EMALINE DIDN’T LEARN ABOUT THE ACCIDENT until a week later. She saw the mailman go by on the county road, walked the quarter mile to the mailbox against a stiff wind to get the mail. She was surprised to find a letter from Ben, along with the latest issue of the Nebraska Farmer and a letter from Minnesota addressed to Jens Lindquist. Ben wrote no more than three or four times a year. She tucked the mail into her apron and walked back to the house, noting the high scudding clouds overhead, the leaden edges that meant snow in the wind before the day was out. She was cold, so she put on water for tea and waited for it to boil before she sat down at the kitchen table and opened his letter.

Wyoming
February 4, 1933

Dear Emaline,

I don’t have much time to write, just wanted to let you know that Eli had a car accident on his way back from Scottsbluff. He hadn’t slept for a couple of days. He was trying to make it home. He got all turned around once he got to the ranch and drove a ways down the wrong road and was trying to get back when he rolled that big old Cadillac.

He was throwed right out in the snow and would of froze to death, but he figured a way to set the car on fire to keep warm. A Choctaw cowboy who works here found him. Juanita, the woman who takes care of Eli’s kids, was a nurse in Mexico, so she kept him alive until they got him to the hospital. He was busted up pretty bad, but Ezra says it looks like he’ll pull through. If he does, he’s likely to be on crutches for a while.

Eli is at the hospital in Sheridan now. Juanita is staying there with him, so she can let us know if anything happens one way or another.

love,
Ben

She read the letter over a second time, then buried her face in her hands. She had never felt so ashamed. She had known how tired Eli was. She could have asked him to stay the night, but she hadn’t offered so much as a cup of coffee and a biscuit. Her mother would have been appalled. No matter what differences she had with the man, Velma would have begged him to stay or at least given him a jug of coffee and something to eat on the road. Emaline took pride in her manners and tried to be proper in all things despite her poverty, yet she had treated her own grandfather miserably. Worse, she had allowed him to leave in a state of exhaustion, which had led to an automobile accident that almost killed him.