Letters to the Editor, Weekly

The Cardston Sentinel came out on Thursdays and had, for the last fourteen years, exactly one employee, who was Ruth Okafor. She was the editor, the reporter, the person who photographed the hockey, and the person who decided which letters went on page three. Page three was where the war was. It had started in 2011 with a letter from Gordon Pratt about the new roundabout. Gordon was against the roundabout. The following week a letter came from Henry Bigelow, who was for it and who described Gordon's letter as "the usual." Gordon replied. Henry replied to the reply. The roundabout was built in 2012 and neither of them noticed, because by then it was the arena, and then the school board, and then the flag at the post office, and then whatever was on the national news that week. Ruth had printed, she estimated, four hundred letters between them. She'd never met either. Gordon lived out on the county road and mailed his in an envelope with stamps. Henry emailed at 2 a.m. in capitals she quietly lowered. She had a rule, which was that if one went in, the other went in. Balance. Both men had rung her, more than once, to complain about the rule. In March a letter came from Gordon that wasn't about anything. It was about Henry. Not an insult. It said that Gordon had heard Henry was in the hospital in Lethbridge and that he wanted to say, "for the record," that fifteen years of arguing with a man was a kind of company, and he hoped Henry got well soon so they could get back to it. Ruth read it three times. Then she rang the hospital and, after some effort, got Henry's daughter, who said he was doing all right, and that he'd asked whether the Sentinel had come out yet. She printed it. Page three, top left, where Gordon's always went. The next week there was nothing from Henry. Ruth left the space. She'd never done that before. A four-page paper does not have space to leave, but she moved the curling results and left it, a white gap about the size of a letter, with no explanation.

Week after, an envelope. Not an email. Henry's handwriting, which she'd never seen, shaky and large. It said he'd read Gordon's letter in the hospital and that his daughter had cried, which was unnecessary, and that Gordon was still wrong about the roundabout. She printed that too. They're back at it now. The subject this month is the parking by the arena. Ruth prints one and then the other, in the same order, and the Sentinel comes out on Thursdays, and she still hasn't met either of them, and she's begun to think she'd rather not.