My name is Sam Sunningdale. Of course I get called Samson, what else? Thank you for writing. Yes, I am looking for a pen-pal, a writing partner, someone to exchange views with, but first, I think it's best we get my story out of the way.
- I used to live in Gloucestershire, in England, a bit out of the way. I'd had a leg injury in a car crash and with the compensation I bought a little cottage. I'd had this dream I might be a writer or something. Ha-Ha!
- Well, like you do, I got hooked up to the web, joined these writer-sites, got into rows and stuff, but I made a few friends here and there. Dee was the best and we got to exchanging emails, stories, photos. The usual guff.
- Dee was married. Her husband was called Henry. She been married before she said, also to a Henry, and he was a bastard too. He'd died (the previous Henry) when he ate poison mushrooms.
- Well, I really liked Dee and she wasn't a bad writer, and our relationship, well it just sort of grew on me. I couldn't put a day or a time on it, but all of a sudden something shifted and instead of my friend Dee it was, “My Dee.”
- Yes, I know, recipe for disaster, internet romances, a married woman half-way the other side of the world, etc. but we don't choose these things do we? Then one day I hinted, she hinted back, I hinted a bit stronger, she wrote a little more directly, I talked about love, responded, then I said Dee, are your emails private, and she said yes.
- So I tapped away. “Dee, I think I'm in love with you.”
- I can't tell you how it felt when Dee emailed back, said she felt the same, but happy doesn't get close. I was cliché happy.
- As Larry, over-the-moon, as a sandboy. I was a little pink pig with a curly tail, le chat avec cream, you name it. I wasn't sad.
- Well, except for the little matter of Henry the Second.
- Actually, Dee wrote the next day, “Henry is Henry the Third. Here in Bleak Pass, Wyoming we gotta lot of Henrys, and a lot of poison mushrooms. “You're joking.”
- “It ent right Christian to be jokin' 'bout dead people Sam. I'm telling this straight up, all my hubs they'se bin Henry's. That night I hit the vodka a bit hard an' all but this one's dead, an me a widow times over.”
- “Fuck me!” I typed.
- “This is what I'm a wishin' to do,
Sam, jest as soon as we figger out my Henry to give us the dee-vorce, so's we can get together.”
- “Tell him we're in love.”
- “Hell no, Sam. Henry he mean as a drunk bear.”
- “Then what?”
- “I'm fig-rin', Sam. Gimmee time.”
- This was Lent, y'know, Ash Wednesday through Easter Sunday. Forty days of torture. It was Pancake Day when we exchanged out true-love confessions and Ash Wednesday when I heard all this. That night, like Dee, I hit the vodka a bit hard and I woke up with my bedroom bright yellow. I told Dee.
- “Why don't y'know chile, yellow is so bad fer bedrooms. Henry Fifth mine, he hate yellow, threw hisself out window cos've that colour.”
- The first Sunday of Lent and I am depressed. Dee writes and says that this Henry he's been beating up on her. She'd go to the sheriff but he's another Lilah same as her Henry an' it a waste of time.”
- “Oh, Dee, can't you just up sticks and come to England? I have a lovely cottage here and I'll never have to work again, with the compensation an' all. There are roses along the path, a river just below.”
- “Oh, honey, you knows I want to, but I have my dogs and folks here.”
- “But Dee.”
- “Patience Hon, I'm still figgrin'. ”
By the second Sunday of Lent I am feeling baaaaaad. I want Dee, I need her. I feel I'd do anything to be with her. I have to go see her. Have to.
- “I want to come to Bleak Pass.”
- “OK, Hon, week after next, Thursday? Friday?”
- And there I was, Maundy Thursday on a flight from Heathrow.
- I sat there on a 747, my little packed lunch and tomorrow's breakfast all foil-wrapped and tidied-away in the overhead locker, and then we were coming in to land in the US of A.
- I got through customs, immigration. Purpose of visit to see my baby! And then I'm in the airport arrivals lounge, looking for my pretty Dee.
- Well, there is no Dee and I sit there, a little bit forlorn, then I see this chap, tall, rangy, carrying a card with my name on it. I walk over.
- “You Samson?” he says, “Please to meetcha! Ma name's Henry.”
- My face drops.
- “Hey no, man. I ain't Henry Lilah, I'm Henry Shift, Dee's cous-inn.” Then he looks at me eating and asks, “Whatchoo got there?”
- “Hot Cross Buns,” I explain. I absolutely love the damn things.
- I'd brought a dozen hoping I'd get them past the sniffer dogs.
- Henry smelled one, then looked at it size-wise. Then, as we walked to the car, his car, he said, “Ah, think I got me an idea.”
- We're driving to Dee's ranch. Henry tells me Henry's there but Dee, she had to go outta town a day or two but she'll be right back any time soon and I am to jest make myself comfy.
- This is when he says, “Glove compartment, buddy,” and when I realize he means me to open it, I open it, and there's this tiny gun, so tiny I can hardly believe it.
- Which is why I'm here and Dee Lillah is living with Henry the Ninth. A derringer fits perfectly inside a hot cross bun.
