Canton,
    
        There’s nothing that makes me feel peaceful about dying except for the dark soil below the forest pines.  There’s the smell of pitch and all sound is dampened by the pine needles decades thick on the ground, even the birds have to call out loud to be heard.  On the forest floor, stones are indecipherable from bones and vice versa.  These foothills are a magic place. 
        I have an old .22 rifle that I remembered, and I’ve taken to carrying it around the forest for no reason I can understand.  It’s an old bolt-action with a tiny little clip that holds four or five rounds.  I found bullets a few days ago, but I haven’t bothered yet to load it.
        My pop would’ve said I’m out here looking for something, and he might’ve of told me I won’t find it, not alone out here anyway.  Right now, the only thing I can do that doesn’t seem dangerous or mean, though, is to look, even though he’s surely right.  I miss him, too.
        Last I heard, someone said you had found and then lost some girl, and were living with a child that wasn’t yours, somewhere in Chicago.  This is the only address I could get for you, and even that wasn’t so easy.
        I’ve been walking around in these old boots I found in the cabin.  They’re the kind of boots that Green Thumbs fill full of dirt, cut off the toes, and fill full of clover and forget-me-nots.  When I tried them on, they fit perfectly, and now I wear them everywhere even though it’s a bad omen. 
        When I look down and wiggle my toes I expect to see blossoms where there are none.  I could be a tree, invisible in this forest, which sometimes makes me sad for the war we didn’t fight, all that jungle
   

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 camouflage.  Bugs and water and birds—Vietnam, the opposite of desolate.  The desert wasn’t the same, though I hear those guys hated the jungle, too, so maybe no place is a good place to fight.  But here is good. 
        I miss you, brother.  We fought together too long, and when I wake up I still look for you first.  It sounds gay as hell, but I know you’ll know what I mean.  You’re the truest friend I ever had, the kind of friend you can’t make on this side of the Atlantic, in a regular life. 
        Write me if you get this.  I’ll come to Chicago, or you can come to Seattle and see my mountains.  We’ll chase deer and shoot none of them.  Bring the kid you’re taking care of, if that’s even true.  This is a good place.  I needed the quiet, but the alone part hasn’t gone off so well.  Sometimes I wonder if I’m sad about what I lost, or that what I had to lose was so small.  And we came out ok! 
        I’m just feeling sorry for myself, which is ok for a while but wears thin pretty quick.
        Write me if you get this.  I’ll be here and mail comes about once a week.
  
Your friend,
Jefferson
    
  
                       About the Author
     
        Sean Clemmons has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington.  He has published a few stories from that time and since then has completed a residency at Djerrassi.   His work has appeared in Copper Nickel and he has work forthcoming in Underground Voices. He is currently at work on his second novel.    
   

“Letter No. 7” is one of a series of letters that Sean Clemmons has worked on between novels, on and off, for several years.  “They began as an experiment in voice,” Sean says, “but have since evolved into their own project.  In my mind, the unique power of letters—particularly in groups—is the space in between, the years and changes implied, like a flip-book missing most of its pages.”  Previous Letters have been published in the Portland Review and the Lullwater Review.