Bodark Creek - 25. Chapter 25

When Charley started having babies, he didn’t stop. “You’re going to be an aunt again,” he wrote, letting me know before he told anyone else in the family. That sent me scrambling through his other letters, looking for one I’d somehow forgotten to read. The one that told me Charley had gotten married.

“When did you get married?” I scribbled back. But I already guessed he was playing games with me.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he answered cheerfully. “The last time I was in port.”

I didn’t know where “port” was for him anymore, but I thought it was still Los Angeles. For a moment, I wondered if he’d found a Hawaiian bride. That and a new baby would be too much for me to tell my brothers all at once. At that point, I hadn’t even told Rosalind. She’d tell Dock, and it was the kind of thing he’d carelessly tell my brothers. He liked seeing them off balance.

“What’s her name?” I wrote Charley, figuring that might at least tell me if the girl was from California. I already knew she’d be young. Charley was twenty-five, but almost never dated anyone near his age.

“We’re thinking of calling her ‘Jasmine,’” he wrote back. “But I’m betting it’s a boy.”

What kind of a name is ‘Jasmine?’” I wanted to ask, though I was slightly irritated that he’d purposely answered the wrong question. Still, I said nothing as we swapped another pair of letters, and I waited for the news. “You’re doing a lot of writing to Charley lately,” Martin noticed, as the unborn baby grew.

“Jasmine’s a flower,” I wanted to tell my husband. “Or a perfume no woman in this town would wear. But it won’t be the name of my latest niece.”

“You’d better hope it’s a boy then,” Charley would have written. If he’d been standing there, he would have grinned. I never gave him the chance. Instead, I’d carefully asked, “What’s your wife’s name?”

He wrote back, “Mrs. Charles Clenton Bronner.”

Now I was more than irritated and was also getting a little nervous since no one in my family knew what I was keeping secret. Charley must have figured that out, because the next time he wrote, he said, “I know our family isn’t full of letter writers like you and me. But you’d think that at least one of them would send ‘Congratulations.’ It’s not like I get married every day.”

“Charley got married,” I told everyone that Sunday, figuring I’d save word of the baby for another time. But as soon as I told them, my brothers got about ten feet tall. “Charley! Charley! Charley!” was all they could talk about. “The baby in the family’s going to be a daddy!”

“How do you know?” I asked quietly, wondering if Charley had also written them.

“Come on!” Dougie insisted. “We’re talking about Charley! You know he’d never get married ‘less he had to!”

“And she must be really something,” Sonny went on. “Or he would’ve just skipped back to his ship.”

“And never gotten off again,” Walter finished. “Not in that port.”

My brothers all loved the fact that Charley was traveling around the world, having all the fun they might have had if they’d been younger.

“Actually, Charley’s wife is going to have a baby,” I admitted. Though I didn’t tell them its possible name.

That shot them to the roof. I’ve never seen three men so happy. “Charley! Charley! Charley!” they shouted. Even Dock and Martin joined in. And when the baby was born, and Charley called us from the base hospital, everyone had to talk and talk.

“How does it feel?” we asked.

“How do you feel?”

“How’s your wife doing?”

“What’s the baby look like?”

“Who does she look like?”

“When are you gonna have another?”

“We’re fine! Fine! Fine!” Charley told us. “Everyone’s fine and wonderful! I just wish you were all here!”

That afternoon, it was all we talked about as we tried to figure out how to visit California. But none of us really traveled much, not past Dallas, and no one could leave their farms, or jobs, or children for very long. So we had to put it off, leaving everyone a little disappointed. Though when news of another baby, a second girl, came less than a year-and-a-half later, we went through the whole thing again.

“We’ve got to see him,” Dougie insisted. “There must be a way.”

“Now’s a worse time than before,” Sonny explained, trying not to ruin the celebration..

“If it was just a different month,” Walter said.

Charley’s second daughter was named Delphine, and her baby pictures looked just like her sister’s.

“Can you send us more?” I wrote. “Everyone wants one.”

“I’ll try,” Charley answered. “But you know how it is. I barely get enough time in port, let alone to take pictures.”

“Oh, come on,” Rosalind said. “He sent us snapshots of every place he’s been, from Ireland to Singapore. He could take pictures of the babies.”

“That’s when he was single,” Dock pointed out. “He’s got bigger things to think of now.”

“And you know Charley,” I told them. “He’ll do what he wants when he gets around to it.”

“They’re just little blonde-haired girls,” Charley wrote back. “They look like any other little blonde-haired girls. But I promise I’ll load my camera the next time I get home.”

“When will we see you?” Sonny had me write. “When can you come and visit?”

“I hardly get time to see my wife these days,” Charley wrote. “I can’t pack the four of us on a train and get halfway across the country and back in a week.”

But he did send pictures. They showed two little curly-haired blonde girls, an equally blonde and pretty wife, and Charley in dress whites.

“If I had that uniform, I’d have a wife like that, too,” I overheard Dougie tell Walter.

“I had the uniform,” Walter almost sighed. “But I hardly got to wear it.”

It seemed like Charley wasn’t wearing it a lot, either, at least not in port. Because we soon got pictures of his third daughter, Glennis.

“He sure knows how to name them,” Dock said, something I’m sure everyone was thinking.

“I’ll bet his wife picks the names,” Rosalind said, only partly defending Charley. “And they’re certainly more interesting than her own.”

That was Marion.

We never did get to ask how she named her daughters. And we never got to meet her. All too soon, Charley was at war.