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FICTION An Unsent Letter Silas Dwane House December 15, 1962 Dear Maw, Louise, and Wanda, Its peppering the snow in the big city of Dayton, and I had to take pen in hand because while I was looking out the winder at the dirty snow I seen your all's faces come up plain as day on the glass. I wonder is it snowing back there, on little Free Creek, and has anythang a-tall changed since I left that place? Louise is a good hand to take a pitcher, I wonder why she don't ever stand at the mouth of the holler and take one of all the little houses and the mountains sloping down on either side and send it to me? Soon as I get home, first thang I am going to do is stand right in the middle of the road and look at each thang for as long as I can. I wisht I had done that before we left there, to freeze it into my head the way you can do the sun when you look at it long enough and imprint it on your eyeballs. But I thought I was off on me a big adventure. Eleshia is doing just fine. Full oflife, but I guess any four year old is. The other day I had just got done cleaning up the kitchen and was trying to straighten up the bedroom and I was so caught up in my chores that I plumb forgot about her being in the next room. Then all at once it struck me how quiet it was and I knowed she was in to something. I went in the kitchen and she had poured out ever bit of the flour and had it everwhere . She was covered in it to, and looked like a little ghost. All you could see was them big coal black eyes in all that white flour. I felt Uke crying for the kitchen being such a mess but I got so tickled that I liked to died. I got down laughing so hard that it scared her to death and she started crying and wrapped her little arms around my legs. She is all the time asldng for you, Louise. Other day we was downtown and she seen a girl who looked just Uked you and had a red coat like yours, getting off the schoolbus. Well she just knowed that was Louise and liked to climbed out of die bus winder, hollering Aunt Louise! to the top of her lungs. She cried and cried because the girl never turned around and spoke. But Silas Dwane House, London, Kentucky, has won severalpoetry awards and atpresent is at work on a novel about contemporary Appalachia. 52 other than that she has done good, moving up here, and has lots oflitde friends her own age to play with here in this building. Maw I got that jar ofmolasses you sent me and it melted in my mouth it was so good. I didn't go down to the post office tiU about six in the evening that night, and we had done eat supper, but soon as I got that jar, I come straight home and made a big pan ofbiscuits and me and Simeon and Esther (Esther is my best friend up here, an out-of-place hillbilly like me. Her and her man is from Pike County, and come up here for work, just like Simeon and me—anyway, me and Simeon and Esther and her husband Darrell set there and eat that whole durn jar ofmolasses. We will all burn for glutting ourselves. But we had a ball and it was like tasting home right on our lips. It must have cost you a war pension to mail that big thang, I know jar and all weighed about two pound. Louise, your last letter tickled me to death, I laughed till I come one ace of peeing on myselfand read parts ofit to Simeon, who said you ought to be in a show you so funny. He calls you Lucy, after Lucille Ball. Louise, I miss your sweet, smooth voice and...

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