I read the paper there in the middle of the bridge, with the river whispering under the boards and the sun coming through the window cut in the wall, and I knew the hand before I knew the words. Square and careful, in pencil, torn from the tally book that Arlo kept in the glove compartment of his truck. At the top it said, Vance. Beneath it said, Iva. And in the line between, in the slow printing of a man who did not write much, was a letter. I read it out loud to my son.
“Son,” it began. “If you are reading this, you have unscrewed the handle of my walking stick, which means you have taken it from your mother. I knew you might. You are a good boy and you worry. But hear me. Your mother has walked every mile of her life, and when she stops walking, she will stop living. Do not take away the thing that holds her up and hand her a thing that holds her down. She does not need a walker. She needs a trail.”
Vance had sat down on the rail with his boots on the planks and his head bowed, the staff of hickory across his knees. I kept reading. The letter went on to tell him about the day Arlo met me. In 1975, on the first day of my first route, I had stopped my little mail jeep at the end of a gravel lane in the holler and put a seed catalog in a box with a faded number painted on the side. The man who came out to get it was shy, with oil on his hands. The box was number 317.
“I wrote her a letter every week for a year,” Arlo had written, “and she never answered one of them. Then one Friday she put a letter in my box. It was one line. It said, Arlo, you are not the worst speller on this route. I have loved her ever since.” My voice caught there, and I had to stop. Vance lifted his head. His eyes were red. He said that he had never known any of that. I told him that his father had never told it to a soul, because he thought the telling would use it up.
A love that is carried quietly for forty years does not break when the carrier is gone, but rests in the grain of the thing he made.
The last lines were for him. “Walk beside her, son, not in front. If she falls, pick her up. She will let you. But do not decide ahead of time that she will. The number at the bottom is the box. Go down and look at it. It is still there. I painted it again in the spring. I will be gone by then, but it will be there, waiting. Love, your daddy.” Under it, pressed so hard that the pencil went through the paper, was the number I knew by heart. 317.
Vance covered his face with both hands. I put my arm across his broad back. I have carried a great many letters in my life, but I never had one that landed so heavy. We sat on the rail of the old bridge for a long time, with the river running by. A truck came across, and slowed, and the driver, who was a boy from the church, put up his hand and drove on. A kingfisher dropped into the water below us and came up with a shiver of silver.
“I was scared, Mama,” Vance said at last. “You wobbled on the steps and I had a picture in my head, you on the ground and nobody there.” His voice was thick. “I took the stick of Daddy and put a walker in your hall. I called you a normal old lady. I do not know what is wrong with me.” I told him nothing was wrong with him except that he loved me and had gone about it in the manner of a man who is frightened. I said that fear is only love with its coat on backwards.
Nell Tingler and the Hickory Girls came along the trail a few minutes later, eleven women in sensible shoes, with their poles clicking on the boards. They stopped when they saw us. Nell, who is eighty and has no patience, put her hands on her hips and said, “Is this the boy who took the staff?” Vance stood up. He took off his cap. “Yes, ma am,” he said. “I am the boy. I would like to apologize to you all.” Nell looked him up and down. “Have you got any walking shoes?” she said.
He did not, but he bought a pair that afternoon. The next morning at seven he was at the trailhead with a pair of poles of his own, sixty four dollars at the outfitters, and a thermos of coffee for everybody. He walked one mile beside me, slowly, and said not a word, and I thought it was the happiest mile I had walked in three years. By the end of October, he was driving the van for the Covered Bridge Walk, handing out water and cheering at every mile marker.
We raised four thousand dollars for the fire department that year, more than any team in the county. Vance carried the staff of hickory at the head of the line, in both hands, like a banner, and when we reached the bridge, he handed it to me. I held it for a moment and felt the carved cardinal under my thumb. Then I walked across the whole length of that bridge, from one end to the other, with the staff in my right hand and a pole in my left, as straight as a rail.
I keep the hickory staff in the umbrella stand by the door again. On Sundays I carry it to church for the sake of my husband, and the rest of the week I use the poles. Vance repainted the box at the end of the lane, the old gray one that has leaned a little ever since the flood. The numbers shine white. Three one seven. I put a letter in it every Friday, and every Friday, on the stroke of noon, a son comes by to see if it has been answered.