Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  The one thing Fitzhugh would not do was foreclosures. When Pegram Gibbons offered work from the bank, Fitzhugh turned it down. “I’m going to run for Congress one day,” he told Bright, “and I don’t want to be remembered as the lawyer who took people’s land away from them.”

  It was Bright who actually became the first to hold office, appointive though it was. Pegram Gibbons dropped by the house one afternoon and asked her to take a vacancy on the Library Board. Bright was surprised. The Library Board was notorious for its decrepit and lethargic membership. “My father sent you,” she said.

  “No, your father suggested that you might be willing.”

  “Well, he was right. I am.”

  At the first meeting, Bright urged the board to double its annual appropriation for book purchases. No money, her aging fellow members said when they roused themselves to stare at her. “Then I’ll raise it,” she said. Bright made the rounds of the community’s merchants and prominent citizens, wheedling and cajoling, until she came back with enough pledges to quadruple the meager book budget.

  Fitzhugh and Bright were both careful to let people know that Fitzhugh, not Dorsey, supported them. Neither would have considered accepting help from Dorsey, had there been any offered beyond the house and office. Bright began to take in piano students, teaching them on the Story and Clark upright that Dorsey had moved from his own home for her. She became the pianist for the Methodist Church and was in demand for musical programs before social and civic groups throughout the area. People admired her talent and wondered, sometimes to her face, why she had not pursued the musical career she had gone to Atlanta to study for. In her own mind, the Conservatory became a brief and almost dreamlike interlude in her life, something unavoidably unfulfilled. She might ask herself whether she would have indeed made a concert pianist, whether she would have had the talent and drive it took, the willingness to sacrifice. But there was no use in belaboring that. She had left because it was the only thing to do at the time. She had made that choice and there was nothing to do but move on beyond it. So when people asked, she said simply, “This is where I belong.” After a while, they stopped asking. And Bright all but stopped remembering.

  Bright remained a devoted daughter. She visited Dorsey at least once a day, usually in the late afternoon. She would often be waiting when he arrived from the lumberyard and they would sit for a while on the front porch, if the weather were suitable, and talk. Fitzhugh and Bright came for Sunday dinner. It was a ritual.

  There was a wariness to Dorsey and Fitzhugh’s relationship that neither man could ever quite overcome, a studied cordiality. Bright would have wished them to be friends, but she realized that in truth they were rivals. It must be thus with any man and his son-in-law, she assumed, especially a man in Dorsey Bascombe’s circumstances and given all that had happened before Fitzhugh Birdsong had come along. As men, they were much alike—intelligent, forthright, sure of themselves. But their interests were poles apart. Fitzhugh was fascinated by the world at large, intrigued by the vast changes taking place in the world’s politics and economics, especially those being driven pell-mell by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Dorsey thought the only world worth being fascinated by was the one he could drive through in a day. His vision narrowed, his outlook became more provincial. Roosevelt, he said, would be a better president if he had left the aristocracy of the Hudson River elite and spent some time at honest work such as lumbering. Like his cousin Teddy. Now there, Dorsey Bascombe said, was a real president. A real Roosevelt. Fitzhugh did not argue with his father-in-law. He kept his own counsel, steered clear of even the hint of conflict. He was deferential without being subservient. Fitzhugh Birdsong had other fish to fry.

  >

  In the autumn of 1934, Bright discovered that she was pregnant. She knew it well before there were any physical manifestations. She woke one morning to an almost imperceptible change in the rhythm of her body, and she said to herself, “There is a baby.”

  It was the most private thing she ever did. Fitzhugh might have planted the seed, but the growing life inside was hers alone to nurture into fullness. And once she had told Fitzhugh, she retreated into herself while he clucked and fussed about her, trying to do something, anything. From the first, he was captivated by her changing body—touching, listening, poking gently, asking a thousand questions.

  “He can’t help it,” Hosanna said. “Biggest thing a man ever do is begat. Every time a woman get with child, you see the man struttin’ around like a peahen, ’cause he done begat. Hell, ain’t nothin’ to begattin’. It’s after the begattin’ that you gets down to bidness. And that drive the man near about crazy ’cause he can’t run the bidness.”

  So Bright told Fitzhugh, “It’s all right. Don’t try so hard. We’re doing fine.”

  She was patient, but she was aware of being aloof with him, distant. She had gone someplace he could not go, and there was a magnificent aloneness to it. She and the baby shared a dark, warm cocoon, both undergoing metamorphosis, quite apart from the light and air of the ordinary world. Her body sang to her, a pure, primal music. She rarely touched the piano. What she could coax from it seemed discordant by comparison.

  The only thing that troubled Bright during her pregnancy was her father. Dorsey seemed taken aback by the business, at a loss for what to say or do, almost embarrassed. For the first time there was an awkwardness between them, long silences as they sat and rocked together on the front porch of his house in the late afternoons. He rarely remarked about her condition and avoided looking at her swelling belly.

  Again, Hosanna: “He’s grieving,” she said. “A man don’t truly give up his daughter ’til she gets with child. Then he has to admit that his daughter does the things women does with men. From that time on, she’s more a woman, and another man’s woman, than she is his daughter. And for yo’ daddy, that’s ‘specially hard.”

  “Why?” Bright asked.

  “‘Cause he messed up with his own woman,” she said simply. “And he put all his stock in you. It’s high time he gave you up, but it ain’t easy. So he grieves.”

  He came to her almost shyly when she gave birth, bringing a lovely hand-carved walnut crib for the baby. Emotion played in open conflict in his face: joy, sadness. She studied him as he sat down in the chair by her bed, truly seeing him for the first time in months as she emerged from her own long self-absorbed solitude. And she thought he looked very fragile again, his health and perhaps his will beginning to slip. She felt a pang of guilt at having been so preoccupied, at having neglected him. And she longed now to make him see and feel the miracle of a grandson, to share it with her. Perhaps, she thought, an atonement.

  “A boy,” she said, nestling the baby in the crook of her arm. “A Bascombe boy. Even if his name is Birdsong.”

  “Yes,” he said softly. “He looks a good deal like Fitzhugh, but that doesn’t mean anything. There’s no such thing as a half-Bascombe. Is he ornery?”

  She smiled. “No, he seems to be a sweet baby. He comes from the gentle side of the family, I’d say. We’ve named him Dorsey Fitzhugh Birdsong.”

  “Well, I’m honored. But you call him Fitzhugh, you hear?”

  “Yes, Papa. I suppose there’s only room for one Dorsey around here.”

  “That’s right.”

  She understood then a little of what he must have experienced these last few months—indeed, all her life. A giving up, as she had just done with the baby. It was a reluctant thing, letting him go from the safe warm place where she had kept him. She longed to hold him inside just a while longer, to listen to the primal music, to sing to him and savor his closeness and keep him from all harm. But he struggled to be free of her and she released him finally into the light and air. It was, as Hosanna had said, a kind of grieving.

  She was very tired and she closed her eyes for a moment, heard a blur of voices —Hosanna gently lifting the baby from her side, Fitzhugh and Dorsey talking quietly. When she awoke, it was dark outside and Dorsey was gone.
It was Fitzhugh who sat in the chair next to her bed, holding her hand. “We did well,” he said. “He’s a fine boy.” She saw then that there were tears in his eyes. He is a fine and gentle man, she thought. He will be a good father, and he has been a good husband. He does love me without reservation, and what more could I ask? And I do truly love him. I do. But she felt oddly riven now. The exquisite aloneness she had enjoyed these past few months, the sense of abiding in the still place deep inside herself, was gone. Now there were three men in her life, all laying claim to her in their own ways. And there was a fine sadness to that.

  >

  It surprised people, and then again it didn’t, when Fitzhugh decided to run for Congress in 1936. People could picture him as a congressman someday. He had the looks and bearing. But now? It was rushing things a bit. His youth was one thing, but more important, the seat was held by a man in his midfifties who had had no opposition whatsoever the past two elections, so safely was he ensconced in office. He was backed by conservative business interests that could count on him not to go too far down the New Deal path with Roosevelt. He had been part of that staunch core of Southern Democrats who had helped block some of Roosevelt’s wilder schemes.

  At one time, Dorsey Bascombe had been a leading spokesman for business interests in his part of the state. He might be progressive, but he was no fool when it came to government meddling in the affairs of free enterprise. So when his son-in-law announced plans to seek the seat in Congress, the men who had known him the longest sent Pegram Gibbons to see Dorsey. And Dorsey in turn went to see Bright.

  “Fitzhugh will make a fool of himself,” Dorsey told her as they sat on her front porch one warmish late-winter afternoon. “Oscar Gainous is a good congressman, a levelheaded man, and he has a hammerlock on that seat. If Fitzhugh will bide his time, pay his dues in the party, his turn will come. But if he goes tearing off into the underbrush like this, he’ll alienate the very people he needs later.”

  “Then why don’t you tell Fitzhugh that,” Bright said.

  “You tell him.”

  “No, Papa.” He looked at her in surprise. “I’m not going to get involved in Fitzhugh’s politics. And I’m not going to get crossways between you and him.”

  “If he gets into politics, you will be involved whether you like it or not,” he said gruffly.

  In fact, she thought, she was involved because she and Fitzhugh had been through all the arguments pro and con already. She knew as well as her father what the political rules and givens were, and Fitzhugh could see quite well what the odds were. And beyond that, they were in no position financially for Fitzhugh to mount a campaign. It would mean long hours away from a law practice that was still struggling, long hours away from his wife and small son. But in the end, despite anything Bright or Dorsey said, his sheer determination wore her down.

  “I mean to go to Congress,” he said.

  They were in Little Fitz’s bedroom, Fitzhugh standing in the doorway while she put the baby down for his afternoon nap. They had argued all through dinner and Bright was worn out with it, prickly with irritation. “Then go!” she snapped. “Leave us here and go!” And then she added, “If you can get there.”

  “I’ll get there.” There was steel in his voice. She had learned in just over five years of marriage that he could be single-mindedly obstinate when he wanted something badly. In fact, she thought, it went back further than that. He had wanted her, hadn’t he?

  “Papa says Oscar Gainous will beat you like a drum,” she said, then regretted it.

  There was a moment of pained silence before Fitzhugh said, “Oscar Gainous is no longer in the mainstream of politics hereabouts. Neither is your father.”

  She tucked Little Fitz’s blanket carefully about him in the crib and then turned to Fitzhugh. “I’ll forget you said that.”

  “Suit yourself,” he said.

  “If you persist in this, Fitzhugh, it’s your business. Just yours. I won’t get involved.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I won’t count on you.”

  She heard the front door close behind him as he left the house, left behind an empty silence that filled the long afternoon as painfully as if it had been a blaring noise. Why does he need this? she kept asking herself. Aren’t we enough? For the first time in their marriage, she felt a sense of abandonment, an ancient grief she thought she had put aside.

  So Fitzhugh ran for Congress, more on sheer instinct than anything else. He demonstrated for the first time his ability to sniff the wind and smell change and adapt himself to it. Throughout his career it would mark him mostly as a cautious man, because change comes to political process only occasionally. But there were a few times when he made bold strokes, sweeping aside convention and leaving the so-called experts and political soothsayers dumbfounded. This first time was perhaps the most remarkable because he had no experience to rely on, just his nose and his intuition.

  The more notable folk across the district were polite to him. He was a nice young man, rather fascinating in the odd way he acted face-to-face. And if he behaved himself in this campaign they would forgive him his folly and perhaps take another look at him when he had grown up. But Fitzhugh didn’t concern himself much with the more notable folk.

  His allies were a few young businessmen across the district, beginning in his own town with Monkey Deloach and Harley Gibbons. Monkey was by now taking an increasingly active role in the day-to-day operation of Dorsey’s lumber business. Harley, home from college, had joined his father at the bank, and together they had saved it from ruin by pledging everything they owned personally to its full faith and credit. This too was an act of faith for people like Harley and Monkey—running at crosscurrents with the established business interests that Dorsey and Pegram represented. They took some heat because of it, but there was something compelling about Fitzhugh Birdsong. It might be a foolhardy and radical enterprise, as Dorsey and Pegram argued, but they argued back that young men were due some foolhardiness. And the times demanded radicality. So they went about their business—forming a small, tight network of men like themselves throughout the district, raising a little money, riding the back roads in their automobiles and stopping to tack up campaign posters on fence posts. And talking. Always talking. Stirring up trouble, the establishment said. But the establishment didn’t take them seriously.

  Lesser folk began to before long, because the message Fitzhugh Birdsong preached made sense. It was simple: Roosevelt needed help. Sure, some of what he tried didn’t work. But he was trying. People were hungry, cold, ill, homeless, hurting. Business was indeed the engine that pulled the train, but when the engine faltered, the folks back in the boxcars needed help—public jobs, security for their old age. Roosevelt was trying to help the people in the boxcars at the same time he tried to get the engine going again. Send Fitzhugh Birdsong to Congress, and he would make sure the folks in this district got a fair hearing in Washington, and that Franklin D. Roosevelt got a fair hearing in Congress. So the people across the district began to take a long hard look at this trim, neatly dressed young fellow who came calling at their homes and stores across the district. He started campaigning early in the spring, while Congress was still in session, and by the time Oscar Gainous came home to announce himself in mid-May at a grand rally on the courthouse lawn in Columbus, Fitzhugh had already covered the back roads of the district once and was beginning a second round.

  Gainous made two fatal mistakes: he underestimated the depth of his constituents’ misery; and he underestimated the energy of his young opponent. It seemed that Fitzhugh was everywhere. He had nothing to assist him but an old automobile he had borrowed from Monkey Deloach, a good pair of shoes, his handful of allies, and what turned out to be considerable powers of persuasion. This young fellow, they said around the district, was the best campaigner they had seen in a long time. He shook your hand, looked you in the eye, captured you with his message. He made you feel that your vote was the only one that counted at that particular moment
.

  Oscar Gainous was rather cavalier about the whole thing until the last week before the primary in early June, when certain members of the district’s Democratic Committee began to whisper in his ear that this young Birdsong fellow might have to be reckoned with after all. He had people riled. Gainous bestirred himself to make a few luncheon speeches to some of the more prominent civic groups in the district. But by then it was too late.

  Bright was detached from all this, watching it as one would look out the window at passersby on the sidewalk. She knew only that Fitzhugh was gone from early morning until late at night, dragging himself in to collapse exhausted in bed beside her. It would have been more of a strained and prickly thing between them, but he simply was not there most of the time. She asked him little and he volunteered almost nothing, not until the very end, when he could smell blood and his own blood was high and he was flushed with the sense of what was happening to him. His excitement overcame his reticence.

  “I think I may win,” he said to her two days before the vote.

  He was near collapse, eyes bloodshot, right hand swollen from handshaking, face gaunt from the weight he had lost. But there was a fierce gleam in his eye, a zeal that almost matched the ardor with which he had pursued her. And she softened, seeing how very badly he wanted this, remembering that this very quality was what had attracted her to him in the first place. She touched his cheek gently. “I hope you do win,” she said. “I truly do. And if you do win, what will you do with it?”