Bartle Clunes - Chapter 25
End of Part One
This Chapter marks the end of Part One of Bartle Clunes. Thanks so much to all of you who have been following the tale of Bartle and his family. You cannot imagine the pleasure it brings me to know that Riles Crossing may be real to you too. Next week begins Part Two, in which seven new eccentric residents of El Dorado County are introduced to weave their way into the fabric of Riles Crossing and into the life of Bartle Clunes.
All previous chapters are listed in order in the Bartle Clunes archive. Click here . If you are new, please start here Introduction to Bartle Clunes .
El Dorado County 1950
It was a normal Sunday afternoon in October at the Clunes’ home. Lonnie had helped Bartle with a roof repair all morning. Ayla wrestled with Maggie on the carpet, telling Louvina stories about people around Riles Crossing. Not gossip, really, just stories she'd heard while working down at the General Store and Hardware. Okay, maybe gossip.
She and Louvina prepared lunch for the men – barley beef soup with vegetables from their garden, green beans and onions, also from their garden, an orange Jell-o salad with grated carrots and raisins, and mayonnaise. The autumn sun dappled through the oak tree and into the kitchen window leaving fluttering shadows on the east wall.
They had just sat down to eat and passed around the bowls and plates to help themselves, when Lonnie spoke. “Bartle, Louvina … Ayla and I have an announcement.” He smiled shyly at Ayla. She nodded.
The Clunes' looked up from their soup, spoons half-way to their lips. “Ayla and I are getting married,” he said. No one spoke. He waited a bit, then continued, “And, well, we hope you will find that to be good news and that we can count on you being happy for us.”
“Getting married.” Bartled smiled, shaking his head. “Hah. Very funny, you two.” He continued eating, but noticed the young folks did not laugh.
“Wait a minute … getting married?” said Bartle slowly. “No, I don't think so. No sir-ree! You are both far too young to get married, and you hardly know each other.”
Ayla said “We have known each other and worked together for nearly a year now, Daddy, and we are both old enough to make our own decisions, don’t you think? And don't you remember Lonnie asked me to marry him the first day we met?” She smiled at the memory. “Lonnie is a good, good man, Daddy, as good as ever I will find on this earth. I know that, and you know that too.”
Bartle ate his soup, muttering, “For the love of Pete ...”
Louvina said, “Well....then....when would this marriage be? What are you thinking of exactly?”
“We are going to the court house on Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” Bartle said, raising his voice a notch. “Wednesday next? Wait a minute! Now you wait just a blasted minute. Damn it all to hell.” He muttered another, more shocking oath. (It was never the extent of Bartle's profanity, but his choice of words that indicated his outrage. His temper was rarely set free, but it could blaze if the occasion demanded it.)
“We just want a quiet ceremony, like you two had, nothing fancy. We don't want to waste our money on foolishness. Will you come with us?” she asked Ayla.
“Bless my soul!” said Louvina.
“Now you listen,” Bartle sputtered. “What is the big hurry?”
“We love each other, Bartle,” said Lonnie. We just want to start our lives together.”
“That's right,” said Ayla. “Well, that, and the fact that we are expecting a baby in June.”
“Holy Mackerel, ” whispered Louvina.
“You. Are. What?” Bartle stood up, pushed back from the table. “Holy Mother of God! What's it to be next!” Louvina reached out and gently touched his wrist.
“It is a wonderful thing, Daddy. We are happy about it. Really we are!”
“We will not be going far away, Bartle,” Lonnie said. “You know the house is only two miles down the road.”
“And... and I will still come up to the studio to work with you, if you will let me,” said Ayla. “Think of it – a grand child!”
Bartle exhaled loudly. He did not reply, did not know how to reply. He loved his daughter. He respected Lonnie. He thought he knew what a father was supposed to say in an event like this, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He looked hard at both young folks, and shaking his head, he said, “I don’t know what to think about this. I am at a loss. We will talk about it tomorrow. I need time to think.”
Leaving his food on the table, he went for his hat and jacket, pulled on his boots and said evenly, calmly, “Louvina, I believe I will walk over to my house. I feel a need for a bit of solitude in which to contemplate this situation. I will be back in the morning. We will work out all this foolishness then.” He took a deep breath, pulled the door closed behind him, and away he went down toward the creek. Maggie let out one sharp bark and swiveled his head around to Louvina. She let him out.
My daughter married, he thought. Leaving my house...moving away. I just found her! Lord help me, he thought, already feeling the loss of what he had so recently gained. He needed air and exercise to clear his head.
What Bartle did not know as he strode away from the house, was that had he waited, he would have heard the rest of the news. He did not yet know that by the coming June there would be two babies in the Clunes family, and only one of them would be Ayla's.
Bartle awoke in the dark of the morning with a chill. He jumped up from his cot and got another quilt from the cupboard. The house felt absolutely empty. He lay back in bed, but didn't return to his sleep. He lay thinking of his life, all the stages of his long life, going over them one-by-one, from the events of yesterday all the way back to his childhood. He counted them out, a personal litany, as beads of a rosary.
A year had come and gone since that day last October when he'd walked over the hills to Louvina's house. He saw himself now, a man who had undergone rapid changes, who had grown more or less gracefully into them. He was no longer alone. Two women had joined him - a strong and capable wife and an equally strong and capable daughter. They were kind, courageous women, and both had chosen to cleave to him and love him, and he was glad for it. He knew they would be the biggest part of his life forever. He had a dog, sleeping at his side, who was loyal and good. He would now have a son-in-law who was more like a son, a bright, young optimistic man that he admired and had confidence in. His unborn grandchild already had a firm hold on his heart.
He thought first of his family and the household he had gained this year, but also of the material success he had achieved over the past few months, the hoped for, but never expected, acclaim for his art. He was triumphant. He knew he had finally proven his father wrong - his painting was of value and well worth pursuing.
Stepping farther back in time, he recalled all the years he had lived alone in these hills, the house and the solitary life he had built for himself, and how he had learned to thrive in that solitude. And farther back still to his unfaithful first wife, the life she had stolen from him. He saw the worn face of his mother, Kate, in her kitchen, a quiet, gentle woman, making biscuits. A woman who found that she herself could not, after all, “get used to anything with time.” A woman pushed to an early grave by a callous, selfish, unrelenting husband.
And finally, Bartle admitted to himself that his father was not just a stern, hard man. He was a cruel man, a bully. He had unremittingly ridiculed and abased his wife and two sons in order to mask his own weakness. He ruled his family with denigration and a leather strap, he chained and beat his dogs, mistreated his livestock. He was a liar and a cheat who went to church of a Sunday. He was a man only to be endured.
Bartle wept. He realized right then that he had endured. He had endured and overcome his father's temper, the pain of an adulterous wife, a lost child, the loneliness of his self-enforced seclusion. He had endured and moreover had been strengthened.
Later that morning, Bartle paused and looked at his reflection in the old mirror hanging near the kitchen door. He saw himself clearly at the end of October 1950. He was 43, tall, wide-shouldered. His eyes were dark, his hair the color of a field mouse. He saw in himself a man who was neat in his person, a man who had made his bed every day of his adult life and who left his boots at the door when he entered his house. An orderly man.
Now, as he had done many times over, he whacked his old hat against his thigh, sending the dust flying, and put it on his head. He stepped out onto the sagging porch. Taking a deep breath of the clean, crisp morning air, he could smell the snow that was coming. The ubiquitous crows in the yard hurled the same tired insults at him and hopped over to the trough when he passed. Bartle strode across the flat, frosted yellow stubble of his field, tall boot-tops flapping against his knees, Magnus at his side. He was heading over to the sunnier side of the draw to his home and his family, a man filled with gratitude.
And though he did not know if there was a God or not, and he often suspected not, he would continue to give thanks at the dawn and the dusk of every day for the gifts he had been given.
End of Part One
I am glad Bartle came to his senses. I am looking forward to him learning the other news. Life is full of surprises. 🤣
Wow.