There was an interesting pattern in the ages of the five Marshall children. I came along about eleven years after Wanda. Then, about eleven years after me, came my little brother, Jim—Jimmy Lynn. That age difference meant that my relationship with Jim was different from my relationships with the older children. When Jim was still a toddler, I was old enough to help take care of him. In fact, I had to. Mother was working shift work at the wool plant in Brady. The plant operated around the clock, and she had to work whatever shift she was assigned.
There wasn't money for childcare. There wasn't anyone else available. So, when Mother went to work, twelve-year-old Wylie sometimes became the babysitter for little Jimmy Lynn. And that leads to one of the hardest memories I have to tell.
Something Was Wrong With Jim
Jim had a physical problem. None of us understood it. We didn't go to doctors very often in those days. We didn't have medical insurance, and we certainly didn't have extra money to pay doctors to investigate a problem we didn't understand. What we eventually learned was that Jim had a nerve problem affecting his ability to know when he needed to have a bowel movement. But we didn't know that then. And Jim was too little to explain it. All I knew was that I was supposed to take care of my little brother.
I thought he knew when he needed to go to the potty and simply wasn't telling me. He would soil his diaper. I would clean him up. Then I would spank his little bottom because I thought he had done something he knew he wasn't supposed to do. It happened again. And again. For more than a year. I was twelve years old. And I didn't understand.
When We Finally Learned
The problem continued after Charles moved Mother, Jim, and me to Lake Jackson. It wasn't until after Charles married Eileen that we finally began to understand what was happening.
Jim could not tell when he needed to go. Eventually, he began trying not to have a bowel movement at all. Waste would accumulate in his colon until his body could hold no more. I remember him screaming in pain. Only then did I understand that what I had mistaken for misbehavior was something he could not control.
What I Know Now
That memory has stayed with me. I wish I had known. If I had understood what was happening, I never would have punished him for it. But I didn't understand. Neither did Mother. Neither did Jim. And there was no doctor involved to explain it to us. I was a twelve-year-old boy trying to take care of a toddler while my mother stood for hours sorting wool on a conveyor belt so she could feed us and keep a roof over our heads. That doesn't change what happened.
But it is part of what happened. Eventually, as Jim grew older, things improved. By around junior-high age, he learned to recognize when he needed to go, and the terrible problem that had dominated so much of his childhood gradually became manageable. He had survived something very few people outside the family probably ever knew about.
If You Don't Behave, My Brother Will Get You Too
Not all my memories of little Jim are painful. There is one that still makes me laugh. Before we moved to Lake Jackson, our family attended the Church of Christ in Brady. One Sunday, Charles was visiting from Freeport and went to church with us. Jim was still a little boy, and apparently he was having some difficulty behaving himself during the service. Charles had had enough. He picked Jim up, carried him outside, and gave him a spanking. Poor Jim seemed to be getting spanked all the time in those days.
When Charles brought him back inside, he put him down in the pew with us. You would think that would have been the end of the matter. It wasn't. A few minutes later, another little boy several pews behind us began acting up. Jim knew exactly what happened to little boys who misbehaved in church. He stood up in the pew, turned around, and announced loudly enough for practically everybody in the church to hear:
“You better shut up, or my big brother will take you outside and spank you!”
The entire church cracked up. So much for a quiet Sunday service. Apparently Jim had decided that if Charles was going to enforce discipline, there was no reason his authority should be limited to members of the Marshall family. I can still picture that little boy standing in the pew, warning another child several rows away about the disciplinary powers of his big brother. Jim may not have appreciated the spanking. But he certainly understood the lesson. And he was more than willing to share it.
High School
By high school, Jim was entering another stage of his life. He went to work in a pizza restaurant. That work would eventually lead him toward the career he was very good at. Unfortunately, something else entered his life there. Jim began smoking marijuana. At the time, he was living with Charles and Eileen. Charles was concerned about him. Sometimes Charles would come and get me, and together we would talk to Jim and try to persuade him to stop. We never succeeded. Jim made his own decisions.
Just as Charles had made his. Just as I had made mine. That is one of the difficult things about loving brothers and sisters. There comes a point when you can advise them. You can argue with them. You can worry about them. You can love them. But you cannot live their lives for them.
A Father
Jim eventually became the father of three children. With his first wife, Mary, he had Jason and Elizabeth. His second marriage did not last very long, but from that marriage came his daughter Sabrina. Jim had custody of Sabrina. And he raised her. There is an image of Jim as a father that I particularly like because it tells you something about the reality of his life. Jim managed pizza restaurants and seafood restaurants. When Sabrina was little, she went with him. Sometimes her baby carriage would be sitting right there on the counter while her daddy worked.
Jim was managing a restaurant and raising his little girl at the same time. He made it work.
He Was Good at What He Did
Jim understood restaurant work and was very good at managing restaurants. What began as a high-school job became his profession.
Forty-Eight
Jim's road was much too short. He developed lung cancer. Around 2004, at only forty-eight years old, my little brother died. Forty-eight. When I write that number today, it seems impossibly young. Dad had died at fifty-two. Jim didn't even reach that. The little boy I had once babysat was gone.
The Twelve-Year-Old Babysitter
When I think about Jim, inevitably my mind sometimes returns to Brady. Mother is at the wool plant. Jim is a toddler. And I am twelve years old. I wish I could go back and tell that twelve-year-old boy what nobody knew. He can't feel it. Don't punish him. Help him. But we don't get to go backward carrying what we learned later. We live life in one direction. We make decisions based upon what we know at the time, and sometimes years later we discover that we didn't know nearly enough.
That is part of growing old too. You remember things differently because now you understand things you couldn't possibly have understood then.
I do not want that painful childhood memory to define my brother. Jim worked, married, became a father to Jason, Elizabeth, and Sabrina, raised Sabrina, and built a life in the restaurant business. He was much more than the sick little boy I once babysat.
Eleven Years
There were eleven years between Wanda and me. Then there were eleven years between Jim and me. In a way, I stood near the middle of two generations within the same family. Wanda was almost grown when I was beginning school. I was almost a teenager when Jim was a toddler. That gave me memories looking in both directions. I remember looking up to Charles. And I remember looking after Jim. There is a difference. One was my idol. The other was my little brother.
Both left before I did. And now, when I reach backward through eighty years of memories, I can still find them. I can still see Charles coming down the dirt road toward the farm, and Jim waiting at home while Mother worked at the wool plant. Both became men with lives of their own; both remained my brothers. I only wish we could have had more years together.