Bodark Creek - 44. Chapter 44

Dougie died almost eleven months to the day after Walter, just before Christmas. I was just saying to someone at church that it was almost a year since we were all out at the cemetery, and then we were right back again. Dougie had a heart attack, like Walter. And like Walter, he died before anyone could get the doctor.

“He was there, and then he wasn’t,” Leona said. “It was like I watched the life going out of his eyes.”

She was pretty sick for a while after that. Some of it was a winter cold, and some was the sadness of spending the holidays without Dougie. Leona went to her youngest daughter in Dallas first. Then she spent most of the winter with her son in Houston. But when she came home in April, she still wasn’t well.

“I might be better, if I hadn’t lost everything at once,” she said. “The farm. And then moving. And then Dougie. And I know I can go and see the old house any time. That Neal and Del and Susan will always make me welcome. But it’s not the same. And I really love my new house. And though Dougie and I hardly spent any time in it together, it feels like home. But it sure is empty.”

“You can come and stay with us any time,” I told her.

“Ruth offered me the same thing,” she said. “And we live just across the street from each other now. It’s even closer than it used to be walking across the yard. But I don’t want to live with Ruth. And I don’t want to bother you. And I don’t want to go off visiting my children. I just need to be sad for a while.”

“I worry about Leona,” I told Rosalind.

“I know. I do, too. I try and go over and see her every day.”

“She seems to be taking it harder than Ruth.”

“Ruth’s had ten years without Sonny.”

“But even after he died...”

“Ruth’s always been more active in the church. She has a lot more to do.”

“I wonder how June’s doing?” I went on. “We hardly ever hear from her.”

“Leona said the two of them saw each other a bit when she was in Dallas. And I keep meaning to write June. Or even pick up the phone. But it’s so expensive.”

It wasn’t that expensive, and it cost almost nothing to write. But Rosalind had never been the letter writer I was, and she was always careful about money. There came a time where I just stopped worrying about it. I was never foolish in my spending. But some time after Del came back from Korea, I realized that no matter what I spent, there’d always be enough.

“I guess I have you to thank for that,” I told Martin.

He laughed. “I never noticed you working any less hard than me.”

“But it’s different,” I said. “I’ve spent more of my life thinking about ways to save money. Spending a little less on groceries. Growing a little more in the garden. But I’ve never thought about earning anything.”

“Either did I, really,” Martin confessed. “I just did what my daddy taught me. I kept the farm going. Now Del and Neal have a whole different way of looking at it.”

Martin always planted crops. Even when we moved to cattle, there was planting for feed. And when there was a problem, like a bad year for rain or too much of it, we went to the bank. And we always paid back their loans. That came before anything. But Del and Neal learned that the government was sometimes friendlier than the bank.

“Those federal boys will help you even when you’re not in trouble,” Del said. “And they’ll charge a whole lot less interest.”

“Federal boys are a farmer’s pal,” Neal joked. “They’ll pay you not to plant something you never wanted to. And they’ll pay you not to buy something you couldn’t afford.”

“They do make it easier,” Susan admitted. “As long as you can get through the paperwork.”

“That’s why I married you,” Del kidded. “You always understand the gobbledygook. And you have the patience to plow through it.”

“Patience can make us rich,” Susan said. “Or at least get us by.”

But they were doing better than getting by. Del always had a new car. And if Del had one, Neal did, too. “They’re not really new,” Del insisted. “The one I drive is almost two years old.”

I laughed. “Your daddy still drives a pick-up from when President Eisenhower was in the White House. That’s what I call old.”

“It’s all how you look at it, Ma.”

I supposed. But a lot was how you planned. Rosalind and Dock never really planned. She’d gone to work every day, and he’d mainly stayed home taking care of Albie. Martin might say he’d never planned, either. But he worked hard, day after day, and he passed the understanding of work on to our children.

By the summer, Leona was feeling a little better. “I’m getting out more,” she told me. And she tried never to miss Sunday dinners.

They were always getting smaller. It used to be we’d fill up the big table in the dining room, the small table in the kitchen, and still have to set up several card tables for the children. Now, we could all fit around the dining table, and the only children were Lisa and Daniel. And they never stayed very long before they went off to play or watch TV. So it was mainly Martin and me. And the boys and Susan. And Rosalind, Dock, and Albie. And Sonny and Dougie’s wives. Pat and Eddie were almost never there. Pat usually had to work on Sundays, and even though Eddie was invited, he wouldn’t come alone. And Rodney and Joann liked to take Paul and Lilah adventuring on weekends.

“Where you going this time?” I’d ask my grandson.

“Fishing, I guess. Daddy likes fishing a lot.”

Paul called Rodney “daddy.” And he called Bobby “daddy.” And he didn’t seem to have any trouble keeping them apart. Lilah called Rodney “step-daddy,” and Bobby “my real daddy.” But Rodney didn’t seem to mind. He just called Lilah “my little flower pot,” though she was already eight.

“When did that happen?” Bobby asked when he saw her. That wasn’t as often as before because he’d gotten married again. He had another little girl and boy, too. But he still picked Paul and Lilah up for a weekend every month. That was another reason they weren’t around.

“We see you often enough, Mama,” Joann said. And that was the truth. But I still missed having my daughters and their families at Sunday dinners.

One of the last times I saw Dougie, he’d just come back from the mill. He’d gone there with Dock and Albie. Albie drove a car now, because he needed it for work. He’d finally given up at the drug store downtown. “They weren’t going to give me any more work. And they weren’t going to give me any more money.” So he got a job at the print shop for the town paper.

“I didn’t know the first thing about printing,” he said. “But they trained me and everything. I didn’t even know how newspapers got put together.”

Even though Albie had a car, you’d still see him and Dock walking around town. “There’s so much you can only see that way,” they’d tell us. “Like the mill.”

“What about it?” Dougie asked. “That’s been closed up for years.”

“Well, it’s boarded,” Dock said. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t get in.”

“You’ve been inside?” Dougie asked. “When?”

“Not a lot,” Dock admitted. “But we got curious once. And once we realized how easy it was...”

“You only have to go up to the door,” Albie interrupted. “And it practically comes open in your hand.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Dougie wanted to know. “I didn’t think anyone’s been in there for years.”

“Oh, the kids play inside all the time,” Rosalind said.

“In the mill?”

“As much as they’re allowed to. They swim in the pond, too.”

“And no one stops them?” Dougie was amazed.

“No one stopped you,” Rosalind pointed out. “I don’t think anyone cares.”

“I sure would like to see inside the mill one more time,” Dougie said.

So he and Albie and Dock set out on an expedition. They went on a Sunday morning, right after church. And they purposely went during the day so they wouldn’t need flashlights. Dougie was eighty, but he was pretty steady on his feet. And it wasn’t like Dock was a young man, either. Even Albie was over forty.

“What did you see?” we asked when they came for dinner.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” Dougie said. “It’s not like I wouldn’t recognize the place. Heck, I spent forty years there, working five and six day weeks. So it’s not like I wouldn’t know my way around. But all the looms are gone. And some of the windows are broken out. And all the rooms look so much darker.”

“Well, a lot of the windows are grown over,” Dock said. “So there’s less light. And the paint on the walls has gotten dirty. That makes it look dark.”

“It was strange to be back,” Dougie said. “When the mill closed, I figured everything just stayed the same. That if you went there, everything would be covered with dust, but things would still be where you left them. Even after I heard the owners were selling everything overseas, I figured no one with any sense would buy. Those old machines were falling apart. But everything’s gone. The looms. The desks from the office. Even the tables from lunch. There isn’t a spot that hasn’t been picked clean.”

“I watched some of it go,” Rosalind told us. “I’d walk around from the house and see them loading the trucks.”

“But I was out on the farm by then,” Dougie said. “With Sonny and Walter. It’s been nearly twenty years since we worked at the mill.”

“Now you know what happened.”

“Yeah. But I liked it better the other way. And I didn’t think they’d ever just open the place again, not without getting new equipment. But it all being gone wasn’t something I expected.”

And that’s the last thing I remember about Dougie. His being surprised about something that seemed so normal. I always thought I’d remember his jokes. Because over fifty years I’d heard so many of them. But Dougie didn’t tell jokes so much as say funny things about people. Or about things that had happened. And that was harder to remember.

And sometimes Dougie said funny things about things that weren’t so funny. When Valerie left Neal, Dougie said, “Well, a man’s gotta have a first wife.”

“I’ve only had one,” Martin pointed out.

“Well, then maybe you weren’t curious enough,” Dougie told him, laughing.