Standing in the Rainbow

by Fannie Flagg

  “Didn’t I just walk?” Anna Lee said. “It’s only two blocks.”

  “No. I took you the first day but you weren’t afraid. You seemed happy to go really, you and Raggedy Ann. I stood there and watched you go up the steps and when you got to the top you turned and gave me a little wave and went on in. And oh, it nearly broke my heart, I was losing my little girl. I stood there on the street just crying my eyes out for all the world to see.”

  Anna Lee said, “You did?”

  Doc nodded. “Oh yes,” he said and relit his pipe, shook the match out, and put it in the ashtray by his chair. “Your mother came down to the drugstore practically hysterical. You would have thought she had just put you on a freighter headed for China.”

  This was the first time Anna Lee had heard this story. “Were you that upset when Bobby went off to the first grade?”

  Dorothy looked down at her sleeping son for a moment. “No. I hate to say it but I think I was actually relieved. The day before he had ruined all six cakes I had baked for the church sale, ran his finger around the bottom of each one and ate the icing. So, no, I was glad to let somebody else have him for a while. But little boys are different. When you get married and have one of your own, you’ll see for yourself.”

  Anna Lee shook her head. “Not me. I’m not having any boys. I’m only going to have girls.”

  Mother Smith laughed. “That’s not something you can control, honey. You may want little girls but wishing doesn’t make it so.”

  “Then I’m not ever getting married.”

  Mother Smith smiled. “That’s what we all say until Mr. Right comes waltzing in the door. Isn’t that right, Dorothy?”

  “It was for me. I told everyone I was going to New York to go on the stage and become the next Sarah Bernhardt. Then your father asked me to the Christmas dance and there went my Broadway career plans out the window.” Dorothy moved a little in the swing, and Bobby’s head moved with her. “Now my other leg has gone to sleep. I don’t know what he has in his head but it weighs a ton.”

  “Rocks probably,” said Anna Lee.

  Jimmy stood up, yawned, and stretched. “Well, folks, I guess it’s about that time. See y’all tomorrow.”

  “Good night, Jimmy.”

  Dorothy looked at Doc. “You better come over here, Mr. Right, and take your son to bed. I need to get on in and work on the show before it gets too late. It’s almost ten o’clock.”

  Doc put his pipe down and walked over and picked Bobby up and put him over his shoulder. “Should I put his pajamas on?”

  “No, just let him sleep in his clothes. It won’t hurt him.”

  Doc said, “Good night, all.” As he got to the screen door he turned to Dorothy and said, “Good night, Miss Bernhardt.”

  Doc Smith

  DOC WAS MUCH older than the other fathers of Bobby’s friends and it worried him because he could not roughhouse or play football with his son like they could, but as far as Bobby was concerned there were plenty of things he did with his father that more than made up for it. Doc, it seems, had been a good baseball player in his youth and was still an avid baseball fan and so was Bobby. They listened to all the games on the radio together and studied the players’ statistics. With Doc’s vast knowledge of baseball he taught Bobby to appreciate the finer and more subtle elements of the game. And though Doc was never much of a hunter, he did love to fish and from the time Bobby could walk he always took him along. Doc would come into his room at about 3:30 in the morning, long before it was light, and wake him. Bobby would get up and dress and they would both quietly slip out the front door so the Robinsons’ chickens would not wake up the neighborhood. Doc would start the 1938 Dodge with the bad muffler as quietly as possible and drive in the dark through the back roads until they came to the river. It was on these mornings that his father would let him have a sip of coffee from the thermos he had brought, preceded with “All right, just a sip, but don’t tell your mother.” This little ritual made Bobby feel as if he and his father were partners in a grand conspiracy. Even though the coffee always tasted bitter and horrible, he endured it without making a face. It was a man thing. Sometimes they would go with Glenn Warren and his son, Macky, but he liked it best when it was just him and his father. He loved having his father introduce him to the other men at the camp as his son. He could tell they all respected his father and it made him feel proud. He also enjoyed going to Old Man Johnson’s fishing camp, where they rented their boat. The ramshackle wooden cabin was filled with rods and tackle. Mounted fish of all kinds and sizes hung on every inch of the wall. Also alongside the fish hung a calendar with a picture of a pretty girl in short shorts fly-fishing in a stream that Bobby thought was exotic. They always bought their live bait out of the cooler plus two cold drinks, crackers and tins of sardines and Vienna sausages for their lunch, and were usually out on the water just as the sun was coming up. Bobby’s job was to row the boat back up into the deep shady places, where the big fat trout and catfish liked to hide, while his father cast his line as close to the bank as possible. The crackers Mr. Johnson sold were stale and the drinks warm by noon but it didn’t matter. Anything tastes good when you are hungry. Some days they would catch a huge string of fish, sometimes just three or four. One day the fishing had been so bad that his father bought some trout from Old Man Johnson to take home. That night Bobby went into such long and elaborate detail about how each trout was caught and how hard it fought that his mother began to suspect something. But Bobby didn’t really care how many fish they caught; he just loved being alone with his dad. A few years before, his father had casually laid out a handful of baseball tickets on the kitchen table and asked, “Son, would you like to go to the World Series with me?” Miracle of all miracles, their team, the St. Louis Browns, was playing the St. Louis Cardinals that year and everybody in the state of Missouri was trying to get tickets. As it turned out, a friend of Doc’s from pharmaceutical school just happened to be Luke Sewell, the St. Louis Browns’ manager’s brother-in-law, and Doc had been able to get tickets from him. Doc brought in a replacement to work for him at the drugstore and Dorothy packed their bags. On October 3, the two of them got on a train headed up to St. Louis with tickets for all six games if it lasted that long and they hoped it would. What a town. What a trip. Just him and his dad staying at a real hotel, eating out at restaurants just like two grown-ups. A Yellow Cab ride to the huge Rexall drugstore in downtown St. Louis to visit his father’s friend and back. He had his picture made under the big steel Gateway Arch, and got a brand-new Browns baseball cap. Each day they took a streetcar from downtown to North Grand Avenue, all the way out to Sportsman’s Park. Going and coming it was always filled with the aroma of Old Spice shaving lotion and cigarette smoke and packed full of loud, exuberant men and boys of all ages headed to and from the game. The sight of the ballpark that first day—the crowds—the noise—the smells—the crack of the bat—the green grass—the hot dogs—the peanuts—that sip of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer! It was all too much. Bobby was so excited he was dizzy. Their team won the first game 2 to 1, which gave them hope, but went on to lose the series as expected. Still, they had been there cheering them on anyway. It had been a wonderful time for both of them. Although the poor St. Louis Browns were never to play in a World Series again, at least Bobby did not come home empty-handed. He was the proud owner of a real, genuine World Series baseball, a foul ball his father had managed to catch, autographed by none other than the National League’s MVP of the year, shortstop Marty Marion. Bobby and his dad stood in line for about two hours to get the autograph but it was worth the wait. When they got home Bobby showed it to everybody. He was quite the big man around town for a few days, or at least until everyone had seen it several times. As for Doc, he came home happy and rested, a rest he had much needed.

  On the surface, being a small-town druggist did not seem like such a hard job, certainly not a hazardous or a grueling profession. But it had its own hidden stresses that few knew about. His
was a multifaceted job of many duties. Not only did he have to stand and listen with great patience to everybody in town who seemed compelled to tell him in long, drawn-out detail all about each and every little pain or complaint they had, but people also brought him birds with broken wings to fix, kids with cuts and scrapes, smashed fingers, and sprained ankles to bandage, and a variety of colds, upset stomachs, sore throats, cat scratches, dog bites, black eyes, and poison ivy rashes to ask about. All this he was glad to do but for Doc, as Elmwood Springs’ only pharmacist, it meant that he was also privy to private information and secrets he sometimes wished he didn’t have to know. With his knowledge of medicine he often knew exactly what was wrong with people by what the doctor had prescribed.

  He was painfully aware, for example, that his best friend had a bad heart condition by the strength of the medicine and by the frequency it was to be taken but he never mentioned it. He also knew that poor Tot Whooten had been given a prescription for Antabuse and she was secretly slipping it into the coffee of her husband, James Dwayne, every morning to try to get him to stop drinking. He knew which soldier had come home from the war having contracted syphilis, what lady was taking pills for bad nerves, which men were being treated for impotence, and those women who were having female trouble, as well as who did not want any more children and who did. All this he kept to himself. It was especially hard when his own family was involved. The day his father’s prescription for morphine was called in he knew his dad was dying, long before his father did.

  But if his job was sometimes complex, Doc’s life at home was a pleasant escape. And it certainly was never dull. Just last week a complete stranger had wandered in and had dinner with them.

  Because the Greyhound bus stopped in front of their house, people were always sitting around on the porch or in the living room. This combined with the number of Neighbor Dorothy’s fans that dropped by all day caused the man to make an honest mistake. When he saw everyone going in and out and the radio call letters written on the front window, he naturally assumed the place was a restaurant called WDOT and decided to stop by later and have a bite to eat before driving on to Poplar Bluff. At around 5:30 he parked his car, strolled in, and sat down in the living room with Doc and Jimmy, who were reading the paper, and asked, “What time is dinner served?” Doc did not know who he was but pleasantly told him, “In about thirty minutes.” Then the man asked where the men’s room was and went down the hall and came back, sat down, and picked up a magazine and waited. As far as Doc knew, he could have been one of Dorothy’s sponsors come to town. When Dorothy called out that dinner was on the table the man got up and went in. Nobody asked him who he was, all thinking he was a friend of someone else’s, and Neighbor Dorothy quietly put out another place setting. He thoroughly enjoyed the pot roast and mashed potatoes and happily chatted away all through dinner, entertaining everyone with his tales of life as a professional poultry inspector for the state of Missouri. And how people always kidded him about being a poultry inspector with Fowler for a last name. He amazed them with how many different breeds of chickens were in the world. After finishing his second piece of coconut cake, he pushed himself back from the table and announced, “Well, folks, I better get on the road before it gets too late,” and dug into his pocket and asked Dorothy how much he owed.

  A surprised Dorothy said, “Why, you don’t owe a thing, Mr. Fowler—we were just happy to have you. I hope you’ll be sure to drop in and see us again anytime you are passing through.”

  That night Mr. Charlie Fowler left town thinking that Elmwood Springs was the friendliest place he had ever been. He did come back often and they were always glad to see him.

  An Ordinary Day

  ON AN ORDINARY weekday Jimmy Head, the Smiths’ boarder, is usually the first person awake. He gets up around 4:30, goes out to the kitchen, puts on the coffee, drinks a cup, then heads out the door before five. The only other lights on in town are at Nordstrom’s bakery, which opens at 7:30, but Jimmy has a big breakfast crowd and has to get the Trolley Car Diner ready to go by 6:00. Doc and Mother Smith are also early risers and usually come into the kitchen and have a cup of coffee together around 5:30. Dorothy is up and dressed by 6:30, comes in, and starts her day by putting a batch of radio cookies in the oven for her guests and then feeds Princess Mary Margaret and her two yellow canary birds, Dumpling and Moe. If it is summer Bobby is up by 7:00 and Anna Lee tends to float into the kitchen around 8:00 or 8:30. She needs her beauty sleep. Doc is down at the drugstore by 7:30, which opens at 8:00.

  The milkman, the iceman, and the bread man have already been there by 9:20 and Beatrice, the Little Blind Songbird, who sings on the show every day, has come over from next door. She and Mother Smith, who accompanies her on the small organ, go on into the living room to run through Beatrice’s song. Dorothy and Princess Mary Margaret arrive for the broadcast around 9:25.

  Princess Mary Margaret greets anyone else who is in the living room to see the show with a wagging tail and often jumps up and sits in someone’s lap during the show. Or if she is not in the mood she gets into her basket under Dorothy’s desk (many have remarked how the dog is much better trained than Bobby). Then Dorothy says hello to her guests and welcomes her live audience, usually people waiting to catch the bus or ladies from women’s clubs. Dorothy sits down and runs over the format and her commercials for a last-minute check and looks out the window so she can give her radio audience the very latest weather update. At 9:30 on the dot the red light on the organ blinks, the on-air signal, and Mother Smith hits the first strains of the theme song, the show begins . . . and everyone in town and thereabouts is usually tuned in.

  Today, fifteen miles outside of town Mrs. Elner Shimfissle, a large-boned farm woman with a plain but pleasant face, dipped her hand into a blue-and-white speckled pan filled with Purina feed and threw it to the chickens in her yard. The chickens, mostly Rhode Island Reds, ran every which way with their heads down close to the ground, trying their best to beat all the other chickens to each grain. She wore a new green-checked apron over her somewhat faded floral-print dress and comfortable old-lady white tie-up shoes.

  She shielded her eyes from the sun and looked far out into the fields and saw her husband plowing behind the reins of their two black mules and called out, “Whoo hoo, Will!” The small man in the large straw hat stopped and waved back and then continued plowing. After she emptied the pan she walked over to the water pump and rinsed it out and hung it on a nail on the side of the house by the big tin washtub. She looked up at the sun again, wiped her hands on her apron, and guessed that it was getting to be about that time and went on back in the house. She had been up since four A.M. and had already done the milking, gathered the eggs, gotten her husband’s breakfast, scrubbed the kitchen floor, done some washing, hung it up on the line, put a pair of overalls to soaking, killed a fryer, and put up sixteen jars of fig preserves. She figured she could afford to sit down and relax awhile and went over and poured herself a cup of coffee and got her pencil and pad ready to take down the receipts. She turned on the radio—it was always set on WDOT, the only station that comes in clear this far out—and heard The Neighbor Dorothy Show, the same program that she had been listening to for the past sixteen years.

  It was the only show other than Gospel Time, U.S.A., the farm report, and the Grand Ole Opry that Mrs. Shimfissle listened to on a regular basis. And this morning Neighbor Dorothy started the show as she always did with a cheery “Good morning, everybody, it’s a pretty day over here in Elmwood Springs and I hope it’s just as pretty where you are. We’ve got so many wonderful things to tell you about on the show this morning . . . so many special guests . . . that I can hardly contain myself. And sitting right here in the living room with me is somebody I know you are going to want to hear from. Mr. Milo Shipp, who has traveled all the way from New York City to tell us about his brand-new book, Hilltop in the Rain, and we can’t wait to hear about that. And also we want to welcome our in-studio visitors.

/>   “We have six ladies from the Claire De Lune Garden Club with us and they are headed all the way up to St. Louis for the big flower show later this morning”—Mother Smith played a few strains of “Meet Me in St. Louis”—“and I know you all are going to have a big time up there. We have a good show for you today. Along with our regulars, Nurse Ruby Robinson and Beatrice, the Little Blind Songbird, who will be singing . . . what? ‘I’m in Love with the Man in the Moon’ . . . and also on our musical menu this morning the Goodnight sisters have promised to drop by later to sing a song in honor of our out-of-town guest, entitled ‘My Sweetheart Went Down with the Ship.’ They say it’s a sad song but it was the only one they could find with ship in the title.

  “But before we get to our interview I want to say a big hello to one of my brand-new sponsors, Verna Clapp’s original strained baby food, and we’ll be talking a lot more about that a little later in the program. First, just in case you’re wondering what you are hearing, it’s not your radio. Poor Tot’s fox terrier got out again and that noise is coming from a box of twelve of the cutest puppies you have ever seen—don’t you think so, Mr. Shipp? He says he does.”—Mother Smith played a bar or two of “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window” and Dorothy laughed.—“Well, they are absolutely free and all Tot wants is to find good homes for them. She says there are five boys and seven girls but not to hold her to it. We know who the mother is but she says she has no idea about the father. As far as I can tell from the look of them, I think the honors will go to that Airedale up the street, so come on by and get yourself one.

  “Also, before I forget I wanted to mention how pleased we are with all the responses we are getting from all of you for the dessert cookbook. Mrs. Frances Cleverdon of Arden, Oklahoma, writes: