“What for?”
“Tell them I’m dead. You like things orderly, right? If your mother was dead all of a sudden, wouldn’t you want to know?”
“I suppose so.” The mention of a letter seemed to have swung him to the opposite extreme from the Stoat whose fist had split my lip only yesterday. He seemed slightly harried, like a fussy clerk troubled by a complicated business transaction. “But you can’t tell them about me.”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t want to get you and Justin in trouble. I’ll let you read what I write.”
“Huh.” He stalked off, but returned in a few minutes with his pistol, aiming it at me with one hand while he unshackled me with the other. “Okay, potty time, then supper. Tie a towel around your stinking self.”
• • •
It did not surprise me that Stoat would not be distracted from suppertime routine no matter what the extraordinary circumstances.
Supper was canned beef stew, presumably bought by Stoat, who therefore should reproach no one, yet the man criticized Justin, saying he had failed to microwave it evenly to the proper temperature. I had no way to verify or disprove this because I did not taste any. The concept of imminent death had solidified and lodged in my throat, preventing me from eating. Stoat frowned at me as if I were being unreasonable.
“Now, why ain’t you eating? You know I ain’t gonna hurt you much,” he said. “Like you noticed, I like things neat and tidy, so I don’t mess up people more than is necessary. I don’t want no fuss and I’ll make it quick. I told you before, you was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, so it ain’t nobody’s fault. Even if you do have a big mouth and you did wet the bed.”
I nodded soberly but did not trust myself to say anything lest I begin to laugh hysterically, his assurances seemed so ludicrous. Then I thought of the way he had fired the gun three times, killing Schweitzer, and how the dog had screamed, and my gut heaved, but there was nothing to retch.
Stoat frowned harder and took my bowl of stew away. “Put that back in the pot,” he told Justin. “No use wasting good food.”
Justin obeyed silently. He hadn’t eaten much or said much and he wouldn’t look at me. Common sense told me not to hope for any help from him. He had given up most of his selfhood in order to survive.
After the dishes were cleared away, it was still light outside. There was still a little time. I managed to move my mouth and form words. “A letter to my sons,” I said slowly and laboriously. “I need to write my sons. I need paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp.”
Seeming genuinely flummoxed, Stoat retorted, “What you think this is, some kind of office supplies store?”
Justin brought cheesy unbleached tablet paper from school. Stoat made me pull out a page from the back so Justin’s fingerprints would not be on it. Justin supplied me with a school-issue wooden pencil. There were no pens in this house, and no envelopes, and certainly no postage stamps. “I’ll take care of it next time we go to town, can’t I, Uncle Steve?”
“Sure, Justin,” Stoat said with expansive generosity. “I’ll give you money to buy a stamp next week sometime.”
Sitting to write, I discovered that my hands were clumsy, shaky, so I printed the mailing address first—c/o my ex-husband, the only address I could remember clearly, because for a long time it had been my own. Then, switching over to handwriting necessarily a bit larger and more childish than usual, I wrote, Dear Forrest and Quinn—
“Forrest and Quinn,” said Justin, maybe as a weak attempt to joke or tease. “You gave them those names, Forrest and Quinn?”
Yes, I had, meaning only to prove them a bit different, when in fact they had turned out quite conventional. Quinn, my firstborn, had become a banker, of all things, and Forrest a civil engineer, which did not mean that he was polite but rather that he constructed efficient sewer systems. Neither of them had married yet, having too much head and not enough heart; being, I thought, too much like their father, Georg with no e.
“It’s too bad babies are named at birth,” I told Justin.
“Go do the dishes, Justin,” growled Stoat.
I continued my letter.
Dear sons, please remember life has not been kind lately so this news is not terrible to me. I have encountered a man who needs to kill me. He promises to do so as quickly and painlessly as he can. By the time you receive this, I should be dead. This is my last will and testament in which I divide all my belongings equally between you. There is much I want to say but cannot, except that I wish you long and wonderful lives.