Notebooks Found in Estate Sales

A spiral-bound steno pad donated to a Goodwill in central Indiana holds draft letters spanning thirty-five years — addressed to a wife, a village boy in Quảng Trị, a brother, and a dead sergeant — none of them ever mailed. The host reads four entries slowly and lets the crossed-out lines speak.

In a donation pile at a church rummage sale in rural Ohio, a 58-year field notebook turned up — the lifetime bird checklist of a man who spent every free hour of his adult life cataloging what flew overhead. Every species is marked with a neat penciled check. One isn't. One is circled, in red ink, with nothing written beside it.