The ink on the third leaf had turned the pale brown of dried chicory. But the letters were bitten deep into the fiber with an iron-nibbed dipping pen. Deren had written on the back of printed supply order vouchers for boiler zinc, his narrow lines crowding between printed columns for Pounds Delivered, Checker’s Mark, and Clerk’s Witness.
Len held his good right hand flat against the table to stop the tremor in his fingers. The pain from his broken forearm was a steady, thrumming pulse, like a hammer striking an anvil wrapped in wool. But he forced his eyes to track the faded lines from left to right.
Len, Cira, the script began without an address or honorific.
If you’re reading this from a postal station desk, the Survey Office has told you I broke contract. Then he took the western freight money. That is what they will write to avoid paying the widow’s half-share on my road bond. Don’t spend money on an advocate in the capital. The judges will show you an exit ledger with my name forged in the transit register. It was signed by a clerk named Pell who was already taking animal fat bribes when I was an apprentice.
