by Robert Inman
Bright lurched to her feet and stood there wobbling like a calf for a moment, and then she turned and started running, across the clearing and down the trail toward the main road, weaving crazily, splashing through the deep puddles, losing a shoe in one of them and ignoring the rocks and fallen branches that lashed at her bare foot. She reached the first clearing and saw the truck. It had smashed head-on into a tree, had struck it with such force that it splintered the tree several feet from the ground and toppled it onto the cab of the truck. She stopped, looked at it for a moment, then walked closer, stopped again. There was no sound but the hiss of steam from the radiator. She stepped up on the running board and parted a branch and saw O’Marron there, slumped over the twisted steering wheel. There was a long deep dent in his forehead, already turning purple. His eyes were open. Bright reached in, poked him in one eye with her finger. Nothing. Bastard! she screamed silently. It was the worst word she knew.
She stepped backward to the ground and started running again. There was the main road ahead, a splash of red clay beyond the opening in the trees. As she reached it, she looked across the road at the plowed field on the other side, saw the colored man standing in the middle, hands on hips, looking toward her. The storm had turned the field to muck and it pulled at her feet as she struggled toward him. She sprawled headfirst, fought her way up, fell again.
“Hey, yonder! You gone trample all the plants!” the colored man yelled at her. “Hey!” He headed toward her, stepping across the rows of tiny cotton plants. He reached her, saw the blood and gore, stopped with his eyes wide. “Lord, sweet Jesus,” he breathed.
She looked up at him, beseeching him with her eyes, but he stared dumbly at her. Help. But there was no sound to it. She opened her mouth again and felt the grief rent her gut and then the dam broke and the words spewed out, an eruption of sound—screams, howling wind and thunder, a primitive and vicious storm of words, all the sounds that had been locked away for so very long. “My papa’s dead!” she cried over and over. “My papa’s dead!” And then the sound rushed in on her and carried her back into the black hole deep inside, obscuring everything.
10
There is someone in the house.
She woke in the deep quiet of midnight, suddenly alert and wary, tingling with the sense of something alive, something disturbing the rhythms of the old house.
She and the house had been together longer than any other thing in her life. She knew without looking when something was out of place, when there was the slightest alteration in sound or feel, as she had felt instantly this morning the change in the house’s tone when the refrigerator went clunk. Now, there was something else. Something she could sense.
She thought first of Fitz, perhaps driving down from the capital in the middle of the night to see her, slipping quietly into the spare bedroom to surprise her in the morning. But no, it was unlike Fitz to do anything quietly. He attracted attention the way a dog attracted fleas—a man frozen in black and white on the front page of the newspaper in his boxer shorts. No, it was not Fitz in the house this night. Fitz had not come home. Fitz had not called. Fitz was in hot water with his mama.
Then she remembered Jimbo. How could she have forgotten, with all that had transpired since the Winnebago lumbered into the yard this morning with Roseann yelling out the window?
And there was something else. What was it? Ah, yes. Fifty thousand dollars, locked away in somebody’s safe with her name on it. Now she was wide awake.
She lay there for a while, thinking she might drift back into sleep, realizing after several minutes that she would not. Now what? She was never up in the middle of the night. Never. By timeworn habit, she and the house and Gladys settled into sleep together—Bright ticking off the events of the day until they began to jumble together with old memories, the house creaking and sighing, shifting about the ancient dust in its cracks and crannies, Gladys bumping against the pipes as she came in from her nightly ablutions and flopped into her favorite hole just below Bright’s bedroom. Finally, all three gave up the day, weary with time, and slipped into the long night. Bright dreamed of things real and imagined, the accumulation of sixty-eight years, and it suited her fancy to think the house and Gladys did too. At their age, it seemed apt. But now, here she was wide awake with a boy in the spare bedroom and fifty thousand dollars in the bank and all the rest—Fitzhugh and Roseann and Flavo and Buster—dancing like dervishes in her brain. What the devil is going on here?
She threw back the sheet and got out of bed, slipping on her robe and house shoes, and went to the spare bedroom. She stood for a long time in the doorway, watching Jimbo sleep in the soft gray light from the street lamp out on Birdsong Boulevard—mouth open in an oval, hair tousled, arms and legs splayed across the bed. There was nothing very neat and buttoned-down about a sleeping boy, she thought, even one who was so carefully scrubbed and pressed when he was awake.
A boy in the house. Lord, it had been a long time since there was a boy in the house. What did you do with a boy? Buy him some overalls, Buster Putnam had said. Yes, perhaps that was it. A boy in overalls.
She was heading back toward her bedroom when she glanced out the front window and saw all the lights at the end of Claxton, up near the bridge. She thought for an instant that it must be some sort of a chase, something like Dragnet. But no, there was nothing that seemed in any particular hurry up there—the lights of automobiles moving slowly back and forth across the bridge, the flashing blue light of a police car, another one that flashed red, and a very bright glow that seemed to come from a spotlight of some kind. It was too far away to tell exactly what was going on. She stepped out onto the front porch and watched for a moment, then went to the telephone and dialed the police station.
“PO-leese,” a young man answered.
“Who is this?” she asked.
“Butch Holley,” he said. She could hear a radio playing in the background. Some kind of boogie music.
“Are you a police officer?”
“Shore am. What can I do for you?”
“What’s all the commotion up by the bridge?”
“Aw,” he said with a bored drawl, “just a little nigger kid drowned.”
Bright caught herself, then said quietly, “Don’t use that word, young man. It makes you sound like a redneck.”
There was a long pause and then he asked, “Who is this?”
“Mrs. Fitzhugh Birdsong.”
“Oh.” She heard the spring in his chair squeak.
“Is Chief Sipsey there?”
“No ma’am. He’s up at the bridge. They’re dragging the river for the … ah … the little boy.”
“Do you know who he is?”
Another pause, and then the policeman said reluctantly, “Yes’m.”
“Well, who?”
She heard the shuffling of some papers. “Well, I reckon I can release the name since the next of kin’s been notified. His name is Lester Flavo French.”
“Flavo?” Her heart caught in her throat. “That’s Flavo Richardson’s grandson.”
“Yes’m. I think it is.”
She was halfway to the bridge before she gave Jimbo a thought, and she was torn for an instant between concern for him alone there in the house and the thought of the child drowned underneath the bridge. She stopped, turned back and looked at the house sleeping under the protective awning of the pecan trees. Jimbo would be safe for a while, if indeed there were any place that was truly safe. She would not be long. But she must go to Flavo. She turned again and kept walking toward the lights, pressing uphill against the cold dread of what she would find when she got there, thinking about the small boy in the black water.
Drownings happened with some regularity, this being a town bounded by a river. There would be an occasional article in Ortho Noblett’s weekly newspaper, often about a fisherman whose boat had capsized, perhaps a picture of the Rescue Squad boat out on the river filled with men holding long poles, or of men carrying a sheet-covered body on a st
retcher. But this was infinitely more personal, a friend’s tragedy, and somehow even more grim and ghastly because it was happening in the middle of the night right here at the end of Bright’s street.
As she approached the bridge, she could see that it was not such a terribly big commotion. The lights, blinking and revolving, made it seem more than it was. A single police cruiser and a Rescue Squad ambulance and several cars were parked along the approach to the bridge. Another emergency vehicle out on the span itself had a large spotlight on top that was trained over the side of the bridge, down toward the water. Just past it, at the crest of the span, a policeman stood in the middle of the bridge, waving a flashlight, directing an occasional passing car around the emergency truck. There was a small crowd of onlookers standing at the near edge of the bridge, flashing red and blue in the revolving lights of the police car and the Rescue Squad ambulance. The only one of the crowd she knew was Homer Sipsey, the police chief, who turned and saw her as she puffed up the incline.
Homer took a step in her direction. “Miz Bright, that you?” He gave her a curious look.
“Yes, Homer. I saw the lights and called the police station. The young man said Flavo’s grandson has drowned.”
Homer hitched up his britches, shifting the weight of the big revolver slung on his hip. “Yes’m. I’m afraid so. He and some of his friends were swimming underneath the bridge late this afternoon, and he just went under. Got the cramps, I reckon.”
She looked down the incline where the riverbank sloped from the levee to the edge of the water. The spotlight danced on the river, and out in the middle she could see in its reflected light the Rescue Squad boat with four men in it. There was a man at either end, tossing grappling hooks out into the water, pulling them slowly back with the ropes. A third was sitting midway, manning the oars, keeping the boat turned into the current. The fourth was hunkered just behind him, wearing a rubber suit that made him look like a seal, slick and shiny. He had a diving mask perched on the top of his head and an oxygen tank on his back. The river was black and sluggish, eddying around the edges of the boat and the ropes that stretched out into the water. The boat was working its way slowly downstream toward the bridge. It seemed a pitifully small effort, sad and defeated here in the soft dark of early morning.
“Is Flavo here?”
Homer pointed down toward the darkened edge of the riverbank below the bridge. “Down yonder, Miz Bright. Flavo and the boy’s mama and daddy.”
“Take me,” she said.
“Miz Bright,” he protested, “it’s a right steep path down there. I’d hate for you to twist an ankle or something. How ’bout I just go get Flavo.”
“No,” she insisted. “I’ll go to him.”
She held out her hand to Homer and he shrugged and took it, pulling a huge flashlight from its holster in his belt and training the beam on the edge of the sidewalk where the dirt path dropped off toward the riverbank. “Let’s just take it real slow and easy now,” he said, and they headed down, Homer keeping a good grip on her arm as she picked her way, stepping carefully.
“You’ve been here all night?” she asked as they went.
“Yes’m. Since about eight o’clock, when we got the first report. I think it happened about six or so. The rest of the young’uns run home after it happened, scared to death, I reckon. One of’em finally told his mama and she called us. We’d have waited until morning to start dragging, except it’s Flavo’s grandson.”
“It’s a bad place for boys to be swimming,” she said.
“Yes’m.” Homer nodded. “We chase ’em off when we catch ’em down there, but it’s hard to keep a lookout all the time.”
She could see now, as her eyes began to adjust to the darkness, a small knot of people huddled on the bank near the water’s edge, faintly visible from the reflected light off the water. Dear Flavo, she thought. Flavo, the silent, invisible child who had suddenly presented himself in her consciousness on a brisk March day when he had stood beside Ollie Doubleday’s aeroplane and said, “How ’bout me?” Flavo, the young man who had come in a rowboat to rescue Bright and Little Fitz from this very river, from the Great Flood. Flavo, the ally of her adulthood. He was, she thought, the one constant of her life, the one person who spanned its entire course. All the others had come late or left early.
He heard their footsteps in the trampled weeds and turned to peer at them in the dim light. “Flavo,” she called out to him softly as they drew near. Homer released her arm and stood back, letting her go on alone.
“Bright?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She went to him and put her arms around him, feeling the stares of the others, black and white. He was strangely unyielding and she wondered for a brief instant if she had offended him in some way. She drew back, still clutching his arms, and even in the near-darkness she could see the dull yellow pain in his eyes, and something else, something smoldering. Rage. It startled her. Grief, dignity in the face of grief—all that she could understand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d give anything in the world if I could undo it.”
He seemed to rise up, the smoldering thing flaring in him. “What are you doing here?” he asked. His voice was cold and hard and she flushed, embarrassed.
“I came because it was the right thing to do,” she said simply.
He stared at her for a moment and then turned his head away and looked out over the river. “He was just a little boy.”
“Yes. I know.”
She wanted to reach out again, touch his arm, but his anger was an unyielding thing between them. There is something else here. Something besides the mere fact of death.
She held back, baffled and a bit hurt, unsure of what to say or do. They stood apart there on the riverbank, watching the small boat work its way methodically downstream toward the bridge, the men at bow and stern tossing out the grappling hooks with a muffled splash, hauling in the ropes hand over hand, pulling them free from the dark water, repeating the process. Once, the man in the stem rose up, tugged hard on the line. “Here!” he called, and one of the other men helped him pull while the spotlight from up on the bridge trained its round white beam on the water. But it was only a snag, a rotting piece of limb.
Flavo seemed to pay no attention to her, made no move to introduce her to the others nearby, a man and several young women. Relatives or friends, no doubt, possibly the boy’s parents. Bright thought for a moment to go over to them, but there was something in the way they formed a tight knot that seemed to exclude everyone else, even Flavo. Bright realized that she didn’t know a great deal about Flavo’s family. There were children; his wife had died a few years ago. Beyond that, nothing. Strange to have known this man for more than sixty years and know that little about the essentials of his life. Had it been a friendship? Or transactions?
After a moment, Homer Sipsey stepped up to her. “Miz Bright, you want to go up now?” He could sense the awkwardness.
“No,” she said, patting his hand. “But you go on back up to the bridge if you need to. I’ll be fine down here.”
Homer shrugged. “Nothing to do up there, I reckon. I’ll just wait until you’re ready.”
She waited awhile longer, and then she stepped across the breach to Flavo Richardson and took him by the upper arm. “Flavo, what is it?”
He turned to her then, stung her again with the raw hostility that flashed in his eyes. She flinched.
“Ask me”—he bit off the words—“ask me why those boys were swimming here in the river underneath the bridge when we’ve got a perfectly good swimming pool across town.”
“Why?”
“Because they can’t get in.”
“What do you mean, Flavo? The swimming pool is integrated. I read about it in the paper.”
“Hah! Some judge said five years ago they couldn’t keep black young’uns out of the swimming pool. So do you know what the town council did, Bright? They made a rule that young’uns can’t go to the pool unless they have a season ticket. You kno
w what a season ticket costs? Fifty dollars.” His voice was rising now, full of fury. “How many black young’uns got fifty dollars unless they steal it? So they come down here and swim. And you see,” he cried out, his arm sweeping the river, “what that gets ’em.”
“But you …”
“Yes. I’m on the council,” he said bitterly.
He blames himself! That’s it! He blames the rest of us, but he also blames himself!
Bright could see the terrible pain in his face, the weight of damning accusation. And then he turned away from her again with a jerk, leaving her alone and wretched on the riverbank. Bright felt the crushing, desperate weight of the old despair, the old misery. All those years of looking into people’s eyes—black and white—and seeing the hard cussedness there, the back-bowed stubbornness, and then trying to prod them gently past it. All that and still, obviously, so much undone. She wanted to take Flavo Richardson by the shoulders, shake him hard, tell him she understood. But this was not the time or place. She could not reach him. Perhaps she should just go home, try again when the hot flames of his grief and fury had eased a bit.
Just then she heard a muffled shout from the river and the banging of the oars against the wooden sides of the boat. “I got something,” a voice called. “Over here.” The boat was nearly to the bridge now and the narrow round beam of the spotlight shone almost straight down. It flashed across the water to where the rope from one of the grappling hooks disappeared, straining tautly against the surface of the river. The man on the other end tugged on it. “Feels like this might be it.” And then the man wearing the rubber suit rose up a bit, pulled the mask down over his eyes and stuck the mouthpiece from the oxygen tank in his mouth, slipped over the side with a quiet splash. He bobbed in the water for a moment, only his head showing on the other side of the boat. Then he began to ease himself across the river, holding on to the rope, a stark figure bathed in the white beam of the light. Flavo and Bright and Homer Sipsey and the others moved a few steps closer to the bank, peering out across the river, watching silently. The diver reached the point where the rope disappeared under the water, and then he gave a flip of his body and went under, roiling the surface. He stayed down for a long time, and all they could see in the beam of light was an occasional rush of bubbles from his air tank. Then something broke the water and they stared at it and saw that it was a hand, a small brown hand, and Bright’s heart leapt into her throat. “Oh, God!” one of the young women screamed. And then the diver came up with a rush, clutching the limp body around the waist, straining to stay above water as the men in the boat rowed quickly to him, reached out and pulled the dead boy over the side. They handled him gently, sadly, in the stark light, and Bright thought to herself, These are not mean people here. They do not hate, especially now at a moment like this. Surely that terrible part of it has passed. But maybe when the memory of grief has passed, they don’t love quite enough. Or understand.