Bodark Creek - 36. Chapter 36

When we asked Sonny what he wanted for his seventieth birthday, he needed to think for a while. “Well, I want a party, of course,” he said, though we’d given him a big party when he was sixty-five and finally left the mill. There’d been another party for Dougie a year later, when he turned sixty-five and quit, so it wasn’t like either of them was short on parties. And Martin and Walter were going to be sixty-five in just another year, and that would be more to celebrate. So we needed something special for Sonny.

“How about a family reunion?” he finally asked.

“That’d be fun,” Rosalind said. “It would be good to see all my nieces and nephews again.”

“I mean more than that,” Sonny said. “Not just our families. All the Bronners we can find.”

“How many are there?” I asked.

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” Sonny told us. “If Daddy was one of seven children, and he brought a dozen of his own into this world. And seven of us lived long enough to have another twenty-five. Then some of Daddy’s other brothers and sisters must also have children and grandchildren.”

“That’s a lot of Bronners,” Dougie joked. “But how do we find them?”

“We got time,” Sonny said. “My birthday’s still months away.”

So Sonny and Dougie got on the phone. And Rosalind and I started writing letters. And Walter got the idea to run a newspaper advertisement in all the places Daddy’s family had lived. And soon we had over a hundred Bronners. Half of them were still trying to figure out exactly how they were related to us, but almost all of them were willing to come to the party.

“This is gonna be fine,” Sonny said. “This is gonna be terrific.”

The party was set for my brothers’ farm, and between their houses and mine, and all our friends’, we figured we could put up a lot of relatives.

“I can take one on the daybed,” Rosalind offered. But I didn’t even like sitting on that anymore, it was so lumpy.

“Maybe if we get a new mattress,” I suggested. But Dock didn’t like that idea, even though Martin said he’d pay for it.

“I’m not ready to start needing handouts,” Dock insisted.

“Meaning he will be someday,” Dougie kidded. “Just not yet.”

“It’s not worth fighting over a mattress,” I said, which pretty much ended it. Besides, we had other things that needed to be done.

We first planned the party for a Sunday afternoon. But once we realized how far some people were traveling, we made it for Saturday, too. Then Friday got added in, and suddenly we were celebrating for almost half a week.

“I figure if I start cooking now,” Sonny's wife, Ruth, told me, “and put stuff in all our freezers, we might be able to make it till Saturday morning before we run out of food.”

“A hundred and eighteen people eat a lot,” Martin admitted. “Especially if they’re related to you.”

“It’s not like your family can’t eat,” I pointed out. “And they’re all invited, too.” In fact, besides all the Bronners who were coming, there were probably another hundred and twenty people from town and from church.

“Is this the biggest party we’ve ever had?” Rosalind asked.

“I think so,” I said. “And it’s making Sonny very happy.”

And it was a wonderful party. People we hadn’t seen for years were there. And people we’d never met before. Not only did Charley and his new family come, but he also brought the three daughters we’d only heard about. They’d taken the train to Phoenix, then they’d all driven together.

Charley’s oldest daughter was twenty-one, and the others were just a little younger. And they all were beautiful.

“The last time we saw you,” I said, “you were just little girls in photographs. And here you’re all grown up.”

They were a little shy around Charley, because they hadn’t seen him much. But they didn’t have any trouble being friendly with the rest of us, especially with their half-sister and brother.

“You look just like I did,” Charley’s oldest daughter told his youngest, who was seven. “Except for the dark hair.”

And as exciting as the party was for everyone else, for me everything changed the moment I saw my nephew William. I knew he was coming, and I knew he was bringing some of his family. Early on, Rosalind had gotten a letter from his sister, who still lived near Hattiesburg. We’d lost touch with her until she’d seen Walter’s advertisement. But William never would have noticed it because he’d left Hattiesburg years before, to go to college just as he planned. And like Charley, he’d never moved back. After college, he became an engineer, then went into a business that took him all the way to Chicago.

“He’s living in Montana now,” Rosalind said. “Just outside of Missoula.” We both had to look that up on a map.

“It’s a wonder they want to come,” I said.

“Well, do you recognize me?” William asked, when he tapped me on the shoulder. I was just taking some biscuits out of Ruth’s oven. And the truth was, no, I could have been standing on line in the bank next to William, and I wouldn’t have known he was family. And I probably never would have talked with him. I wouldn’t have known what to say.

“You look great,” he told me. But that’s not what I was thinking about. William was only a month younger than me, but it could have been ten years. He didn’t look like he’d ever been outside a day in his life.

“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” he asked. Then he grinned. “Or do I have to introduce my wife first?”

I realized there was a beautifully-dressed woman standing just next to him, and when she smiled, I also realized she must be his wife.

“Jean,” he said. “Addy.”

We said hello, and then I did kiss William. And then he laughed.

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

“How many years?” asked Jean.

“Near as I can figure, thirty-four,” William counted. “Dad took us away from here when Mama died, and that was nineteen twenty five.”

“Nineteen twenty five,” I repeated. “I must’ve been twelve years old.”

“Seventeen,” William corrected.

“I was just joking.”

He laughed again

“I should leave you alone,” Jean said. “You have a lot of catching up.” And though she did move off then, William and I didn’t really have a chance to talk till Saturday night. Before then, it was all meeting people, and eating, and telling stories, and listening to them, and laughing, and then eating some more. And then talking some more.

“The only reason we won’t run out of food,” Ruth decided, “is people don’t have time to close their mouths.”

“Don’t worry about food,” Sonny assured his wife. “If we run out, we can always get more.”

But Saturday night, around eleven, I was sitting on Walter’s living room sofa when William sat down beside me. There were other people in the room. Everyone was talking and making a lot of noise. But I could hear just fine.

“Hell of a party,” William said, and I must have looked at him funny, because I still didn’t hear “hell” said all that often.

“Sorry,” he offered.

“No,” I said, laughing.

“I forget where I am.”

“It’s all right. Del… he’s my oldest… he knows far stronger words than that. He just knows not to use them around me.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that.”

“Why?” I had to ask.

“You always seemed more adventurous.”

I smiled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, whenever anyone says he wishes girls would go back to being how they used to be, you know, all blushing and not thinking for themselves, I tell him he didn’t know the girls I grew up around. But I’m really thinking about you.”

“You’re going to make me blush.”

“I don’t think you have it in you.”

And maybe he was right. Some things embarrassed me, and I could easily think of three or four I’d much rather forget. But I also couldn’t remember ever being so embarrassed that I’d actually turned pink. Still, those were words I didn’t expect to hear.

“Do you ever think about me, Addy?” he asked next.

“Not really,” I had to admit. “We don’t have a lot of pictures from those days. I know we had a camera, and there are some blurry pictures in one of our photo albums. But most of our pictures come from after the boys were born.”

I always wished I had a photo of Mama and Daddy looking more as I remembered them. All our pictures of them came from when they were younger.

“I’ve never needed a snapshot to remember you,” William went on. “And I might not have recognized you if we hadn’t been introduced. But you really haven’t changed.”

He was being polite, because I knew I’d changed. And I should have. It wasn’t only that I’d spend over half my life working on the farm. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t gone to college like William and become an engineer, so I felt all that different from him. But the girl I was when he knew me was such a little girl. I went to school and went to church. And I helped Mama around the house and in the garden. But there was so much more that I needed to learn. Still, I told William, “Thank you,” because I knew he meant it as a compliment.

“I never meant to lose touch with you,” he continued. “With your or your family. I’ve thought about writing you all these years. And I’ve asked my sister if she’d heard where you all were. But we were always much closer to my father’s side of the family because he lived so long. He only died a few years ago.”

“I had no idea.”

“My mother died so young.”

I’d never thought about Frances being young because she seemed so much older than Rosalind and me. But when she died, Frances was only five years younger than I was then, and I was just beginning to think of myself as getting old. I knew Martin was. He was almost older than Daddy was when he died, though Martin was rarely even sick.

“It’s all in the working,” he insisted. “It keeps your blood going.”

“How old was your father?” I asked William.

“Eighty-two.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. He lived a good long time.”

“I hope that means you will, too.”

“Let’s both hope. And I hope to see you again soon. Somewhere without a crowd. You and Martin have to visit.”

“Montana?” I asked, almost stunned. Then I laughed.

William had to ask, “Did I say something funny?”

“I’ve just never been out of Texas,” I admitted. “Not since we first moved here, forty-seven years ago.”

He laughed. “Then we’ll have to fix that – Jean and I. We’ll have to invite you and Martin to our ranch and insist that you come.”

“I’d like that,” I said.

“Good. Then we just have to pick a date.”

But we left it like that because then we got interrupted. And really, I couldn’t imagine traveling as far as Montana, even to do something I wanted. And I couldn’t imagine getting away from the farm for that long. True, Del and Neal could take care of everything. They knew what Martin and I did almost better than the two of us anymore. But I still couldn’t imagine getting Martin to leave the farm for the two or three weeks it would take to drive to Montana and back. And I knew we’d never get him on an airplane. Or me, either.