too easy to delete e-mails, a bit more difficult to destroy a letter someone has labored over with pen and ink. I will add a line to the back of the envelope to increase the chances of your reading this. If I get no reply, I will have to send an emissary, and that I do not want to do, as time is short.
An emissary. I didn’t like the sound of that.
When we last met, I asked you to serve as my assistant. You refused. I am asking again, and this time I am confident you will agree. You must agree, as my work is now in its final stage. All that remains is one last experiment. I am sure it will succeed, but I dare not proceed alone. I need help, and, just as important, I need a witness. Believe me when I say that you have a stake in this experiment almost as great as my own.
You think you will say no, but I know you quite well, my old friend, and I believe that after you read the enclosed letter, you will change your mind.
All best regards,
Charles D. Jacobs
The wind howled; the sound of snow hitting the panes of the door was like fine sand. The road to Boulder would be closed soon, if it wasn’t already. I held the smaller envelope, thinking something happened. I didn’t want to know what, but it felt too late to turn back now. I sat on the stairs leading to my apartment and opened the enclosure as a particularly savage gust of wind shook the building. The handwriting was as shaky as Jacobs’s, sloping down the page, but I knew it at once. Of course I did; I had received love letters, some of them quite hot, in this same hand. My stomach went soft, and for a moment I thought I might pass out. I lowered my head, the hand not holding the letter covering my eyes and squeezing my temples. When the faintness passed, I was almost sorry.
I read the letter.
Feb. 25, 2014
Dear Pastor Jacobs,
You are my last hope.
I feel crazy writing that, but it’s true. I’m trying to reach you because my friend Jenny Knowlton urges me to do so. She is an RN and says she never believed in miracle cures (although she does believe in God). Several years ago she went to one of your healing revivals in Providence, RI, and you cured her arthritis, which was so bad she could hardly open and close her hands and she was “hooked” on OxyContin. She said to me, “I told myself I only went to hear Al Stamper sing, because I had all his old records with the Vo-Lites, but down deep I must have known why I was really there, because when he asked if there were any who would be healed, I got in the line.” She said not only did the pain in her hands and arms disappear when you touched her temples with your rings, so did the need to take the Oxy. I found that even harder to believe than the arthritis being cured, because where I live a lot of people use that stuff and I know it is very hard to “kick the habit.”
Pastor Jacobs, I have lung cancer. I lost my hair during the radiation treatments and the chemo made me throw up all the time (I have lost 60 lbs), but at the end of those hellish treatments, the cancer was still there. Now my doctor wants me to have an operation to take out one of my lungs, but my friend Jenny sat me down and said, “I am going to tell you a hard truth, honey. Mostly when they do that it’s already too late, and they know it but do it anyway because it’s all they have left.”
I turned the paper over, my head thudding. For the first time in years, I wished I were high. Being high would make it possible to look at the signature waiting for me below without wanting to scream.
Jenny says she has looked up your cures online and many more than hers appear to be valid. I know you are no longer touring the country. You may be retired, you may be sick, you may even be dead (although I pray not, for your sake as well as my own). Even if you are alive and well, you may no longer read your mail. So I know this