Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  It sometimes got her in trouble. At school, she would occasionally find her teacher standing over her, glowering. “Bright Bascombe! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you hear me speaking to you?”

  She would blush, with the titter of the other children’s laughter bubbling up around her. “No ma’am.”

  “Where on earth do you go when you drift off like that?”

  “Nowhere,” she would answer. That was not true; it was simply not worth explaining. She suspected that other people did not hear music in their minds quite the way she did, and that they probably would think her daft if she told them what went on in her own. She also realized that other people thought her a somewhat odd child, a trifle distracted and distant, and that it would be useless to try to make them understand that the music she heard was ever so much more interesting than almost anything they had to say, certainly more interesting than her friend Xuripha Hardwicke’s ceaseless babble.

  Finally, she presented herself beside the piano one afternoon as her mother was playing, waited until the piece was finished, and then said, “I want to learn.”

  Her mother put her hands in her lap and turned to look at Bright. “You do?”

  “Yes,” Bright said. “I hear music up here all the time.” She tapped her head. “It needs to get out.”

  “Well,” said Elise, “I’ll call Mrs. Bobbitt.” Mrs. Bobbitt also taught piano students in her home a block away and had a small recital each spring in the basement of the Baptist Church. It was said that Mrs. Bobbitt did not take kindly to Elise Bascombe, who after all did not need the income, dipping into the limited local supply of young piano students. Perhaps Elise wanted to placate Mrs. Bobbitt by sending Bright to her for instruction. But Bright knew from Xuripha, who took lessons from Mrs. Bobbitt, that she had a habit of rapping her students on the head with her knuckles when they made a mistake. And that did not sound much like a pleasant way to learn piano. She probably did not like children who asked a lot of questions, either.

  Bright shook her head. “No, I want you to teach me.”

  Elise pursed her lips, considering it. “You might find you positively don’t like it, having your piano teacher in the house all the time, reminding you to practice. Goodness knows, I wouldn’t have liked it when I was learning. Grandma Poncie plays, but she always sent me to someone else for lessons.”

  “But you’re not Grandma Poncie,” Bright said stubbornly, “and I’m not you. Besides, I wouldn’t want to take piano lessons from Grandma Poncie, even if I were you.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Grandma Poncie doesn’t have much patience.”

  Elise allowed herself a tiny smile, just a tug at the corners of her mouth. “Well, Grandma Poncie is very sweet.”

  “Yes ma’am. Will you teach me to play?”

  Elise scrunched her face up earnestly. “My goodness. Well…”

  Bright didn’t give her mother another moment to think about it. She climbed up on the piano bench next to Elise, who slid to the right to give her room at the middle.

  “You must promise me this,” Elise said. “You’ll tell me if you get tired of it, or tired of having me for a teacher. We shouldn’t have any, ah, conflict over the piano.”

  Bright couldn’t imagine having much of a conflict with her mother over the piano or anything else. Elise avoided conflict of any kind, and Hosanna, as much as anyone in the house, took on much of the burden of keeping Bright reined in. “Yes ma’am. I promise.”

  “All right, then.” Elise took a deep breath. “Let’s see. All good students of the piano start at the beginning, and that’s middle C.”

  Bright didn’t think that made a good deal of sense, beginning in the middle. But for once, she didn’t ask any questions. She placed her right thumb where her mother showed her and gave middle C a good, strong strike. And she could feel it vibrate as if the string were somewhere deep inside her own body instead of in the piano. It was certainly not the first time her fingers had touched the piano keys. But it was the first time when there was purpose and direction to it, when it meant something more than just random sound. If you could play middle C, and know you were playing middle C, then that must inevitably lead to all the other, to that vast swirl of music loose inside her head. Yes. This is it.

  That evening, as they sat at the supper table, Bright announced to Dorsey, “Mama’s teaching me to play the piano.”

  “Oh?” he said, raising his eyebrows and glancing over at Elise, who was still finishing her meal, taking dainty bites of fresh sliced tomato. “When did this start?”

  “Today,” Bright said. “We started today with middle C.”

  Dorsey wiped his mouth, folded his napkin and tucked it under the edge of his plate. He stared at the plate for a moment, considering something, then cleared his throat and folded his hands in front of him. “Well. I think that’s just fine.” He paused, then looked at Elise. “In fact, I think you ought to just concentrate on Bright.”

  She jerked her head up quickly, stared at him. “You mean …”

  “These other children”—he waved his hand in the general direction of the parlor. “I can’t imagine why you bother, Elise. Send them to Mrs. Bobbitt. Lord knows, you don’t need the money. I’m sure she does.”

  “It’s not that,” she said in a small but even voice. “I enjoy it. It gives me something to do.”

  “To do? Goodness, you’ve got a house to manage, a child to raise, a husband to put up with. And I would think there are a thousand other things you could do to occupy your time. It’s not New Orleans, but there are things going on here.” Bright could tell he was trying to keep his voice light, but she could hear the edge in it, something that no doubt echoed from other times and places and encounters, from the mysterious and secret part of her parents’ relationship.

  Elise put her fork down on the plate and placed her hands in her lap and then Bright saw something wholly unexpected—an almost imperceptible tightening of her mother’s mouth. She stared, amazed, and then she thought, She is going to say no. Silence covered the table like the still, glassy surface of a pond and Bright held her breath, waiting to see what curious thing would shatter the calm. She is going to defy him.

  But then Dorsey reached across the expanse of New Orleans linen, reached into Elise’s lap, took her right hand in his left and lifted it to the table. Their two hands rested there, his big and sun-reddened with the hairs along the back of it a forest of gold strands in the light from the chandelier, hers very small and smooth and pale, the two hands in strange union against the white of the tablecloth.

  “Didn’t I promise I would always take care of you?” he said quietly. “And haven’t I always?”

  Elise closed her eyes very slowly and her jaw went slack and she nodded. “Yes.”

  Bright sat frozen in her chair, transfixed by the sheer, raw, quiet exercise of power, of maleness. And she felt something twist inside her, something at once fascinating and frightful. Suddenly she felt, as she had felt on Fostoria Hardwicke’s doorstep three years before, her mother’s ally.

  “I’ll go to Mrs. Bobbitt,” she said, almost feeling the painful rap of knuckles against her skull.

  Dorsey looked at her, blinked, as if she had forgotten that she sat there, seeing everything, listening to everything, feeling everything. He studied her for a moment, then released Elise’s hand, which slid back into her lap, defeated. Dorsey sat back in his chair. “No,” he said. “I won’t have it.”

  And Bright, like her mother, did not argue.

  >

  By the early spring of 1919, the boys were coming back from the Great War in Europe, and some of them were bringing their flying machines. Suddenly, the air above America was full of them, bi-winged one- and two-seaters with fabric stretched over their fragile wooden frames and the whole business held together precariously with wires. Sometimes, the pilots flew while other foolish young men walked on the wings of their planes, and others dipsied and doodled acrobatically above g
awking crowds at county fairs. Quite often they crashed, and there was an element of morbid curiosity about the whole affair.

  The Air Age came to Bright Bascombe on a brisk, dappled day in late March as she stood in the backyard, handing wet items of clothing to Hosanna, who draped them over the clothesline and fastened them down with wooden clothespins she took from a pocket of her white apron. Camisoles and undershirts flapped wetly in the chill wind and Bright stuffed her raw hands into the pockets of her coat until Hosanna was ready for the next garment. Hosanna seemed not to mind the cold. She was clad only in a light cotton dress that moved easily around her lumps and bulges. She had a bright green scarf tied about her head, knotted at the back. Hosanna’s boy Flavo stood solemnly at his mother’s elbow, watching them. His great round eyes followed their movements, a small black Buddha swallowed by a tattered jacket several sizes too large for him. Flavo was a quiet presence in the kitchen these days, a small dark ghost who communicated largely by nods and shakes of his head and seemed to be pretty much at peace with things. He was four. Bright took scant notice of him most of the time. He didn’t interfere with her running discourse with Hosanna, didn’t intrude on the life of the house. He was simply there.

  They heard the buzzing sound overhead and they all looked up at once, Hosanna’s hands poised over the thin wire of the clothesline. Bright saw it then, a tiny moth among the scudding white puffs of cloud, spiraling down toward them in big, lazy circles. They stood mesmerized as the plane seemed to stop in midair, then tumble sideways in a wingover with a sparkle of sunlight dancing off the spinning propeller at its nose. “Lord Amighty,” Hosanna said softly. “God done give the bullfrog wings.”

  “It’s an aeroplane!” Bright cried.

  Hosanna snapped a clothespin over the top of a sock and put her hands on her hips. “Course it’s an aeroplane. You think I don’t know an aeroplane when I see one?”

  The plane righted itself now, and it was low enough that Bright could see it clearly—gaily painted with a stubby red and blue fuselage and white wings, a man sitting inside. The wings waggled from side to side as the plane made a wide circle of the town, disappearing momentarily behind a tree and then reappearing, held aloft by magic. Then it turned and headed straight for them, veering off just as it passed with a roar, and the pilot turned the plane a bit and leaned over the side and waved to them. “G’wan! Git outta here!” Hosanna shook her fist and bellowed, her voice lost in the noise. Bright stood frozen, mouth open. And then as the plane disappeared over the trees, just about the place where Abner Carlisle’s pasture began a half mile or so away, Bright took off running, leaving Hosanna and Flavo at the clothesline. She could hear Hosanna’s voice at her heels, but she never even looked back.

  Bright was the first one there, except for the small herd of Abner Carlisle’s frightened milk cows that lumbered toward the near end of the pasture, bumping into each other and mooing loudly, teats swinging, like a committee of old ladies rousted from a Women’s Missionary Union meeting. Bright paid them no mind. Her eyes were on the aeroplane down at the far end, bumping slowly along the ground, turning now in her direction, the backwash from its propeller churning up a whirlwind of dead grass. As she got closer, the engine died and the propeller gave a few more turns and then stopped with a shudder. She could see some writing on the side, and as she reached the plane she read RIDES $2.

  She stopped just beyond the edge of the wingtip, unsure of how close she should go, and stared at the pilot, who sat up in the front seat, fiddling with something in front of him. When he pulled off his leather helmet and goggles and grinned at her, she could see that he was not much more than a boy, with a thick mat of tousled brown hair and big white rings around his eyes where the goggles had been.

  “Hi,” he called down from the cockpit.

  “Hi yourself,” Bright called back.

  “Wanna go for a ride?”

  She looked the plane over carefully, front to rear and back again. It looked pretty sturdy, sitting here on the ground, not the fragile swooping bird she had seen up there among the clouds a few minutes before. “Yes sir,” she answered.

  “Got two bucks?”

  “No sir. But my papa does.”

  “Where’s your papa?”

  “I imagine he’ll be here pretty soon. He’s the mayor.”

  The pilot stood up and eased one leg over the side of the plane, then the other. He dropped to the ground, bouncing easily on the balls of his feet. He had on a leather jacket and khaki puttees and tall brown boots, much like Dorsey Bascombe wore. “Well, the mayor gets a free ride. For you, it’s two bucks.”

  “Mr. Abner Carlisle is going to be mad as a wet hen at you for scarin’ his cows. He won’t let any young’uns close to this place. He must not be at home, or he’d be out here with his shotgun.”

  The pilot grinned and ran his hand through his mop of hair. “I been shot at by the Huns. Ain’t no cow farmer gonna scare me. Anyhow, I had to set ’er down someplace. What you folks need is an aerodrome.”

  “A what?”

  “Place to land aeroplanes. And fix ’em.”

  “We don’t have any aeroplanes around here. This is the first aeroplane I’ve ever seen outside of a picture in the newspaper.”

  “Oh,” he said, “you’ll see lots more before long. We’ll have aerodromes all over the country. Even in little piddly towns.”

  Bright put her hands on her hips. “This isn’t a little piddly town.”

  The pilot laughed. “You wait ’til you see ’er from the air. I’ve flown over New York City and Chicago, Illinois, little lady, and I’m telling you, alongside the great metropolitan areas of the country, this is a piddly town.”

  Bright heard a noise behind her and she turned to see a crowd of people climbing the fence, heading across the pasture toward them, dodging the cow pies, pointing and chattering as they ran. Hosanna’s white apron and bright green scarf were a splash of color in the crowd and she was pulling little Flavo along with her, his feet barely skimming the ground.

  “Looks like a welcoming committee,” the pilot said. “And there ain’t a shotgun in the crowd.”

  Hosanna grabbed Bright by the arm as the crowd boiled up around the plane. “What you mean, runnin’ off from me, child? You come on away from here.”

  “I’m going for a ride,” Bright said, digging in her heels. “As soon as Papa gets here with two bucks.”

  “In that?” Hosanna pointed at the aeroplane.

  “Of course.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, when Mr. Dorsey Bascombe gets here, there ain’t gonna be no riding in that thing. He’s gonna shoo it off from here.”

  But he didn’t, as Bright thought he probably wouldn’t. Dorsey Bascombe was a farsighted man, and when he strode up a few minutes later, she could see the twinkle in his eye. He had come home from a business trip to Nashville a few years before talking about the aeroplane he had seen at an exposition, and he had read to her from the paper one evening a year ago about how aeroplanes had started carrying the mail from Washington, D.C., to New York. Dorsey thought aeroplanes were here to stay, he said then, the way trucks were here to stay in the logging business. He said that people might one day as easily go places on aeroplanes as they did on trains.

  Bright squirmed out of Hosanna’s grasp and ran to meet her father. He was wearing a black band around the sleeve of his coat, still mourning the death of Theodore Roosevelt two months before. Dorsey Bascombe considered Theodore Roosevelt a consummate American—the kind of man, Bright thought, who would jump at the chance to take a ride in an aeroplane. “You get to ride free,” she called. “It’s two bucks for me.”

  He laughed as he took her small hand in his big one. “Whoa, wait a minute, sugar. Let’s see what this is all about.” Bright thought she probably wouldn’t say anything about the pilot calling their town piddly.

  “Here comes the mayor,” somebody called, and the crowd parted to let them through, Dorsey and Bright with Hosanna an
d Flavo right behind them.

  “Dorsey Bascombe,” he said, shaking hands with the pilot.

  “Ollie Doubleday,” the young man said. “From Oklahoma.”

  “Long way from home, aren’t you, son?”

  “This here is home,” Ollie Doubleday said, patting the side of the plane. “She’s a Curtiss Jenny and she’ll fly a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and I can be anywhere I want to go in a heartbeat. That’s the marvel of flying, sir. A guy from Oklahoma can go anywhere he takes a notion. I been to France, I been to New York City. Not a lot of folks from Oklahoma been either place. You’re the mayor?”

  “Some of the time,” Dorsey said.

  Ollie Doubleday indicated his plane with a twist of his head. “You ever been up?”

  “No, I can’t say as I have.”

  “You goin’ up in that thing, Dorsey?” a man called from back in the crowd.

  Dorsey turned to the man. “Think I ought to?”