Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  The men in the rowboat and the others up on the bridge called back and forth to each other now, their voices bouncing hollowly off the water and the underside of the bridge.

  “… come on with the stretcher …”

  “… body bag?”

  “We’ll just cover him with a sheet.”

  “Be right down.”

  “… some coffee for Hobart. Water’s still a little cold this time a’ year.”

  “I’ll bring the thermos.”

  Then the voices stopped and the night was still and quiet now except for the muffled bumping about in the rowboat out in the river as they headed for the bank with the dead boy, and the soft moans of the women in the group onshore. The air felt chill now, and Bright shivered, holding her arms close. And then she thought suddenly of Jimbo, sprawled in sleep in the spare bedroom, vulnerable in the way a little black boy was vulnerable in the dark waters of a river. What if fire broke out, or an intruder…. She felt panic rise in her, an old beast with hot yellow eyes that danced with the reflection of the still and bleeding form of Dorsey Bascombe, sprawled across the steps of the camp house, a beast that snarled, Something will be taken from you…

  She turned to Homer Sipsey, who had moved now to the edge of the riverbank, watching as the rowboat neared. “Homer?”

  He turned to her. “Yes’m.”

  “Help me back up now.”

  “Just be a minute, Miz Bright. Let me give the boys a hand here …”

  “No,” she said, her voice rising. “I need to go now.” She did not want to be there when the boat reached the shore, when they lifted him out and covered him with the sheet. She wanted to flee back to the comfort of her home and bed. It was too sad here, too confusing. She was not ready for any of this, especially the pain of Flavo’s harsh anger.

  Homer heard the panic in her voice, and he turned abruptly and peered at her in the dim light, then shrugged and started toward her. “Sure, Miz Bright. The boys can handle things, I reckon.” He took her arm gently and they started up the narrow path, the beam of his flashlight darting in front of them.

  “Roseann’s boy Jimbo is staying with me this week,” she explained. “He’s there in the house by himself. I shouldn’t have left him.”

  “No problem, Miz Bright. I’ll drive you home myself.” He took his time, steadying her with a firm hand as they climbed. She was quite winded when they reached the bridge and they stopped for a moment while she caught her breath. Then Homer helped her into the squad car, turned off the flashing blue light on top, and then eased off down Claxton, away from the bridge. She peered ahead, past the soft amber glow of the streetlights along Claxton, but she could barely see her house under the shadows of the pecan trees in the front yard. At least she could see no angry flash of flame.

  She looked over at Homer, saw in the dim light from the dashboard how very tired he looked, the lines in his face deepened by fatigue. He was no longer young, probably in his late forties, unlikely to ever become the police chief of a larger town, certainly too old to be running up and down the road in a highway patrol car. Homer, she thought, was a man at people’s beck and call, at least those upon whose goodwill his job depended, those above him in the pecking order. She wondered where in the pecking order of things Homer Sipsey put her.

  “I’m sorry to put you to this trouble,” she said after a moment.

  “No trouble, Miz Bright. No sense you having to walk home alone this time of night. Things ain’t as safe as they used to be.” He fished a cigarette out of the pack in his shirt pocket, stuck it in his mouth, then punched in the cigarette lighter on the dashboard. “Two nights ago, somebody broke in Folmar’s Drug Store. They cut a hole in the roof, of all things. Lowered themselves down by a rope and got in the pharmacy. They took a bunch of drugs, stuff like Demerol and Valium and so forth. I said to myself, ‘Homer, things has changed around here. When you got hopheads breaking in Folmar’s Drug Store, things has changed.’ ” The lighter popped out and Homer lit his cigarette, inhaling noisily and then blowing a stream of smoke out his window, away from her. “Then too, Miz Bright,” he went on, “you got all that money now. You got to be more careful.”

  “All that what?”

  He glanced over at her. “All that money you won at the Dixie Vittles last evening. Fifty thousand, I hear it was.”

  “Good Lord,” she said softly. “I had forgotten.”

  Homer laughed. “I don’t see how anybody could forget fifty thousand dollars. That’s more money than anybody around here will ever see at one time. I want to be there to see a check with ‘fifty thousand dollars’ printed on it.”

  “Well, I suppose I do too.”

  “You want to be careful, now.”

  “About what?”

  “Flimflams. All sorts of folks out there with schemes to take folks’ money. Especially old folks.”

  She started to say that she wasn’t old, but she stopped herself. That wasn’t true. Not anymore. Bright clutched her purse, thinking about the fifty thousand dollars lying in somebody’s bank with her name already on it. As they turned into her driveway, she said absently, “I hope I’d know a scheme when I saw it.”

  “Well, Miz Bright,” Homer said, easing the car to a stop in front of the steps, “folks sometimes don’t think straight when they get to thinking about money.”

  “They make fools of themselves,” Bright said.

  “Yes’m. I reckon that’s the whole of it.”

  He got out of the car and came around to the passenger side and opened the door for her and put his arm under her elbow to help her out.

  “Thank you, Homer,” she said. “I’m really very grateful. I shouldn’t have left Jimbo alone here in the middle of the night. But I’m glad I went.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “Flavo Richardson is as good a man as there is in this town,” she said.

  “He’s a fine man, yes ma’am. Good councilman.”

  “It’s still a good town, Homer. Despite folks breaking in Folmar’s Drug Store.”

  “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he said. She could tell he wanted to go now. He still had business at the bridge, things to be done before he could go home and get some sleep.

  “We need to find a way to keep little black children from swimming in the river,” she said.

  “Well, I’ve tried everything I know.” There was a little edge in his voice. “I guess me and the boys have run ’em off a dozen times since the weather got warm.”

  She touched his arm. “I’m sure you’re doing all you can,” she said. “We’ll think of something. We’ve always worked things out here, one way or the other.”

  “Can I help you up the steps?”

  “No. I can manage fine. You go on back now. Thank you again.”

  He touched the edge of his cap. “Glad to help, Miz Bright. You take care of yourself, now. Be careful about that money. You ever got a question about anybody, you just call me. I’ll be right over.”

  He waited by the car until she got up the steps and in the door, and then she gave him a little wave to let him know she was all right. He got in the car and backed out of the driveway, then turned the corner onto Claxton and headed back toward the bridge. She watched him for a moment, then went to the spare bedroom and looked in on Jimbo. He seemed not to have moved an inch—arm thrown over the side of the bed, mouth slightly open, deep in the cave of sleep that only a child could inhabit.

  Bright got undressed and lay in bed for a while, thinking back over the night, and when she got to the part where she was talking with Homer Sipsey in the patrol car in her driveway, she remembered saying “we.” “We’ll think of something,” she had said. How strange, she thought, perhaps her strangest utterance on a strange night. It was something Dorsey Bascombe might have said. But not Bright Birdsong, who had not thought of this town in terms of “we” for a very long time. What was she getting at? And what would Dorsey do if he were here? What would he have said to grieving, angry Fla
vo Richardson on the riverbank in the dead of night? He knew a lot about loss, but he hadn’t been so successful at getting beyond loss. Perhaps Dorsey would not have had any answers at all. Maybe just now, if he saw and heard from wherever he was, he would say, Work it out for yourselves. I’m not interested anymore.

  She was thinking about Dorsey, remembering the tall leather boots that filled the opening of the cave underneath his desk at the lumberyard as she hunkered, waiting for a piece of candy, when she finally drifted off to sleep again.

  11

  She dreamed that Little Fitz was calling, but she could not get to the telephone. She knew it was Fitz, knew somehow by the way the telephone rang. But she was immobilized by something —dread? laziness? Whatever it was, she gave in to it finally and drifted away and then the ringing stopped.

  But a moment later: “Mama Bright…”

  She opened one eye, saw Jimbo standing over the bed. He had a book in one hand, held open with his thumb. It was late, she could tell that by the light in the room. Much later than she ever slept. She had missed the early sun. She felt rotten.

  “Uncle Fitz is on the phone,” Jimbo said.

  “What?”

  “Uncle Fitz. He says he’s talking on the telephone from his limousine. That’s neat, huh?”

  “Neat,” Bright said groggily. “Good Lord.”

  “He says he wants to talk to Old Lazybones. I told him you were still in bed.”

  Bright threw back the sheet and eased her legs over the side of the bed, tucking her nightgown around her, then searched with her feet on the rug until she found her house shoes. Jimbo turned and left and she heard the screen door to the front porch slam behind him. She stood, wobbling a moment, holding on to the bedpost until she gained her balance. Her head hurt and she struggled against a shroud of sleep that clung to her like cobwebs. She shuffled to the parlor, sat down in the chair by the telephone table, picked up the receiver.

  “Hello, Fitz.”

  “You been out cattin’ again, Mama?” Fitz laughed, his lovely honey laugh. Fitz enveloped you with his laugh, made your toes tingle, made you feel that you were standing with him in the middle of a wide green field with the sun warm on your face, just the two of you sharing a deliciously special moment. He was a tall man, like his grandfather Dorsey Bascombe, and gentle like his father. When Little Fitz Birdsong laughed, people wanted to give him their firstborn.

  She could hear music in the background. Country music, some guitars and a whiny-voiced woman. She had raised Fitz Birdsong on Chopin and Schumann (not that he had any musical talent himself) and now he listened to country music while he tooled around in his limousine. “Where are you?” she asked.

  “In my limousine,” he said.

  “Jimbo told me that. But where?”

  “We’re just riding around, looking at the morning. Me and Corporal Dodson. Soon to be Sergeant Dodson. He’s gettin’ a promotion next week. It don’t look good for the governor to be driven around by a corporal. Oughta be at least a sergeant, don’t you think, Dodson? Here, Dodson, say hello to my mama.”

  The telephone rustled as it was passed from hand to hand, and then a young voice said, “Morning, Miz Birdsong.”

  “That’s Dodson,” Fitz said, taking the receiver back. “He’s been learning to drive stately. Dodson used to race cars on the dirt tracks, and he likes to scratch off at the traffic lights. But you do that in a brand-new Lincoln Continental limousine, and you’ll tear the transmission right out of the sucker.” He laughed again, filling the car with it, making the telephone line hum.

  “Is your limousine the only place you’ve got a telephone?” Bright asked.

  That sobered him. She could picture him in the broad rear seat of the limousine, his face suddenly somber. He had always been eager to please, quick to accommodate. He floated like a winged seed on a spring breeze, looking for just the right place to light.

  “I tried once and the line was busy,” he said.

  “Once,” she said. “Do you realize it’s Tuesday morning?”

  “I been up to my ying-yang in alligators up here,” he said quietly.

  Bright shifted in her chair, put the telephone receiver in her left hand, kneaded her temple with the right. “So I’ve heard. And read.”

  “Actually,” he went on, “I’ve sort of been out of pocket.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I’ve been staying up at our place on the lake. Lavonia ain’t very happy with me right now, and I’m just trying to stay clear until things die down a little.”

  “Hmmmmm.’

  “But I got up this morning and told Dodson, ‘Dodson,’ I said, ‘it’s time to hitch up our britches and get this thing took care of.’ ”

  Took care of. Fitz Birdsong was a college graduate, more than that a middling lawyer and somewhat literate man. But he had worked so long and hard at being one of the boys that took care of came naturally to him.

  “So,” he went on, “I put on my best blue pinstripe suit and a baby blue oxford cloth button-down shirt and a nice red tie and me and Dodson got in the limo and headed for town. When I get to the Capitol, I’m gonna call me a press conference and tell ’em Fitz Birdsong is back. And then I’m gonna go over to the mansion and tell Lavonia to get her fanny off her shoulder and let’s get on with things. Ain’t that right, Dodson?”

  She heard a muffled reply from the front seat of the car, then a brief silence. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Enough about me. I hear you’ve been right busy yourself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Big Deal O’Neill called this morning and said you won fifteen thousand dollars at the Dixie Vittles.”

  “No, as a matter of fact it was fifty thousand.” She felt a throbbing at her temples. She didn’t want to think about the money, didn’t want to talk about it.

  “Whewwwww.” Fitz gave a long whistle. “I thought Big Deal said fifteen. I’m surprised you aren’t off to Acapulco with all that money.”

  “Why would I want to go to Acapulco?”

  “Well,” Fitz said, “with that kind of money, I reckon you could go just about anyplace you wanted.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got Jimbo here with me.”

  “Yeah. He told me that Roseann and what’s his name have gone to the beach.”

  “Rupert. His name is Rupert.”

  “I’ve only met him once,” Fitz said. “At the wedding. I invited ’em to a big do at the mansion a few months ago, but I never heard from ’em. Jimbo told me Rupert can’t swim.”

  Bright pictured Roseann and Rupert on the beach this morning, Rupert’s pale knees showing between the bottom of his Bermuda shorts and the top of his long black socks, Roseann huddled under a striped umbrella with a can of diet soda pop and a romance novel, glowering behind her sunglasses. She has a lot of energy, Rupert had said.

  “You should get to know Rupert,” Bright said. “I think you’d like him. He’s very good with refrigerators.”

  “What?”

  “My refrigerator broke yesterday while they were here. Rupert put a new motor on it.”

  “Next time the refrigerator at the mansion breaks, I’ll tell Lavonia to call Rupert.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic, Fitz.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “I need to get to know the man. I can’t imagine anybody who’d put up with Roseann. Does he get combat pay?”

  “Fitz, that’ll do,” she snapped.

  “Sorry, Mama.”

  “We’re talking in circles here,” she said, exasperated. It was like him, talking all around the edges of something. She supposed it was part of what made him a good politician. His father had had the same talent. What you had to do with a politician was tie him down and make him get to the point. “Get to the point, Fitz,” she said now.

  “Ah, yes,” he sighed. “The point. Well, I’m in a peck of trouble, Mama. That’s the point.”

  “I guessed as much,” she said.

 
Fitz took a deep breath. She could hear it through the phone, a great whoosh of air passing over the mouthpiece. “I need the money,” he said.

  “What money?”

  “That fifty thousand dollars you won at the Dixie Vittles. Just a loan. I’ll pay you back as soon as the campaign’s over. I’m having a little cash flow problem right now, and I need to buy some TV time right away. It’s the only way I can lick this thing, Mama.” He was talking rapidly now, his voice urgent and insistent. “We’re gonna vote a week from today and I’ve got to get on TV and talk to the folks.”

  “What are you going to say?” she asked.