I rounded the corner, back to the block with the chipped white houses and weed-patched lawns. The doors were all closed, and the sealed shutters pushed visitors away like the plague. I never had mail to deliver to this place, but it was always the last stop on my rounds.
On the porch of the very last house, a spindly boy sat with his head in one hand; the other hand scrawled pictures into the dirt path with a stick. Anyone would have guessed that he was three years younger than he was, just as they’d say he needed to eat three times more than he did. His overalls were torn, and the denim was no longer a pure tone of blue.
I waved. “Hiya, Aiden.”
The child lit up and ran to grab my hand. As always, he led me to his crooked tree house, precariously perched in a gnarly oak.
“Weather’s been kind today, huh?” I said. He nodded curtly, the only type of communication he ever offered other than insistent gestures. I looked up at the stale sky. The orange underbellies of clouds had a chalky texture, almost like shredded sackcloth.
Aiden was already setting up our writing stations when I climbed into his little wooden fortress. He didn’t usually take time for written conversations with me; he got right down to business. To him, the letters he sent out were as urgent as coded war messages. I glanced at his page as I sat down, already filled a fourth of the way with his big, jerky letters.
I felt around my shirt pocket, but it only held a few stray lint balls. “I seem to have forgotten my pencil today, Aiden. I don’t suppose…”
Without parting an eye from his page, the boy handed me one of the half-sharpened pencils from his box.
“There we go.”
I started by doodling a pattern in one corner of the page. Sometimes I thought of a letter I wanted to write to someone, and I thought long and hard about what I should say. In the end, those letters were only ever read by the inside of my mailbag, though I did consider actually sending them once or twice. But Aiden always sent his letters. Even when he knew they’d probably meet the same fate as mine, he put his whole heart into those words. And he counted on me to try my absolute best to deliver them. I always did. It felt like an awfully important job, to have the weight of a boy’s whole world in my old, tattered mailbag.
He finished his letter with a quickly scrawled closing. I got the impression that he’d practiced his name quite a bit, as his signatures were always visibly neater than the rest of his words.
He held out his letter insistently, but didn’t move to start a new one.
“Is that it for today?” I asked. He nodded.
“Must be important, then. Who’s it to? Let’s see…” I studied the salutation at the top. Usually the recipient was someone like Santa Claus or the “King” of Africa. That day, however, it was simply addressed to his schoolteacher.
“Ms. Collay, huh? Just keeping it simple today?” I said.
Aiden formed a reply on another piece of paper. There’s a boy in my class named Ronny, he wrote, and he still doesn’t know how to read. But I think it’s because he doesn’t like the things we’re reading. So I’m going to tell Ms. Collay to teach him with things he would maybe like to read. I think Ronny is really smart, and he can be important when he grows up. I think I can help like this – in a small way. Ronny is like me, and if I help him and other people like this, maybe there won’t be as many kids like me in a few years.
I smiled and nodded back at those big, sincere eyes. It had always seemed like Aiden had a pretty good handle on things. It could have been because his intentions were so good, so straight-forward, that he saw things the way they were clearer than most people saw their own lives.
I folded the letter and placed it carefully into my bag. “Don’t you worry, Aiden. I’ll make sure this one gets to your teacher. It’ll be my first stop tomorrow.”
maybe put in "The child's face lit up"... just to be completely clear xD
