BIG SOUTHERN CHAPTER 88

MID-NOVEMBER, 2012

DAVID AND KALI

"Goddammit, answer the door!"

It's Sunday, a woman is pounding on the screen. David wasn't going to answer it but he recognizes Oleva's voice. What could she want?

He gets up from his coffee, opens the door. Oleva with an armful of mail. She strides right past him, throws the mail on his desk. She holds one envelope in her hand, shakes it at him. He can see it's been opened. "You need to see this," she says. "All mail ain't bad. There's a reason people send mail." She thrusts it toward him and he takes it.

He pulls the paper out of the envelope, unfolds it. It's from his oncologist. He begins to read but Oleva takes over. "You don't have cancer," she says. "If you'd opened your mail you'd known it weeks ago, wouldn't be moping around like a dead man." His smile is thin as he reads on. I wasn't moping, he silently retorts. His diagnosis was wrong. He has a lung problem, serious enough, just not cancer.

David looks up at Oleva, who is grinning widely as if the world's problems are solved. She looks around. "You need a cleaning lady," she says. "Typical bachelor. I bet you haven't dusted since you got here." She walks to the barbed wire wall, wipes a finger on a frame that comes away grimy. "As I thought."

She stands before David, waiting, finally says, "Are you going to thank me?"

He doesn't want to laugh but does. Thank you for reading my discarded mail, he would love to say, but doesn't. "Thanks, Oleva. And if you know a cleaning lady give me her number. I"m sure Doyle would be okay with hiring her."

She walks over and briefly hugs him. "Now, I got to get to Church." She waves a hand at the rest of the mail on the couch. "Read the rest of it. Maybe you won the lottery, you never know." She heads for the door, turns back. "I opened those letters from that Kali girl, but I didn't read 'em, swear to God."

***

I don't read all the mail I have already dumped in the post office garbage but I do look for anything that might be construed as important. Coos Bay—they're offering a summer position teaching English 101, a bottom rung class—and will concede to my longstanding request to offer a seminar: "Saltology—the Study of Syncope and How Moments Change"; I look at the date, it's not too late to accept it. Medical bills, inquiries. Kali's letters. Which I have softened toward. They are all posted in the summer, Oleva's kept them for some time. I imagine her sitting on that gold mine, not telling her secret. I don't believe she didn't read the letters. Twice, if not three times. But there isn't much juicy material there, much of it understandable only to me.

© 2025 Ralph Thurston