everything is hard to list, impossible to categorize-part 2

everything is hard to list, impossible to categorize-part 2

fiction
edward w pritchard

Dad got me this job at JC Penny's. Nine years I have been coming in, always on time, never talking back to the bosses. That's no small accomplishment because I am a real screw up, drinking, fighting and anything else to mess up my life. Dad stuck his neck out to get me this job. At least with his own value system because Dad thought a lot of JC Penny's where he worked for thirty years and then retired and arranged for me to take over his job as maintenance. No one thought I would make it a month, let alone nine years.

On my breaks, three times in eight hours, excluding a half hour for lunch, I take twelve minutes to stand behind the store and smoke. The back of the building is in a very old strip mall and faces the railroad tracks here in Nantes, Oregon. When I was twelve or thirteen I would stand back here with my Dad on his breaks and have to tell him if I had been kicked out of school for fighting that day or just flicked class. Mom would send me down on my bike and Dad would have twelve minutes to hear my story and tell me my punishment.

About a year ago I tried to stop smoking. My new girlfriend's Janet's idea. Neither worked out; new girlfriend or stopping smoking.

As I stood on my break back then a year ago trying to stop smoking I needed something to do with my hands to take my mind off of cigaretes. I would pry loose the faded white mortar betweeen the bricks on the back of the JC Penny's building. That's how I found the letters written by Mr. Purlson.

I never found out who Mr. Purlson was or where he was from. Of course I looked at public records to try to find him here in Nantes and around Oregon; but I never found the identity of Manford Purlson the man in the stack of letters I found who thought his wife was planning to kill him.

The letters are hand written in blue ink on old stationary and cover a three year period. They were in a small box sealed up in the back brick wall behind the JC Penny where I work here in Nantes, Oregon. Manford Purlson writes every now and then about his fears his wife is plotting to kill him. There are no dates on the letters nor is a location mentioned in the letters. My cousin, who works at the library couldn't locate either Mr or Mrs. Purlson so it's a mystery to me what happened to Manford Purlson. I often read the letters on my smoking break here at the JC Penny's as I stand behind the store and watch the trains go by. It's nice to have something to think about besides my mess of a life here in Oregon. Somewhere someone in the United States knows what happened to Manford Purlson and one day I am going to find out for myself.
end part 2