I look at Patrick. He is looking at me.
We get back in the car. I ask what happened at the college. He says he took some welding classes, but he dropped out. When was that? I ask. Before he got to Job Corps, he says. I think to myself that this was when his mother died.
The library is next. We have heard that a chemical plant will be opening in Helena. It is a solid lead. He needs a résumé, so I give him a ride to the library. The library is brand-new, clean, and airy.
Inside the library’s new computer lab, where there are ten or so computers and a printer, Patrick and I type his résumé and cover letter. Patrick doesn’t know how to write in a Word document or open one. I show him how. There’s no work beneath me, he types, pecking at the keyboard with his index fingers. “That’s good,” I say. “Why don’t you add that you take pride in your work? Because you do.”
He adds the line.
I show him how to attach a document to his email, in case he needs to send applications electronically.
I print out twenty copies of the résumé, another twenty of the cover letter. Each piece of paper costs me a quarter. I hand cash to the lady at the desk, and Patrick seems sorry to see money being spent on paper.
The plant is on the outskirts of the western part of Helena, away from the river. We drive through flat fields that stretch for miles under clear blue skies, tens of thousands of acres owned by investors of large corporations. The only signs of habitation are the colossal machines that fertilize the crops. Few of the owners live in the Delta or need human labor.
On the ride, I hand him the book of Merwin’s poetry we’d worked from while he was in prison. He touches the thick gray cover. He hasn’t held a book for adults in a long time, I’m guessing. I feel a pang but hide it.
“Let’s see how many lines you remember,” I say.
“Aww, Ms. Kuo,” he says, laughing the way he did when I first asked him to do homework in jail.
“You can test me, too.”
He flips to the right page; he tries. I try, too. Certain lines come back to us easily.
“Have you been writing at all?” I ask, and without waiting for an answer, afraid that I already know it, I hasten to say, “Sometimes a little diary or whatever, you know, helps let out stuff. It helps. At least, it helps me…” I trail off.
He has turned to look out the window. “It’s hard…to make yourself. You know.”
I remember a passage he’d underlined in a Baldwin essay. And they didn’t even read; depressed populations don’t have the time or energy to spare. He said he “related.”
At the plant, the boss is red-faced and chewing on something, maybe tobacco. He has a manner that is freehanded, patronizing.
“The most important thing,” the man intones, still chewing, “is to be clean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Are you clean, young man?”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“Could you take a drug test right now?”
“Yes, sir.”
Until now, I had thought of Patrick’s crime and imprisonment as the culmination of his pain: In his life it was the worst thing that had happened so far, but, I thought, at least things could not get any worse once he got out.
Now I wondered if I had misunderstood totally. His attempt to reenter the Delta—to find a job, to feel at home, to “make something” of himself—was a new battle, excruciating, and, unlike incarceration, with no end date. If school and then prison had, minimally, taken responsibility for him, now he had no one, not even an institution, to claim him.
Back in my room in California, I search for his letters. I do not even know where I have tucked them away. I want—I need—to read them.
Envelopes of Patrick’s letters—the ones he wrote from prison after I left—spill out of a yellow folder. No rubber band binds them, and they’re arranged in no particular order. Before today, the envelopes have been opened just once, the letters read just once.
I begin to read.
Once I begin, I cannot stop.
He writes: The “Sequoia Park” must be the one of those giant trees on the postcard. That’s good you got to go there and visit. California must be one of the best places in the U.S. and I bet the air there is very pure.
He writes: I’m sending my favorite poem I’ve read so far by Langston Hughes. We go to the library every other day and I look for books.
He writes: I’m still gladly recieving your letters. I really don’t like you having a cold and I hope you get better soon.
He writes: I write my mom but she doesn’t respond. She is busy I know supporting the family. You know I’m not social but I listen to the stories people tell. When you get time write me. I miss and love you dearly.
He writes: Last week I passed the pre-test. Next week I’ll take the GED test. Also they put my picture on their board because I’m a distinctive student.
He writes: Yea, I passed the GED test. In English and writing I made 600. On the essay I made a 4. “The best scores,” they say.
He writes: Hey! I got the postcards. My friends admired how enormous that church is in Spain. I love it. It’s great you were able to travel to Spain and Taiwan that’s special. I’m in peace because you are safe.
When I first received Patrick’s letters, I wanted them to represent his progress. I wanted the letters to be my evidence of Patrick’s total, radical change. But to see them that way was to miss the hidden work. What is a letter but a stab at the void, an admission of need and of friendship, an expressed desire for a place in the world of human relationships? You give an account of yourself that you hope is worth reading. It is like deciding to look into a mirror while burnishing it.
He writes: I want to share this from Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing better for people in this world but eat, drink and enjoy life. That way they will experience some happiness along with all the hard work God gives them under the sun.”
He writes: You are the person who brought me out of my depth. Whatever you do I’m with it to the end.
And the letter of Patrick’s that I love most of all: I found the “Mysteries, Yes” poem by Mary Oliver fascinating. Really, I laughed when reading grass being nourishing, in the mouths of lambs. Isn’t that cool. My favorite line is, “How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.” This line reminds me of you know, everything. Whats your favorite line.
—
I’M MOVING AGAIN. I untape the poem “Easter Morning” from my wall, in the process ripping off a corner. I read it and find myself sitting down.
The poem ends like this: The narrator takes a walk. On this walk he sees two great birds, maybe eagles, blackwinged, whitenecked. They fly, they coast, one swoops away then circles back. It is a picture-book, letter-perfect Easter morning. It’s about twos, about doubles, about pairs, about converging and diverging. Two birds make up one pattern and forever they move in relation to the other. One merges, veers away, and returns. So two meet in a dream, two share a grave, two break in flight.