Bodark Creek - 55. Chapter 55

With Albie gone, another part of my family went. I’d lost most of my brothers, Sonny, Dougie, and Walter, and I’d lost Rosalind. But as long as Albie was there, it seemed like that part of my family was still alive. All my brothers’ children had moved away. Like June, they went to what they hoped were more interesting places. And though they came back to visit Leona and Ruth, it wasn’t the same.

I knew I was lucky to have my own children close, not that Dallas and Fort Worth were far away. And I knew I was fortunate to watch most of my grandchildren grow up. But Albie was the first of my mama’s grandchildren. And maybe I always looked after him a little more for that.

“There was no reason he should have died so soon,” I told Joann. “He should have lasted till he was seventy.”

“Why stop there?” she asked.

“Because the men in our family don’t live much longer than that. Dougie was the exception. And now I wish I’d seen Albie more.”

“You saw him every Sunday, Mama. At least, every Sunday you were here. And that was most of his life.”

“I know. But I still miss him.”

“You’ll have great-grandchildren soon enough,” she told me. “You’ll be more than busy.”

“Paul’s not old enough to get married,” I said.

“You and I might feel that way. But don’t tell him.”

“Is he really thinking about it?”

She nodded. And soon Paul got engaged to a girl he’d been going with. Though nobody mentioned a date.

“Paul’s just bribing Cara with a ring,” his sister Lilah joked one night. “So she’ll let him into bed.”

There was only Lilah, Joann, and me there for dinner. Paul was busy with his electrical training. But Joann didn’t disagree, and she didn’t even disapprove. I wanted to say that this sort of thing shouldn’t be going on. But it happened with William and me, even if we could say we were older and there was an odd excuse. And it happened with Del, and Neal, and Joann. And I’m sure even Pat had some experience with Eddie before they got married. And when Walter first moved into town from Hattiesburg, he was getting in trouble.

“Did I ever tell you that story about my brother?” I asked Joann.

“Which brother? And which story? You tell me so many.”

“Walter. When he got in trouble swimming. With one of his pretty girls.”

Joann laughed. “That one I remember.”

“Well, a couple of months ago, a woman in church came up to me. I wasn’t going to tell anyone this. And she said she was visiting, and I can’t say I’ve ever seen her before. And she said she was Polly Wallrobinstein’s great-granddaughter. She said Polly had died some time ago, but in her later years, she always talked about a boy she was once in love with. She said he somehow slipped away.”

Joann needed to think for a moment. “I don’t remember any Wallrobinsteins.”

“I think they moved away before you were born. Probably before the war. But I think Polly was the oldest girl. And I think she was the one Walter took swimming.”

“You never knew that?” Joann asked.

I laughed. “Walter knew a lot of pretty girls, though probably no more than Paul. And I think Paul knows his girlfriends better than Walter ever did.”

Joann laughed again. Then she smiled about something she didn’t want to tell me.

“What?” I had to ask. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just there are some things you never talked about when Daddy was alive.”

That made me smile. “Well, there are some things I didn’t know about with your father. He was so different from William. He paid me a different kind of attention.”

We let it stop at that, which I thought was fine. But it didn’t stop me thinking about William and Martin. Though soon there was something more important than remembering either of them. My daughter Pat.

When Charley was off in the war, I worried about him all the time. And when Del was in Korea, and Neal wanted to go, I worried about them. I somehow never worried about Pat and Joann because they were always nearby, and there was almost nothing that could happen to them. Even when Joann and Bobby moved to Dallas, they didn’t stay long. And when Eddie died, and then Rodney, it hurt me more because it hurt my daughters so much. But when Pat had her accident, it hurt me as much as all the other deaths together.

She was driving home from one of her nursing classes. It wasn’t even dark, but it had been rainy all day. And the better the roads got, the faster people drove, and Pat always liked her cars. She wasn’t far away, just on the highway coming back to town. But it was February, and the road was icy in a way Pat couldn’t see. They call it black ice because it’s the same color as the highway. And maybe she was going a little fast, but Neal told me that even if she’d been going slower, she would have hit that ice. And her car would have turned around and gone into the other lane. And it would have gotten hit by that truck.

She was still alive at the hospital. The ambulance came and took her almost immediately. But for a week, no one wanted to say what would happen.

“They don’t know, Mama,” Joann claimed. “They’re not hiding anything.”

And the people in the hospital were very nice. They told us everything as soon as anything happened. But nothing seemed to change.

“She just lies there in bed,” I told Charley on the phone. “Her head’s bandaged, but she’s breathing on her own. She sometimes sounds terrible. So hoarse that I almost wish she would stop. I don’t want her to be in any pain.”

“She’s not,” Joann insisted. “The doctors are very good about that. It’s just like she’s sleeping.”

“But that’s all she seems to do,” I said. “When’s she going to wake up?”

“When her body’s ready,” Joann said. “When it’s over the shock.”

Only it never seemed to be. She hardly really moved.

“She changed her position yesterday,” Del pointed out.

“Does that mean something?” I asked.

It didn’t. It turned out that the nurses just moved her so she wouldn’t get sores.

“Is she ever going to get better?” I asked. There were still tubes in her, but they were mainly for feeding. And the bandage on her head was getting smaller. I seemed to spend all my days at home praying, or in the hospital praying, or praying at church.

I went out to the cemetery, too. There were so many people there to visit, even if I didn’t go to my own family. I could walk through some areas and know every stone.

“You shouldn’t go there so much,” Joann said.

“It doesn’t make me sad,” I told her. “I don’t really miss these people. Most of them had good lives.”

“I don’t want you getting depressed.”

I wasn’t. I was just thinking a lot. And there came a time when Pat was moved out of what they called Intensive Care and into an ordinary room. Then she was moved out of the hospital and into a nursing home.

“I thought nursing homes were for old people,” I told Susan when she stopped by there one morning. “Pat’s only forty-three.”

“And this isn’t how she’d want to spend the rest of her life,” Susan said.

But none of us knew how much longer it would last. Some of the doctors thought Pat could wake up at any moment. Others said she was already gone.

“Only her heart’s too strong to quit pumping,” I told Charley. “Isn’t that funny? She’s the first one in our family with such a strong heart.”

“I know this is tough for you,” Charley said. “And I wish I knew what to say. But maybe no one does.”

“We just have to take care of her,” Joann told me. “For as long as it lasts.”

“Promise me she isn’t in pain,” I said.

“She isn’t, Mama.”

But I was never sure Joann was telling the truth. So I had to pray about that, too.