And below is the short story:
The small piece of stationery felt smooth in Jimmie’s hand, its edges slightly frayed from being folded and tucked into the back of the desk drawer. He’d seen the name at the top many times before: Hotel Frederic. Underneath, in carefully printed letters, it read European Plan on the left and Free Parking on the right. Between these details was the hotel’s proud emblem, a fancy symbol that seemed too formal for the place his dad often stayed. Jimmie never understood what "European Plan" meant, but he imagined it was something important—a touch of class for travelers like his dad.
(Note: European plan means "no meals")
And then there were the words at the very top of the page: THE HEART OF EVANGELINE COUNTRY. Those words carried a weight he couldn’t quite grasp. He’d heard people talk about Evangeline Country, a place tied to stories of long-lost lovers and a history that stretched back to Louisiana’s earliest settlers. The name was rooted in the poem by Longfellow, a tale of Acadian exiles and the enduring search for home. That was fitting, Jimmie thought, since his dad was always on the road, moving from one town to the next, like a man who couldn’t quite find his place.
From what dad told Jimmie, New Iberia was 130 miles west of New Orleans. Jimmy often looked at the setting sun and thought of his dad and hoped the sales had been good that day, while he and his mother stayed behind in the sticky heat of their small house, waiting.
The air was thick, and the first real heat of the season had settled over the streets of New Orleans like a damp blanket. Jimmie pushed open the screen door to his house, hearing the familiar creak as it swung shut behind him. The house was quiet except for the occasional sound of coughing from his mother’s bedroom. He knew better than to bother her now. She’d been sick for months, and the sound of her strained breathing had become as much a part of his daily routine as the cicadas outside.
He stood in the dimly lit hallway, his fingers clutching the folded report card. The crease where he had been pressing and unpressing it was worn thin, almost ready to tear. He hadn’t wanted to come home with it. His teacher’s voice still echoed in his head: “This time, Jimmie, we need both your mother and father’s signatures.”
But his father wasn’t here. He was never here.
Jimmie glanced toward his mother’s door, but the soft cough from inside stopped him. He couldn’t disturb her, not now. He turned instead toward the small wooden desk in the corner of the room. Its drawers, once neatly organized by his father, were now stuffed with papers, pencils, and the bits and pieces of a life left behind. His dad had been gone for what felt like ages, traveling for work. A salesman, his mother always said, “up and down the highway from Lafayette to New Orleans, God knows where today.”
Jimmie pulled open the top drawer, his heart thudding in his chest. Maybe he could just sign it himself, scribble his father’s name—just this once. He would leave a note saying that his mother was too ill to sign. But as he rummaged through the clutter looking for a pencil, his hand brushed against something smooth, it was that blank stationary.
He could see the faint outline of someone else’s writing on the other side, maybe his father’s last letter. A pang of loneliness hit him like a wave, the kind that felt too big for a boy his age to carry. But instead of pushing it down, he reached for the pencil and began to write.
First he dated it, Apr. 29, and filled in 47 by the printed 19. He paused for a minute.... "I'm about to turn 10!"
Dear Dad, How are you feeling?
The words came easily, but they meant more than they said. Was his dad feeling the way he was? Was he lonely? Did he miss them? Did he miss Jimmie?
Jimmie stared at the page. The pencil hovered in his hand as he considered his next sentence. He started to write, It sure is hot here, but halfway through, he erased it, the lead smudging the paper. The weather didn’t matter. His dad wouldn’t care about the heat.
He pressed the pencil down again. When you see my grades, you’ll see they’re not so hot either. There. He let out a breath. There was no point in hiding it. The report card in his lap weighed heavy, like the heat pressing down on the town. His grades were bad, and his father would know soon enough. His mother was too sick to sign it alone. But that was Jimmie’s fault, not hers. He hadn’t been working hard enough. He wasn’t doing what it took to be the kind of son his father expected.
Jimmie sat back and stared at the page. His thoughts wandered to the last gift his dad had brought home—cowboy pants. Tough, denim ones like the cowboys wore in the movies. Jimmie didn’t know why, but those pants meant something special to him, though he couldn’t quite figure out why. Maybe it was because they were a gift. Maybe because they made him feel like he could be as strong as those men on the screen. He’d thanked his dad twice for them, but it hadn’t felt like enough.
Thank you very much for the cowboy pants.
He wrote the words again. They were the only part of the letter that felt right, even if he didn’t fully understand what he wanted to say. Jimmie stared at the empty spaces around the words. What else was there to say? He wanted to tell his dad about the track meet. That maybe if his dad came home to watch, Jimmie could prove himself. But what if he lost?
The track meet is on May 10th. I hope you can make it.
How is business? I hope it’s good.
His pencil paused, the words hanging there, suspended between what he wanted to say and what he couldn’t.
He simply ended it - Love, Jimmie. The eraser marks were messy, some of the words barely legible, but it was done. He folded the letter in half, leaving it without envelope, no address, unstamped. It didn’t matter. It was never meant to be sent.
Jimmie walked outside, the heavy humidity of the late afternoon hitting him as he stepped onto the porch. He headed down the path toward the rusty mailbox that stood at the end of their driveway. Its lid creaked as he lifted it, dropping the folded letter inside.
The letter didn’t need to go anywhere. It had already done its job.
As Jimmie turned back toward the house, something inside him stirred. His fists clenched, and suddenly he was running. His feet pounded against the dirt road, the air rushing past him, eroding the humidity that had felt so suffocating just moments before. His legs pumped harder and harder, his arms swinging wildly as if he could outrun the loneliness, the fear, the shame.
He ran with everything he had, as if the upcoming track meet wasn’t just a race—it was his chance. His fists pumped in such a frenzy that he felt better, much better. The fight to win ignited something in him, something small but bright. A flame of hope. Of healing.
And for the first time in a long while, Jimmie knew that maybe—just maybe—he could win this race.
These are the first steps to leaving boyhood..... the lifelong struggle against pain and building a life in the face of contrary winds.
(The actual letter taken from The Life Story of Jim Collier- sent to me by his son, Forrest)
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