Letter from a Desperate Father by Maron Anrow

 
    Good sir,
    I’m writing to you because I’ve heard
you’re a fair and generous man. You may not know this, but you
purchased a few of my goats three years back. Your man didn’t try
to wear me down with haggling. He paid a reasonable price. I
remember things like that.
    I know how my recent actions must seem.
My story is not a simple one, though it pains me to dwell on how
things turned out. All I ask is to see my son, and I hope you’ll be
willing to help me after reading this letter. You’re respected in
our community, and I entreat you to use your position to intercede
on my behalf.
    I will start at the beginning. My
childhood was humble. I had two brothers and three sisters. One of
each died young, and the rest moved away. I inherited our parents’
four acres of farmland and the small cottage on it. My eldest
brother said I was slow and lacked ambition, but I’m happy
surrounding myself with animals by day and books by
night.
    In a way, my life didn’t begin until I
met my wife. My memories before her are faint and bland—when I
recall them, it’s as if they didn’t happen to me—while everything
after her is crisp and flavorful, much in the way a parched mouth
swells with moisture after biting into a sour apple.
    Our courtship was untraditional. When I
went to feed my goats one morning, I discovered a post had come
down and two of my billies were missing. They must have jumped the
dip in the fence. I fixed the post in haste, then went to find the
animals. The Milwood Forest isn’t far from my property, and that’s
where I went after searching my fields in vain.
    After a few minutes in the forest, I
heard crying amongst the trees. Not a shrill, childish cry, but a
defeated sob. I followed it, and there were my goats, resting next
to a weeping woman. She looked at me, and there was anger in her
eyes—as if it were I who had caused her to be so sad.
    “Those are my goats,” I said,
justifying my presence.
    Her anger changed to
irritation.
    “So?” She waved her arm over the
resting goats. “I did not take them, and I’m not holding them here.
Do what you will.”
    I understood her words, but I stood
there, distracted. Her appearance had arrested my attention. She
wore a standard servant’s smock, but it did not suit her at all.
Her hair was blacker and straighter than any I’d seen, and it fell
to her waist. One of my friends later told me her hair was like
silk, but I’ve never seen silk so I can’t say. She had an accent
I’d never heard before, and she held herself like the lady of a
fine estate despite her servant’s garb. To complete the wrongness
of it all, her clothes were dirtied and torn. I wondered if she’d
been in the forest for days.
    I suppose I was standing there dumbly,
because she cocked her head to one side and said, “Don’t you want
your goats?”
    Her strange accent entranced
me. I stammered a yes , or so I think I did. But I couldn’t approach her.
    “Come and get them,” she
said.
    I stayed where I was until I finally
found my tongue. “What happened to you? Why were you
crying?”
    “Because of unkind things, and because
life is not fair.”
    “What?” I’ve never claimed to be a
smart man.
    She smirked at my dullness. “Will you
help me?”
    “How? I mean, what do you
need?”
    “I’m on my own and I have nowhere to
go. I worked for a cruel master,” she gestured at her smock, “but I
escaped. I fear to leave this forest because there is nothing else
for me.” Her eyes bore through mine. “You seem a nice man. Can you
help me?”
    Turning her away never crossed my mind.
“I don’t have much, but I can offer you food and a place to sleep
for a short time.”
    Now her smile reached her eyes. “That
would be enough.” She stood gracefully from the log on which she’d
sat, and when she stood, so too did my goats.
    Her long black hair swayed with her
movement. She was a tall woman, and she spoke and looked at me with
masculine directness. I know men