Primogeniture In The Rear-view.

The framed black and white family photographs on display easels were arranged on top of the console television, surrounding the misplaced mantle clock. The RCA Victor television was also black and white, installed inside a walnut-stained pinewood casing, set on four spindle legs. William looked at the photographs arranged on top of the television, and the larger hand-colored photographs on the wall behind the television. The photos displayed the faces of family members he did not know.

           “Grandma, tell me who that man is,” William asked, pointing up to one of the larger framed photos. There was no answer.

William turned around and realized Grandma was no longer in the living room with him. He turned back to look at the photos. He knew they were family members, but he could not recall their names or his relationship to them. It had been too long.

William felt a cold breeze as someone opened the front door. The winter night air rushed into the room as his Mother appeared in the open doorway. She held the doorknob in one hand and William’s sleeping baby brother in the other arm.

           William pointed at the photograph on the wall, “Mama, who is that man?” he asked, not waiting for her to close the door or take off her coat.

           “Not now, and your brother is sleeping,” she whispered. “Where is your Grandmother?” she asked as she looked around the room.

           “Where is Daddy?”

           “He will be here in a minute,” his Mother responded softly as she laid the baby down on the sofa. “Is Grandma here, William?” she asked.

William pointed to the kitchen as his Mother unbuttoned the baby’s sleeper. She looked to where the child was pointing but could see nobody in the kitchen.

William’s father pushed open the front door with his shoulder as he carried an armload of firewood through the doorway and walked to a wood rack next to the fireplace. “Close the door, William,” he instructed his son as he placed the logs on the rack. William did as he was told.

           “Your brother split those logs for me,” William’s grandmother said as she walked into the living room. The man did not respond as he added more fuel in the fireplace.

           “His children came over and helped me arrange all the National Geographics in order by date. I’ve been meaning to do that for years,” she said, gesturing toward the collection of magazines neatly arranged on a bookshelf next to the fireplace. “His sons are growing like weeds,” the woman said as she walked past William back to the kitchen.

William wondered which of her other four sons Grandma was talking about. His father put the metal screen back in front of the fireplace and stood up.

           “Daddy, who is that man?” William asked, again pointing at the photograph on the wall behind the television.

           “The man your Grandmother was talking about,” he replied, without looking at his son.

           “Bill,” William’s Mother said, “be prudent.” William looked at his Mother but did not understand her comment. She picked up the baby, and walked to the hallway, turned on the lights, and went into a bedroom down the hall.

Bill was the second of five boys in the family. Four of the brothers joined the armed forces during WW II and returned home to Kansas after the war. The oldest son stayed home and was exempt from the draft because he worked for a defense contractor as an engineer.

Bill picked up his son and carried him over to the display of family photos. The father and son looked at them for a few minutes, then Bill carried his son to the sofa and sat the boy next to him. He began to quietly tell William the names of the family members and how they were related.

           As they were talking, William saw his Grandmother walk by the entrance to the kitchen. “Grandma, do you have photos of my cousins?” William asked, interrupting his father.

Bill looked around and saw his Mother pass the doorway and walk to the kitchen sink. The woman did not respond to the question.

           “Some of those people are your cousins,” he said to his son as he leaned down to whisper in his ear. “See the group of kids in that photo by the clock? They are your cousins.”

           “I mean the cousins that live here,” William responded, looking up at his father.

Bill understood what the boy was saying. He was asking about his cousins that lived in the general area of the family farm where his Mother was still living. Bill’s Mother had been a widow for the past ten years and depended on her three sons that lived in the area of rural Kansas for assistance around the farm. Three of Bill’s brothers had children that were close in age to William, and over the years, Bill had made efforts to keep in touch with the three brothers, their families, and his Mother.

Bill’s family lived in Wichita, where Bill and his wife were school teachers. On holidays and more often during the summer months, Bill drove the half-day it took to visit family. The oldest brother and his family lived in Kansas City.

           “Maybe she doesn’t have any recent photos of those cousins,” Bill suggested to his son.

           “Let’s get some for her!” William eagerly suggested. Bill smiled down at his son but said nothing.

           “Get what, for who?” William’s Mother asked as she walked into the living room.

           “Photos of our cousins for Grandma,” William replied with a smile. His Mother smiled at her son but said nothing as she sat beside him on the sofa and then looked over at her husband, who was sitting on the other side of the boy.

           “Grandma, we are going to get you some photos of our cousins,” William announced when his Grandmother walked out of the kitchen.

Grandmother stopped and turned toward the three family members sitting on her sofa. She glared at her son. Bill looked at his Mother and said nothing.

Grandmother walked over to the television and looking at the clock announced it was time for the local news. She turned on the television and waited for it to warm up.

           “We saw our cousins at Uncle Steve’s house this morning,” William said to the woman.  “We stayed and had lunch,” he continued. His Grandmother sat down in a wooden rocking chair by the fireplace but said nothing.

           The adults looked at the television as the screen started to faintly display an image.

           “Tomorrow we are going to Uncle Mel’s farm,’ William announced. “Do you want to go with us, Grandma?”

           The woman shook her head and said, “Oh, I’ll see them soon enough.”

William’s Mother put her hand softly on his leg and said, “Let Grandma watch the news now.”

“We’ll bring back photos of our cousins for you, Grandma,” William announced.

“The boy has lots of ideas, Bill,” the woman said to her son. Bill continued to gaze at the television and pack tobacco into his pipe. William’s Mother put an arm around her son’s shoulders and slipped her hand around her husband’s arm.

The next morning Bill’s family loaded into their 1952 Dodge sedan and drove through fresh snow down an unpaved road to Uncle Mel’s farm. It had been a quiet breakfast at Grandma’s house. Nobody talked much, except William’s Mother, who made small talk as Grandma made pancakes.

It was a few days after Christmas, and William knew that soon his family would be driving home to Wichita. William stood on the back seat of the Dodge so he could see the snow, and his Mother held his baby brother in her lap. William asked his father if they were going home after the visit with Uncle Mel’s family. His father looked in the review mirror and saw that his son was facing away from him, looking out the back window at the farm as they drove away.

           “Let your Father pay attention to driving,” said his Mother over her shoulder. The only sound in the car was the heater fan, which did not seem to force much heat into the backseat area.

Uncle Mel’s family of four children welcomed William’s family as they walked through the backdoor of the house, without knocking. Aunt Jenny was stirring something in a large pot on the stove, and the house smelled like fresh bread. The brothers greeted each other with a hand-shake and pat on the back. The wives hugged, and Aunt Jenny fussed over the baby as William’s Mother took off her coat. The men walked to the living room together.

William’s cousins asked if he wanted to see the new things they got for Christmas and invited him to a large family room where a new model train was set up on the wood floor. The cousin closest in age to William showed him how to operate the train using a dial on what he called a transformer that adjusted the speed of the locomotive, which pulled the train along the tracks in a large circle.

After they played with the train for a while, William asked his cousin if they had given family photos to Grandma.

           “I don’t know,” his cousin said as he started disconnecting the circular track starting at the train station.

The boy started building a new track configuration into a figure eight. At the intersection he put a plastic tunnel over one section of track and then used a railroad bridge to cross over the tunnel, completing the figure eight. He then put a second locomotive on the track that was heading the same direction as the first

           “Grandma has photos of the other cousins, “William offered.        As he worked on connecting the track sections, his cousin said, “Yeah, she has photos of just some of her family.”

William watched as two locomotives pulling freight cars along the tracks crossed over each other at the bridge and tunnel. His cousin let him operate a control to the second locomotive as they each adjusted the speed to coordinate coming to the intersection at the same time.

William noticed it was suddenly quiet in the adjacent room. The two men were looking at the children and obviously had been listening.

Uncle Mel had been a gunner on an Army Air Corps bomber in the Second World War. The airplane was known as the Flying Fortress. Bill had been a sergeant in what was called Patton’s Army and fought all the way into Germany. The two men had a common bond that went beyond being brothers.

           “Our children observe more than we sometimes realize,” Mel said to his brother.

           “They are seeing the truth,” Bill replied without looking at his brother.

           “We can’t hide the truth from them, but we can shield them from how we feel about the truth,” Mel suggested.

           “It is one thing to favor one son over your other sons,” Bill responded, “but now she is extending it into the next generation. Dad would not have tolerated that.”

Bill looked away from his brother, realizing he had raised his voice.

           “No, Dad was not old-school like Mom. Plus, he was not the first-born son, which I think had a lot to do with his view of privilege and birth-order,” Mel acknowledged.

           “She lets four sons go off to war and pampers the oldest son who stays home with the women, children, disabled and privileged,” Bill said through tight lips.

The two men sat in the quiet of the snow falling outside the window. Mel picked up their coffee mugs and refilled them in the kitchen.

“Bill, I’m more concerned about your anger than I am about who Mother loves most,” Mel said softly. “My anger and I did have anger, would have more impact on my children than a grandmother who doesn’t give the best of herself to all her grandchildren.”

“Go ahead, take the side of the oldest brother,” Bill said as the color in his cheeks began to change.

“I’m not taking his side.”

Bill relit his pipe and let the vision of falling snow cool his mind. “I know,” he said.

“Our mission in the Flying Fortress was to bomb targets in Germany, mostly bridges,” Mel said. “But as a gunner, I had another mission which was to keep the enemy away from our plane. Sometimes the gunners started to think the mission was shooting down enemy fighters and forgot we had a bigger goal. I had to remind myself, even when we could not see the ground from where I sat that getting to the target, unloading the payload and getting back to base was the real mission.”

Bill sipped his coffee and looked at the falling snow. “And your mission now?” he asked, still looking out the window.

“Getting my family safely back to base, even when I cannot see the ground. I cannot control a stubborn woman with old-world values, but I can control my reaction to her lack of wisdom,” Mel advised.

After dinner, which consisted mostly of leftovers from Christmas day, William’s family packed up for the trip home. The baby was sleeping, and William felt like he might fall asleep on the way home. His Mother put the baby on the seat beside her and closed the passenger door.

“Are we going home?” William asked from the backseat as his father started the car. Bill got out of the car and scraped the ice and snow off the car windows. William’s Mother said nothing. She looked over at her husband as he got back in the sedan.

As Bill backed the car along the driveway to where it connected to the county road, he turned around, putting his right arm over the seat so he could look out the rear window and steering with his left. William looked up and watched his father back up along the snow-covered driveway.

       When they reached the county road, Bill looked down at his son and said, “No, we are going back to Grandma’s house. I need to split more firewood for Mom in the morning.”