Monica my love,

I have not stopped thinking about you once since you were over here. And since your last letter when you said you would be willing to be my wife you have made me the happiest man on this whole block – shit, in the whole state of California. I haven’t slept for about three days since I got that letter and I can’t stop thinking about us and our wedding and our life together and how I would like it to be. I am as proud as if I'd been a soldier and got the top medal they give, or a boxer who’d just whipped the world champion or something. If you’d asked me a week ago I’d said there was no way no beautiful white English lady would ever want to have nothing to do with me and I still can’t hardly believe that you’ve said yes.

I know I am not made much of a shape of my life but I want you to know that I am not no good for nothing bum because that isn’t so and that isn’t me. I can look after you really good and give you a decent life you won’t be ashamed of. I got skills and I got abilities. I never told you but I am one shit hot auto mechanic. When we lived down in Georgia my brother had an auto repair business and he trained me up and I can strip down a transmission and rebuild it in one day and every oil seal will be seated exactly right and every nut tightened to the right torque and you won’t know it’s any different from the day they drove it out the factory. I am not fixed autos for a while now, circumstances being like they are, but I can soon get into the way of it again and I can make top dollars in any auto shop in this country.

Folks always said my brother was the smart one of the family but he isn’t no smarter than me. Only difference was he was brung up by Mom’s second husband Leroy, not by Horace our real Dad. Horace got his self-killed in a knife fight in a bar in Topico, Georgia when I was nine years old. My brother Sammy was only a baby; he never really knew our Dad. Fact is every bit of guidance and example my Dad ever give me was wrong and dumb and everything my Mom ever told me was right and sensible. But like most young kids I listened to my Dad and not my Mom and I wanted to be just like him. I never appreciated my Mom.

Fact is, you and my Mom are very like each other. I don’t mean race and colour and education and all that because that kind of thing don’t matter for shit, I mean you two is both good people through and through and not dumb and easily led like me and my Dad. Leroy was a good man too but he didn’t have long after he married my Mom. He got shot in cross-fire one night when Sammy’s gas station got raided. We used to say that violence followed our family and it would get us all in the end but that’s stupid talk. We weren’t the luckiest but we weren’t the unluckiest either. Everything that’s happened to me I brung on myself, I know that.

When I told my Mom about you she was so happy she cried – real tears, I am not kidding. She says you are family now and no matter what happens she is going to look out for you, and you’re going to be the daughter that she always wanted but never had. You should always listen to her and take good account of what she says. If I had done that I guess my life would have turned out a lot different and a lot better but then I might never have met, you so maybe everything was meant to happen just the way it did. There’s two people in the world who love me now, you and my Mom, isn’t that something?

I want to talk to you about the kind of wedding you would like because there ain’t much time left. When my Mom married Leroy she wore a kind of purple cotton dress that she said was lilac coloured. My Mom never looked so pretty and happy as she did on that day in that dress. When I close my eyes I can still see her standing there outside the Baptist church in Topico wearing that dress with all her family and friends around her. So I wanted to ask you - would you mind getting married in a lilac cotton dress, with the skirt all gathered up into pleats like my Mom wore? It doesn’t really matter, it’s just that I want to be able to see it all when I close my eyes. Me in a black tuxedo and a white shirt with a big bow tie and a blue flower in my button hole and Sammy and the guys who work for him and all those smiling people around us wishing us well.

Do you think you would like a big family? A lot of our friends had six or eight kids but my Mom only ever had the two. I don’t mind a small family but I don’t think all boys is a good idea because I think they lead each other on and go off the rails too easy.

And I love kids, and I understand what makes them go off the rails some times and what really matters to them and what doesn’t. And I wouldn’t ever lay a hand on a kid of ours no matter what. If you do that all you’re teaching them is that you solve your problems with your fists and maybe later with your gun, and I know exactly where that leads. You and me would make great parents, and then when we get old they can be around and look after us and take us out on trips to beautiful places, and we can take our grandchildren to Disneyland and Universal Studios and maybe even back to Aruba to see the dolphins.

I know I don’t deserve anybody even near as good as you but I can change really easy when I have a mind to and a reason, and I’ve got that now. I pick things up real fast and I reckon I could be a college-trained engineer if I set my mind to it. I don’t want to be wild no more, that kind of life is shit. I only wish we could have met sooner when things were easier for me but no matter, what counts is I’ve met you now and you’ve said that you love me and want to marry me and that’s the most wonderful thing that has ever happened in my life or that’s ever going to.

I’m sorry for going on and on like this but I just like to imagine things and I would sure like to hear from you about that lilac dress. That’s the colour I would like you to wear – I think you know when I mean. Could you please write back just once more as quick as you can and let me know how you would feel about being married in that lilac dress. You don’t need to answer the other stuff, it’s all just nonsense anyway, but please let me know about the dress.

I will just end by saying that there is nothing in this world that I would rather do than bring up a family with you and for us to grow old together and for me to make you as proud of me as I am of you. You have given me so much to live for that I just can’t find words to thank you enough.

With all my love and my deepest respect now and forever,

Nelson Horace Cole.