Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  Bright felt suddenly at ease for the first time all morning, felt the tension in the back of her neck beginning to slip away. It felt good to sit here watching the day marinate with Harley Gibbons on the front porch, feeling the easy rhythm of speech keeping time with the morning. Harley had something on his mind, but he would arrive at it eventually by circumlocutions, the way a hawk would make lazy circles before swooping down on prey. There was something good and reassuring about conversation that took its time getting to its destination. She had learned the rhythms at her father’s side, the way he and another man would lean against the hood of a car with their talk mingling like soft, slow music in the morning air, until finally they parted with a handshake and you realized, on reflection, that a piece of business had been transacted, an understanding reached, perhaps even a disagreement resolved. You had to be very quick, very finely tuned to the nuances of the conversation, to know it had transpired. Bright herself had always been quick of tongue, prone to go directly to the heart of things. But as a child she had been able to hear and understand the measured cadence of good, slow talk just as she heard music in her head. It was the sound of patience, of tolerance, of compromise and getting along. Now, on this June morning, it returned as a welcome and soothing echo from the past. And she thought, This is the way we do things here, not by causing pain. And perhaps we can work this new thing out if we give it a little time and don’t try to butt heads. Then she thought, There I go again. “We.”

  “Fitzhugh put a lot of stock in psychology,” Harley said now. “Fitzhugh would study a thing, and then he might say, ‘The time’s not quite right, Harley. No matter what the fact of a thing is, it’s what people perceive it is. Politics is timing.’ But when he sensed that the time was right, he’d go right ahead and do a thing, and ninety-nine percent of the time it would work out right.”

  All right. A perfect opening. I will tell Harley about the swimming pool now, and we will start … But just as she was about to speak, Harley said, “Actually …,” and she stopped, because he said it rather forcefully and she could tell he had arrived at what he had come for. It must be important, because his circumlocution had been fairly brief.

  “Actually, what I came by to say has something to do with timing,” he said, crossing and uncrossing his legs again.

  “Hmmmm,” Bright said. “I thought you were just passing.”

  “Well, I was. But I thought it might be a good time to stop and chat for a moment.” He paused, looking into his tea glass. “I’ve sold the bank,” he said.

  Bright set her glass down on the table. “What on earth for?”

  “Because some people offered me a lot of money for it.”

  “What people?”

  “Some of the big boys. You’re one of the few folks who know about it outside of me and their top people. They’re buying up small banks all over the state now.”

  “But your family has had that bank for a hundred years, Harley,” she said.

  “Not anymore,” he laughed, shaking his head. She could hear a little undercurrent there. Bitterness? “Just not any room for a smalltown banker any more. If I didn’t sell, they’d come in here anyway, put up one of their branches, and cut the rug out from under me. No way a little guy can compete with them. They’ve got too much money, too many people, too many computers. They lend money cheaper than I can borrow it.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said.

  “Well,” he said dryly, “I have your son to thank, in a way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Little Fitz got the legislature to pass a statewide branch banking bill. It was one of the first things he did when he got into office. The big banks put a lot of money in his campaign, and they called in the IOUs. So now you’ve got a few big banks gobbling up all the little banks.”

  “Well, I’m sorry he did that,” Bright said, genuinely distressed. She couldn’t imagine Harley Gibbons not owning the bank, standing near the front door to greet customers as they came in. “What are you going to do?”

  “Oh, they’ll keep me on for a while,” he said with a shrug. “That’s good business. Keeps folks from getting upset, you know. But they’ll ease their own people in. First thing I’ll get is some bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young fellow not long out of college with a lot of flashy ideas about how to run a bank. And then one day one of the big vice presidents will walk in from state headquarters and tell me it’s time to retire. Thing is, he’ll be right. I’m getting old, Bright.”

  “You’re not seventy yet,” she protested.

  “No, but I’m gaining on it.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t know what to say, Harley.”

  He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “No need to feel sorry for me. I’m making a pile of money off the deal. It’s cheaper for them to buy me out than compete with me, so they’ve been downright lavish with their money. I’ll never have to worry about a thing. Evelyn and I could get on a plane tomorrow and start flying around the world and never come back.”

  “But you won’t,” she said.

  “No, I won’t. I don’t like to fly. I like to bank.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do. You were cut out for it, just like your father was cut out for it.”

  Harley reflected on that a moment, took off his glasses, stared at them, put them back on, and looked out down Claxton Avenue as if searching for something.

  “Bright,” he said, “banking’s not going to be the same in this town anymore. These new folks, they’ll run it by the book. There won’t be any more of this business of looking a fellow in the eye, hearing him out, and then deciding by the seat of your pants if he’s worth a loan. We’ve managed to do business that way since the bank was founded. But these new folks will put your life history down on paper and crank it into a computer and then say yea or nay based on a cold, hard formula. They’ll come in here and go through my books with a fine-tooth comb, and they’ll be hard-nosed about folks who owe us money.”

  She stared at him a moment, and then it dawned on her. “Like me,” she said.

  She and Fitzhugh had put a small mortgage on the house nine years before when he had made the decision to come home. They had spruced up the house and bought the Plymouth. And she had added small amounts to it over the years for one project or another. Harley sent her a bill for the interest each year and kept rolling over the principal. She had paid little attention to it. But now …

  Harley nodded, still looking off down the street. “I looked at your file this morning, Bright. Your mortgage is just over thirty-eight thousand dollars. Interest rate is still five and a quarter. Unheard of.” He turned to her now, and fell silent.

  “It’s not a good loan,” she said, helping him.

  “No, it’s not a good loan. This house” —he indicated it with a wave of his hand —“probably wouldn’t appraise for thirty-eight thousand.”

  “It’s a good house,” she said.

  “It’s not in the best of shape,” he countered. “But the loan is in worse shape than the house.”

  “Why haven’t we had this conversation before, Harley? Business is business.”

  He shook his head. “Not entirely, Bright. Business is people, or at least that’s the way I’ve run my business. And it is my business, or has been until now. As long as I don’t break the law, I can do what I want. If a bank examiner comes in here and arches his eyebrows over a loan, I can look him in the eye and say, ‘That’s none of your business.’ And the directors who sit on my board don’t own enough stock to amount to a hill of beans.” He sighed, raised his hands in resignation. “But that’s about to change.”

  She felt genuinely sad for Harley Gibbons then, for what he was giving up. She could hear the echoes of his words, going way back in time. The earnest sound of the child Harley’s voice in a classroom on a spring morning, gravely reciting, “‘The boy stood on the burning deck,’ ” the measured cadence of his words telling you, if you listened carefully enough, tha
t he would be his father’s son, a man you could depend upon when he grew to manhood, that he would be serious about his life but not too serious. And now, all he had invested in his life, irrevocably altered. You didn’t call that change. You called it disruption.

  But now Harley Gibbons smiled at her, a nice warm smile, the kind with which he had been greeting his customers all these years. “But Providence has blessed you, Bright. Honestly, I’d call it a miracle.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “The money.”

  “What money?”

  “Why,” he said, raising his eyebrows, “the fifty thousand dollars. You can pay off your loan. I imagine you’ll have just enough, when you get through paying taxes on the money. It should come out just about right.”

  “Taxes?”

  “Well, of course Uncle Sam’s going to want his share. A prize like that is treated as income.”

  “Income?” What is going on here? You walk in off the street, minding your own business, and suddenly somebody thrusts fifty thousand dollars on you. And then people immediately start asking for it, all these folks who say you’ve got a responsibility to them —son, banker, tax man.

  “Are you all right, Bright?” Harley asked, wrinkling his brow, bending toward her a bit, putting his hand on her arm.

  “A bit overwhelmed, Harley.”

  “Can I get you something? Some more iced tea? Just tell me where it is.”

  “Oh, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. Really. I’ve just had a lot happen the last couple of days.”

  “Fitz …”

  “That, yes.”

  “Well, don’t you worry about Little Fitz. He’s a heckuva politician. He’ll get through this. We’re all pulling for him.”

  “Even after what’s happened to your bank?”

  Harley shook his head adamantly. “That’s business, Bright. This is home folks. Little Fitz is our boy.”

  And he meant it. She could tell that. Good, solid, dependable Harley Gibbons. He would stick. And this other thing … they would work it out. Somehow.

  “Harley,” she said, “I’ve been thinking back about the school business. Closing Booker T. Washington back yonder.”

  He looked at her curiously. “What about it, Bright?”

  “We did the right thing back then, Harley. Especially you. We never could have pulled it off without you.”

  “Ah,” he sighed. “It wasn’t easy.”

  “But it worked out. Things have changed a lot since then, and that’s what started it. We’ve done the things that needed to be done.”

  “Yes,” Harley said. “One thing led to another, I suppose.” Harley took off his glasses again and rubbed the bridge of his nose where they made deep indentions in the skin. His eyes were pale and watery. He looked much older without his glasses, Bright thought, older and tired. “Other than that demonstration over the water fountains at the courthouse, we’ve never had an organized protest by the coloreds in this town. We never had anybody sit down on the sidewalk, or stop traffic, or parade around with signs.”

  All right. It’s time. “You’ve heard about Flavo’s grandson, I suppose,” she said gently.

  “Yes,” he nodded. “Terrible thing. We thought about canceling the council meeting tonight, out of respect, but we’ve got some business that just can’t be put off.”

  “The council meets tonight?”

  “Yes. Tuesday night, seven o’clock. Same as always.”

  “Well. Yes. I suppose I forgot. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a council meeting.”

  Harley gave a wry, soft laugh. “Well, I remember some you came to.”

  She smiled. “We’ve had some moments over the years on one thing or another.”

  “But always remained friends,” Harley said.

  “Yes. I’m grateful for that. I was thinking about old friends when I drove up just now. Old friends who know each other’s history.” She paused. “I’m sorry about the bank, Harley.”

  He ducked his head, just a tiny motion. “As I say, time moves on,” he said. “Time gets away before you know it.”

  “About the loan. I’ll do the right thing, Harley. You can count on that.”

  “I knew you would, Bright. Better to take care of things before they become a problem, you know. Always try to anticipate. Avoid surprises. Fitzhugh was that way, I remember. Never saw him do a thing he didn’t think out ahead of time.”

  “Except the last thing he did,” she said.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s right. I’m afraid he didn’t plan that very well.” Harley looked around at the house, sagging and graying with age. “Fitzhugh intended to come home and take care of you,” he said.

  “We both had intentions,” Bright said.

  Harley rose. “Well, I’d better be getting on. Almost dinnertime. Evelyn will be looking for me.”

  “You still go home for dinner?”

  “Of course.”

  “My father always did that.”

  “So did mine.”

  He shook her hand and then walked down the steps to his car. She sat watching as he pulled away from the curb, waved as he headed off up Birdsong Boulevard toward home. Bright picked up her iced tea glass from the table beside her, took a sip, tasted again the unusual tartness. She held the glass in her hand for a moment, staring at the dark tea inside and the green sprig of mint peeking out of the top of the glass. It looked all right. Then suddenly it hit her. Gladys has been peeing on the mint! Good grief, what rancid poisons there must be in that ancient bladder! And then she thought, My God! Gladys! She jumped up and headed for the back porch and out the door. Gladys was sitting there on her haunches next to the opening in the bricks, looking mournfully up at her with her one good eye.

  Bright threw up her hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” she said. “So much has happened …” She trailed off lamely, thinking how silly she was to be standing here in her backyard making excuses to an unfed dog, especially one that peed on the mint. She went quickly to the kitchen and heated up a pan of milk, then took it back to the steps and poured it over some dog food in Gladys’s bowl and sat down on the steps, watching her eat.

  Harley Gibbons lingered in her thoughts. He had been her high school beau, tall and earnest and a little out of breath with pursuing her. Would she have been better off with Harley? They were both of this place and bound by it through ties that ran deep. There would have been no conflict between them, at least not over that. The problem was, she didn’t love Harley Gibbons. She did love Fitzhugh Birdsong, then and now, despite all the disappointments and missed connections. And because she loved him, she was willing to take equal blame for the failures. If Harley had disappointed her, she would have been tempted to blame him completely, not loving him enough to share. No, she thought now, he was better off with Evelyn and his bank and his mayor’s job. And she was better off with the friendship that spanned their lifetimes, especially right now, when she might have to ask Harley to stick his neck out for her one last time.

  She looked up at Gladys, who was licking the last morsels of food from the bottom of her bowl. “And,” she said to Gladys, “Harley Gibbons might not have allowed a decrepit old dog under his house. What would you have done then?” Gladys cocked her head to one side, gave her a curious look, then disappeared under the house.

  “Hah!” Bright called after her. “I wish I could get under there with you!” But she knew that it would be a good long while before her head hit the pillow in repose.

  She should be exhausted after her chaotic night and morning, on top of everything else that had happened since she had welcomed yesterday’s early sun. But for some reason she felt strangely refreshed, even exhilarated. Things were possible here. Something, as Dorsey Bascombe was wont to say, might just come along. And after it did, after she was done with this, then she could forsake the field of battle for good. She would be quiet again. You could count on that.

  The telephone was ringing when she got back i
n the house, and she let it jangle for a moment while she filled Gladys’s bowl with water and left it to soak in the sink.

  “Miz Bright?” Doris Hawkins said from the other end when she finally picked it up. “I figured you’d fell in.”

  “Fell in where?”

  “The commode. I saw you was home, but the phone rang so long I figured you’d got stuck or something.”

  “No, Doris, I’m fine.” She looked out the front window and she could see Doris behind the checkout counter at the Dixie Vittles, the phone cradled between her head and shoulder while she rang up an order on the cash register. Bright could hear the rattle and jingle of the register in the background.

  “Well,” Doris said, “you’re about to be a lot finer. They want to give you your money tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes’m. Fellow just called from the big office over at Columbus, said they’ll be here in the morning for the ceremony. They want to do it tomorrow so Ortho can get it in this week’s paper. Is ten o’clock all right?”

  “Yes,” Bright said, “I suppose that will be fine. But do they have to put it in the paper?”

  Doris cackled. “Lord, yes, Miz Bright. It ain’t every day the Dixie Vittles gives away fifty thousand dollars, and they want to get all the goody out of it. I’m surprised they ain’t sending a limousine to pick you up. Thirty-nine forty-five.”

  “What?”

  “‘Scuse me, Miz Bright. That was Miz Poteet’s order here. Thirty-nine forty-five.”

  “Well, I don’t think we’ll need a limousine to get across the street, Doris.”

  Doris bellowed another laugh. “I reckon not. Well, we’ll see y’all in the morning. Bring your wheelbarrow.”

  >

  She heard the alligator under the house. Jimbo’s alligator. Josephus, he called him. She wondered at the implausibility of such a strange creature coming to visit, taking up residence for a while, disturbing dust and ghosts and the old dog who had been the sole resident for so long. A child’s alligator, grown to life in the dark underbelly of the house in the heat and ferment of imagination. They face each other warily, squatter and intruder. The dog —ancient breath, stale eyes, coat armored with the dust of centuries, grumpy from sleep. Go away. You’re a passing fancy, and not much to look at, at that. The stuff of turgid dreams. I’ve been here much too long to give you the time of day. The alligator —snout probing the close air, powerful tail sweeping to and fro, eyes blinking slowly, patiently. I can wait, old dog. I am a child-beast, and I have time on my side. And because I am a child-beast, I can be tiny and quiet or I can be large and noisy. And if I become big enough, I can drive you out of here, old dog, out into the light. Old dogs and child-beasts, creatures of past and future. And what about the here and now?