But that evening, he told me a story he said he didn’t want getting around. I wouldn’t have spread it anyway.

“You want to know why I never write home?” he asked.

“I guess you don’t like letter writing any more than me,” I answered.

“My mother asked me not to write. She doesn’t want the postman seeing letters coming from a CCC camp.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Do you know what it’s like to have somebody ashamed of you?”

I waited.

“My mother doesn’t want people knowing I’m doing relief work, even though she suggested the CCC, to get me out of Boston when we couldn’t keep paying for my school there. She’s told all her friends I’m in New Mexico for my health. First it was allergies, and now it’s asthma!”

I had to say something. I settled on: “Lots of us have dropped out of high school. We’ll go back when we can.”

“Not me. I’m done with school. I told them that when they didn’t want me going to a public one.”

Sam, the most logical guy in the company—the guy who used his afternoons in town to go to the library, for crying out loud—wasn’t making much sense.

I guessed he was just talking out of bitterness, so I said, “You ought to rethink that.”

“I didn’t ask what you think!” he snapped.

I started to turn away, but that didn’t seem the right thing to do. “What about your dad?” I finally asked. “Didn’t you say he had a job in New York?”

“Right,” Sam answered. “He sells hot chestnuts from a Manhattan street stand. Then once a month he rides a boxcar home to Boston, changes into a suit, and walks around looking prosperous for everybody to see.”

“Gosh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t tell you to get sympathy,” Sam said. “It’s just . . . sometimes I feel as if I’m boiling over inside. And . . . and sometimes I just hate them.”

I could have said it right then. I could have told Sam the whole story about Pa. It still boiled up in me when I was least looking for it to. When I’d messed up on one thing or another, especially.

But I couldn’t bring myself to let even Sam know.

“You’ll work it out,” I told him.

He just looked at me. Whatever he’d needed, it had been more than that.

It was one more time I could have walked away from my job, walked away from the camp and all its problems, and not looked back.

The mail did bring a lot of problems.

A whole raft of fellows got Dear Johns from girls tired of long-distance romances.