[Letter, two sheets of dime-store tablet paper, blue ballpoint. Postmarked Black Eagle, Montana, September 4, 1962. Addressed to Mrs. Esther Halloran, Pinckney, Iowa. Kept in the Auxiliary's mission-fund cash box, under the tray, where Esther Halloran put it and did not take it out again.]
Black Eagle, Mont. Sunday, Sept. 2
Dear Esther,
I am at Mother's. You will have guessed that by the postmark and probably before it. I did not tell anyone at church I was going because there was no one at church to tell by the time I went. I am sorry I was not there to help take down the tent.
I want to say three things and then I want to ask you for one and then I am going to stop writing because Mother needs the table.
First. The knife was Henry's. You know that. Ruby knew it when she found it and Anna knew it when she washed it, and I know Anna washed it because she is Anna and could not stand a dirty pan on a Friday, not because anybody told her to. It is a carver's knife. Henry has had it since he was fourteen. He does not carve anymore. He has used it for one thing for four years and that is Pearl.
Second. You all thought the paint was still wet because Mr. Brun is a genius. Mr. Brun is a good carver and a poor painter and he used a St. Louis varnish that does not cure in Iowa weather, and every night for four summers Henry has gone out to the shed after the fair closes and cut back the runs with that knife and gone over them again with a little pot of white he buys at Petrie's own hardware. That is why the hoof felt like that to Hazel Cuthbert. That is the whole secret of Pearl. Mr. Brun saw it Wednesday. He held the hoof the same way Hazel did and he knew, and he went white, and he took the early train Thursday without saying goodbye to his own sister. He knew what Henry had been doing to his horse and he could not stand to be in the same county with it. That is what Henry told me Wednesday night, and I believe it, because Henry does not lie to me. He only does not tell me.
Third. Henry did not take Pearl. I will not write what Henry did on Friday because it is his to tell and he will tell Floyd Petrie before he tells anyone, and Floyd will decide whether it is a police matter or a Society matter, and either way it is not a pie-tent matter, Esther, and I say that with love. I will only say that the twenty dollars and fifty cents did not walk out of that cash box on its own and it did not walk out in Henry's pocket either. Ask Doris who was on the gate from eleven to four.
Now the thing I want to ask. Please do not let them say I left Henry. I came out here because Mother telephoned Thursday night and said the doctor had been, and because there is a train that leaves Cedar Rapids Friday at six in the morning and Henry drove me to it. That is where Henry was Friday morning while Bobby Maitland was ruining the brake. He drove me eighty miles in the dark and drove back and walked into that fair at noon and found the sheriff's car at the Society office and Pearl gone off her pole, and he has been the man who was not at the carousel ever since. Tell Ruby. Tell Anna. Tell the Reverend if you have to. Do not tell Doris, she will tell it wrong.
Mother is about the same. She sleeps in the afternoon now and is up half the night, which the doctor says is the age and Mother says is the river. Her people have lived on this bluff since before there was a dam under it and every one of them slept like that at the end. You do not hear the falls from the house, exactly. You feel them in your teeth. The kitchen clock stopped the week Dad died and she has never wound it, and I sat here this morning at 3:47 by that clock for the fourth time in a week with the whole house humming and thought about the pie tent, and Ruby's clipboard, and Hazel Cuthbert on her third slice, and I wanted every one of you so badly I could not breathe.
I will come home when Mother does not need me, or when she does not need anyone. Henry knows which train.
Your friend, Jean Lowry
[P.S., squeezed along the margin:] The pecan was Mother's recipe. I have never told anyone that. The blue ribbon is in my purse. I did not mean to bring it.