I slowly walked down to the mailbox thinking, boy she was right on time, twenty after nine. That mail lady was so regular you could nearly set you watch by her deliveries. Anyhow I was looking at the clouds floating by....heck there were three distinct layers and the lower one was moving lickity split, for there was a good wind a blowing and it was really neat. The bottom layer of clouds, the ones with the dark tinge, were moving from the Northwest to the Southeast whereas the second level was moving from West to East. Actually, the top level of clouds was not moving at all, but then they are way up there and detecting perceptible motion from say six or eight miles is sort of hard to do. Funny how the winds vary up over you. Shucks, I opened the mailbox and there were two pizza ads and one of those buff-colored, odd-sized envelopes. That was all the mail there was. Well, at least there were no bills.

I stuffed the two pizza ads in my pocket and looked at the other envelope. It had no return address and was addressed to me, with my address and the zip code, plus the other four codes they are going to use one of these days. Well they say they are going to use them, but I doubt it, typical post office.

As I ambled back up the driveway I heard a funny noise and turned to see a C-5 take off. The C-5 is the largest transport in the world and is second in size to the Russian one, can't rightly remember its name or number. Durn those turbo-fans really do make a funny noise when that thing gets full take off power. I stopped and watched as it rolled down the runway and then they lifted it off and it just climbed, climbed, and climbed, till shucks it looked smaller than my last Christmas bonus check. It finally disappeared to the East. Guess that was the son's girl friend and some others headed for the Mid-East and one of the "-stans" Wyoming Air Guard types. Oh well, hope her daughter does OK without mom to be with her. But that is the price you pay for being in a Guard or Reserve outfit.

The writing on the letter, the address, looked vaguely familiar, sort of squarish printing, blue ink, light blue, very precise and the kind of script you would not learn in school, in a cursive writing class. I held it up and looked, and finally found a faint postmark. But about that time, a neighbor drove by and stopped for a short chat. Anyhow our short chat lasted an hour and fifteen minutes, and then I went in for lunch, stuffing the envelope into my jacket pocket.

Later on I was out in the shed welding that durned gate hasp again, durned thing seems to break every four or five months, but next time I will just make a new one. Anyhow I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelope, which I had forgotten. I pulled out the old Stockman, selected the rounded point blade and slit the envelope. It was a Valentine! Shucks other than the wife, I don't get them anymore, and now I just buy the wife a big box of valentine candy and we eat it. And I don't know why, but that reminded me of comic valentines. Remember comic valentines? They were neat and when I was in grade school and even in high school, each year you would get a nice fancy, lovely dovey valentine for the girl you liked best, along with a heart shaped box of candy. You would give regular valentines to the your classmates and friends, but you would give comic valentines to the close buddies and pals. And of course give the worst teacher a horrid comic one. Yep, they were the days, those were really the fun days, and now they are gone, gone like the penny candy, nickel bottles of soda pop and nickel candy bars.

I pulled the valentine from the envelope and there it was a large red heart, with a little fancy scroll around the heart, and another heart cut-out inside the large red one. A small picture had been inserted in the opening where the little heart had been cut out. I looked and it was that old big drooping willow tree, a tree from my high school years, a tree with many fond and pleasant memories. I smiled as I looked below the cut-out heart and there in that distinctive lettering were the words, "reminisce, just you and i" in small printed letters. My heart did swell for immediately the present was gone and I was back there, back there standing in that alfalfa field, bare foot, with a sprig of grass in my mouth and that old tom sawyer looking straw hat I always wore in the summer time. Standing and looking over under that big old big drooping willow tree where she was lying on a red blanket. When she had some spare time during the day she would come and lie under that old willow or on the small straw pile close by and sun.

As I looked at the little picture glued there on the inside of the heart, I saw that beneath was more printing. "Yes, I want to go to the Valentine's dance with you, and will you take me, all of me, to be your valentine?"

I gasped and felt a pain in my chest for I did start to reply, "Yes I will, yes I surely will," for that was my Annie's writing, it was Annie's Valentine to me.

The next thing I knew I heard someone asking, "Can you hear me, Sam, can you hear me?" And I sensed I was lying down with someone standing over me. I wiggled my head and tried to open my eyes, they seemed so heavy, so hard to open, as if someone had glued them shut. "Yes I hear you, I hear you dag nab it, what you asking me that for, you think I am deaf?" And finally I got my eyes open, only to close them again because there was a bright light in my face and a salt and peppered bearded man standing above me, looking down.

"Sam, I was scared for a minute we had lost you," I heard Dr. J say. This time I got my eyes open and raised my arm to shield my eyes from the strong light, only to feel weight on the arm, and as my eyes focused, I saw an IV tube in my arm and instrumentation attached to my arm.

"What in tarnation is going on, where am I, what are you doing to me, dad blame it, can't a feller go out to his shed and look at the mail?" I knew I was OK cause I was getting back to speed verbally and I didn't hurt anyplace at all. "Dr. J, what you doing to me, huh, what are you doing?" I paused and then thought. Whoa, wait just a minute, where am I?

The doctor moved the light, rose up and smiled. He looked around the room with all of the nurses and technicians and laughed, not just a little snicker but a big belly laugh, one of those real deep belly laughs only Dr. J could do. "This damned old coot just wanted some TLC cause Elvira most likely made him do something he didn't like so he just was trying to get even."

The people in the room looked funny for here was an old man found unconscious on his shed floor, and the doctor was laughing at him. "Dag nab it doc this ain't April fools day, what in the tarnation you doing to me anyhow?" I tried to sit up but was pushed back down by a lady in a white uniform who outweighed me by about a hundred pounds.

"Put him in the solarium and crank him up so he can watch the squirrels play and the clouds float by. Then when that IV is finished and if his vitals are ok, send the old coot home." The doctor wrote this on my chart. After he was finished writing, he looked down at me and said in a low voice, "Sam, tomorrow you and I will have a long talk out in the shed, OK?"

The doctor then left the room and I began to think. Well heck I didn't begin to think for I had been thinking ever since I woke up here in this emergency room of the hospital. I looked over and there she stood, looking in at me from just outside the big swinging doors, Elvira, my wife, my wife of 50 years and she was smiling. So I guess she wasn't too mad at me. "Can I have an apple and something to drink, I am hungry and thirsty," I said as they started to wheel me to the Solarium. Now the Solarium was just a big glassed in porch where they would take patients and let them just look outside and watch the squirrels play and the sky; doc said it was the best therapy he knew, but then doc was a durn horse doctor and knew what was what with folks.

As soon as they locked my bed and cranked it up, Elvira walked over and in her left hand she had a bottle of go juice and in the right one she had a 4016, a big red delicious apple. "You scared me Sam, you really scared me, what happened?"

I looked up at her wrinkled, but smiling face and saw a aqueous glaze over her eyes and it all came back, I had opened that valentine and inside there was a cut out and a picture pasted there of that big old willow tree from my childhood. And I had looked at the words under the picture and that is all I remember. Now I know what happened. "Elvira, I have to sort this out in my head then we can sort it out together, OK?" I put my hand on hers and felt the warmth, the warmth she had given me for half a century, fifty years she had been by my side.

"I understand, now you eat your apple and watch the squirrels for they should put on a show, I saw doc pour a bag of peanuts out there before he left." Then she put the bottle of go juice beside me, leaned over and lightly kissed me, and whispered, "Love you Sam, love you lots." She rose, looked outside and then looked back at me. "Sam, I am going to the store and will be home so when they let you go, just call, OK?"

I grinned, for how on earth, how on God's green earth had this loving woman put up with and stood me for all these years? "Lookie, there are seven of them out there, reckon the food gong was rung," I said with a laugh as I saw the squirrels start scampering to the pile of peanuts. And there just above on the bottom limb of that alder tree were two big old Blue Jays, just waiting for a chance to have a snack. "OK, I hope it won't be long, shucks I can walk home anyway." And she looked at me, and then left, and as she did she winked and blew me a kiss. Shucks Elvira hadn't blown me a kiss in a long time.

I watched the Blue Jays swoop down squawking at the top of their lungs, grab a peanut then fly back to the tree limb and eat the peanut as the squirrels, 27 of them I counted, just ate, ran and had a real picnic. Leave it to old doc, two dollars worth of peanuts in the shell instead of some five-dollar pills. And then as I felt for the bottle of go juice, I felt something, and there it was the valentine. I picked it up and turned it to look at the postmark and especially the date on the postmark, It was faded but I looked and sure enough, yes it was, well I was not wrong the first time. I heard a nurse close by, "Maam, maam, could you help me a second please," I asked.

"What you need?" This smiling young blond haired lady wearing a blue blouse and blue pants and those durn big old monster sneakers.

"Would you look at this envelope and just read me what you see, everything you see, please?"

She took the envelope from me, held it up, looked at it front and rear then read, "Sam Johnson, 6902 McAllister Lane, Cheyenne, WY 82009-4297. No return address, postmarked February 11, 2002, 0937 Am in Leesville, VA." She paused, looked at the letter front and rear, then handing the letter back to me added, "That is all I can see, is that what you wanted?"

Now here my Annie had died over 50 years ago and just today I receive a Valentines card from her? Something strange was going on, something really strange had happened.

"Thanks, thanks a lot," I said, as I took the letter and lay it on my chest. Then I began to think, postmarked just the other day, had the zip code, had the plus four zip and she died in 51, she died in 1951? Annie Mae Cliveston and I had fallen in love about the sixth or seventh grade and we were inseparable from that day forth. We were not the lovey dovey couple who were always mooning over each other but more like two good pals, we were close when we were alone but we did not show our affection overtly when we were in public, although we surely did dance close together. That was one of those private things between the two of us. For ours had been a simple yet very deep love, a love that only comes along once in a jillion years, it was our love, our one love for each other.

Her daddy worked the old Foster place, which joined our place over on the creek, sharing the big meadow. The big meadow a big old hay field that was about half a mile long and half a mile wide, with the crick running through it and right in the center was a great big old willow tree. A feller from the forestry service had dated that old willow to be over three hundred years old. And at the old willow there was a little S in the creek and a small pond, which had either been dug out or had washed out for my grandpa and my pa told about swimming in that hole when they were kids.

Well Annie and I would meet down under that willow tree for it was about half way from either's house. And our folks knew that if either of us was wanted and nobody knew where we were, we could be found together under that old willow. We would just lie for hours looking at the clouds, for there were a lot of clouds where we lived, and saying what we saw, and in the fall and early spring we would wrap an old tarp about us and I would read to her or we would make up poetry. She would say one line and I the next, and just go on and on. It is a pity that we never wrote any of those poems down, but then again if we had it could have; well it would have caused problems down the road for me. In the summer, on warm nights we would swim in the pond, just swimming and holding each other; whereas in the winter we would ice skate our style, which was to run on the ground then jump on the frozen pond and see how far we could slide on our shoes. Heck the only skates we ever saw or heard of were those of Hans Brinker in the story and in pictures of Sonja Henie.

And so our lives went, working on the farm, and going to school. We often talked about going to Carolina to get married but we knew our folks wanted us to finish school and then we thought heck we could just do like Bobby and Annie, get married and find a place to live till we finished school, but we thought better of that cause her mom needed her at home and pa surely did need my help on the farm. Well we started our senior year and I didn't get my baseball scholarship so I couldn't go to college and she didn't get her Home Economics Scholarship; so we were just stuck. And it seemed we spent more time saying "what if?" than we did anything else. What we wanted was to go on to college and become an engineer or teacher but we just didn't know how and had not figured out what we would do.

Mom and dad and grandpa just kept telling me, "Sam, don't worry about it, don't worry for the lord will provide," And I was getting tired of hearing it cause there was no way the lord would send me to college, much less me and Annie. But the Valentines Day dance at school was always the biggie of the year, shucks even bigger than the Junior-Senior Prom. She had made a new red dress with dark blue trim to wear to the dance, and I had managed to buy me a new, used red blazer, with a pair of red pants and blue shirt and tie to match. We had planned this since just after Christmas and we were going to shine that night.

Knowing we could not go to college, I decided we should just run off and get married and so I had asked her would she, and she said she would have to think about it, because it would go against her parents wishes; you see when she graduated from high school, she would be the first one from her ma or pa's family to ever graduate from a 12 year school and to successfully finish high school. So I just said OK, you think of it.

Valentines day would be on Saturday, and we had finagled permission to hold the big dance on Saturday night at the high school. Normally the school principal would not let us hold any parties or dances on Saturday at the school because he could not control us like he could when we had them on Friday nights. But back then kids respected their elders more than they do today and listened to them.

To make ends meet and to help out, Annie's family who were all real good with their hands would make all sorts of little craftsy things, and she and her ma and Doreen would sew all sorts of stuff. So on Friday the day before the big dance, she and her mom, after school had taken a load of eggs, and afghans and handicraft stuff the family made over to Glade Creek to sell. Well coming back it was snowy and the ESSO truck, Mr. Tolver, was going back to town and there on dead man's curve had slid over and hit them, knocking them over the bank and they had landed in the river and drowned. She and her mother both were drowned. Well after that I just finished school went into service. And that had happened the 13th day of February, in 1951 and she had given me her reply, and that was what it was all about.

� Tom ([email protected])