The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [167]
When Sonora went back home to Little Rock that year after the summer was over, she was emboldened to write a letter to Hank, saying things that she dared not say to his face, things that he dared not listen to, to his face. She told him that although she was only sixteen years old she already felt grown up and that she didn’t like any of the boys in Little Rock as much as she liked him and she was very sorry that he wasn’t able to talk to her and she hoped that even though he couldn’t talk to her he might be able to write to her, and she signed it “Your friend, Sonora.”
Just holding this letter in his hands made Hank get very red in the face, especially because Sonora was the prettiest girl he had ever seen, which made it all the harder for him to conceive of ever being able to say anything to her. But he suddenly realized that saying something to her in a letter wouldn’t be the same as saying something to her face. She wouldn’t be looking at him when he said it; she couldn’t even see him. So he sat down and got out a sheet of writing paper and took his pencil and licked on it and chewed it for a while, and managed to write, “Dear Sonora:” That was as far as he got. He waited for a better day, but the day never came, so he took the sheet of paper saying only “Dear Sonora:” and put it in an envelope and mailed it to her.
She was thrilled, and responded with a letter pouring out her heart to him, telling him how she liked Stay More so much better than Little Rock and how she wished she could live there all year around instead of just in the summertime. She even told him who her favorite film actors and actresses were.
These names meant nothing to Hank because he had never seen a film, and yet, as if by magic, the same week Hank received this letter, a man drove a truck into Stay More and hung dark curtains over the windows of the school house and set up a screen and a projector and allowed everybody to come and pay ten cents to see real shows that were almost as good as the shows that Brother Long Jack Stapleton used to show before he lost the power, and there on the screen were the actual persons that Sonora had mentioned to Hank in her letter, so that after he had seen ten of the shows, he was able to write Sonora and say, “Dear Sonora: I saw some of them shows too, and my favorites is also Barbara Stanwyck and James Stewart. Your friend, Hank.”
This was the most that he had ever said to any female except his mother, and Sonora realized it, and was greatly flattered. She replied at great length, saying she hoped that when she came back to Stay More the following summer to stay with her aunt, she hoped that she and Hank could go together to watch a picture show. If the show were romantic, she speculated, they might find themselves holding hands. Hank read this letter several times, and thought about it carefully. Movies, he had discovered, were shown in the dark, and in the dark it wouldn’t be so difficult for him to hold hands with a girl, especially Sonora, since they had already broken the ice by mail. In his next letter he told her so, and she was so excited that she replied by suggesting that if the movie were romantic enough, and they held hands, it might develop that when he took her home afterwards they would want to sit in the porch swing together for a little while, and if they did that they might kiss. Hank memorized this letter but was uncertain as to whether or not he could ever get up the nerve to kiss Sonora, certainly not in broad daylight, and he conveyed these doubts to her in his next letter. She replied, “Silly. It would