A Package
A week later, Nellie waits for me on her porch. I give her my letter to Corporal Westy and two cents for postage. She hands me two more letters! One from Mr. Redmond, one from Florence. He tells me he enjoyed the reunion. She writes the way she talks, flitting easily from one subject to the next. She mentions Chance is busy getting ready for college, and slides quickly into a tale about a lady I don’t know. I wish she’d said more about Chance.
Nellie takes to waiting for me every week, pelting me with questions about the letter writers in my life. When I don’t tell her much, she questions me about Aunt Freddie and Mr. Crutcher.
“They’re getting married,” I say.
She already knows that. When I don’t give her an earful, she says she told Jess Willoughby I get letters from “gentlemen.”
“That boy was green-jealous. Ya know he’s took with ya.”
Considering Nellie’s prying, I’m right surprised she hasn’t heard Mama and Nancy Willoughby are close as two kernels on the same corncob. And Nancy already told me Jess is sweet on Ruthie Pender. If you ask me, Nellie’s the one who’s green-jealous over Aunt Freddie and Mr. Crutcher.
Yet, she is among the congregation when the circuit-riding preacher joins them in marriage.
A few days after the wedding, Nellie rushes from her porch when she sees me, unable to catch her breath by the time she reaches me.
“A package,” she pants. “This time ya got a package.”
A small package wrapped in brown paper has Florence’s return address, but the handwriting is not hers.
I thank Nellie and hurry away so fast I forget the newspaper. I run back and snatch it from her hand before she has time to sweeten the annoyed look on her face.
I sit on the creek bank, where my torn piece of petticoat still flutters, though the stone it marked lies in our cemetery in a row with six others.
Inside the package—with a tin of butterscotch candy—is a note.
I want to cheer you and wish I knew a way to send a box of warm breakfast buns like I carried the day we met. I hope you will be content with butterscotch candy. I recall you said you like it.
If you would like to cheer me, nothing would please me more than a letter from you. You said you like to write.
Change
The scent of butterscotch used to call to mind Pender’s store. Now it makes me think of Chance, and I vow to keep it forever.
Now when I write letters, I write to Chance. Or Corporal Westy. Or Florence. I hope the ancestors and babies don’t feel neglected. I haven’t stopped caring about them, but it gives me such pleasure to receive letters in return.
