tapping to Montgomery Gentry on the

radio.

“Dad?” A sideways glance and a raised eyebrow were the only acknowledgement I

got. “You ever broke your fingers?”

“Yeah, broke most of my left hand, matter of fact.” Dad took the wheel with his

right and showed me his left hand. The knuckles were bulbous, the fingers crooked.

“Didn’t get ’em set right, so they’ve always been kinda fucked up.”

“How’d you break ’em?”

The fingers in question scratched at a shaved scalp, the stubble of a receding

hairline whisking under his nails. “Me and your Uncle Gerry were out in the back

forty, riding the fence line, checking for breaks. My horse got spooked by a snake.

He threw me, ‘cept my hand was tangled in the reins. Dislocated most of my fingers.

Then, when I hit the ground, his hoof landed on the same hand, broke the middle

two pretty good. Your Gramps is a hardass, and I knew he’d wallop me good if I

came back without the job done. So I set the broke fingers best I could. There was a

busted fence post, see, way out at the far corner, and Dad’s prize Thoroughbred kept

getting out. Gerry and I fixed the break and went home. I never told Dad about my

fingers, just had my mom wrap ’em for me. Never really healed right, and even now

when the weather’s shitty my hand aches.”

I’d heard the stories of my father’s childhood growing up on the Wyoming horse

ranch that had been in the Monroe family for several generations. Every summer

of my entire life had been spent on that ranch, riding and roping and tagging and

birthing and breaking. Gramps didn’t accept excuses and didn’t tolerate weakness

or mistakes, and I could only begin to imagine what it had been like growing up with

Connor Monroe as a father.

Gramps was a tall, silver-haired, iron-hard man. He’d served in both Korea and

Vietnam before returning to work the ranch. Even as his grandson, I was expected

to pull my weight or go home. That meant up before dawn, to bed past sunset, the

entire day spent out in the field or in the stables, rarely even sitting for lunch. At

fourteen, I was tanned, muscled, and, I knew, hardened to the point of looking older

than I really was.

Dad had been the first Monroe son to pursue a career away from the ranch, which

had caused a decades-long rift between him and Gramps, leaving Uncle Gerry to take

over running the ranch as Gramps got older. Dad left Wyoming after high school,

moving to Detroit on his own to become an engineer. He’d started on the floor of a

Ford plant, assembling truck frames and attending night school until he’d completed

his degree, and eventually he’d been promoted to the engineering department,

where he’d worked for the last twenty years. Despite his decades as an engineer,

Dad had never really lost the wild-edged intensity of his upbringing.

“Why the questions about my fingers?” he asked.

I shrugged, tilted the drawing into his line of sight. “I can’t get these damn fingers to

look right. The last two look messed up, and I can’t fix it. So I thought I’d make ’em

look broken, on purpose.”

Dad glanced at the drawing and then nodded. “Good plan. The relationship between

your angles and curves is off, is your problem. I’m more of a draftsman than an

artist, but that’s my two cents.”

I made a surreptitious study of Dad’s broken fingers again, adjusted the knuckles on

the pencil-rendered hand, making them look misshapen and lumpy, then worked on

the tips of the last two fingers, curving them slightly to the left, zigzagging the fourth

finger to resemble Dad’s. When I was done, I held up the drawing to show him.