Pen pal's letters one of life's treasures

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I have accepted his words and his love, the way an infant accepts food. I've never wondered at them before. His letters have arrived sometimes in clusters, sometimes separated by weeks. I've relished them all.

They are breezy, newsy, funny, warm, full of joy and wonder and life. I've shared them with my husband and children and answered some, but not all.

"You are right. You are a lousy pen pal," he once wrote. He suggested I call, "COLLECT." "Any Saturday or Sunday between 9 and 5 except between 1 and 2, when I take my daily nap."

So I called, but not collect. Chuck, however, continued to write.

I never realized how much more than information he gave me in his letters. I never sat down and read them all together until now. The beginning ones are missing, so I don't know exactly when the beginning was.

"Dear Beverly, It's time for your annual lesson on the Kentucky Derby," he wrote on April 14, 1990, which means that he must have written at least a year before that. But he couldn't have written too many times because he was still signing his notes "Your pal, Charles R. Heger."

Two months later it was "Your Loyal Reader, Charles R. Heger," and then it was "Love, Charles R. Heger," then "Love, Chuck," then "Love Chuck and Lola."

Love. At the bottom of a piece of paper it can be an affectation, not a declaration. But with Chuck it was from the start, sincere.

"Love Chuck and Lola." At first I just smiled at the signature. But I've come to love this man and those words.

"My cat, Lola, is 12-years-old," he wrote after I mentioned in a column that my cat, Fresca, was missing. "When I got Lola she was young, lanky and malnourished. I patted her head at home and she was so weak that she fell down. A month later, after lots of TLC, she was a new, strong cat. She has disappeared many times but the last time she stayed away for a week. I was worried. I prayed to St. Anthony. Within an hour Lola was at the door. I have already prayed to St. Anthony for you. I hope you have good news soon."

I did have good news. Fresca came home, and if I had even an iota of doubt it was because Chuck prayed, I didn't have to read further than the beginning of his next letter.

"See, I told you so! A prayer to St. Anthony works most all the time."

He chastised me, too, for not immediately telling my readers that the cat had returned.

"What took you so long to tell us about Fresca coming home? You had us all on tenderhooks."

Tenderhooks - that's what I'm on today. It's Chuck's birthday. He's 73, and he's sick. He has been sick for years. He has leukemia. But though it slowed him down, it never stopped him before now. I phoned because I missed his letters. I hadn't heard from him for months. Reluctantly, he told me he wasn't doing well. I had to dig for this information. Mostly he wanted to talk about me, the kids, the cats, our dog Molly.

I've never met Chuck. He lives alone in a trailer in Seabrook, N.H. He sent me a picture once. In it he's holding Lola. But it's a picture of an old man and his cat. It's a picture of a body, not a soul.

And his soul is what I have on paper. His soul is what he has been sharing, little by little, over the years. Rereading his letters, I'm overwhelmed by all he has given me, his history, his present, his future. His letters are a treasure map pointing the way to who he is.

"I knew it! Sooner or later I knew {your daughter} Lauren would win {her battle to get a dog}. But I hate the name. Couldn't you guys come up with something better than Molly? It's too bad you didn't think of having your readers send in names."

"I just turned 72 on April 3, but I have never tasted real maple syrup until this week," he wrote last year. "I bought a quart for $9.75 and it arrived Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I asked my homemaker, Annika Woodman, to make me some pancakes. I poured the real stuff on the flap jacks but I was disappointed - it tasted the same as Log Cabin!"

"Did you ever go to that wild nightclub on Wollaston Beach? I forget the name but it was a popular spot. I was there once with my brother Joe and a friend, Bill. When we left it was raining and my '42 Hudson skidded into a tree. Luckily no one was seriously injured."

Chuck has sent me poems, pictures, hot tips, jokes, lists of column ideas, a subscription to Animal Sense, a monthly newspaper in which Lola writes her own column, a sea-shell mobile, which hangs over my desk.

I have accepted these things as if they were my due. I have taken them all, saying thank you and writing and calling.

But the thank you's aren't enough. Chuck has brightened my world. He has been a gift. He is the treasure. That's what I wanted to tell him on his birthday.