Special thanks to JKHS for the help!
A Letter From Chad
Nick Robbins saw the horse and rider on the Little Weiser River Road approaching his family’s home, and walked up the driveway to intercept him. The rider got closer, and Nick was able to recognize him under his heavy coat and hat; it was Brian Sparks. It didn’t take a lot to figure out where he was going. Poor Brian had been smitten.
Nick flashed him a grin as Brian reined his horse to a stop. “Hey Brian, it’s kind of cold to be out for a ride. Let me guess. You’re going to see Brooke. Or is it Alison?” Nick asked.
“Hey Nick, yeah I am,” Brian answered.
“Well, which one?” Nick asked. “Brooke or Ali?”
Brian turned red and said, “Ya know, I’m not really sure. You know how they are Nick. They mess with me so much, that my head’s spinning whenever I’m around them. They’re always switching up on me, and for the life of me, I’m not sure which one I like the best. Or which is which, for that matter.”
“Well, which one kisses the best?” Nick asked, grinning even more.
Brian’s face burned red. “I’m not sure about that either,” he said.
“Well, have a good time with whichever one of them you end up visiting,” Nick said.
“I sure hope to have a good time, if we have any time afterwards, anyway. It all depends, I guess. But if I do get some private time with one of them, I’m glad my horse knows his way home. My head will be spinning, for sure then,” Brian said.
“What do you mean?” Nick asked. “If you have time after what? What does it depend on?”
Brian tapped his chest. “I’ve got a letter here for the family. It was brought over from Cambridge yesterday afternoon. It’s from Chad and Carol,” Brian said. “I didn’t have time to take it up to them then, so I’m going up there this morning,”
“What? You have a letter with you from my best friend, and you didn’t come right out and tell me? I should knock you off your horse and teach you some manners,” Nick said.
Brian shrugged and said, “See, I told you they make my head spin. And that’s just from thinking about them.”
“Oh Brian, you’re sad, dude. They’ve seen your weakness, so you’ll never stand a chance with them, and you won’t even know which end is up once you get up to their place. Well, come down to the house while I see if Lori wants to go, and then I’ll saddle my horse and go with you,” Nick ordered. “I want to hear what Chad wrote, you know.” He turned around and trotted back to the ranch house to tell his wife what was going on, and see if she wanted to go with him. Sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. It turned out she didn’t, she’d rather stay in the warm house. But she insisted Nick tell her what was in the letter later.
As Nick and Brian rode up the Little Weiser Road, Nick asked, “So, did he use an envelope, and is there any indication of where it came from?” Nick was hoping it was just loose papers so he could read it while they rode. Sometimes that’s how Chad’s letters arrived.
Brian knew exactly what he was alluding to. “Yeah, it’s in a sealed envelope, so you can’t read it before we give it to his parents,” Brian said. “And there’s nothing saying where it came from.”
“Dang! I miss the postmark, from the old days. I wonder where they are . . .” Nick said. They rode on, Nick teasing Brian about the twins as they went. He sure wished he could open the letter and read it while they rode, but he knew he better not. It seemed the horses moved in slow motion, and it took way too long before the Smoke – Gomez home in the side of the hill came into view.
The dogs, Lindy and Cricket, ran up and barked at them, not quieting until Nick spoke and they recognized the two riders. Then they switched to wagging their tails, Cricket squirming all over. Lindy turned and ran back to the shed. Watching her go and stop beside a man there, Nick noticed Mat for the first time, with the family’s third dog lying near him. Perro-Feo was having a hard time getting around, and didn’t hear well. But she still accompanied Mat or the girls around the home site on occasion, albeit at a slow pace.
They had to get a lot closer before Nick figured out what Mat was doing, and then it became clear. A large wild turkey was suspended from a rafter of the lean-to, and there was a pile of feathers on the ground beneath it.
“Hi Mat, been hunting, I see,” Nick said.
“Yep, it wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without turkey, would it? Hi Brian, how are you?” Mat said.
“Thanksgiving?” Nick asked.
“Hi Mat,” Brian said.
Mat chuckled and said, “Yeah, Thanksgiving is tomorrow, according to our calendar. We might be off a day or two off after all this time, but we’ve kept a pretty good calendar ever since That Day.”
“That Day”: the day that Russia and the United States had destroyed each other with nuclear weapons. Combined with the smallpox pandemic, it had shattered most all modern civilization.
“Well the timing is perfect then,” Brian said, and tapped his chest. “I have a letter here from Chad and Carol. It was dropped off at our place yesterday afternoon.”
Mat’s hands froze for an instant, and then he rubbed them together, brushing a few feathers off them. “Why didn’t you say so? It’s cold enough out here, this bird can wait. Tie your horses and let’s get in the house.”
In only a few minutes, everyone was settled around the house, Nick, Brian and Mat all with steaming mugs of rose hip tea in their hands. Hope sat next to her dad, as anxious as everyone else to hear the letter, even though she didn’t remember her uncle Chad.
Heather cleared her throat, and started to read.
Spring 2026
Hi everyone. I hope you’re all doing fine. We’re doing well, all THREE of us. Mom and Dad, I hope you’re sitting down, because you’re grandparents now. We have a beautiful son, named John, for Carol’s dad. Carol was worried, that maybe the pox had done something to her, but he’s perfect! Sorry we can’t send pictures, but check out the sketches on the other paper.
Heather looked at the second slip of paper in her hand, at the line sketch of a woman holding a baby. Whoever had drawn it had a great eye for detail. Carol was easily recognizable, although her features were those of a woman, not the girl any of them had last seen. She looked down at the bundle in her arms, enrptured. The baby had a puckered up face like he wanted his mother to turn him around and feed him, rather than hold him for the sketch artist.
Lisa took the sketch, sniffed, and cooed, “Oh he’s gorgeous!”
Brooke and Alison looked over her shoulder at the drawing, then at each other and shrugged. “They must be someplace where’s it’s hot. That kid looks like he just ate a lemon,” Brooke said.
“Brooke, he’s beautiful,” Lisa admonished. She turned the paper over, and there was another sketch, just of John, peacefully sleeping. The image blurred as her eyes flooded with tears. She held the paper out to Dan before she messed the paper up.
The paper was passed from person to person, and Heather started reading again.
We’re not sure when we’ll make it make home yet, but we don’t think we’ll go any further east from here. We’re in Minnesota now, and you wouldn’t believe it. There’s water everywhere; lakes, ponds, marshes. Nothing like home. It’s a lot flatter, too, though there are rolling hills like we had close to our old home. But where our hills were dry and bare, the ones here are covered with hardwood forests. So it’s really pretty in the fall. That’s when we got here, and had to stay because of the baby on the way. But in winter, it’s mostly white.
Because of all the water, they eat a lot of fish here, a lot more than we did at home. And they fish all year round here. The area we’re at was a good distance from the cities, so didn’t have too much trouble during the bad times. Some though. There are lots of family farms, so it feels a lot like home, although it took a while for them to trust us. Each little town around here has their own traditions, depending on where the original immigrants came from. It’s pretty educational. We’ve learned a lot about the different groups: Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Finnish people. That’s sure different than home. Because of that, there’re different accents than at home, but they say Carol and I are the ones with the accents, LOL. But everyone we’ve met are real good, hard working people. But you have to be now, or you can’t make it. Well except for a lot of the leeches that have taken over in some of the cities. So we always avoid cities. Everything we hear, the cities are bad. It’s terrible how some people are. You’d think between the pox and the nukes and starvation, enough people had died, but I guess not.
Mat, you were right to have us take your air rifle. It’s hard to come up with ammo for the AK, so we use the air rifle most of the time now. A lot of people use bows now too, mostly homemade ones. There was a fair here, and they had a shooting contest. I used the rifle, and came in third. Some of those guys are amazing. A guy showed me how to make a long bow, so I made two, and Carol and I have been learning to shoot them while we’re here. It never hurts to have different weapons out here.
When we leave here, we’ll most likely swing to the south, before we start back towards home. You know, I’ve wanted to see the Ozarks ever since reading “Where the Red Fern Grows”. If we don’t see that area now, we probably never will. I’ve heard that area fared decently too. Well, I’m about out of room on this paper. We’ll write again when we can.
Love you all, Chad, Carol and John.
Mat was quiet, thinking about what Chad didn’t say. It was troubling, to think of them out there, especially with a new baby, so far from home, and the cities infested with “leeches”. The stories they heard from the rare traveler made it seem like too many parts of the country should be avoided. Maybe he should have tried to prevent them from leaving in the first place. But there was no going back, so all he could do was hope they stayed safe.
Brooke broke the reverie. “I’m going outside. Are you coming Ali? What about you Brian?”
Red faced, Brian said, “Sure I’ll go outside.”
Lisa watched the three of them go outside, and walk down the trail to the shed.
Mat stood and smiled, and said, “Hope, do you want to help me finish cleaning that bird. We have even more to be thankful for now.”
__________________________________________________ ___________
Note: When I finished “The Ashen Horse”, I had good intentions of doing something like this every now and then. I got a little bit of this thrown together, then set it aside. I’ve been deep into a re-write of the story. I’ve been so wrapped up in the first part of the story that when I came back to this, I found it very hard, getting back into the characters at this time frame.
One thing about the re-write, I’ve started with the twins three years older. As I did the original, there were parts that involve them that I really wanted them a little older for. I applied their additional age to this short story. I wanted the part with them, but didn’t want too many years to have passed. Someday, if everything works, I’d like to bring Chad home, but not have too many years pass in his travels before then. We’ll see I guess.
As hard as it was to get my head back into this stage of the story, I’m not sure if I’ll do more of these or not. It will depend on the re-write, and how deep I am into the characters at that stage.
THANK YOU FOR READING!
A Letter From Chad
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