Bodark Creek - 11. Chapter 11

The first time I heard about my brother Dougie coming to Bodark Creek was almost the day he got there. And he wasn’t just coming for a visit. He and his family were moving in.

“We didn’t want to tell you,” Walter said, “because we knew you’d get too excited.”

“And ask too many questions,” Rosalind put in.

“Did you know about this?” I asked her.

“No,” she insisted, and Walter backed her up.

“We didn’t want to tell either of you,” he said, “till we knew for certain.”

“When are they coming?” I asked. “And where are they going to live? And is Dougie going to work at the mill?”

“Whoa! Whoa!” Walter said. “Give them a chance to settle in.”

But work was exactly the reason Dougie was moving. The mill was getting bigger, and the owners were building two more streets with new houses, and Daddy said there weren’t enough decent weavers in a hundred miles to fill all the jobs. So Walter wrote to our brothers. Sonny said he’d think about it, but Dougie was all set to go.

By that time, Sonny and Dougie each had three children. When Dougie married Virginia, she already had a son, Gordon, who was born the same year I was. Then they quickly had two daughters. Sonny and his wife also had two daughters and one son.

“What this family needs is more boys,” Daddy would tell us. “If we’re not careful, the world’s gonna run out of Bronners.”

“I’ll give you boys,” Walter promised, then turned around and had four daughters in a row. But that was all after Dougie and his family moved to Texas.

Dougie was five years older than Walter and just a year behind Sonny. But he always seemed the youngest. He was thirty-two when I met him, but you’d never know it.

Without having Walter’s light hair and his old smile, Dougie could make friends faster than anyone I ever knew. When he walked into a room, people started to have fun. He’d go straight to the middle and tell a joke, and soon everyone would be having a great time. It didn’t even have to be a good joke. People would laugh anyway.

Dougie was rounder than Walter, even more than in the old pictures we’d seen. Walter’s hair was dark by then, too, so it matched Dougie’s. But even though we rarely saw Walter smile, and Dougie was always grinning, you could easily tell they were brothers.

And Walter seemed happy to have Dougie with him again. He always knew lots of girls, but not as many men. He mostly depended on Daddy having friends.

But with Dougie there, you’d see the two of them playing Cribbage or Gin. Or just sitting on the porch steps, talking.

“They’ve got a lot of catching up to do,” Daddy would say. “What’s it been? Seven years.”

“It doesn’t seem that long,” Mama would answer. “Though there’s been a whole world war in between.”

“The funny thing about Walter,” Dougie soon told us, “is he never used to have trouble making friends, especially meeting girls. He’d just sneak into the corner of a room, and soon there’d be a crowd. It was like that from the time he was born. He always made it hard for the rest of us.”

“I didn’t do it purposely,” Walter insisted. He almost seemed hurt by what Dougie had said.

“You never did anything purposely,” Dougie joked. “But somehow, you always got the girls.”

Dougie seemed surprised by the changes in Walter. “I don’t think I’ve changed all that much. I just keep on going. And I like how Walter’s more dependable now. But he’s not as much fun.”

“Change him back,” Daddy suggested.

“Nah,” Dougie told us, laughing. “It’s easier this way.”

Walter almost smiled when he heard that. You could see it in his eyes. But he never really laughed.

Maybe because of that, Dougie was always doing stupid things in front of him. “You’d tie wings on a dog,” Walter told him. “Just to make me think it’s funny.”

“It would be funny,” Dougie joked. But Walter wouldn’t agree.

It was almost like Walter had seen too much in the war and had promised to be serious for the rest of his life.

“Has he told you anything about the fighting?” Daddy asked Dougie.

“No. It’s like he owes it to someone to keep it all quiet.”

“That’s about right.”

So the rest of us accepted that. It wasn’t hard. We still liked Walter a lot.

And when you needed something done, especially in a hurry, you always went to Walter first. With Dougie, it would be a week before he even got around to thinking about it. “We live in a slow moving town in a lazy part of Texas,” he’d say. “Why all the rush?”

It was strange though, because as different as Walter and Dougie were, their wives almost could have been sisters. Myra and Virginia didn’t even know each other before Dougie moved to Texas. Myra was as quiet and thoughtful as Mama, though she liked to crochet.

Mama didn’t. “I spend enough of my time working with yarns and threads and needles at the mill and making clothes for you all here. Why would I want to sit and make doilies?”

“Because it’s fun,” I told her. “And Myra showed me how.”

“Then you go right ahead, Addy. I’d rather work in the garden.”

Dougie’s wife Virginia also crocheted, though she didn’t like it as much as Myra. “My aunt taught me when I was little,’ she said, “and it was always something I could do in the dark. And I’m still the last one to fall asleep.”

Myra slowly won Virginia over, and the two of them could sit quietly on the porch, Sundays, crocheting, while the six of us kids ran around. Rosalind was almost eighteen, so was always in charge. Gordon and I were thirteen, so were her deputies. That left Charley, Doris, and Grace to follow.

“I’m almost ten,” Charley would insist, and he’d especially tell this to Gordon. “Why do I have to be with your sisters?”

“Because I need someone to order around,” Gordon would say.

Charley could be pretty stubborn about a lot of things, but he always looked up to Gordon. Just as Walter now seemed to listen to anything Daddy or Dougie said.