Bodark Creek - 49. Chapter 49

When Dock died, it almost wasn’t a surprise. Practically no one had seen him since Rosalind’s funeral. At Sunday dinners, Albie would say, “Daddy’s not feeling well,” or “You know how he’s been since Mama’s gone.” Or Albie wouldn’t say anything at all. He’d just show up and have the best time he could. But he’d be having it alone.

“Daddy really misses Mama,” he’d tell us. “I miss her, too. But somehow not as much.”

“Is Dock all right?” we’d ask.

“Oh, yeah,” Albie would say. Though Del disagreed.

“He’s not the same person anymore. I’ve stopped by there any number of times, and sometimes Dock will barely talk. Other times, I know he’s in there, but he won’t even come to the door.”

“You could go in and check,” I suggested. “You know the door’s never locked.”

“I don’t want to be rude. And Albie would tell us if something was wrong.”

But Albie always said the same thing. And Dock never came to church more than he needed to, so we couldn’t tell. He was there in February for Martin’s funeral. And for Rodney’s in April. Both times, he sat in the back with Albie and didn’t stay long. Then he didn’t go to the cemetery.

“He’s really sorry,” Albie explained. “But even thinking about Mama makes him sad. And he doesn’t want to see where she’s buried.”

We understood, and certainly didn’t blame him. Albie said Dock mostly kept to himself. “He still walks every day, but not in town where anyone can see him. He mainly goes to the woods. And he’s not eating the way he used to. He says he’s lost his appetite.”

“Maybe it’s your cooking,” Neal tried to joke.

“Nah,” Albie said. “It’s always his own cooking. I come home, and there’s supper on the table. And there’s breakfast every morning. And Daddy’ll sit down with me and put food on his plate. He just never gets around to eating it.”

“I wonder if he’s drinking,” Neal asked after Albie left.

“Dock’s never been one to drink,” I said. “I think he and Rosalind had the same bottle of scotch in the house for twenty years. They’d have a shot of it on his birthday, and that’d be it.”

“Well, he didn’t have one this year,” Neal pointed out. Dock’s birthday was three weeks after Rosalind died in January. It was the first time we hadn’t celebrated in over forty years.

Palm Sunday was the week after that Rodney’s funeral, but Dock didn’t come to church. He wasn’t there for Easter, either. By that time I’d moved over to Joann’s, so I was closer to town. And if I was baking a pie, I’d make an extra one for him. Then I’d stop by and deliver it. But Dock really didn’t want to talk.

Outside Albie, I might have been the person closest to Dock. Some of the way my brothers felt about him had dribbled over to Ruth and Leona. “We’re not the worst relations,” Ruth allowed. “We just don’t have a lot to say.”

When Dock did want to talk, it was usually about Rosalind and Martin. He always had kind words for them both. Though never too many.

“I kind of felt I took her away from you,” he told me one afternoon.

“That never happened,” I assured him. “We were as close the day she died as we ever were. I didn’t need to see her all the time to keep that.”

“Good,” he said. “I think a lot about that.”

“Don’t,” I told him, and I leaned in to kiss him. But he turned away.

The other thing Dock thought about was Albie. If Joann worried about Lilah and Paul, Dock worried about his son.

Albie was forty-four. He’d gotten over his wife’s early death, though every time we were at the cemetery, he put flowers on Lyn’s grave. Still, he’d never remarried.

“The baby would be almost fifteen by now,” he said after Rodney’s funeral. “And he wouldn’t have been alone. There would have been two or three more.”

“Where was he going to raise them?” Susan asked later. “Would the five of them be living with Rosalind and Dock?”

“That would have sent his mama to an even earlier grave,” Neal kidded.

“No, I think Rosalind would have liked that,” I said. “She always wanted grandchildren. That’s why she spoiled everyone else’s.”

“She was always good to me,” Neal admitted.

So was Dock. He always had a bit more to say than maybe you wanted to hear. And he said it a little bluntly. But he loved my sister, and he loved his son. And he made them both very happy.

When Dock died, there wasn’t anything especially wrong with him. He was Rosalind’s age, seventy-one, and he was still in pretty good health. “As near as I can figure,” Del said, “it was just a case of a man not wanting to be here anymore.”

“He didn’t do it purposely,” Albie insisted. “Daddy never could have done that. He was just lonely.”

The funeral was simple, though there weren’t a lot of people there – the members of the church and our immediate family. Even my brothers’ children didn’t come in.

“You know how it as, Aunt Addy,” Ruth’s oldest daughter Gayle said. “We came in for Aunt Rosalind, and we came in for Uncle Martin. Some of even came in for Joann’s husband, though we barely knew him. And it’s not that we didn’t know Dock...”

“I understand,” I said. “ I really do.”

My brother Charley also made his excuses. “Coming to Texas three times in one year is a little too much. And it almost was three times in three months.”

“This time it’s been a bit longer,” I mentioned.

Charley laughed, but he wouldn’t change his mind. “I’ll make it up to you, Addy. I promise.”

“It’s just bad timing,” Del said, also laughing. “If Dock wanted a bigger funeral, he should have held on another year.”

“I’m sure he’s just as happy this way,” I said. “He liked things quiet.”

At the cemetery, there were only ten of us. Albie and me. Ruth and Leona. Del and Susan. Neal and Marie. Pat and Joann. We’d left the grandchildren home. The new minister said the prayers, though he didn’t know Dock at all.

“We’re turning into a family of women,” I told Pat as I looked around. “And old women at that.”

“I’m not that old,” Pat insisted. “And either is Joann.”

“What did you say?” Joann asked, I guess hearing her name.

“Nothing,” Pat said. “I’m just looking out for you.”

“Poor Albie,” Leona told me as we walked back to the cars. “Who’ll take care of him now?”

“He’ll just have to live by himself,” Ruth said. “Unless one of you want to take him in.”

“I would,” I told them. “But I don’t think he’d come. For as close as he was to my sister and Dock, I don’t think he’s ever wanted to live with anyone else.”

We were all wrong. Within a month after Dock was buried, Albie married one of the nurses who’d taken care of Rosalind.

“I fell in love with her at the hospital,” Albie confessed when they came back from Longview, where his new wife had family. “But it wouldn’t have been the right time to propose.”

“Why is it now?” Pat asked.

“It probably isn’t,” he admitted. “But I asked her, and she said ‘Yes.’ And we saw no real reason to wait.”

“Why would she marry him?” Susan asked when I told her. That was a pretty good question.

Albie was a nice man, but he was never very smart. He had a good job, and he worked at it five days a week. He owned the house my mama and daddy had, though we all called “the family place.” But it wasn’t a big house, and it always needed fixing up.

It also wasn’t in the good part of town. The best thing about it was that it was right by the woods. And with the mill closed, and the trains gone, it was pretty quiet.

“He’s not a bad looking man,” Leona pointed out.

“The way our eyesight’s going,” Ruth joked, “no one’s bad-looking anymore.”

“No, I mean it,” Leona went on. “When you just look at him, sitting across the dining table or standing on the porch, and you don’t know it’s Albie, you realize what a good-looking man he is. And he’s always had the nicest manners.”

“Well, let’s hope he can get by on that,” Ruth said.

Albie’s new wife, Barbara, was only a few years younger than he was. And she was as pretty as he was good-looking. But she’d never been married before. So maybe she thought it was Albie or nothing.