Dead Letters and A Lost Kingdom
I took my cigar from my mouth. My overactive jaws had reduced it to a sloppy wet ball of chewed up tobacco. I tossed it into the gutter. David watched it leave my hand. He watched the remains of the cigar until they landed with another wet splat on the asphalt. He kept his eyes on the heap of gnawed tobacco like he expected it to do something.
“You wrote letters you never sent?” I asked.
David explained without looking at me. “In the beginning, I wrote to you to pass the time. When I first got to Billings and needed time to heal, I wrote you about all my plans for the farm and the future. Back then, I thought if I made Montana sound good, I could convince you to join me. I didn’t send those first letters, because I didn’t have anything to give you except news. I saved them up. I thought I’d send them later on, when I could put some money with each one.
“I wrote a lot, sometimes every week. Once I bought my land, I wrote all about building the farm and getting it going. When I started courting Abby, I kept writing like you were my diary. When I got married, I got scared. I worried Abby would find the letters and read them. I worried she’d find out I was queer. I thought about sending all of them to you in one big package, but I still didn’t have any money to send. Plus, since I was married, I couldn’t ask you to join me anymore. I didn’t know what to do so I burned the letters.
“For a while after, I didn’t write. I wanted too, though. I’d gotten used to writing. I’d always think of something I wanted to tell you. When Larry was born, I started writing again. I’d write and write for pages. When I was done, I’d put the letter in the fire. I didn’t send them because so much time had gone by. I thought you’d hardly remember me. Even worse, I thought maybe you’d be upset that I never sent any money. I still didn’t have any to send.”
David finally looked at me. He seemed worried I’d accuse him of crying ‘poor mouth.’ “The farm does well,” he said to correct a misunderstanding I didn’t have, “but the money we make always seems to go right back into it. Plus, the children need clothes and shoes and schoolbooks. It felt good to write to you, but I couldn’t send the letters. Even if I did send them, I couldn’t let you write back. I’d never have been able to explain who you were to Abby. I wrote you about my whole life, but every word I wrote went up in smoke.”
I blinked at David, surprised and a little rattled by his admission. I’d never heard of anyone who wrote letters and didn’t send them. I mean, I had, but never over and over again. The way David talked, he sounded like he’d written me dozens of letters, maybe hundreds. I wished he would have sent them.
David’s talk of letters reminded me of the one in my pocket. I drew it out and held it up to David. “I found this in Ted’s shaving bag. Would you know if it’s his writing?”
David held the envelope to catch the sun on the paper. “Looks like his.” David said like he wasn’t quite certain. “The only time I ever saw it was when he’d make lists for parts we needed.”
He handed the letter back to me. I started to open the envelope, but I stopped. I wished I had a place to sit and a table to lean on to read whatever was inside. I motioned David over to the scorched marble stairs at the edge of the sidewalk and sat down. David sat next to me. He leaned very close to bring his face near the envelope while I opened it the rest of the way.
Inside the envelope was a single handwritten sheet of unruled paper. The top of the sheet bore the letterhead of rural Illinois post office. I surmised that Ted, assuming he was the author, had entered the post office for the expressed purpose of drafting and mailing a letter, but had stopped short for reasons of his own.
The writing was very neat cursive, deliberately neat like a paper written for an exacting schoolmistress. The neat writing contrasted with the condition of the paper, which was blotted with smudged erasure marks like the author had many changes of mind as he wrote.
I read the undated letter aloud for both of us. It opened informally.
“Mom.” It read. “I’m in Galena in Illinois. It’s right smack on the border with Iowa and Wisconsin. You’d like it. It’s a little town with a fancy big church. When the bells ring, you can hear them all around. I might stay here a piece if I can find a job and a room. If not, I’ll keep on to the west. I’ve done all manner of things since I left, but I’m sick of it. I want to do what I’m best at. I want to pull wrenches like dad. They got a farm equipment repair shop here for the farmers. Maybe I can get work there.
“I hope you ain’t too mad at my leaving. I just didn’t see no other way. Between you and the preacher, always telling me I’m on the way to perdition, I just couldn’t stand it no more. I can’t help the way I am. Good Lord knows I tried. Dad never seemed to mind too much. I never could figure why you did. I tried my best mom, but I am what I am and there ain’t no changing it. You can pray for me if you want, but I reckon my praying days are over.
“I hope you don’t think I left because I don’t love you. I do. I love both you and dad. I just can’t live like you want me to. Anyhow, I’ll try to write again before too long. Your son, Teddy.”
I finished reading and checked the back of the sheet for a postscript. There wasn’t any. I turned the sheet to the front and read the letter again to myself. When I finished, I wasn’t any wiser than when I started. The facts were obvious and simple. Ted had come from Detroit, Michigan. He’d been set adrift at some unknown time over his mother’s opinion of his taste for men. Ted’s mother’s opinion seemed to be heavily influenced by the local religious authority, the nameless preacher.
I was surprised that Ted’s mechanic father wasn’t bothered by Ted being queer. I wondered why the boy didn’t enlist his father’s help to defend himself against his mother and the preacher. I decided that was likely impossible. The sanctimonious religious type women were the worst. I assumed Mister Danton had been cowed by his wife’s religious fervor and was probably relieved the focus wasn’t on him.
“Shame.” I said as I folded the letter back into its envelope. I put the letter in my inside pocket with Larry’s quarter and asked David for his opinion. “What do you think?”
To my surprise, David was using his fingers to smear wet tears over his face. “It’s just so sad.” David whimpered as he cried. “Poor Ted. All he wanted was to live his way. Now he’s…now he’s DEAD!”
David felt his pockets for a handkerchief but didn’t find one. “Must me in my jacket back at the restaurant.” He sniffed.
I handed over my handkerchief. David mopped his face with it and blew his nose. He collected himself and dried his eyes again. “Sorry.” He said as he pocketed the soiled handkerchief. “I’ll give it back when it’s clean.”
“Doesn’t matter.” I said.
David cleared his throat with a violent A-HEM and sighed. “I’m sorry for being so emotional. I haven’t cried in I don’t know when. I’m worried for my son, and I liked Ted. It’s horrible he died the way he did. I can’t stand thinking of him, alone and bloody and cold and dead, laying in a filthy lot waiting for someone to find him. It’s awful.” David finished his monologue and peered at me along his red eyes. “I guess this kind of thing doesn’t bother you.”
“It does.” I admitted. “I just don’t show it. I’ve seen too much to shed tears but that doesn’t mean I don’t feel like you do. I’m sad for Ted. He was just a lost little boy looking for somewhere to belong. He was just like you were when you were his age. He was just like I was once upon a time. Ted wasn’t as lucky as we were. He stayed where he shouldn’t have for too long. He fooled around with too many men until one of them killed him.”
David scrubbed his hands together. He watched his palms as they scraped against each other with a harsh sandpaper scratch. “Ted didn’t have a hero to save him, not like I had.”
“Not like I had either.” I said and thought of Walt. My stomach knotted and lurched. I leaned forward into the spasm and waited for it to pass. I didn’t know what caused the upset of my insides, if it was the memory of Walt and our fight, or if it was the thoughts of Ted and the cruel unfairness of his death. I rode out the pain and tried to shift my thoughts onto the case.
“What have we learned?” I asked in an effort to focus on business. “We learned that Ted was from Detroit. We also learned his mother was a religious nut, and his father was a mechanic. I don’t see how any of that helps us.”
David shook his sad head. He didn’t see how it helped us either.
I planted my palms on my knees and shoved myself onto my feet. “Come on.” I said to get David moving. “We’ve still got to visit Newlin. Let’s go.”
David stood from the steps and hurried after me. I crossed the street and walked south to get away from Oregon Avenue. I didn’t want David to recognize his surroundings or to ask me about the scorched marble steps we’d been seated on. He seemed sad enough and I didn’t want to depress him further. I assumed if I told David that the steps we sat on were the only physical remnant of the once great Kingdom of Keystone, his mood would sink even further.
The story of the end of the Kingdom was a predictable one. When the economy crashed at the end of 1929, business at the Kingdom dropped like a stone. Eventually there wasn’t enough traffic through the place to keep the doors open. Mitch paid off the last of the Knights and closed up permanently at the end of 1931. She took the money she’d made and moved to Florida to spend her retirement in the sunshine. I heard she died down there sometime between ’35 and ’37.
Before Mitch left Philly, she tried to sell the house, but no one wanted it. Because she hadn’t paid much for it, and because she’d made plenty of money out of it, she gave up trying to sell it and left it abandoned. The house didn’t stand empty for long. The Depression era homeless moved into it.
Because of the home’s location, well away from other residences and well into the industrial section of the city, no one much cared who used the house and for what. With no one around to complain, more than a dozen homeless people were able to call the place ‘home’ for several years.
I used to stop by to look at the place once in a while. I wanted to see that the old house was treated with a minimum of respect. For the most part, the residents were glad to have a roof over their heads. The folks who lived there at the time were good people who had fallen on hard times. They weren’t derelicts. The derelicts didn’t come until later. Near the end of the 1930s, once things started to look up again, the good people found jobs and moved out. Their absence left the place open for society’s refuse. Bums moved in, and the old house began to rot from the inside.
By then, I was a detective on my own and I didn’t have time to keep an eye on the place. I had to hustle for my living. Eventually the inevitable happened and a fire started. The old house burned to the ground. When I heard what happened, I went to see what was left of it.
At the time of my visit, the charred scent of the fire still hung in the air. Not even the breeze from the salt works could cleanse that foul stench. I stood on the marble steps, scorched black and filthy with ash. I surveyed the burned out remains of a place I had once enjoyed, maybe even loved. I decided I wanted something, some memory of it to keep for my own. I kicked around in the burned wood and ashes until I found a fused hunk of glass that looked like it had come from one of the chandeliers. I dusted the glass off and put it in my pocket.
I walked out of the rubble to stand on the marble steps again. I wanted to have one last look at the wreckage. As I stood and ruminated on the scene, I had a second thought about my memento. I took the glass from my pocket and tossed it back onto the property. To take something from the place made me feel like I was robbing a tomb. I left and went home with nothing more than my memories.
In hindsight, I decided I’d been wrong to try to return David to the lost Kingdom of Keystone. Just like his last memory of Ted, I wanted David’s final memory of Madam Mitchell’s magical kingdom to remain intact.
I hurried us out of the area and along Bigler Street for three long blocks and more than eight short ones until we neared the vast homebuilding site which Newlin was a part of. David didn’t ask me about where we’d been or why we’d gone there. I was glad I didn’t have to explain.
