Bodark Creek - 38. Chapter 38

Sonny went for a walk in the woods one afternoon and didn’t come back. He’d driven into town to see Rosalind, and when he didn’t stop by again after his hike, she figured he’d gone on home. Only when Ruth phoned, near dinnertime, did Dock discover that Sonny’s truck was still parked on their street.

By that point, it was too dark for Dock to go looking. “He could have gone into anyone’s house,” Rosalind told us. “You know how Sonny is. He could be sitting in Leo Kinzer’s kitchen, playing Whist.”

“Sonny doesn’t lose track of time,” Ruth said. She’d driven in with Walter, Dougie, and me.

“I’m going to look for him,” Walter said. “I don’t care how dark it is. I know where Sonny walks. I’ve been with him dozens of times.”

“You’ve been with him during the day,” Dougie pointed out. “And when we were younger. You haven’t been in these woods for years. Almost none of us have. And if something happened to Sonny, who knew the place better, it could happen to you.”

“Holes don’t just open up in the middle of the forest,” Walter insisted. “I’m not going to disappear. He’s probably twisted his ankle, and he’s sitting on a log, knowing he’ll hurt himself worse if he tries to move.”

“I’m sure he’s playing cards,” Rosalind repeated.

Walter won, and while he and I went looking for a couple of flashlights, Rosalind began calling everyone she knew in the neighborhood. Dock and Albie planned to start going door-to-door, and Dougie suggested phoning the police. But everyone voted him down, saying it wasn’t that serious.

“I’m sure he’s just sitting somewhere, waiting for us,” Walter explained. “And the longer we take, the madder he’s going to be.”

Only we didn’t find him. The woods weren’t that wide near the house, probably less than a quarter of a mile. But they were long, going out past the city limits. And at that hour, there was no light. We could have been five feet from Sonny and never noticed, if he didn’t answer to his name.

“Sonny!” I called.

“Sonny!” Walter yelled, often adding, “Goddamn it!”

We walked for maybe two hours, twisting back and forth, stumbling on roots and logs and into little holes. When we finally got back to Rosalind and Dock’s, Dougie said the only reason he hadn’t gone hunting for us was that Ruth insisted he stay. By that time Martin and the boys were there, and they’d also looked in the woods, though not very far because they didn’t know the area at all.

“Now can we call the police?” Dougie asked.

“They’ll only ask why we didn’t call them three hours ago,” Dock said.

But we called, and they asked, and we said we thought we could solve the problem ourselves.

“That’s what everyone thinks,” Hugh Scherer told us. He’d come from his own house, after someone at the police station called him.

Hugh knew Sonny and Ruth, though I didn’t know him especially well. And I barely recognized the three younger officers who were with him. I’d really lost track of people growing up in town. After a couple of minutes taking, the four of them went off into the woods, taking Del and Neal back with them. They probably did the same thing Walter and I had done and had the same luck.

“At least, it’s not a cold night,” Hugh said, when he got back. “And you said Sonny was wearing a jacket, so he’ll probably be fine. And it’ll be a lot easier to find him in the morning.”

By that time, despite what Rosalind first thought, we were all pretty sure that Sonny was in the woods. No one in our part of town had seen him, and it seemed that everyone had called everyone else. Two or three other groups of men had also gone looking for him.

We went home, but I doubt anyone slept any better than I did, and even before the sun was up, we were all back at Rosalind and Dock’s. This time, there were enough people gathered to walk almost side-by-side across the woods. We moved slowly, staying five or six feet from each other, starting from the Mill and going out to the edge of town. Someone found Sonny around seven-thirty.

The police officers brought him out on a stretcher, so I didn’t see him until then. But the man who found Sonny said, “He was just lying there on the ground, looking peaceful.”

He’d had a heart attack. “A big one,” the doctor told us. “Even if it had been in my office, or in the hospital, he would have died right in front of me.”

I thought he was saying that to make us feel better and to let us know we’d done everything we could. And maybe we had But it didn’t change the fact that Sonny was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Albie’s wife had died, and some of the older people in church. But it was like our family had been blessed since the second world war. It was like that had taken enough.

“I’m really sorry, Mama,” Joann told me, and all the others said the same. “I know you loved Uncle Sonny.”

I loved them all. It wasn’t like I could tell one of my brothers or sisters from the others. We were just family.

And the rest of the family gathered. All of Sonny and Ruth’s daughters came, with their husbands and children. And Charley was back, with Faye this time, and a lot of the other people we’d seen at the wedding and the reunion. “There are a lot worse ways to die,” so many people told us, sometimes adding, “At least, it was quick.”

“We like to hope that,” Dock said to one neighbor, ever one to doubt.

“Since you’re not a real doc,” Martin told him privately, “why don’t you just keep quiet on this?”

And Dock did. He hadn’t meant to cause trouble

“Seventy-two’s not a bad age,” Dougie pointed out, when just Rosalind, our brothers, and I were sitting in her living room. “He matched Daddy, though I’m hoping the rest of us beat them both.”

“You’d better hope that,” Charley weakly joked. “Since you’re already seventy-one.”

And no one had to lie about Sonny at his funeral. He was a hard-working man, a family man, a deacon of the church, and he’d lived decently and made plenty of friends all through his life. “What’s the worst thing you ever remember Sonny doing?” Walter asked Ruth while we were waiting at the cemetery. “You lived with him for fifty years.”

“Oh, he used to get me mad at silly things,” Ruth replied. “But the madder I got, the sillier they seemed, so they couldn’t have been that important after all. And I once thought everything would be all right if he just didn’t snore. But I got used to that after thirty years.”

Everyone laughed when Ruth said that, which surprised the minister as he showed up late, apologizing for being stuck in town.

“He was just a nice man,” Ruth went on. “Nothing special, but, oh, how I’m going to miss him.”

I couldn’t have said anything better. In fact, nobody could. We were all going to miss Sonny.