Praying for Sleep

me and have told lIes About Me to waShingtOn and the enTIRE worlD. they think that I am dANGERous etc but this is their excUSE and EVErybody beliEVEs it. That is beliEVEs “them”. they are very Strong & we Must fear them, they arE eVErywhere.
    It is a CONSPIRACY. CON + S + PIRACY.
    and I know YOU are in it!!!!
    Revenge is mine it is not the LORDS because the LORD knows what I have Done and will not let ME rest. He shoots me in the hEAd every nighT!!! I accept my fATE and YOU who are bEAuTiful mUSt too. Come to me for eternal rest forever.
    EVErywhere. forEVEr. rEVEnge.
    EVE the woman
    COME to ME.
    i your lover
    Michael Hrubek’s penmanship featured green, black and blue ink.
    And for her name, and his “signature,” red.
    The sheriff sucked air between shiny white teeth in a loud, irritating way. “Does any of this make sense to you?” He addressed the question to Owen.
    Lis answered, “It’s just babble.”
    Owen glanced at her, then added, “We talked about it when it came but we thought it was a kid’s prank.”
    Lis taught sophomore English at Ridgeton High School.
    “I’m a tough grader.” She laughed wanly. “I’ve been on my share of sixteen-year-olds’ shit lists.”
    “ ‘i your lover.’ ” The sheriff hitched at his gun belt. He stared at the letter for a moment. “Return address?”
    Lis flipped through the manilla folder where she’d filed it—in the Letters, Miscellaneous slot. Just past, she now noted, Last Will and Testament—Owen and Lis. She found the envelope. There was no return address. The postmark was Gloucester.
    “That’s nowhere near Marsden,” she pointed out.
    “Let me make a call.” The sheriff glanced at Owen, who nodded at the phone.
    As she leaned against the counter, sipping the rose-hip tea, Lis remembered a hot Saturday in September, replanting a bush of hybrid tea roses, lemon yellow. Sweat was running along her nose with a tickle. Owen had been working all day and had just returned. About 6:00 p.m., the sun low and wan. He stood in the doorway, his large shoulders slumped, a piece of paper in his hand. Lis glanced up at him and the plant sank through her fingers, a thorn piercing her skin. Because of the sallow, grave expression on her husband’s face she hadn’t at first noticed the pain. Lis looked down a second later and saw a sphere of blood on her finger. She set the plant on the ground. Owen handed her this very letter and she took it from him slowly, leaving a bloody fingerprint on the envelope—like an old-time wax seal.
    Portia now read it. She shrugged, and announced to Lis, “I’ve got some stuff with me. Stop by the room, you want. It might relax you.”
    Lis blinked and forced herself to appear blasé. Only her sister, she reflected from an emotional distance, would offer a joint with one-fifth of the town’s constabulary standing nearby (his squad car’s bumper proclaiming, Ridgeton Says NO to Drugs ). This was vintage Portia—playful, cunning, perverse. Oh, Portia—the hip, pale, French-braided younger sister with her Discman and her stream of thin-faced boyfriends. She’d been forced to endure an evening in the country, and she was blowing Lis one of the cold kisses her older sister remembered so well.
    Lis did not reply. The young woman shrugged and, with a glance at Owen, wandered out of the kitchen.
    The sheriff, who hadn’t heard Portia’s proposition and probably wouldn’t have understood it if he had, hung up the receiver. When he spoke, it was to Owen. “Well . . . The long and the short of it is that she doesn’t have anything to worry about.”
    She? Lis repeated to herself. Was this me? Her face burned and she sensed even old-world Owen shift uncomfortably at the sheriff’s patronizing attitude.
    “They said it didn’t mean nothing. Hrubek’s a schizo—they don’t do well by people face-to-face. Too nervous to talk or something. So they write these long letters that’re just nonsense mostly and when they do make a threat they’re like too scared to act on it.”
    “The postmark?” Lis asked firmly. “Gloucester.”
    “Oh, about that. I asked. He may still’ve sent it. He got sent to this hospital there for some tests the first week in September. It’s pretty low-security. He might’ve slipped away and mailed a letter. But, what I was telling you before, he’s headed east, away from here.”
    The sheriff and Lis both looked at Owen, who because he was the largest person in the room and the most