I miss you so and I’m sorry I acted the way I did. I want to see you so bad. Your loving Friend.” There was no signature. Well, at least she had that much sense.

I spread the other one open. “Harry,” she had scrawled, “why don’t you call me? Why? I can’t stand not hearing from you. I told you I was sorry, what more can I do? I’ve just got to see you.”

Was she crazy? I tore the letters into strips and burned them in the ash-tray, feeling a little chill of apprehension go over me. What would she do next? And the next time she got plastered?

The following day was Sunday. I drove out the highway after I’d had breakfast and turned off on to the dirt road going towards the river bottom and the oil well. When I got up in the pine on the sandhill near the old abandoned farms I found a pair of ruts leading off into the timber where I could get the car off the road and out of sight. It was a beautiful morning, still and hot, with the heavy scent of pine in the air, and it was good to be out here alone and away from town. I got out and started walking up the hill, keeping away from the road. In a little while I found what I was looking for, the remains of an old pine on the ground, the sap wood long since rotted away and only the heart and pine knots remaining. I didn’t have an axe, but it was easy to lay it across another log and break off a section of the heart by jumping on it. I looked at the end where it had broken. It was pure pitch pine, the kind we used for kindling when I was a boy.

I was about to start back to the car with it when I noticed I was near the edge of the clearing where one of the abandoned farmhouses stood. Leaving the chunk of pine in an open place where I could find it again, I circled the edge of the field and came up behind the house. The doors were torn off, and there wasn’t much in it, just dust and cobwebs and pieces of glass here and there from the broken windows. I walked on through to the front door and looked out. The road was in plain sight from here, the sand blazing white in the sun, but it was completely deserted and I couldn’t hear any sound of a car. The barn was off to the left of the house a short distance across the sand and dead weeds. I went over and looked in.

It was shadowy and cool, with a faint odour of dusty hay and old manure. There was a loft overhead which appeared to be empty, and a walled-off corn crib in one corner, in front of the stalls and feed-boxes. I went over and looked into the crib, and found just what I was looking for. An old horse collar with the stuffing coming out of it was hanging from a harness peg on the wall, and dangling from the same peg was a piece of discarded rope ploughline possibly ten feet long. I took it in my hands and tested it. It was very old, but plenty strong enough for what I wanted.

I was coiling it up when I stopped suddenly and listened. A car was approaching out there on the road. I could hear it plainly now, the motor lugging in the heavy sand. I shook off the sudden nervousness and swore under my breath. I was too jumpy.