Bodark Creek - 32. Chapter 32

And suddenly we were at war again, something I never would have imagined. Almost immediately, Charley was called back into the Navy. He’d been working for General Electric and living just outside of Philadelphia. “What do you do?” Rosalind had asked, when Charley, Faye, and their daughter had come to visit. “Is it something with radios?”

“Newer than that,” Charley said. “You’ll see.”

Though it had to wait until he figured out where Faye and their daughter were going to live. Then they discovered they had a new baby coming. “And we were just getting ready to buy a house,” Charley said, laughing. “Well, we can’t afford that.” Instead, Faye moved into Navy housing, and their new son was born in a Navy hospital.

Right after Charley left, Del was called up, and I went a little bit to pieces. It’s not something I’m proud of. It’s just something that happened. I had the worst feeling about Del’s being in the Army.

“It’s all right, Mama,” he said. He could be that sure of himself because he didn’t know what he was talking about. He thought he knew all about wars from his maps and his reading. But that was before the atomic bomb.

I started having nightmares even before Del left Texas. It would be a beautiful day, and he’d be visiting us in uniform, all tall and smiling. Then he’d be on fire.

“Addy! Addy, you’re having another dream,” Martin would be saying as he woke me up. And he’d look really confused because he’d never seen me upset that way. Then I’d insist on seeing Del, to make sure he was safe. But Del was sleeping in a barracks somewhere, in a place I couldn’t get to. So I’d have to go back to sleep or just lie there quietly until the sun came up.

I never understood Korea. “What are we doing there?” I’d ask Martin. “Who are we fighting for?”

“I don’t know,” he’d say, though he kept reading about the fighting in the papers. So did I. But the newspapers never gave me any answers, so they didn’t keep me calm.

I couldn’t imagine what would happen if Del died. He was twenty-one, six-foot-three, and the center of our farm. As hard as Martin worked, Del could do everything faster and most of the time better. But I wasn’t worried about getting work done. There were always other men we could hire.

I just couldn’t lose Del. Or Martin. Or Neal. As terrible as it sounds, I could lose anyone else in my family, even the girls, and I’d get by. And I knew Del would get married and move out, and Neal would follow him. But I also knew they’d both never leave the farm. It was theirs to share, and they’d be home every day.

It was different with the girls. For one thing, they weren’t in danger. They weren’t about to be sent to the other side of the world. Patricia was only fifteen, and Joann was two years younger. They’d also been raised to leave the farm. I’d raised them that way. There was never any question about their plans, and the three of us talked about boys all the time. And husbands, and children, and weddings.

“I wish you had a special dress,” Pat told me. “One that’s been passed down through our family.”

“You know we don’t,” I said. “I got married in my best Sunday dress. It wasn’t even white.”

“What about your mama?” Joann asked.

“I don’t know what she wore. We have a picture of her and Daddy, soon after they got married. But it might not have been on that day.”

“And Aunt Cordie?” they asked Martin. Cordelia was the youngest of his sisters, the one who’d gotten married just before we did.

“You’d have to ask her,” Martin said. “But I know it wasn’t a dress like you see in the movies. There’s never been anything like that in my family.”

There would be soon enough. And it would be worn, then carefully packed away. And it didn’t matter how much it cost, or how I probably could have made it for less, because as hard as it was to accept, the war years had been very good to Texas. Bases were built, and factories, and there was oil everywhere. And almost everyone had more money than they’d ever had before.

My older brothers were planning to retire to their farm and raise cattle. After his divorce, Walter never even went back to a tiny mill house. He and my brothers built bigger places on the farm. Myra stayed in their old house, since she still had her job, and the mill owners didn’t seem to mind her living alone. All of Myra and Walter’s daughters were married by then, and one had even gone to college.

“Are you interested in that?” I’d asked Del before he got drafted. He’d be the first man in our family who would be.

“Nah,” he’d said. “Everything I need, I’ve learned from Pop.” Maybe that was true, but it was also true how little he was like his daddy.

Del always needed friends. Martin was sometimes happier on his own. Del read all the time. Martin only went near a book to figure out something for the farm. Del probably would have gotten married at sixteen if we’d let him, while Martin might still be living with his sister if she hadn’t left him first.

Del was already engaged when he got his notice. Susan had never been closer to a farm than driving by because her father owned the stationery store in town. “But I’m not worried about her fitting in,” Del said.

After they graduated from high school, Susan spent almost every weekend with us. She worked the rest of the time in her daddy’s store.

“I’ve never seen people work so hard,” she told me. “You and your family do everything mine does and a whole lot of other things I’ve never thought about. And we’ve never gotten up at five in the morning.”

“The work’s not so hard,” Martin said. “A lot of it does itself.”

“Well, I want to help,” Susan said. “And I want to learn about farming. And I want to be with Del.”

That was fine with us. Martin and I both looked forward to Del and Susan having children.

“You think the war’s gonna last long enough for me to fight?” Neal asked one night.

“Be quiet,” I wanted to say. But Martin said it with a stare.

“What’s wrong with fighting?” Neal went on.

For a moment, Martin said nothing. Then he began, “I’ve never been in a war. I’ve never been in the Army or Navy. I’ve fired shotguns and rifles, but nothing like what soldiers use to kill. And I’ve only ever shot animals that were bothering us or that we wanted to eat. So before you think of going and enlisting, you talk to someone like your Uncle Charley.”

“It’s hard to talk to Uncle Charley right now,” Neal said. “He’s off with Del.”

I didn’t want to be reminded, and I didn’t need to be, either. We got letters every week from Del and Charley, telling us how safe they were, and how this war was nothing like the last one. But it didn’t help me sleep any better.

And even if he wanted to, it wouldn’t have been easy for Neal to talk with his cousins who’d been to war. A lot of things had changed in Texas, but maybe the biggest thing was how our family had started to move again. It was like Daddy and his sisters and brothers. Almost all the men who’d come back from the second war had taken their wives to Austin or Galveston or San Antonio. Even Dallas and Fort Worth were too close. One of Dougie’s daughters had moved to Delaware, and Charley went further than that.

So Neal just had to listen to Martin or listen to me waking up halfway through the night, scared or crying. He had to understand that I’d somehow accept it if he got drafted. But I’d never forgive him for enlisting.

“He can do it without us, you know,” Martin said. “In just another year.”

“But he won’t,” I told Martin. And he didn’t.