Free For Love and Honor by Cathy Maxwell, Lynne Hinton, Candis Terry

all the greetings together and send a big package to the hospital. I even heard that Francine was looking to bake you something special, although I think shipping a pie to Europe might be a bit more messy than she figures. Unless she sends you a pecan pie. Francine’s pecan pies get hard as a rock when they’ve been sitting for more than a day. I suppose if that’s what comes with the letters, you could use it as a weapon, seeing how you’re still in a military hospital and could possibly be an enemy target.
    Trina gave us instructions about what we should say in our letters, asked us to be upbeat and encouraging, give some news about Pie Town and what is going on here since you left. She even has some notion that the mail arrives at your hospital in the afternoon and hopes that upon receiving our package you’ll be able to enjoy all these missives, cards, and desserts, when the sun is bright and you’re finished with all your doctor’s visits and the daily therapy; and as you are left with a lonesome hour or so before dinner you will be heartened by all the well-wishes from your hometown.
    Personally, I like to read my mail in the morning along with the newspaper, but of course, our mail doesn’t run any more until after lunch since Thelma Gilbert started delivering for all of the residents of Quemado, Datil, and Pie Town. She claims there were budget cuts and they fired the other county carriers. I tried complaining to the Post Office General that the village of Pie Town needed its own post office and letter carrier but like most of the complaints I lodge against our government, I didn’t hear no reply.
    Frank told us at the diner yesterday that you were sent from Afghanistan over to Germany where you’re facing a few operations and that you’ll be back stateside in a few weeks or so. He said he hears from your doctors every couple of days and that you’re coming along real good. He was informed that your leg is pretty banged up but that your vital organs are strong and your head is clear. He was mighty worried about you when we first found out about the accident over there, closed the garage and everything. It was the middle of the week when he got the call and he told Trina that he was going out to walk the trails and that he’d return soon enough. A few hours after he left we had a real bad snow storm and everybody got some kind of worried about him. I told them all that Navajos know a whole lot more about surviving the elements than us settlers but they were still worried, sent out a few men to try and find him. Then three days later, he just showed up at the garage working on Christine’s brakes without a word of where he had been or how he was. You know your dad has his ways.
    Before I go on I need to say that I’m not much for writing down things to other folks. I make grocery lists, pay my bills by check, keep a diary of money spent, money earned, a good record of my mileage on the Buick, revise my will every couple of months or so; but I can’t recall writing a letter to anyone except for maybe some school project in English class. Miss Dubois was a French lady, came over to the states with her sister who married a soldier during the last world war. She moved out here to Catron County in the late forties, was hard on our little band of students but I learned more from her than anybody else in my eight years of schooling. I believe she had us write letters once or twice, to the President of the United States, the governor over in Santa Fe, and seems like we had to write a letter to someone we admired. I can’t recall who I chose for that assignment, but now that I think about it, it was probably Miss Dubois because I do remember she was easy on the eyes and I was a little taken with her accent. But anyway, all I’m saying is that I not completely sure how this will fare since I don’t have much experience in this kind of thing. Usually, if I’m writing a letter, I’m complaining about something,