Just In Case
Jarrod rubbed his forehead and put pen to paper while he still had the chance, but exactly how to put things wouldn't come easily to him. He hated "just in case" letters. He had written a few over the years – particularly during the war – but never sent them, never used them. He wrote one before every battle he knew was coming. The one he wrote at Sharpsburg was the hardest and the most urgent, because everybody knew the night before that the next day was going to be beyond dreadful.
Dear Mother –
Please know that I am thinking of you tonight, and of Father, Nick, Audra and Eugene, too, but mostly you. I know from reading your letters that you worry terribly about me. I know that, like Father, you didn't want me to go to war, but here I am, and there is another battle looming. If I fall, I want you to know my last thoughts are of you, my last vision that of your face, the last joy in my heart that of having you for my mother…..
Jarrod remembered that letter, almost more than any other, because it had gotten blood on it from the arm wound he suffered at Antietam. But he never had to send it. No one had to find it on his body. His mother never knew he had written it.
Now, it was many years later, and it was time to write another letter, for another reason. He had been passing near the town of Alto when circumstances shoved him into a quarantine of people afflicted with influenza. Bad influenza. There had already been deaths and many more languished in this house. Jarrod had had the influenza before, and it had been rough on him, largely because he'd had pneumonia as a child. The risk that he'd get pneumonia again after getting influenza was always there.
He had to write another "just in case letter" now.
He sat at the small desk in the guest room the Barlows had given him and began writing.
Dear Mother -
No, he corrected that.
Dear Family,
I write this as I have gotten myself into another mess, this time an influenza outbreak. I am quarantined with many sick people, helping where I can. If you get this letter, it will only be because I have died, and I do not want to go without you knowing my deepest thoughts.
I love you all more than I can ever say. You have supported me through hard times when I've needed it, turned to me as your help when you've needed it, and given me more happiness throughout my life than one man deserves to have. I am grateful beyond words, and yet here I am, trying to give you words that might comfort you when I am gone.
Don't grieve too long for me. Send me off with your love, restore your lives and your happiness, and remember me for the man I tried to be, and not always the man I was. I had my failings, but I never failed to love all of you, even if my actions might have now and then said otherwise.
My thoughts and prayers, on this night I wait to see if I will become ill, are with you. My love will be with you always, even if it comes to be that I am not.
Take care of one another. Love one another, and know that I love you too.
Forever, Jarrod
Jarrod finished the letter, to the sound of Jenny Barlow panicking in fever again in a room down the hall. For a moment Jarrod closed his eyes and said a prayer for everyone he loved and everyone around him. Then he folded the letter, put it into the inner breast pocket of his jacket, and prayed that no one – no one – would ever see it.
The End