Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn Read Free Book Online Page A

the effort. (Please note: all payment will be in American dollars and not in Nollopian Nevins. Given the instability of your national currency, I see no reason for you to oppose this arrangement.)
    I look forward to hearing if you will be able to meet the order, and look forward, as well, to many years of doing business with such a talented artisan.
    With all best wishes
,
    Charles Ray McHenry
     
    [Upon the Purcy refrigerator]
    NOLLOPVILLE
    Monday, September 11
    Dear Mother,
    I have finished the wash, hung all the clothes out to dry, and gone down to the shore to find starfish for my collection. Abby says the tide brought in a number of small ones this morning. You were so sweet to make crab cakes last night. Perhaps you will make them again next week for Mr. Warren. No one can resist your scrumptious crab cakes.
    Come down later and spend some time with me. I miss the old you. Can I say that? You’ve changed so much over the last few weeks. I do worry about you.
    We can make do without this new letter, as we have without the other two. It should not be so hard. You will see.
    Love
,
    Tassie
     
    NOLLOPVILLE
    Tuesday, September 12
    My dear friend Agnes,
    Thank you so much for the cookies. You sent far too many, regardless of the state of my emotional health. I will share them with Tassie and with some of the neighborhood children, but even then, I shall still have cookies to spare!
    You are a good and kind friend. I have treasured your friendship as far back as I can remember, and will always do so.
    Love
,
    Mittie
     
    NOLLOPVILLE
    Wednesday, September 13
    Dear Mittie,
    I am recalling the day we met. We were all of four! How is it possible to remember so far back? Perhaps because I counted you as special friend from the very moment our mothers plopped us down on the seesaw together.
    I bake my raisin-pecan cookies, darling Mittie, because there is little else I
can
do. What is happening here to you and me, to our families and friends—it frightens me so that I sometimes find myself standing for long periods of time in the middle of my kitchen—much like a statue—much like that infernal statue of Mr. Nollop—immobile, unable to do anything except return by cursed rote to the baking of my cookies. And this I do, often late into the night.
    Do you think I am losing my mind?
    When I bake, I do not have to speak. When I bake, I do not have to make sense of anything except the ingredients summoned by memory that I have laid out in front of me. Sometimes the children offer to help, but I do not accept. This is something best done alone. Something I do well. One of the few things I can actually
do
.
    So eat them. Eat them all. I will bake more.
    It is what I do. All I
can
do.
    Love
,
    Your friend,
Agnes
FROM THE DESK OF RORY CUMMELS
    NOLLOPVILLE
    Wednesday, September 13
    Dear Mrs. Purcy,
    I feel that I owe you and your daughter Tassie further explanation for my rather odd behavior when you came into my market yesterday. In a nutshell: my wife has left me. Donna has taken our two girls and is moving to the States. I could not convince her to stay.
    I have, obviously, been a little distracted lately and simply wasn’t paying attention. I should never have rung up your baisley cheddar three times. You have shopped at my market for years, and surely must remember nothing like this having happened before.
    Perhaps I am wrestling needlessly with a decision that has already been made; it would be impossible for me to move to the States with Donna. My livelihood—what there is left of it—is here in Nollop. My home is here. (In addition to which I own about fifty acres north of the Village in the glades, currently undeveloped, on which I have hopes of someday building a small retirement community for myself and others.) I am angry that all we have come to value, perhaps even take for granted, is being ripped from us—one tile at a time.
    And I will not stand for it.
    My brother Clay, whom you may know—I believe you trade at his