Dear Jamie,
How are you? I guess you’re surprised to get this letter since it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, but I hope we can continue to be friends although we both have stepped out on new paths with new people this year.
Jamie stared at those words. New paths. New people. Whatever did she mean by that? Had to be Crandall, but there was that word “both.”
His heart had been pounding in his ears ever since his mother handed him the envelope. He knew Piper’s writing at once.
His mother recognized her writing too. After all, they had exchanged letters for years, up until he had quit writing after his father died. It hadn’t seemed right to hang on to hope with Piper when he had nothing to offer. But now somehow hope had been reborn in him that he did have something to offer Piper. Love. He might be a foolish romantic, but he wanted to believe love trumped money.
Simon’s words echoed in his head. Not when you don’t have a roof over your head or food on the table.
He had a job, a position he’d taken solely to convince Piper’s father that he could buy food and take care of Piper, but her father wasn’t impressed. He had picked another man to provide for Piper.
Crandall could do that. In style. But did Piper love Crandall? Did Piper love him—Jamie? Those were the questions. New paths didn’t sound like the answer he wanted.
After his mother gave him the letter, he had casually stuffed it in his pocket as though in no hurry to read it.
His mother knew better, but she merely said, “I hope Piper is well.”
He forced himself to walk up the steps and not take them two at a time with the letter burning in his pocket. In his room, he tore open the envelope. Anxious to read what she wrote. Afraid to read what she wrote. And now in the very first lines were those words about new people, new paths.
He shut his eyes and wondered if it would be wrong to pray that the next lines didn’t say she was marrying Crandall. Please, Lord, not that.
He’d been going to church with Uncle Wyatt. Not that he hadn’t always gone to church. He had. Practically every Sunday of his life. Out of habit. Duty perhaps. Appearances for sure. But that wasn’t why Uncle Wyatt went. He believed. Truly believed. Said he didn’t know how a doctor who continually saw life and death could not believe.
That was where Jamie had found new hope. From being with Uncle Wyatt. There was such peace in this house. The kind he’d never known in his parents’ house, with the continual struggle to gather more money and rise in society.
He opened his eyes to read more. If Piper had written to say she was marrying Crandall, it wouldn’t change the words for him to cowardly fold the letter and put it in his pocket.
I’ve certainly found some new paths to walk here in Leslie County with the Frontier Nursing Service. I love it. You probably think that’s funny. I have to work. I mean really work. Cleaning out stalls. Currying horses. Delivering medicines and messages. Sometimes walking miles to the hospital when Miss Aileen, that’s our supervisor, decides I should walk instead of ride. On top of all that, I’ve been planting gardens and learning what’s a weed and what’s a bean plant. I know you’re laughing at that, since I always insisted daisies should not be called weeds.
Jamie smiled as he remembered picking Piper daisies and claiming they were weeds. His heartbeat had slowed. This wasn’t a Dear John letter. Not that she would have to write him that kind of letter. They weren’t engaged. No promises between them. But oh, how he wished there were. That was his fault. Totally his fault.
I thought of you the other day when I went across a swinging bridge. You should have seen me when I first stepped out on it. A person should expect a swinging bridge to swing, but I was hanging on for dear life. Then I thought of you and how you would probably run across the bridge. Maybe jump on it to make me shriek. Do you remember all the fun we used to have?
Did he ever. At least she remembered too.
But I had the best adventure yet yesterday. I went with one of the nurse midwives to deliver a baby. Well, I didn’t deliver the baby, but I watched. Didn’t faint, either. Wow! That’s all I can say. I don’t have words for how great that was—to see a new baby come into the world. He was so precious.
I’ve probably written too much. Bored you silly. I wish you happiness on your new paths and hope we can still be friends.
Your pal,
Piper
P.S. You’ll laugh at this. Down here they call me Danny. Except for the midwife I was with yesterday. She calls me Pippay. They say everybody has to have a nickname. I’m afraid to tell Truda. She claims Piper is a fine name.
Pal? Nothing remotely romantic about that. Had they always only been friends? But there were those few kisses stolen now and again at dances or in the meadows when they gave their horses a rest. Thinking about that started his heart pounding like crazy again.
He read the letter over again, wishing it ended with Love, Piper instead of Your pal, Piper. At least his prayer had been answered. She hadn’t said she was marrying Braxton Crandall. Not yet anyway. Her new path was this adventure in the mountains. But why had she said he was on a new path?
Perhaps her father had told her about his teaching job, but he couldn’t imagine that being true. Mr. Danson wanted Jamie to disappear from Piper’s life completely. To go teach school in California or on the moon. How about in the Appalachian Mountains? Maybe they had summer school down there. He could always volunteer for something. Like Piper had.
He’d found out about those frontier nurses Della said Piper had talked about from Cal Rogers, the local newspaper’s editor who knew about the Frontier Nursing Service that Mary Breckinridge had started in Hyden, Kentucky. He said his wife had donated baby clothes for the midwives to give new mothers there.
Jamie liked Cal. The man tried to act the part of an irascible newspaper man expecting nothing but bad news, but the editor was happiest when some local kid did something good he could put in the paper.
“Sells papers,” Cal claimed, but it was more than selling papers for him. He wanted to make his town look good.
Cal had taken Jamie under his wing after he showed up with an article about how people at Centre College still celebrated their upset football victory over Harvard that had happened almost fifteen years before.
After motioning Jamie toward a chair in his cluttered office, Cal read through Jamie’s article. When he finished, he threw the piece down on a pile of papers and leaned back in his chair to study Jamie. “Writers are durn fools. You realize that, don’t you?”
Jamie didn’t know whether to nod or admit that no, he didn’t know that. He decided to be honest. “I guess not.”
“That’s because kids like you are ignorant to how things really are. You come out of college thinking the world is going to welcome you with open arms, and instead it clips you behind the knees and then kicks you when you fall.”
“Nothing much has been easy for my family for a while.”
“So your pop was one of them that lost everything in the crash. What’s he doing now? Licking his wounds or drowning his sorrows in booze?”
“He died.” Jamie stood up and held out his hand for his story. “I appreciate you reading my article. If you’ll hand it back, I’ll quit wasting your time.”
Cal leaned forward and planted an elbow on Jamie’s story. “Don’t be in such an all-fired rush. If you want to be a writer, you’ve got to toughen up. So sit down. We’re not through here yet.”
Jamie sat back down. The man wanted tough. He could be tough.
The editor picked up his story again. “This isn’t half bad. Trouble is, this story’s done been told about five hundred times in this very paper.”
Jamie didn’t say anything. What was there to say? He was simply going to have to wait until the man was ready to hand him back his story.
Cal peered at the page again. “You got a little fancy with the adverbs. You need to let verbs do the work.” He looked back at Jamie. “But tell you what. We’re coming up on the fifteenth anniversary of that crazy win, so if you’re willing to let this be on file until October, maybe I’ll print it then. Can’t pay you much, but I could use another pair of feet to cover what’s happening. Nothing full-time, you understand. But a story now and again. Get you a few bucks.”
“Something I come up with or something you assign?” Jamie asked.
“Could be both. To start off and see how things go, the little woman has this garden club. She expects me to go poetic on it every time they meet. Flowers make me sneeze. But if you go to that meeting and write up something interesting enough that maybe five people besides the garden club members are willing to read it, then we’ll be in business.”
“Do I get a byline?” Jamie asked.
The editor shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Then I like flowers.”
“Good. You’re my man.” Without standing up, Cal had stretched his hand across the desk for Jamie to shake.
The arrangement had worked out. Jamie didn’t make much money. Not enough to keep food on the table for a family, for sure. That was why he took the teacher job. The job he wanted to resign before school started.
But the few dollars here and there for the stories Cal published bolstered Jamie’s hope that someday, with enough fortitude, he might make money with his words. Not just by writing news articles, but fiction too. Somebody was going to write the next great American novel. He could dream that might be him.
Maybe that novel should be set in the Appalachian Mountains. A writer needed to do research. Plus, Cal was interested in a Frontier Nursing Service story.
“That would be a great human-interest piece. Nurses on horses. Babies born in cabins. You write it, I’ll run it,” Cal had said. “Who knows? A story like that might get some syndicates interested. Think about it, kid. I nickel and dime you for your stories, but those syndicates, that’s where the money is.”
Syndicates buying something he wrote had sounded good. Better than good. Now Jamie stared at the address on the back of the envelope he held. Wendover, Kentucky. Maybe it was time he wrote that story.
When he stuck the letter in a desk drawer, his eye caught on a picture of Piper and him. He picked it up. Jamie had his arm around Piper and they were both laughing. Seemed like then, they were always laughing.
A finger of sadness poked him as he put the picture back in the drawer and slid it shut. How long had it been since they had laughed together like that? Too long. Much too long.
Last week’s paper lay on the desk folded open to his yawn of an article about the safest way to can vegetables. Useful, but boring. Still, the “by Jamie Russell” was good to see.
He picked up his composition book, turned to a blank page, and wrote Frontier Nursing Service—Wendover, Kentucky. He stared at the words a long time. He’d have to come up with money for a train ticket. Going would be a leap of faith. In his ability to gather a story. To take the right pictures. To convince Mary Breckinridge to give him an interview.
Get Piper to laugh with him again. Your pal. He wanted to be more than pals. Much more than pals.