Bodark Creek - 23. Chapter 23

For a while, Dougie joked, all I seemed to do was have babies and go to my nieces’ weddings. In and around helping run the farm, of course. Sonny’s older daughter got married shortly before my second son, Neal, was born. Then his younger daughter surprised everyone and got married at seventeen. Sonny and Ruth took it with a shrug.

“Jack’s a nice boy,” Ruth said, “and I’m sure he’ll do well. Besides, Madeline’s finished with high school. So it seems a good time.”

“And what could we do?” Sonny asked, not exactly as helpless as he seemed. I’m sure, if he’d wanted, Madeline would have waited

“We’re just happy she’s not having a baby,” Ruth went on. “Though if she has one in another year, we’ll be tickled. It doesn’t look like Gayle and Earl are in any hurry.”

Gayle was their older daughter, who’d been married for ten months by the time of her sister’s wedding. But she and her husband were both working in the mill and didn’t seem to have any other plans.

“There are jobs here,” Earl said, “so we’re staying for a while. But I’ve got cousins in oil, down near Galveston. And it might be good to see that part of the state.”

In Sonny’s family, that left only Lyle, his son. Lyle was already twenty-one, closer to his older sister’s age, but he didn’t seem interested in settling down.

“That’s fine,” Sonny decided. “I’d rather have him working on the farm. Besides, Daddy always said no one should get married till he’s thirty.”

“And no one’s ever listened to that yet,” Dougie joked. “Not in our family, for over a hundred years.”

“Well, you can’t push Lyle,” Sonny warned. “You know what that gets you.”

“Yeah,” Dougie agreed.

Lyle rarely got pushed into anything, because he usually leaped ahead. He was the first boy in our family who’d really wanted to work on the farm. He didn’t even talk about finding a job at the mill.

“You can do both,” Dougie advised.

“Not and work the farm well,” Lyle said. “And I’m not saying anything against the way you and my daddy and Uncle Walter have been doing things. But there’s so much more I can do when I’m just working here.”

Martin certainly agreed, and he helped Lyle out as much as he could. And they quickly convinced Lyle’s older cousin Gordon, Dougie’s adopted son, to stop fixing automobiles and join them.

“Why’d you want to work inside all the time,” Martin asked, “covered with grease...”

“When I could be out baking in the sun?”

“At least, it’s our own sun,” Lyle said. “You don’t even own any of those cars.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

That was one advantage to having Gordy working in the auto shop. Whenever a car came in that was wrecked past what someone else wanted to fix, Gordy would buy what was left and repair it on his own. Then he’d sell it to someone in the family.

“You know what kind of deal this is,” he’d say. “You can’t let someone else take it.”

“Even if it’s something we don’t need,” Dock would point out.

“You need it. You want it. You’re just too stubborn to give in.”

Gordy and Dock had been friends from the start, so Gordy could say things my brothers wouldn’t dare. And Dock gave in partly because he trusted Gordy, but more because there was a bargain to be had. I didn’t care. Any way it worked, it let Rosalind see me more.

Like Lyle, Gordon also wasn’t married. “What you waiting for, Gordy boy?” Dougie would crack. “You know you got my permission.”

Gordon was twenty-nine, the same age I was, and he’d been going with the same girl in town for a couple of years. But he also liked going to Dallas from time-to-time, to see the women there.

“And I’m not ready to give that up,” I heard him tell Lyle, quietly, one evening. “Plus there’s lots of other things I want to do.”

“He says that, then he never really does them,” Dougie griped. “He’s either too busy working, or he’s off in Dallas.”

“You should be happy he’s working the farm,” I said.

“Oh, I am. And it’s doing terrific.” So well, in fact, that my brothers were looking at other pieces of land.

“Not that you give Gordon much time free,” I went on. “No wonder he talks more than he does things.”

“Well, he could fight me over it,” Dougie insisted. “He’s man enough.”

“Dougie wants grandchildren,” I told Martin. “And he’s afraid Sonny’s gonna get them first.”

“He’s sure spoils Del enough,” Martin said. “You’d think he’d never seen another five-year-old.”

My brothers’ farm was just a little further from town than ours, so they were always stopping by. And Dougie always found reasons to spend time with Del.

Dougie’s own chances of having grandchildren seemed pretty good, since he had two daughters the right age, plus Leona’s daughter who he’d adopted. But only Dougie’s older daughter seemed interested in getting married. That happened just before my first daughter, Patricia, was born, and about the time Sonny’s daughter Gayle announced that she was having a baby.

Gayle and Earl hadn’t really decided anything. “It’s just something that happened,” she said.

“Now that, I understand!” Dougie said, laughing. “You should talk to my daughters some more.”

He really meant that, too, because even before their wedding, Dougie’s daughter let everyone know she wasn’t rushing into having babies.

“What’s the matter with you?” Dougie teased his new son-in-law. “You need some lessons?”

“No, old man,” Henry said. He knew how to fool with Dougie. “Doris and I just want to wait a couple of years.”

“Wait!” Dougie shouted, hardly believing it. “Now there’s one I’ve never heard.”

Doris also hadn’t been working at the mill. After high school, she’d taken a one-year business course at the college, then found a job as a secretary. She worked at a bank in town. Henry worked in the mill, but Doris was also getting him to take courses at the college.

“It’s just in accounting,” he said, “but I seem to have a way with numbers. And it’s a lot easier, figuring with a pencil, then lying on my back, struggling with some busted loom.”

“I’m good with numbers, too,” Martin told me. “But I’d never think of doing only that.”

“I might have,” I said. “If I’d had the choice.”

That came out mean, in a way I didn’t intend, but I didn’t have to explain. Martin just smiled.

My brothers might not have understood, at least not as easily. They were all right with their wives working at the mill, because everyone needed money. And they were fine when their wives needed to stay home, to raise babies. But they wouldn’t have liked their wives working in town and earning more than they did.

“But Henry’s doing fine with that,” Dougie admitted. “He keeps working right along with us. And any extra money Doris makes, they just pack away.”

“They’ll need it when Doris quits to have children,” Sonny said. “You wait and see.”

“I’m not so sure she’s going to quit,” Dougie said. “Any more than I’m sure Grace and Janice are ever gonna get married.”

Janice was Leona’s daughter, and she was working as a phone operator in town. She never did especially well in school, but she was very polite. So she was perfect with the telephone. Dougie’s younger daughter was a better student, though she got distracted easily with boys. She always seemed to have one after her, but never the same one for very long.

“If she’d just set her mind for a couple of months,” Dougie almost complained, “something could work out. Hell, Sonny’s got a second grandchild coming, and I don’t even have hopes.”

Sonny’s first grandchild had been a girl, so he’d been wishing for a boy. “Though boys don’t seem to run much in our family.”

“Daddy had four,” I reminded him.

“But out of twelve. Then two died. And between Dougie, Walter, and me, we have fifteen children, but only two blood sons.”

“I’ve done all right.”

“That doesn’t improve my chances any. It may even take away.”

I had to laugh. “Who knows how it works?”

“It’s luck,” Sonny insisted. “And I’ve had lots of good luck in my life. But there’s always room for better.”

Maybe Sonny got that, because he soon got a new grandson. And maybe that rubbed onto Dougie’s daughter, because Grace got married right after my second daughter, Joann, was born. But Grace wasn’t interested in having children, either.

“That’s all right,” Sonny told me, seeing me with my new baby. “Seems we could all take a little rest.”

“You never know,” I told him, though I was happy with four.

“What’s Martin say?” Walter asked.

“I’m sure Martin thinks it’s a great good time,” Dougie joked.

At that moment, Martin was down in the kitchen, or he would have given Dougie a very hard look. Martin always felt that what we did between us was only our business.