We've always been farmers. For as long as anyone in Warnerville can remember Warners have been growing soybeans and corn in the weedy West Virginia foothills. Mama and Daddy were both Warners; Mama didn't have to change anything but the address on her driver's license when she married Daddy in 1964. They went to the Baptist church every Wednesday and Sunday, singing hymns and reciting Bible verses with the mayor and his wife (both Warners, of course,) until Billie came home. Now they don't go to the Baptist church anymore, or even into town, unless Daddy has to buy some feed or one of the younger children is sick. They just farm the land, turning Billie over and over with the organic soybeans those Yanks order by the bushel.
Billie was born in 1968, after Patsy and Julie Dee. While the rest of the country watched the Chicago Convention and read The Feminine Mystique, Mama and Daddy farmed. It could have been 1948 or 1988; it didn't much matter. Daddy was just so proud he finally had a son. He had been angry with Mama when Patsy was born, certain she had reached into her womb and changed his boy into a little girl. He just ignored
Julie Dee. But William Babson Warner IV was his baby, namesake of the great grandfather who lynched the undesirables and made moonshine in his root cellar.
Billie was frail and dainty, smaller than Julie Dee. He cried a lot; Mama said he was always up with the colic. He had a rigid little body and webbing on his right foot. As he got older he loved reading and playing dress-up with Julie Dee. Daddy used to drag Billie out to the tractor by the hair, Billie crying as Daddy kicked his shins until they bled. Sometimes Daddy took Billie into the barn and beat him with a cattle prod. Mama just covered her ears.
Even I knew Billie wasn't like the other boys in Warnerville. He was seven when I was born, a poet who told me magical stories about knights and unicorns. He always let me suck on his finger and play with the foot he called the waddler. He wore Mama's earrings and lipstick when no one else was home. He never asked me not to tell anyone about his visits to Mama's vanity, but somehow I knew it was our little secret.
As soon as he turned sixteen, Billie hitchhiked to New York City. Daddy pretended he had only two sons after Jimmy was born, when I was ten. Mama was relieved he was gone. She'd always been ashamed of Billie, certain he was queer because she had married her cousin. Daddy was just enraged, furious his namesake would disgrace the family name and burn in hell for his immorality. Julie Dee and I were the only ones who ever mentioned Billie, and after a while it was almost as though he had never existed. Until the day Daddy got the organic soybean contract.
Daddy got a call from some wholesaler in Brooklyn asking him if he would like to sell his soybeans for 200% more than their current yield price. All he had to do was convert the farm to a "pesticide free" zone. Business had been poor for years; it was Daddy's
salvation. Daddy insisted on going to New York to finalize the contract. He would not do business with any man whose hand he had not shaken. Some of the younger Warners out on route 151 had Billie's New York address, and so Daddy set out in the old white pickup for the trip north.
Daddy found Billie and his dark lover in thrift shop dresses and Marilyn Monroe wigs, nuzzling each other as they walked down the avenue. Daddy had to retch before he spoke to Billie. After the boyfriend left, Daddy stood behind Billie and silently slipped a bit of the white cord he always carried around his eldest son's neck. When it was dark he wrapped Billie in the tarp from his trunk and loaded him under the flatbed cover. Three days later he drove back to West Virginia with two contracts for organic soybeans and the body of his eldest son.
I can't say Daddy was proud of what he did. It was his duty, learned from great-grandpa and long evenings at the town meeting hall. The Warner name was more important to Daddy, and to Mama, than one individual Warner. And so Billie disappeared forever, into the grist mill, one spring day.
I don't think Mama and Daddy thought we children would know or even care what they had done to Billie. But to Julie Dee and me, one Warner was much more important than the family name. I, too, learned from Grandpa how to tie a slipknot. And now it is Julie Dee and I who avoid Wednesdays and Sundays at the Baptist Church and trips into town, as the Yanks buy more organically fertilized soybeans.