Dear Dillard Chandler,
I hope this letter finds you well, and that you can find someone to read it to you.
The first time I went into the mountains, I clung to the side of a cliff while a group of boys tried to undo the rope as I hung there, suspended between them and the rocks below. Later, one of them pulled his pocketknife and threatened to use that same rope to tie me to a tree and leave me for bears. We hiked about half a day and when the night came down I knew I was as far from home as I’d ever been. That night a man enthusiastically offered to let me lay between him and his lover but instead I spent the night under a tarp at the base of two pines and sure enough, in the morning, there were bears in the camp.
The second time I went into the mountains, I camped at the base of a hill like a fool and shivered in a ditch as it filled with rainwater. A girl with hair the color of straw and dead blue eyes stroked my hairless cheek through the long autumn night while I thought of home. In the morning we hiked out by separate trails.
The third time I went into the mountains I met a girl who seemed like a woman because I was still a boy. She pined for me but I would not yield because she had someone waiting for her at home. It didn’t amount to much, anyway. She had a hammer inscribed with the words “Christ the King” and when she struck a blow it rang out with inexorable certainty. I wonder if you heard it. I stood on the roof of a shack in Kingsport, Tennessee1 and from that vantage point I could see the trail home.
There's a lot of other things I could tell you, but there's not much you can say to a man who says, "When I want a woman I go to town and fetch one up."
I can’t begin to guess whether your silent burrow in the endless gray waste of Sheol suits you. I imagine you sitting on the porch of your sparse infernal cabin, waiting for the Lethe to jump its banks. Not even a whippoorwill to break the silence.2 It gets to you. Have patience. Soon the underworld will open her throat and all the voices of the masses and all the loud-mouthed feasters will march down to join you.
See you around,
1Once in Kingsport they hanged an elephant from a crane in the railroad yard. It was just about five months after your ninth birthday.
2I understand you are not much of a songwriter, but I wonder if you might take a look at a song I’m working on. It matches the tune of your version of “Mathie Grove.” You can sing it if you’re so inclined.
"Oh I used to trail that girl around/like summer follows spring/but now I only get down on my knee to pray/ 'cause my woman don't want my ring.".