Bartle Clunes - Chapter 10
El Dorado County 1949 - Father and Daughter
All previous chapters are listed chronologically in the Bartle Clunes archive. CLICK HERE
Bartle held his daughter for a minute. She felt very thin to him, her jacket too light for winter. She smelled faintly of pine soap. Her head fit just under his chin. After a moment, she gave him a sweet self-conscious smile and put her hand in his. “Are you hungry?” he asked. “Do you need to use the services before we leave? We have a two-hour drive.” Ayla had been en route from Salt Lake City for over fifteen hours, and had eaten little. They stopped first at the station cafe and picked up sandwiches and bottles of ginger ale to take with them.
Driving through the low winding hills, neither knew what to say. Bartle kept looking over at her and smiling. Her hands were clasped securely around a small leather bag on her lap. The word ‘Idaho’ was worked in tiny glass beads across the front of it. She fiddled with the fringes. Bartle, taking the lead, said, “Tell me a few things about your life, Ayla, if you would, please.”
“I scarcely know where to begin,” she answered.
“Well, I don't know... maybe you could just begin with some things that you want me to know right off? Where have you been? Have you been happy?” Bartle wanted to know everything about his daughter and the childhood he had missed out on. He hoped he was prepared to hear it. Though she was nearly a woman now, the image of his two-year-old brown-eyed girl clinging to her rag doll and crayons was so clear in his mind.
Ayla took her time telling her story. “Let me see... I lived with mama and Gerald until I was about eleven years old. We moved around a lot. We lived in Kalispell and Missoula, and... and... Butte and another place in Montana called Canyon Ferry. I went to seven different schools.”
“For heaven's sake!” he said. “That was hard, surely. How was it with you and your mother? And what about... Gerald?” he asked cautiously. “Was he good to you? What did you call him?”
“I called him Pa,” she said, “but I knew he was not really my father. Gerald was... good, I guess. He drank a lot, but he was not mean. Mostly he just seemed tired and sad, like. He did his best for us, I think, but he couldn’t seem to settle down. And he could not hold on to a job for the life of him, either. We learned to make do, you know?”
“Yes, I do. And where is Gerald now, Ayla? Does he know where you are?”
“No...well …I don't know. One day when I was, let’s see, I was in the sixth grade, he left. He went away and we never saw him ever again.”
Bartle scowled. The dishonorable snake, he thought. What kind of a man carries off someone else's wife and child and then abandons them? How could a man live with himself? “What did you do then, you and your mama? Where did you go?”
“Well, these last years Mama and I lived near the town of Idaho Falls. She had a cousin there. Mama took work as a waitress in the Hurry Back Cafe. Sometimes at night she worked in a tavern in Blackfoot. I worked, too. I milked cows and I picked blueberries in the summers. I took care of two children for a woman who lived about a mile down the road and I tended our neighbor's vegetable garden when they could hire me.”
“But who stayed with you?” asked Bartle. “Who looked after you while your mama was working?”
“I stayed alone most of the time. I wasn’t scared, not really. I got used to it.”
Bartle noticed she was relaxing a little, her speech coming more freely now. “And what about school? Did you finish your schooling?”
“Yep. I was a pretty good student, especially in science and in art,” she said. “I finished my high school courses half a year early.”
“Well, that's wonderful to hear. Something to be very proud of. Ayla, I have to say, this accounting of your life is very painful for me to hear. It was my job to care for you. It was my right and my responsibility to raise you. It enrages and saddens me to think of everything you and I have lost.”
“Don’t feel sorry,” she said. “We managed all right. And I am here now.”
“But... what happened to her, to your mother?” he asked, though he dreaded hearing the answer.
“She took sick, back in May. A wasting of the pancreas, they said. There was nothing they could do, and she was gone in only three months. I miss her so much.” Her eyes clouded with tears.
They were both quiet for a time, looking out in opposite directions at the barren, snow-dusted landscape, Ayla grieving, Bartle deep in thought. He turned up the heater and gripped the wheel solidly, as if it would get away from him. Ayla twisted the fringes of her bag.
“But,” she continued suddenly, “she did not tell me anything about you, Daddy, until just before she died. She told me the whole story. Maybe it was the whole story. I always knew that Gerald was my stepfather, but she told me I was not alone, I still had family, and that you were my father. She said she was sorry for the mess she'd made of our lives, and she made me promise to find you. She said she was always sorry for leaving you, that you were a good man and a good father.” Tears slipped down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.
The snow began to drift down again. Bartle mulled over all he had just learned, thinking of what he wanted to say to her. Finally he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped the truck. Ayla was confused. He turned to his daughter. “Ayla, God sent you down a stony path in your childhood, but He gave you strong shoes. Don’t you ever forget that.” Ayla nodded.
“And I want you to remember another important thing, right here and right now, because I know it to be true. A child learns what correct living is from the adults around her. It does not matter if the adults are good or bad. If we have bad examples around us, we can decide for ourselves to do just the opposite. If our parents are unkind, we learn how important it is to be kind. If they are lazy we see the results of laziness and we can decide to better ourselves. If they blame others for their misery, we can learn to hold our own selves accountable. If they don't pay their debts, we promise ourselves to never be debtors. No matter what we have lived with, Ayla, we can all choose to do right and make ourselves strong. Do you see the truth in that?” She nodded again.
“You lived with a poor example but I can see it did not break your spirit. It has made you a brave, competent, young woman. You can be proud of your strength. I just hope,” he added, “that it will be easier for you from here on out and that you will be happy living with us.”
Ayla said, with determination, “Daddy, I am glad that you want me here with you, but I will find work as soon as ever I can, and I’ll pay you back for my train ticket, and I’ll earn my keep. I don’t expect you to support me.”
“Yes, I see,” Bartle said. “I see the way of it, what your independence means to you. We will be patient with each other then, and we will know what to do as we we go along.” Bartle started up the truck again and they continued on their way.
The softly rolling hills of El Dorado County were now covered with a thin ragged blanket of snow. Tufts of short yellow grass poked through, like a feather-bed losing its stuffing. The big oaks wore white lace doilies on their heads. Few cars were on the road. Ayla watched the sparsely populated countryside roll by. She saw lone trees and bunches of crows. After a while, she looked over and smiled at her father, enjoying the ease that was starting to grow between them. “I talked enough,” she said. “You tell me something about you, please.”
“I will then,” he said, gathering his thoughts. “I looked everywhere for you, Ayla, and when I couldn’t find you I left Wyoming. I had to start over. I bought a small piece of land in these hills and built a plain small house where I lived alone and did my work for a long time.
“But my life has now changed - changed in a big way, a good way. In only this one month of November I have married a fine woman that I love and who, for some blessed, unaccountable reason, loves me back. I have moved to a new house. I have acquired a loyal hound, who seems to value my friendship. And now my lost daughter has come back to me! It is almost too much to comprehend. I lived alone for such a long time and now suddenly I have the gift of a complete family. No doubt we will all four need time to adjust to one another. It may prove complicated, but we will try to understand each other and be kind to each other. We will do the best we can to be a normal family.”
“Okay, Daddy,” she said.
Bartle is a rare, fine man. Such wisdom.
Bartle is a rare, fine man. Such wisdom.