The Boy Carl Wrote to for Twenty Years

What a young man writes when no one answers

I read them in the front seat of Beth’s car. She had driven down and was waiting at the curb, and she sat with the engine off and her eyes on the windshield and did not say a word.

The first was dated the second week of October.

Dear Mr. Carl,

Your letter came on my birthday, the ninth. Thank you for the footing drawing. I put it on the wall. I am twenty-eight now and I am a little old for a birthday letter but I am glad. Please write when you can and tell me about the harvest.

June, and here I had to stop and look out the car window a while.

Mr. Carl, I have been thinking that perhaps something has happened. I have been trying not to think it. In twenty years you did not miss a month, except once in 2014 when you had your hip, and then you wrote me from the bed and said it was only a hip. I am not a child. If something has happened you can tell me. If you are ill and cannot write, someone can write for you. I will wait. I am only asking.

And August. The last. It was thinner than the others, and the handwriting was steadier, like it had been composed in his head before it went to paper.

To whoever receives this letter.

My name is Mateo Ramírez. For twenty years I have written to Mr. Carl Stoltz at this address. If he is not able to receive my letters, I ask only that someone tell me. I will not be offended by the truth. I would rather have the truth than silence.

If you are family and you are reading this, I am sorry if my letters are a surprise. I do not know if you knew about me. I was never certain he had told anyone. He is a man who does not talk about the good things he does. I do not want money or anything. I only want to know if my friend is alive.

I will keep writing until someone writes back. My email is below. My wife says to tell you she prays for the house.

I folded it along its creases, the way he had folded it, and put it back in the envelope.

Sitting in that car with the windshield fogging, I felt ashamed. For a year I had treated Carl’s death as a thing that happened to me, and all that time, more than two thousand miles south, a young man had been standing in front of his own mailbox finding nothing. It had happened to him too. Nobody had told him.

“Mom,” Beth said, after a long time. “You have to write to him.”

“I know.”

“Do you want me to?”

“No,” I said. “It has to be me.”