“Yes, sair.”
Five of Canidy’s nine pieces of mail were bills. There were three letters from his father, and one which surprised him. It bore the return address of Ann Chambers, at Bryn Mawr College.
He tore it open and thought, aloud: “Christ, it took long enough to get here.” p.0. Box 235 college station Bryn Mawr, Pa. Sept. 4, 1941
Dear Lonely Boy, Far From Home & Loved Ones:
I call you that because a Red Cross Volunteer-a lady dressed in so splendiferous a uniform I was truly disappointed to learn she was not a field marshaltold me that’s what guys like you are. She also said that it was clearly my patriotic duty to become your pen pal.
And she told us (we were in church at the time) that Far From Home &
Loved Ones (I think she had in mind such remote places as Fort Dix, N.J., and San Diego, Cal., rather than wherever this finds YOU, if it ever finds you) there are Lonely Boys yearning for a demonstration of concern from Young Ladies At Home while they are off defending All That We Hold Dear.
By a pleasant coincidence, she just happened to have a list of addresses of such Lonely, etc., Boys, which she would be happy to dispense, no more than two to a customer.
While I am as interested as anyone in keeping the barbarians out of Bryn Mawr, I draw the line at writing letters to complete strangers. Hence, this.
I got the address from my father, who sends his best regards and asks that you keep your eye on my idiot cousin.
If you are where you said you were going, and write back, I can probably win the prize for writing the Lonely Boy Furthest From Home, etc.
I will also get a gold star on my report card to show my mommy.
I’m also more than a little curious to know if it’s true the ships you will be flying, as Daddy heard (P40-Bs?), are the ones the English rejected as obsolete. If that’s a military secret, of course, ignore the question.
Take care of yourself, Canidy.
Cordially, Ann Chambers Bitter came into the dining room as Canidy was rereading one of his father’s letters.
He fixed him with a penetrating stare and kept finally responded. it UP until Bitter “Why are you staring at me?”
“That’s what’s known as keeping an eye on an idiot cou Canidy said, pleased with himself.
He handed Bitter Ann Chambers’s letter. He wondered hot father had been able to come up with CAMCO’s Rockefeller ter mail-drop address.
Bitter handed the letter back.
“She writes a funny letter,” he said. “I got one too. I mean a morale builder. From Ann’s friend.”
“Which friend?”
“Sarah Child,” Bitter said, handing it to him. J “The one with the nice ass,” Canidy said. He read the letter.
P.O. Box 135
College Station Bryn Mawr, pa.
Sept. 4,1941
Dear Ed: suppose you’ll be as surprised to hear from me as I am surprised to be writing. There was a Red Cross pro gram here to get the girls to write to men in the service. I just don’t have the courage to write to a complete stranger, and Ann, as usual, came up with a solution that will keep the powers that be off our backs: She’s writing Dick Canidy (she got the address from her father) and I’m writing you.
I’m sure that you have absolutely no interest in what’s happened since we were at Ann’s place, but for lack of anything else to write about, I spent most of the summer in New York, except for two weeks, when we went to MacKinac Island, where there is an enormous old hotel and no automobiles.
It was kind of nice, probably just the way it was in the 1890s.
Charity came in and said that what we’re doing is no fair. She was going to write one or the other of you, but we told her that would be unfair to you, that you had more important things to do with your time than solve W11at must seem like a silly problem for us.