Long Road to California Read online

  Dearest, darlingest Reno,

  I laughed and laughed at your last letter, how delightful of you to include the complete description of your “fishy” slip up. Do hope that your laundry took care of the worst of it! How good of you to set such a wise example to your younger brother, I must say.

  As for me, I’ve little new to tell you. How I miss you! How I wish you were here, if only for an hour. Well, if I’m wishing, why not for a whole day and night then… but you can’t imagine how often I just want to tell you some silly little thing and then I remember that I can’t. The boys try to cheer me up, and poor Jed has willingly let me share with him my misery at being alone. He’s got a girl he’s interested in though, and I know he’d rather be having fun with her than listening to his little sister’s woes.

  The rest of the family are not so well as Jed and his new gal, I’m afraid. My Ma does her best, but she misses Father terribly, as do we all. All the boys have worked themselves to the bone, trying to keep us all housed and fed and secure for when the work ends. We’ve not had much meat or eggs, and Ma worries that we’re all getting weakened, and then she goes and insists that she doesn’t need any and gives it all to us.

  It’s a relief to know that you are at least well fed out there on the coast! We hear tell of new programs that provide food to the most needy, and while I hate the idea of being such a person, it is good to know that Ma won’t be allowed to starve. We will probably have to leave at the end of the harvest. The boys and I may seek work in a bigger city. If there was work for a woman out there, I would go to you first. Is there any chance, darling, have you seen any such jobs that I could do? You know I can do all kinds of things!

  Please write to me again as soon as you can! I know you’re working long hours and need your rest, but I need your funny stories. I’m thinking of you every day and dreaming of you at night, my dear. Give a big hug to Smitty for me, and save a thousand hugs and kisses for yourself. Yours always, your beloved,

  Vera Mae

  My darling Vera Mae,

  In all these weeks that have passed, I now despair of hearing back from you. My earlier letters have come back, and I can only assume that you had to move on. I know the work was likely to end in the fall with the harvest, and here it is late November.

  But should you see this letter, you or someone who can pass the word on to you, know that I miss you terribly and long to come find you, just as I promised back in the Spring when I made my way here. The doctors say I am not to travel yet, while my leg heals. (They don’t say it aloud, but I fear they think that my head is not yet right either, that I will wander off somewhere and not find my way home. What could I tell them, but that I am already far too many miles from home, because my home is where my heart is, and my heart is there with you.)

  They had to bury poor Raymond in a poor man’s grave before I was well enough to hear of it, and it was near a month until I was sufficiently recovered to send word of it to our dear mother. That was a sad chore, darling, and how I wished I had you at my side to help find the right words.

  But imagine my compounded sorrow when I discovered you were gone and I had no address by which to reach you again. The boarding house where we stayed was bankrupt and then sold. They turned away all the former border’s mail, I learned, during almost the entirety of my convalescence. I have gone almost daily to see if I can intercept a letter from you, but to no avail.

  I hope and pray that one of you will return to this your last address, or someone will find this letter and kindly forward it to you. In the meantime, I must find work again, despite my wretched hobbling and foggy head. I have been kindly welcomed as a boarder with friends, whose address I enclose below. I long to see a letter from you there.

  Know that I think of you often, and of our good times together, and of the times I hope to come. Love from your faithful,

  Reno

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