The boy stumbled through a dip in the yard as he sprinted from the mailbox back to the house. He dropped all but one of the envelopes onto his father’s desk. His father peered from beneath bushy eyebrows.
“It’s from Adunya,” the boy said. “See, look here. It says Ethiopia. Do you think he’s coming back? Do you think he’s hunted lions with Uncle Albin?”
His father shrugged. “Open it and see.”
The boy began to rip at the edge, but slowed and pulled at the flap as if the envelope held a baby rattlesnake. Finally, he slipped the yellowed paper into the open and unfolded it. A black feather fluttered to the floor. The boy picked it up and held it behind the letter. The writing appeared as the scribbles of a toddler at first glance, but as the boy studied them, they began to form in to letters and words and even sentences:
Uncle teach me to write at heat of day when hunters sleep. I stay with brother of my father for only week before Uncle bring me back to camp. Here I feel I am home.
The boy stopped reading for a moment and turned toward the window. Out there, beyond the house, he could see forever across a prairie mostly grazed to the ground. But the seemingly endless expanse of grass and rock held secrets only its inhabitants understood. Out there, dens and buck brush and hills and canyons and cliffs held badgers and snakes and deer and coyotes. Out there, hawks fed on rabbits. Grouse scurried from stalking foxes. Out there, life was free. The boy understood what his friend, so many mountains and rivers and oceans away, meant. And he wondered if it was possible to have more than one home.
Uncle say he teach me to shoot. He say I one day I be better hunter than him. He say one day you come to Ethiopia and we hunt buffalo and leopard together like Uncle and your father do. I look with happiness to that day. Please give feather to Jon Jon. Tell him it come from bird like his raven. I will wait for letter from you. It will make me envy of all camp. Your friend, Adunya.
The boy refolded the letter and stared out to the prairie. “Do you think he’ll come back?” he said softly.
His father moved to the window and without looking back said, “I hope so.”
