Letters B, C, and D

Dear Reader,
None of these letters are written by me.

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Dear Mary,
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I yearn for you tragically.
A.T. Tappman
Chaplain, U.S. Army

Censoring Officer: Irving Washington

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Dear Joe,
I wish that we could at least have said goodbye to each other before you left New York. I think I understand why you ran away. I am sure that you must blame me for what happened. If I had not sent you to Hermann Hoffman, then your brother would not have been on that ship. I don't know what would have become of him in that case. And neither do you. But I accept and understand that you might hold me responsible. I suppose that I might have run away, too. I know that you still love me. It's an article of faith for me that you do and that you always will. And it breaks my heart to think that we might never see or touch each other ever again. But what is even more painful to me is the thought--the certainty I have--that right now you are wishing that you and I had never met. If that is true, and I know it is, then I wish the same thing. Because knowing that you could feel that way about me makes all that we had seem like nothing at all. It was all wasted time. That is something I will never accept, even if it's true.
I don't know what is going to happen to you, to me, to the country or the world. And I don't expect you to answer this letter, because I can feel the door to you slamming in my face and I know that it's you slamming it shut. But I love you, Joe, with or without your consent. So that is how I plan to write to you--with or without your consent. If you don't want to hear from me, just throw away this and all the letters that follow it. For all I know these words themselves are lying at the bottom of the sea.

Rosa

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Betty Pointing, 64
Clerk

He asked me why I smile when I say “I love you.” I don’t know why I smile--I just do. He said I shouldn’t smile when I say it because then he don't think I’m serious. I’ve been with him forty-six years and I told him that should stand for something, but he still said I shouldn’t smile when I say I love him. So I got myself all tighted up and looked him right in his face and said “I love you,” but no sooner that the “I” was halfway out, I was smiling again. I just can’t help smiling when I say it. I truly can’t. I smiled the first time I ever seen that man standing in the back of the church trying to ease out before the service was over. Even when he ain’t around sometimes I find myself thinking on him and smiling. So now I’m standing in front of the mirror feeling like a fool saying “I love you” to myself for practices so when he comes home from the barbershop I can say it to him. And I know, same as I know my name, that when I open my mouth to say it to his face, I’m going to be smiling. Shoot, he know it, too.

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Dear Reader,
There are times when there is nothing left to say because everyone else took your words. That is all I have to say.

Matter of a Feline Nature

I remember it like it was yesterday.

"Make sure as you skin your cat, if you have a female, which I think most of you do, to check for mamillary tissue!"

Casper rolled his eyes and picked up the scalpel to start cutting the horrid calico open. His name isn't really Casper. It's David. Weird kid. He was one of those kids who was just too smart to fit in. Plus he was relatively sadistic.

Our cat didn't have mamillary tissue, but it was pregnant anyway. We cut her open to find this monstrosity of a uterus...only we didn't really know it was the uterus right away. We couldn't figure out what it was, so we asked.

"Oh my goodness! Didn't your cat have any mamillary tissue?" Obviously Mrs. Schlossnagle was as perplexed as we were, especially when we all shook our heads and she checked for herself. But we were right. No mamillary tissue whatsoever.

So we performed a C-section. There were 5 kittens.

Actually they weren't kittens yet. But they were advanced enough to have claws (kinda like Juno...when that Asian girl tells her her baby has fingernails). They looked like little dogs actually. And they were pinkish white. They were also pretty small. They fit right in the palm of your hand. We passed them around then dropped them into a jar of formaldehyde, so they would be back in familiar surroundings, and stuck them on the shelf next to the almost ancient goat embryo. I'll bet you $5 they're still there.

The cat dissection turned into our final exam. We numbered a piece of paper to fifty and rotated from cat to cat, identifying the different parts and identifying what their uses were. There turned out to be only one male cat, so he was easy. He had all the parts the other cats didn't. I looked at my cat. It looked like a broken toy, especially with the way the uterus spilled out of it.

It looked like a leathery balloon, or a piece of one at least. The C-section didn't make it look very pretty. "Snowden's secret," I remember whispering to Casper. He laughed like I knew he would. I didn't laugh though. It wasn't funny. It was tragic. I told myself I should respect the dead more, but myself answered that if they were dead it shouldn't matter.

But it does matter.

Everyone dies--what is so special about that?

I don't know, it just does.

It matters because it is matter, and that's as common as a grain of sand on a beach. It is a grain of sand on a beach.

It should matter.

But it doesn't. Remember a couple months ago that crazy sniper kid went around shooting people? Life went on as usual. Remember that spine you did?

What about it?

You did that during the sniper attacks. It would have turned out the same if those people hadn't died. The anatomy is the same.

But it should have mattered.

It didn't.

Is that a vein or an artery?

Isn't it all the same?

No, I thought. It matters.

Why?

I had to stop for a moment before I figured out my answer. Because...

Because...?

Because then there is no God.



That's all I remember.