Bodark Creek - 21. Chapter 21

Getting married changed everything, more than I ever could have thought. It was the first time I’d lived away from town, and the first time I’d really been away from my family. And moving meant giving up so many things I’d gotten used to. Electricity and running water for a start. And a bathroom. And the telephone.

In town, we didn’t use the telephone much. Everyone we knew lived so close, it was almost easier to walk. But once we had one, it was good just knowing it was there. Our farm was too far out for them to run a line, so there was almost no way of telling people things without getting on a horse. I’d never done that, or even driven a car, since no one had ever let me.

“Which do you want to try first?” Martin asked, and just that could have made me love him. My brothers’ wives had all been curious about their shared car, but none of them had ever asked to drive it. Still, Martin was only being practical. If I was going to help on the farm, I needed to get around. And I needed to help.

I took the horse first. It seemed easier, but it was a mistake, even though Martin put me on an old one. Horses have moods. Cars are machines. Ours was hard to start, and it sometimes lost a tire just when you needed it most. But it never threw me.

I had to work on the farm because Martin and I were practically alone -- on eighty acres. His youngest sister had stayed with him longest, and I think he finally got married because she wanted to. Not that she was getting an easier life. Like her three older sisters, she just moved to another farm. They’d all been well trained.

They’d had a second brother, too, but he’d been killed in the war. Martin might have enlisted as well, but his father had talked him out of it. “I need you here more,” he’d said. “Besides, you can’t just leave me with the girls.” The brother was still spoken about, and so were Martin’s parents, though they were also gone. But his sisters talked more about them than Martin.

He could talk. He could even talk well when he wanted. But he spent so much time working, mainly by himself, that he didn’t have a lot to talk about. And I spent even more of my days alone, without even a hired man for company. So when I saw Martin in the morning, or at meals, I didn’t have all that much to say. At the end of the day, we ate, and he was grateful for my dinner, then we went to bed.

I’d shared a room with Rosalind for almost twenty years, and it was only after she got married that I had a bed to myself. Martin had slept alone since he was twenty-four, when his brother went into the Army. And though he knew what animals did, I guess no one had ever told him that he wasn’t one. We went to bed in the dark, he did what he needed to, then he fell asleep. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, or even feel. And I didn’t really know about pleasure there, except by accident. But I liked sleeping close to Martin, even if the only times I saw him undressed were when I poured hot water into the kitchen tub. And then he wouldn’t look at me.

I could have talked to Rosalind, I suppose, but I didn’t know what to ask. I’d heard girls talking about boys, but it was mainly about what they looked like or how they kissed. And I’d heard women talk about their husbands, but it was never in that way. It was certainly never anything I’d heard Mama speaking about with Aunt Evie, and I would have been too young to understand anyway. And my brothers’ wives wouldn’t ever have told me about my brothers.

Our first son was born a year after we got married, and he changed my life again. I loved Del from the beginning, and he was healthy and strong. He gave me someone talk to, and sing to, and touch. He took away my loneliness, if that’s what it was, and he was with me almost all the time.

Martin loved Del, too. He couldn’t wait to teach him things, “to set the boy to work,” as he put it. But he meant that in the best way. Martin loved work, as he loved the farm. He loved knowing that it was ours, and that we never had to depend on anyone else to get by. “We can eat what we grow,” he said. “We’re never gonna starve.” Martin also loved knowing that no one could take the farm away from us, “As long as we pay our taxes each year,” which he was always very careful to do. “I’ll go without, and you can go without, but the government always comes first.” His daddy had taught him that after his family had lost their own daddy’s farm. Martin wouldn’t forget that, just as he couldn’t wait to let his children learn how to grow things and raise things. He never thought there was a better way to live.

But even with Del to fuss about, I missed seeing my family. I was with them at church, but that was mostly once a week. Even if Rosalind got Dock or one of my brothers to drive her to the farm, we never had enough time together. At home, we used to talk while we were cooking, or talk while we were doing the wash, but we never needed to arrange to see each other. And I was used to my brothers or their wives stopping by the house for no special reason, then staying a while. You don’t do that when you live seven miles apart.

“Don’t you miss your sisters?” I’d ask Martin.

“I see them all the time,” he’d say. But “all the time” for him was only once a week.

“Do you miss having Martin nearby?” I’d ask his sisters.

“We see him plenty,” they said. “We were always a close family.” And they didn’t even get to see Martin for Sunday dinner, though they were always invited to Sonny’s house, where we’d taken to having it.

“It’s not that I have the largest house,” Sonny told us. “And it’s not like my wife is the only cook. But I am the oldest, and there’s a certain responsibility.”

Just before Del was born, I found myself writing letters. I’d tried keeping a diary, but that was like talking to myself, and it seemed foolish. So I started writing to Rosalind. I’d begin a letter on Monday, right after I’d seen her, then I’d add to it whenever I had something to say. Sometimes, I’d think about what I’d write while I was working, then I’d change it and change it again, before I finally got it on paper. And some things never got written down, because I got too busy with other things. But it was always fun working the letters out.

I gave them to Rosalind on Sundays, in church. That way she had something to read if she got tired of listening. Rosalind was getting less interested in church than the rest of us, and I think Dock and Albie had something do to with that. Not that they ever stopped coming, or even would have dared. Church was something we had to do. I always looked forward to it, because it meant seeing other people.

And I wrote to Charley, though he was hard to keep track of. First, the Navy sent him to Philadelphia, then he was on two different ships in the Atlantic. Next, he was in the Pacific, on another two ships that sailed out of Los Angeles. He’d come home once or twice a year, to visit the family, and he’d always spend three or four days on our farm. He liked helping Martin work, “Because this time I get to leave – it’s not like I’m stuck working for the Volgers.” And he loved his nephew. “The best boy in the world.” He also wrote me letters back, “Because I always have the time.”

He wrote his girlfriends, too. Charley had lots of girlfriends. He’d tell me about them in his letters, and I’d always ask to see their pictures. Then he’d write, “You know how it is, Addy. By the time I get their pictures developed, I’ve lost interest.”

“Are you ever gonna get married?” I’d ask, flat out. My brothers would joke about it, but since they were mainly kidding, he could kind of skip away. “You don’t have to stay in the Navy forever,” I’d go on, and that was true. Our part of Texas was almost booming compared to the rest of the country. You had to be a fool to let it slip by.

“I like the Navy,” Charley wrote us. I always read his letters to our family. “I like the ships, and I like being on the water. And it’s not the worst thing, sitting around, not doing enough, then getting paid for it. But I will give you nephews. And nieces to spoil. Just give me time.”