Long Dis­tance [1919] opens with a strik­ing con­trast: Chet Ball, once a rugged line­man from Chica­go, now rests in a qui­et Eng­lish hos­pi­tal room, paint­ing a wood­en chick­en with hands more famil­iar with climb­ing poles than hold­ing a brush. His broad shoul­ders and sun-worn face seem almost out of place amid the dain­ty sur­round­ings of Recon­struc­tion Hos­pi­tal No. 9. Though the toy he paints is small and col­or­ful, it stands as a pow­er­ful sym­bol of how far removed he is from the grit and per­il of his past life. The room is serene, but its silence speaks of wounds deep­er than the ones bandaged—of mem­o­ries shelved and voic­es silenced by trau­ma. His leg, tech­ni­cal­ly healed, remains a con­stant reminder of the moment his life splin­tered, and his mind, still reel­ing from the shock, strug­gles to make peace with the tran­si­tion. Each brush­stroke is not just a dis­trac­tion but a frag­ile attempt at reclaim­ing bal­ance.

Chet’s cam­ou­flage dur­ing battle—strapped high in a tree, report­ing artillery movements—now seems unre­al to him, as dis­tant as a sto­ry told in some­one else’s voice. What brought him down was­n’t just ene­my fire but the weight of what he wit­nessed, absorbed, and could nev­er ful­ly describe. The ther­a­py at the hos­pi­tal, intend­ed to re-anchor men like him, relies as much on rou­tine as on gen­tle human con­tact. One after­noon, a let­ter from Chica­go arrives, its enve­lope bear­ing the famil­iar script of home. Miss Kate, a nurse with more com­pas­sion than cer­e­mo­ny, offers to read it aloud. Her voice, soft and delib­er­ate, breathes life into the words that speak of mun­dane joys, neigh­bor­hood gos­sip, and mem­o­ries that once made up Chet’s world. The dis­tance between the let­ter and the man grows small­er with each line, the warmth of the writer break­ing through the fog of war’s after­math.

Before he became a casu­al­ty of psy­cho­log­i­cal injury, Chet lived large—climbing poles with swag­ger, swap­ping jokes with cowork­ers, and charm­ing local girls with­out effort. But it was Anas­ta­sia Rourke who cap­tured some­thing deep­er in him, a rela­tion­ship built not just on flir­ta­tion but on shared won­der and the thrill of unpre­dictabil­i­ty. Their romance, brief but vivid, nev­er got a chance to mature, stolen by the draft notice and sealed by a hur­ried farewell. That unfin­ished chap­ter in Chet’s life lingers in his thoughts like a song that cuts off mid-verse. As he lis­tens to Miss Kate read the letter—perhaps writ­ten by Anas­ta­sia, per­haps by some­one else from that old world—he’s momen­tar­i­ly trans­port­ed. The act of hear­ing those words, rich with per­son­al famil­iar­i­ty, becomes its own kind of heal­ing. Not a cure, but a con­nec­tion.

Chet’s paint­ed chick­en remains unfin­ished, much like his life feels. He paus­es now and then, not due to fatigue, but because each detail reminds him of the hands he once held, the streets he once walked, the job that gave him iden­ti­ty and thrill. War may have sep­a­rat­ed him from all of it, but the let­ter in Miss Kate’s hands rebuilds, line by line, the bridge back to mean­ing. The toy in his lap might one day end up in a child’s hands, or on a shelf, for­got­ten. But in the moment, it’s a tal­is­man of possibility—something he can fin­ish, con­trol, and offer. In a life where unpre­dictabil­i­ty and loss have dom­i­nat­ed, even this small act gives him agency.

Long dis­tance, in this con­text, means more than geography—it mea­sures the emo­tion­al chasm between who Chet was and who he hopes to be. It reflects the gap between trau­ma and recov­ery, silence and expres­sion, dis­con­nec­tion and inti­ma­cy. The let­ter does­n’t fix any­thing, but it opens a win­dow. And through that win­dow, sun­light fil­ters in—quietly, per­sis­tent­ly, like mem­o­ry stitched back into the fab­ric of a man’s frag­ment­ed life. Chet may nev­er return to dan­gling above the city sky­line or light­ing up street­lamps. But per­haps, with each let­ter read, each toy paint­ed, and each tear gen­tly blinked away, he’s already climb­ing his way back.