Bud Trent

Bud Trent, born William Delaney Trent, is one of the Trent brothers and Anne Elizabeth Trent’s older brother in the family’s account of itself. The evidence gives him no sustained viewpoint of his own: he is first described through family expectations and reports of his conduct, then recalled by Anne Elizabeth after the United States War Department reports his death in a solo-flight crash. The movement from a lively, imperfect young man to a name in a telegram makes his loss both sudden and unresolved; no one knows exactly how the crash happened.

Family and Identity

The Trents live in Dallas, on Pleasant Avenue, in a household presented through its father’s pride in the family and its place in Texas. Anne Elizabeth is the daughter of a prominent attorney, and her mother died when she was very young. Her father and brothers call her Daughter. Bud’s given name is William Delaney Trent, like his father’s; his younger brother is Spencer Anderson Trent, whom the family calls Buster. These names locate Bud within a closely knit household, but the surviving account gives more space to the family’s demands and memories than to his private thoughts.

The household’s expectations for Anne Elizabeth help define Bud’s place in it. By the time Buster is sixteen, he tells her that their father is worried about the oil business and that the household needs her to abandon her independent plans, return home, and take responsibility for keeping house. The account presents this as a family problem rather than as a position Bud himself states. It nevertheless shows the pressures surrounding the brothers: their father is anxious about business and household management, while the children are expected to respond to those needs.

University Years and Return Home

During a summer on the family ranch, Joe Washburn visits for two weeks after graduating from law school in Austin. He is preparing to enter the father’s law office in the fall. Anne Elizabeth plays a series of pranks on him, and her brothers become so displeased that they will not speak to her. Their father calls her a tomboy. The episode does not establish Bud’s own view of the visit or of his sister’s behavior, but it places him among the brothers who react to her mischief and shows the comic friction of family life before later events recast those relationships in a more serious light.

By the time Buster drives Anne Elizabeth home in a new Stutz, he reports that Bud has been causing trouble at the university and is close to being dismissed. He also says Bud has become entangled with a woman in Galveston who is trying to blackmail him. These details reach the reader through Buster’s account, not through a scene with Bud, and the evidence does not explain the circumstances further. They establish a period of instability and family concern, but they do not define Bud’s whole character or reveal how he understands his predicament.

The same conversation complicates the picture of Bud’s difficulties. Buster says that he made five thousand dollars trading options near Amarillo, and Anne Elizabeth responds by praising him and saying that it is good to be home. The exchange places money-making and family trouble side by side: the household has been worried about the oil business, while one son has found a way to make a substantial sum on his own. The passage does not say that Bud earned the money, and it should not be confused with Buster’s account of his own trading.

War, Family Memory, and Death

In the following period, Anne Elizabeth resumes tennis and golf and returns to a busy social life. Joe Washburn marries and lives in Oklahoma, making his absence a relief to her because seeing him distresses her. She later goes to Austin to finish her journalism course, partly because she thinks being there will help keep Bud on a straight course. They drive home together on Fridays in her Buick sedan. Her decision makes her education and her brother’s welfare run alongside one another: she is pursuing her own studies while also trying to remain close enough to influence him.

Their routine unfolds against rising wartime activity. Anne Elizabeth’s social calendar becomes crowded, and she has little sleep; her father has bought a new Tudor-style house, and she spends her spare time choosing furniture, hanging curtains, and arranging its rooms. The narrative records these domestic and social details before abruptly interrupting them with a telegram from the United States War Department. Her father is away in Austin on business, so she opens the message herself. It reports that Bud has crashed and been killed. Her first thought is how hard the news will be for her father.

Joe Washburn calls from San Antonio. Anne Elizabeth recognizes his voice and tells him she knows what he wants to say. Joe explains that it was Bud’s first solo flight and that nobody seems to know how the crash happened; he suggests there may have been a structural defect. The account therefore distinguishes the known fact of Bud’s death from the uncertain explanation for it. The possible defect is Joe’s conjecture, not a confirmed finding, and the narrative supplies no further investigation or definitive cause.

After Joe ends the call, Anne Elizabeth tries briefly to imagine that she has not yet risen and that the phone call was only a dream. Her thoughts instead return to particular memories of Bud: his laughter, his sudden intervention when the car skidded on the way into San Antonio, and his appearance in uniform. These recollections give the loss a personal scale without resolving the mystery of the crash. Bud’s death closes the account of his future as abruptly as the telegram enters the household, leaving Anne Elizabeth with the remembered brother rather than an explanation.