Who is Charles Ashland from Welcome to the Monkey House and what is their importance?

Charles is a petroleum merchant from Florida. He owns and lives above his own gas station, which he built with his son. Like Mikhail, Charles writes of his son, Bud, with intense love and respect. He returns Mikhail's letter with the same spirit of desperate hope, in the future and in his son's memory. Charles doesn't know why people call Bud a killer. He describes Bud's passion for flying and, like Mikhail, recognizes his son as someone who was uninterested in war.