Who We Were & Who We Are Now

Part 20 Epilogue

Forrest Junior had heard all sorts of stories about his daddy growing up from his mother and his uncles. It was hard to believe the quiet and calm man he knew was once an outlaw. He recalled him and his baby brother getting slipped thimbles of liquor by Uncle Howard, telling them about the time they all took down an entire county of cops after them. All he knew was that his mother was sweet and his father was quiet and that they loved each other and them. Both the boys looked like their daddy, stocky and strong, dark hair with their mama's green eyes. Forrest Jr. recalls the day his brother was born, the only time he'd seen his father tear up, but his mama told him he'd only ever cried one other time, and that's when he was born.

Tawny and Forrest stayed in Franklin County together. Even with Howard and his family away, and even after their children moved away. They sold the station and had a little house on the edge of the woods, a little pond Forrest liked to pass his retirement by with fishing and a garden Tawny liked to pass her time in. It was a simple and quiet life and they were happy all the way to the end.

Forrest and Tawny had over thirty years together being married. Raising two boys and running the station all the while. The hard-living Forrest did in his younger years eventually caught up to him, as he knew it would. He caught pneumonia and passed away in their bed, Tawny never leaving his side.

The boys knew their mama was heartbroken. They made it a point to try to get her to move in with them, let them take care of her now that she was all alone out there on the homestead. But of course, she refused. She passed her days alone and it just as quiet as it was with Forrest there. She had lovely portraits of them together she liked to talk to, sometimes she'd hear his heavy footsteps around the house, swearing she could still smell those cigars as she'd walk past his favorite chair.

Tawny held on for five months after Forrest passed. She waited until the birth of the next grandchild, a boy that they'd named Forrest after him. Her sons and even her daughters in law knew she didn't want to live without her Forrest. The sons weren't so accepting of it, but the daughters understood the sentiment and even after she was gone they thought the whole thing was tragically romantic. She passed away in the chair they'd left her in that night, rocking with her hand on the bassinet with the newest Forrest Bondurant in it after whispering to him and kissing his head, telling him how much she loved him, how much Forrest would've loved him. She told him stories about him until he fell asleep in her arms. She thought he looked just like her sons, and just like Forrest did.

It was really to no one's surprise when they found she'd passed away in their father's favorite chair, wrapped in one of his sweaters that next morning. She was only sticking around to see the baby and she'd told him what she needed to to be able to leave.

She and Forrest are buried side by side as she'd written, in a small graveyard in the woods of Franklin. It was a fenced off site in the far corner away from everyone else. She'd fought with getting to choose where they were buried, the owners insisting they go by the book, going in a numbered order like the rest of the folks. But she reminded them they weren't like normal folks and threatened to haunt them if they didn't follow through on her wishes. Bold and fearless until the end, she was.

She'd said she wanted Forrest to have privacy in death, just as he'd preferred in life. And deep down she'd known she wouldn't last long without him. He'd told her she was his reason for living all those years ago, and he'd quickly become hers thereafter. She wasn't unhealthy, she wasn't sick with something doctors didn't catch, she'd just lived her life, raised her babies and their babies and without Forrest, she didn't feel any need to be there any longer.

So it came to pass that she and Forrest were buried side by side, a single large tombstone for them both with the name of Bondurant across it. Nothing else on it. Just two bodies, two lovers and parents and grandparents with the simple carved last name that stood for so much more than a means of identification. She wrote in the letter's to her sons that it was fitting that unless you knew Forrest in life, that you didn't know him in death either. She thought he'd appreciate being remembered simply as a Bondurant. A matriarch and a patriarch of Bondurant and nothing more, nothing less, and the same as Tawny. In the end they were both known by the name that meant the most to them. All they wanted anyone to know about them that hadn't been in their life, was what was on that tombstone, BONDURANT. First, foremost and forever.