Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  Dorsey left the house before dawn and returned well after dark, letting the lumberyard consume him. He grew thin and gaunt, and Hosanna fussed. “Mr. Dorsey, you wastin’ away. You gone make folks think I unlearnt how to cook. You gone have Dr. Finus shipping you off to Philadelphia to see what’s eatin’ you up.”

  “I’m just working hard, that’s all,” Dorsey said. “Lots of folks need lumber. Got to get it while the gettin’s good.”

  “Humph,” she snorted. “Jes’ make sure you save some for the casket.”

  Bright went with her father on Saturdays, sitting mutely beside him in the car while they bounced along rutted dirt roads into the deep woods to wherever the sawmill was set up, watching through the windshield as Dorsey’s leather-booted strides took him across the work site, issuing orders, checking the operation, pausing to encourage the black men who strained and sweated in the growing warmth of April. Then back to town, where Bright spent long quiet hours in the tiny office at the core of the lumberyard or climbed into the spreading branches of the elm tree outside to watch the frantic beehive of activity around her. Dorsey would check on her periodically, but he was absorbed in the work. Bright was content just to be there, away from the strange silent house where Elise still cowered in the upstairs bedroom, sleeping away the mornings and sitting idly by the window through the lengthening afternoons with a book, her silence mocking Bright’s muteness.

  Here, in the lumberyard, there was life. It reeked with the sweet pungent odor of pine and resin, it rattled and clanked and whined and shouted, and if you were not very careful, it would run over you in a heartbeat. But she sat high and safe in the tree and the black men who passed smiled and waved to her, not caring whether she could speak or not. She let the teeming life of the lumberyard bubble up around her and fill her own silence. She still had no power of speech, but she began, ever so slowly, to feel her senses reawaken.

  >

  In the spring, Dorsey hired a foreman. His name was O’Marron and he was a short, elfish man with yellowed teeth and red hair. He came from North Carolina, where he had straw-bossed a lumber operation in the forests near Asheville before the war. Dorsey had put out the word among Southern lumbermen that he needed an experienced foreman, and O’Marron had written a brief, polite letter setting out his credentials and references. Dorsey checked them out, found them excellent, and hired him by mail. O’Marron climbed off the train on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April, carrying his belongings in a cloth satchel, and presented himself at the door of the lumberyard office. Bright was inside, watching as he crossed the yard, stepping around the puddles from a downpour the night before, dressed in canvas britches tucked into puttees and an olive drab Army-issue jacket with a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his brow. He had a pronounced limp, and his upper body lurched as he walked. Bright opened the screen door as he stepped onto the small stoop. He stared down at her, then peered inside the office. “I’m lookin’ for Bascombe,” he said. He had small steel-gray eyes, set deep in his face. He stood there for a moment, waiting for an answer. “Did you hear me?” She nodded. They looked at each other a while longer. “Well?” Bright could see that he was an impatient man. “Who are you?” he demanded finally.

  “My daughter,” Dorsey said as he rounded the corner of the office building.

  The man looked him up and down. “O’Marron,” he said simply, then with a jerk of his head toward Bright, “She dumb?”

  “She doesn’t speak,” Dorsey said evenly. He offered his hand and they shook. “Wipe your feet and come in.” Dorsey held the door for him. O’Marron looked around, then scraped the bottoms of his shoes on the edge of the stoop, leaving a crust of mud. Inside, he set his valise down on the floor, but he left his hat on his head. Dorsey showed him to a chair and then sat down behind the battered desk while Bright returned to her perch in the rear window, watching the men in the long shed at the planer mill carrying two-by-fours to a growing stack on a flatcar at the edge of the high platform.

  “You had a good trip?” Dorsey asked.

  O’Marron grunted. “Tol’able.” He had a flat, hard voice and his words sounded like pebbles dropping out of his mouth.

  Bright heard the rattle of paper behind her. “Your letter says you’re just back from the war,” Dorsey said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you see action?”

  “Marines. Belleau Wood. Until I caught a bullet in the leg. It don’t give me any trouble, if that’s what you’re getting at. I can get around.”

  “I’m not getting at anything,” Dorsey said. His chair creaked as he leaned back. “You have family?”

  “Not no more.” That was all. Just a dead silence now, leaving Bright to wonder about Mr. O’Marron’s family—how many there had been, what had happened to them. She imagined a huge tree falling, a train plummeting off a mountainside, fire racing through a frame house in the dead of night. Or perhaps Mr. O’Marron arriving home one evening to find wife and children simply gone. She shuddered.

  “Well,” Dorsey said after a moment, “I suppose it’s easier to move about if you don’t have a family to worry with.”

  “They never did worry me noways,” O’Marron said. “Makes no difference. Man offers you a good job, you go.”

  “Yes,” Dorsey said, “it is a good job. Good wages and an opportunity. My business is busting loose at the seams. And it’s going to get a lot bigger. The South’s the place to be. It’s ripe for boom times. Peace and prosperity. I think you boys who went over have pretty much guaranteed us that. I’m a patriotic man, Mr. O’Marron, and I’m pleased to have a veteran working for me.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” O’Marron said. “I just know timber.”

  “What kind of logging were you doing around Asheville before the war?”

  “Hardwood, mostly. Good deal of oak. Walnut and maple. Some spruce and pine.”

  “We cut mostly pine around here. Construction lumber.”

  “Trees is trees,” O’Marron said. “Cut ’em down and haul ’em off.”

  Dorsey shifted in his chair. “I’ve got one rule about my operation, O’Marron. We don’t clear-cut.”

  O’Marron gave a little snort. “You waste a lot of time, then. But if that’s the way you want it done, so be it.”

  Dorsey waited for a moment before he spoke, and Bright could tell that he was trying to keep his voice light. “You’ll find that the crews know how to get what we need. It’s been a while since you’ve worked crews, I take it.”

  “Coupla years,” O’Marron said. “But it ain’t something you ferget how to do. I’ve worked all kinds.” He paused and then added, “Except niggers. There ain’t no niggers to speak of in the mountains.”

  There was a long silence and Bright waited, holding her breath. Dorsey said quietly, “We don’t use that word around here.”

  Curiosity got the best of her then, and Bright turned from the window to see O’Marron shrug. He didn’t take his eyes off Dorsey’s face. “You’re the boss, I reckon.”

  “That’s right.” Dorsey’s voice was firm now. There was no banter in it at all. “You come highly recommended, Mr. O’Marron. I’ve got more here than I can say grace over. I need someone who can take on a good deal of the work in the woods, get the most out of the crews. I’m prepared to pay top dollar for it.”

  “Then let’s get on about it.” O’Marron stood up and looked over at Bright, gave her a hard stare. She thought that she would not like to work in the woods with Mr. O’Marron.

  She stood at the window watching as Dorsey gave him a tour of the lumberyard. O’Marron hobbled along gimp-legged, fists stuffed into the pockets of his jacket. It was warm enough that a man ought not to have to wear a jacket, but he clutched it about him as if he were cold. And then she thought, No, Mr. O’Marron is not cold, he’s angry. She wondered if the Great War had made him angry, or if he had been angry before he left, or if his anger had something to do with whatever had happened to his family. And the
n she wondered how much of Mr. O’Marron’s anger Dorsey could sense. Bright could tell it right away from his movements, the way he sat impatiently on the edge of his chair, the gray glint of his eyes, the flat unmusical quality of his voice. She had come to notice over the past few months of her own silence how much you could tell about people if you just listened, if you weren’t so busy getting ready to talk that you missed the tiny signs that told who they really were and what they were about. But Dorsey didn’t seem to pay much attention to it. Out there in the lumberyard now, he was talking a lot, gesturing, in high spirits, like a man who had been rescued. Mr. O’Marron wasn’t saying a word.

  Bright wondered too, over the next few weeks, if Dorsey could sense the subtle change in the lumberyard. It was a matter of rhythm, of tone and vibration. The pace quickened perceptibly under O’Marron’s hand, took on an impatience that Bright could feel as soon as she entered the yard. Her visits with Dorsey became less frequent because he was away much of the time, making deals for land and timber rights, expanding his operations across several counties in the area; taking long trips to places like Memphis and Atlanta, Birmingham and Jackson, to sell the lumber his crews hauled from the woods from dawn to dark. The groaning trucks and wagons deep-rutted the road into the yard; the stacks of drying lumber grew, spilling across the boundaries of the woodlot onto adjacent land Dorsey bought and cleared. And it seemed the planer mill ran at a higher, more urgent pitch, the black workers tending it like bees around a queen who devoured the fruit of their labor, spitting it out onto the flatcars lined up along the rail spur.

  O’Marron seemed to be everywhere. Dorsey bought another automobile, a Model T, and O’Marron shuttled back and forth between the logging and sawmill operations in the woods and the lumberyard in town, driving the operation like a sergeant. He was a nimble man despite what the war had done to his leg. He was born to the woods, and he scrambled about the logging sites like a rooster, hopping over the felled trees, barking orders, paying little attention to anything but the work, not even to Dorsey when he drove out to inspect. Dorsey all but stopped going to the woods. O’Marron had things in hand, and there was better use for his time.

  It was Hosanna who first gave voice. She stood in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room early on a Thursday morning in mid-June, watching Bright and Dorsey hover over their breakfast of sliced pork and eggs. Bright looked up at her and Hosanna gave a little flick of her hand. Eat, eat. Hosanna wasn’t satisfied unless you were eating. If you couldn’t talk, you could at least eat. If Hosanna ever died, which was unlikely, she would go to a heaven of nothing but fat people who begged her all day to cook for them. God would come to Hosanna for wisdom and a plate of pork chops and scrambled eggs.

  Bright took another bite of scrambled egg and chewed slowly and watched her father. He looked tired this morning, even after a night’s sleep. He had arrived late, long after Bright had gone to bed, after a two-day trip to Nashville. But he had waked her early. They would spend the day at the lumberyard.

  It had been two weeks since she had been with him, and summer vacation was already dragging wearily through the first hot days of June. She was bored and fidgety, frequently alone despite Hosanna’s attempts to keep her occupied. Her silence put people off, kept them at arm’s length. Other children found her difficult to play with and quickly abandoned the effort. And her mother was virtually a ghost in her own home, keeping to her room, her own silence mocking Bright as Bright’s mocked her father. Bright felt increasingly isolated, trapped inside the dread silence. She had come to hate it now, hate what it did, hate that she was powerless to end the silence and her pervading sense of loss. If she could have spoken, she would have asked them each in turn, Do you love me anymore? But then, she was afraid of what they might say if they spoke honestly.

  Now, at the table, Dorsey ate and talked, trying to fill the silence. “… take along a book,” he was saying. “I’ll have to spend most of the day at my desk, I’m afraid. It just piles up. I don’t know where it all comes from. Thank God for O’Marron. The man’s a wonder.”

  Then Hosanna took a deep breath and said, “The devil take him.”

  They both stopped in midbite and stared at her. Dorsey put his fork down on his plate, then wiped his mouth with his napkin and held it wadded in his hand. “I beg your pardon.”

  Hosanna crossed her arms. “They all afraid of that man.”

  “O’Marron?”

  “Mose say they call him Crawdad.”

  Dorsey arched his eyebrows. “Crawdad?”

  “Yeah. He skitter around sort of sideways and ever’ so often he reach out and bite. Crawdads got a mean temper.”

  Dorsey shook his head. “Well, O’Marron’s a no-nonsense fellow, I’ll give you that. But still…”

  “Mose say he talk nasty. Mose say his cousin Blue was sittin’ on a stump late afternoon the other day, all tuckered out from being worked so hard, and that man come over and jerk him up and say, ‘Git yo’ black ass back to work.’ ”

  Dorsey cut his eyes over at Bright. “Hosanna, that’ll do,” he said sharply.

  “Well, that’s what he say, Mr. Dorsey. I’m just tellin’ it like it is.”

  His nostrils flared. “Well, don’t tell it exactly like it is!”

  Hosanna hung fire for a moment and then she tilted her head back a bit and looked down her nose at Dorsey. “Plain truth ain’t got no honey on it,” she said. “And truth is, Mr. Dorsey, you done turnt yore bidness over to the devil’s disciple hisself.”

  “Hosanna—,” he started, warning her.

  But she bulled ahead, gathering her courage about her, speaking fast so he couldn’t interrupt, her voice urgent. “He mean as a snake and he takin’ it out on mens that give you the honest sweat of they brow. They gettin’ the trees out of the woods, jes’ like you want. But that man gone kill somebody ’fore long. You ax ’em. They tell you what he does, how he talk. You ax ’em Mr. Dorsey. ‘Bout time you was axin’ ‘stead of tellin’.”

  “By God, that’s enough!” Dorsey roared, and his fist came crashing down on the table, rattling the dishes. Bright cowered in her chair, stunned. Mostly by Hosanna. No one, no one had ever talked to Dorsey Bascombe like that, at least not in her hearing.

  Hosanna stood there for a moment and her eyes never left his face, and Bright understood suddenly what an incredible thing it was that Hosanna had done. And then Hosanna said quietly, “You keep on, folks gone think you Big-Ikey.” And she turned then and disappeared into the kitchen, leaving the door swinging softly behind her, leaving Dorsey openmouthed, staring at the space she had left.

  It hung over them like a cloud all day, unspoken. Bright took refuge from Dorsey’s smoldering silence in the spreading branches of the elm tree just outside the office, shaded from the sun, watching the lumberyard boil with activity—the relentless stream of wagons and trucks from the woods, crews of men scrambling to unload and stack the pine boards, the unending screech of the planer mill. It was feverish, kicking up a haze of dust in the hot June day. The dust drifted up to where she sat, coating her skin with a fine powder, making her eyes dry and scratchy—a nettlesome emanation from the lumberyard, troubled, unsettled, unhappy with itself. And through the open window of the office, she could see her father hunched over the desk, his pen darting across the papers and ledger books in front of him.

  Just before the noon hour, he rose suddenly from his work and strode out the door, headed across the lumberyard. Bright scrambled down and followed, keeping a safe distance. Dorsey seemed to pay her no attention. He went straight to the planer mill, where Mose Richardson’s brother, Jester, was feeding two-by-fours into the whirling jaws of the planer. He signaled to Jester to stop the machine, and he heaved on a big metal handle and disengaged the long flapping belt that transferred the power from the steam engine to the planer. The machine ground to a halt and Jester stepped away from it, waiting, cautious.

  “Jester,” Dorsey said.

  “Yes sir, Mr
. Dorsey.”

  “Everything going all right here?”

  Jester fetched a bandanna out of his pocket and mopped at his sweat-slick brow. The muscles on his arm bulged, like small animals burrowing under the coal-black skin. It was backbreaking work, feeding the planer. Bright had seen men topple from exhaustion in the heat. But Jester Richardson could keep at it hour after hour, an extension of the machine. Dorsey Bascombe’s workers were all strong men, and they wore their great strength like a cloak that fit easily on their shoulders. Any one of them could pick up the foreman O’Marron and break him like a matchstick. Bright understood perfectly that they wouldn’t. “Yes sir,” Jester said, “it’s running jest fine.”

  “No, I don’t mean the machinery.”

  His face was impassive. “Don’t rightly know about nothing else.”

  “But you hear talk,” Dorsey said. “From the crews in the woods.”

  Jester’s eyes never left Dorsey’s and they never revealed a thing. “I jest take care my bidness,” he said. “I let other folks take care they bidness.”

  “You’d tell me if anything were wrong,” Dorsey said. It was a statement, not a question. “You’d tell me right away.”

  Jester looked away. “I reckon.”

  They drove home and ate in silence, Dorsey’s face gray and troubled. Hosanna served them without a word and left them alone in the dining room to eat. Bright watched him, knowing as surely as if she could look inside his head what was going through his mind. He has made a mistake, a very grave one. He misjudged. And because he is a proud man, he doesn’t know what to do about it. And then it struck her—terrible, blinding in its clarity. It is not the first time.

  >

  “You’ll stay home this afternoon,” he said, and there was something in his voice that warned her not to plead with her eyes or pluck at his sleeve. She nodded. He left shortly, banging the screen door behind him, leaving silence and dread.