all morning, since Millie and Junior had returned from town. This time Millie didn’t put up a fight, however, decided to just get it over with instead: there were more important matters at hand.
When Mother had finished with her, Millie went back to the barn, paced the mow floor, fingering the new red welts on the back of her thigh, and thinking about mysteries. Thinking about Tommy. Thinking about those letters she’d hidden in the cigar box. Those damn letters.
She had found them the day of the funeral, when everyone else was in the house. They were in his buggy, half-soaked and dirty, but still in their silky handkerchief wrapper. Tommy’s trunk had had to be moved from the barn back to his closet, which she had done with Junior’s help with Mother and Pa at church so they wouldn’t ask questions. After this was done Millie hid the warped, water-stained bundle of letters inside the trunk, under the big Shakespeare book, where he had kept a similar bundle of letters, though these were neat and dry because they had never left the trunk. She thought that was where they belonged—the two bundles of letters, side-by-side. Tommy would have wanted them there. So then, she had to wonder, why had it been so important to her that she get them out of the trunk last night? When she saw Mother heading up to Tommy’s room with the Pinkerton, getting those letters out of there where that sneak from St. Louis wouldn’t see them had become suddenly the most important thing in the world to her. Why?
She didn’t know. She’d never read them. For four months she had resisted—knowing there might be something in there to tell her why Tommy had been so desperate to get out of town that day, the day he was killed. Still she had resisted; but now, with the Pinkerton here to put things right, maybe it was finally time. Tommy, she knew, would want her to read them—he would want her to see if there was a mystery in them, a story being told through them.
Tommy said there was a story in every written thing. It didn’t matter if it were an ad in the newspaper, a postcard from San Francisco, or War and Peace. He said you have to understand what came before it and what would come after it (What was that word he’d used? It began with a C. ) to really understand the story in it. Did she think Victor Hugo invented Napoleon’s France? Did Shakespeare think up the kings of England? No, they were given a character and context (that was it), and created a story using only these. It was a writer’s job to find the story in all of this—which came from the emotions and desires of the characters involved—then re-create it for the reader, then it was the reader’s turn to re-create it as she read, and maybe understand it as the writer had. It was all nothing but mumbo-jumbo to her, something Tommy had picked up at the college in Wichita; but when Tommy was as passionate about something as he was this, he wouldn’t rest until someone else was as passionate about it with him.
He had started her with the Bible, because he said it was written for children and fools, and for the time being she fell into one of these two categories. Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle came after that, because he thought their writing was as clear as any writing. She thought Edgar Allan Poe's writing was about as clear as a cow puddle, full of horrible words like prolixity and syllabification , which Tommy made her look up in the dictionary just so she could forget them. Mostly, he made her read these mysteries because he said life itself was a mystery brimming with little mysteries for each of us to solve.
She had called it all a “high pile of fly-bitten horseshit.” After a while, in frustration, she quit on it, refusing to even glance at so much as one more O. Henry story. Then one day he asked her that one question, one simple question that should have had a simple answer but
When Mother had finished with her, Millie went back to the barn, paced the mow floor, fingering the new red welts on the back of her thigh, and thinking about mysteries. Thinking about Tommy. Thinking about those letters she’d hidden in the cigar box. Those damn letters.
She had found them the day of the funeral, when everyone else was in the house. They were in his buggy, half-soaked and dirty, but still in their silky handkerchief wrapper. Tommy’s trunk had had to be moved from the barn back to his closet, which she had done with Junior’s help with Mother and Pa at church so they wouldn’t ask questions. After this was done Millie hid the warped, water-stained bundle of letters inside the trunk, under the big Shakespeare book, where he had kept a similar bundle of letters, though these were neat and dry because they had never left the trunk. She thought that was where they belonged—the two bundles of letters, side-by-side. Tommy would have wanted them there. So then, she had to wonder, why had it been so important to her that she get them out of the trunk last night? When she saw Mother heading up to Tommy’s room with the Pinkerton, getting those letters out of there where that sneak from St. Louis wouldn’t see them had become suddenly the most important thing in the world to her. Why?
She didn’t know. She’d never read them. For four months she had resisted—knowing there might be something in there to tell her why Tommy had been so desperate to get out of town that day, the day he was killed. Still she had resisted; but now, with the Pinkerton here to put things right, maybe it was finally time. Tommy, she knew, would want her to read them—he would want her to see if there was a mystery in them, a story being told through them.
Tommy said there was a story in every written thing. It didn’t matter if it were an ad in the newspaper, a postcard from San Francisco, or War and Peace. He said you have to understand what came before it and what would come after it (What was that word he’d used? It began with a C. ) to really understand the story in it. Did she think Victor Hugo invented Napoleon’s France? Did Shakespeare think up the kings of England? No, they were given a character and context (that was it), and created a story using only these. It was a writer’s job to find the story in all of this—which came from the emotions and desires of the characters involved—then re-create it for the reader, then it was the reader’s turn to re-create it as she read, and maybe understand it as the writer had. It was all nothing but mumbo-jumbo to her, something Tommy had picked up at the college in Wichita; but when Tommy was as passionate about something as he was this, he wouldn’t rest until someone else was as passionate about it with him.
He had started her with the Bible, because he said it was written for children and fools, and for the time being she fell into one of these two categories. Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle came after that, because he thought their writing was as clear as any writing. She thought Edgar Allan Poe's writing was about as clear as a cow puddle, full of horrible words like prolixity and syllabification , which Tommy made her look up in the dictionary just so she could forget them. Mostly, he made her read these mysteries because he said life itself was a mystery brimming with little mysteries for each of us to solve.
She had called it all a “high pile of fly-bitten horseshit.” After a while, in frustration, she quit on it, refusing to even glance at so much as one more O. Henry story. Then one day he asked her that one question, one simple question that should have had a simple answer but
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