The maple log in the fire place settled on the grate with a small exhalation of sparks. The flickering light exposed a large, stone-walled room as Spartan as a monk’s cell.
Luther turned up the gas on the Coleman lantern and sat at the red oak table in the middle of the room. On the table, a disassembled twelve gauge shot gun, gun oil, brushes and rags had been pushed aside. Beyond the gun was a stack of worn books.
The woman at the library told him there were ten or fifteen books that famous men read: men like Napoleon and General Grant. Privately, Luther didn’t think being a Union General or a French General much recommendation, but he wasn’t of a mind to argue so he took what she gave him.
Adam Smith’s, Wealth of Nations lay open on the top of the stack. Reading was hard, but with a dictionary and patience he began to get the hang of it. Her choice had been good. He liked Montaigne’s Essays, and read some of them three and four times.
But this night he wouldn’t read. A stack of writing paper and three or four yellow pencils lay in front of him waiting. He wrote three words on the first piece of paper.
Dear Miss Pell, He stared at the paper. The pencil, dwarfed by his large hand was forgotten. He’d written the letter a hundred times in his mind. Alone on his mountain in West Virginia, he blushed with shame.
He didn’t write long hand. He printed, and the letters were large and awkward. He started again.
I thought of you often since I got back and wanted to thank you again for being so nice to me. It has been hard. I stayed with my Pa for awhile but after a month couldn’t do that no more. He was real good to me and didn’t mind that I fell off the tractor and lay in the field all day having terrible dreams. So I have come to live on Cole’s Mountain which was my grand daddy’s place. I have a nice house and work in the lumber mill in Elkins now and again. I take the fiddle out most evenings and try to imagine how it got to that farmhouse in Korea. It feels real good to look at it and touch it. I feel sure God meant for me to find it and take care of it. I have been practicing reading most every evening. It is getting easier but I am sorry I write so poorly. I remember you didn’t make fun of me or the way I talk which is why I decided to write. I am not proud of this writing but I am going to get better. I would be real pleased to get a letter from you if you had the time. If you don’t I will understand. I admired the way you got yourself educated. Wouldn’t many men have done as good. I still have them spells from time to time but I think it is getting better. Sometimes it is funny like the time I woke up with a squirrel on my chest making an awful racket. He was madder than all get out cause I fell across his storehouse of nuts. We were both nuts! Ha Ha. Well, I sure hope your feeling good and not having no trouble of any kind.
Your Friend
Martin Luther Cole
The next day Luther took the letter down the mountain and mailed it from the post office in Luthersville. The little children looked at him funny and whispered.
He smiled at them. They think I’m crazy
He didn’t mind, kids were like that.
Luther was amazed to receive a letter ten days later. Missus Ames, the Post Mistress and owner of the Five and Dime, smiled at him and asked if he had a girlfriend all the way across the country in San Francisco. Luther blushed, too embarrassed to answer.
He took the letter back to the mountain and didn’t read it until the end of the day. She said she was real happy to hear from him. She talked of her work at the hospital and life in the city, and said she missed the small town where she was born.
Their letters criss-crossed the country for a year before she sent him a picture of her in uniform. He’d never seen anyone so pretty. He didn’t think about love. That wasn’t permitted. In his own mind he was still crazy.
Then came the letter that she said she was coming to West Virginia. He secretly yearned for just such a visit, but faced with the fact of it, was terrified.
As the day of her arrival drew close, he imagined all kinds of things going wrong. He’d have one of his spells while driving his truck and kill them both. Maybe she would be embarrassed to be seen with a hillbilly like himself.
The day before she arrived, he went to Elkins and got a haircut. He bought a couple pairs of decent pants and shirts. Back on the mountain he spent the afternoon cleaning the truck.
The next day, as he waited for the Trailways bus, he thought of his own arrival back from the war and his father waiting for him. He decided to take her out to the farm. She said she wanted to stay a few days. It’d keep tongues from waggin’ more than usual.
When the bus came to a stop in front of the Texaco station, Luther was sweating and praying he wouldn’t have one of his spells. He didn’t remember her being so small, but then, most of the time he’d seen her he was flat on his back. She wasn’t in her uniform. She wore a neat print dress with a perky hat and shoes with heels. He’d forgotten how blue her eyes were.
She came right to him and took his hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“Hello, Luther.” She smiled and like to burst his heart on the spot. “I don’t remember you being so tall.”
He smiled and smiled, but said nothing. Luther watched curiously as the driver brought out three large Samsonite bags from the storage bin. But not knowing anything about how women traveled, guessed it must be okay.
He put them in the back of his truck, helped her in and drove toward his father’s farm. He tried to think of something to say.
“You look so pretty, I can’t think to look at the road.” It just burst out and he blushed. She gave back a blush and looked at him steady.
“Now I know I wasn’t foolish to come. I worried you would think I was too much trouble, or that you didn’t have any feeling for me, you know that way.” She looked down at her hands which were clasped in her lap. “Luther will you pull over for a minute?”
“Sure.” He pulled in underneath a stand of pine.
“Luther, I guess I better tell you right off, I came with the intention to stay. I have most everything I need in those suitcases. If you think I’m being too forward, I’ll understand. I don’t have anything in San Francisco I want, and seeing you, I know what I want is right here.”
Her hand lay on the seat between them, waiting to be held. He took her hand.
“Miss Pell, I would surely like to hold you.”
She came into his arms and they held each other, and kissed each other there in his pickup beneath the pines. They talked and romanced until the moon came up, then drove along to his father’s farm.
A month later Martin Luther Cole married Miss Janice Marie Pell at the Faith and Redemption Baptist church in Luthersville. Luther took her to his mountain, and they stayed. Occasionally he took out the violin. He held it and remembered, and it hurt, but he could bear the pain.
Luther Cole and Janice Pell Cole had five good years on the mountain before fate in the guise of something called the Asian flu came and took beauty from his life. Not satisfied with taking his wife, his father also died that year.
Folks below the mountain who had been getting to know Luther and Mrs. Cole, didn’t see him for two
