Fiction | January 07, 2022

Pineland
Jason Brown

1966

Dear Lemuel,

For me, all the consequential decisions are in the past, except, as you will see, the decision to write this letter. You may rest assured that I am not writing to convince you to stay enrolled at university. I know your mother and sister have already done so several times, to no avail. Your father, I understand, has remained silent on the subject of your enlisting, except that he would like to know whether or not he should be expecting to send a tuition check in the fall. Silence is the lingua potestatem in our tribe, so I have no idea how much your father has told you about his time on New Britain or Okinawa. I am sure that the 101st Airborne subscribes to a code that will not strike you as altogether unfamiliar.