Brotherly Love

CHAPTER 11

BROTHERLY LOVE

“One would be in less danger
From the wiles of the stranger
If one’s own kin and kith
Were more fun to be with.”
Ogden Nash



“February 15, 1980
Dear Sugar Boy,
How are you tonight? I hope you are doing just fine. Me and Sula (Grandma Martin’s sister, visiting) are just eating and sleeping. We have got a big snow, but Harold is taking good care of your calves. They sure have grown since you left.
You will have to get you a person to answer the phone when you get home. Everybody and his brother has called about you. Your girlfriend in Bedford called and talked a long time this morning and said she was coming to see you next week, and her mother called me, too. Lynn came over this morning and said if we needed anything to just let him know. He has been to see me several times.
I got my [Social Security] check . I put 180.00 in the bank.
We haven’t got the money to the man for the corn yet, but I will tell him what you said. He has been sick, Mrs. Moore said. Peggy and Annie carried my check to the bank for me. The rent man (a tenant who rented a house my uncle owned) was going to bring the money for the rent and I told him he couldn’t see you, so he said he would bring it over here in a day or two.

Harold killed three cows last night. Son, you do what they tell you and you will get well sooner. Don’t be uneasy about the calves. Harold is taking good care of them. You try and get well. I am feeling alright and you know all that wood I brought in I have got enough to last until the snow leaves. I will be up to see you in a few days soon as the roads get better.
By for now, Sweet Boy”
Letter from Grandma Martin to my Uncle Jack


Uncle Jack died five days after this letter was read to him by my father. When he finished, my father began to weep softly. My uncle was barely conscious and it was doubtful if he could comprehend what was being said to him. My father then reached down over the hospital bed and kissed his brother and ran his hand through his hair. The withered frame of his younger sibling haunted my father for years, and it would take several years before my father recovered from this loss.
When my Grandaddy Martin died in 1970, Uncle Jack moved in with Grandma Martin so that she wouldn’t need to live alone. Her house was a mile away from our home and was within sight of it. Every morning my father would get up before my mother and me and go to Grandma’s. She would already be up, fixing breakfast for the three of them in her basement kitchen (for reasons only she fully knew, my grandparents used this area as their primary living quarters, saving the upstairs for “company”). She cooked on her electric stove, but always, even in summer, had a small fire in the wood stove and kept water heated for coffee. Sometimes, if I got up early enough, I would go to eat, too.

Daddy, Uncle Jack and Grandma would eat, talk about what was going on in the community and watch some of the early morning news on television before the work day began. My Uncle Jack had a farm in Moneta, and made his living buying, raising and selling livestock. In addition to his cattle business, my father ran the slaughterhouse, and, sometimes, Grandma Martin, still spry at 82 years old, would come and help, too. Even during the time my father worked construction work, he was almost always at home every night, and he saw both his mother and brother every day.
Several months before Daddy took my grandmother’s letter to the hospital to read to Uncle Jack, I witnessed how much the brothers loved one another. After a day of work in the slaughterhouse, my father and I went to the hospital for a visit. He had not been able to visit him for the past week because November was always a busy month for butchering animals before winter, and Uncle Jack was scheduled to come home in a few days.
My Uncle’s skin was a pale yellow, the color of a days-old bruise as it begins to heal, and he had lost over twenty pounds since my father had last visited. When my father entered his room, he was stricken by his brother’s emaciated condition, and he went to him immediately, and kissed him without saying a word. It was apparent to him that my uncle’s cyrhossis would soon claim his life. On this night, my father finally realized that his brother would die, and the fact him hard. He cried all the way home, and cried most of the night, too.
After the two brothers exchanged pleasantries and spent a few moments talking about their cattle and how busy things were in the meat-packing plant, my father changed the conversation to a serious matter. He pulled out a Bible from the night stand drawer and began looking for a portion of scripture. Uncle Jack started to cry softly because he knew what my father was doing and he pulled the bed sheet up over his mouth so we would not see him cry.

Noticing this, my father, A Now wait, brother, don’t get upset.” “You and I haven’t done this before. It’ll be alright.” Then he bent over his bed and read a few passages of scripture, which I have now since forgotten, from the New Testament. After a few moments, my father asked him if he wanted to accept Christ, and Uncle Jack simply said “yes.”
When Uncle Jack said that, my father asked me to say a short prayer of thanksgiving. Then, the scene, which was a bit uncomfortable for a teenager, was over. Uncle Jack seemed relieved, too, but from that moment until the time he died, he seemed more peaceful. He had been humbled by what had happened, but the faith (Baptist) in which the brothers had been raised required this act of acceptance. Uncle Jack had been to church before, but he had never made the public commitment that Baptists believe is necessary for salvation. .
During the last several years of my father’s life, after my mother had passed away, my father and I spoke by phone at least once per day. He always ended our conversation by saying, “I love you more than yesterday, but less than tomorrow.” The physical expression of love that my father showed for his brother was always shown to me, and I have tried to show it in equal portions to my own family. Perhaps most farm men would have been uncomfortable embracing each other as did my father and uncle because “real men” are not supposed to do that kind of thing. But the two men I saw that night did not feel that way. Comfortable in their manhood, they knew that the true measure of a man had nothing to do with hiding emotions. On a much more accurate measurement stick, they were, after all, real men, indeed.