Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  “I hope there’s not any trouble. There’s never been any around here, not with the blacks.”

  “You know all about the business with the swimming pool?”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “Harley told me.” He started to say something else, but there was a commotion up ahead of them now and the parade began to lurch into motion, the units easing out of the parking lot one by one, the color guard and Homer Sipsey’s car up front, his siren competing with the bleating of the high school band. Just behind them, the street sweeper roared to life, its diesel spouting puffs of smoke. Big Deal sprinted back to the convertible and slid in behind the wheel, gasping for breath. Bright took a tight grip on the hot leather of the seat.

  She felt like a ninny, perched on the back of the convertible next to Fitz, directly behind Big Deal, with her feet resting on the rear seat next to her purse. It was a rather snazzy-looking Ford convertible, white with red leather upholstery. But Bright was not much for display. She leaned over, tapped Big Deal on the shoulder. “Francis, don’t you hot-rod this car, you hear?”

  “Yes ma’am,” he grinned back at her. “No danger of that.” He pointed over his left shoulder. “The parade can’t go no faster than the street sweeper, and it’s kinda slow. So we’ll just take ’er real easy, okay?” He looked back at her. “After the parade’s over, I can work out a good deal for you on this car, Miz Bright. Low mileage, one owner. Little bit down, easy payments. You ought to get a new car.”

  “Francis,” she said, “I’ve got a perfectly good automobile. Low mileage, one owner. Nothing down, no payments.”

  The city police car just ahead of them began to move then and Big Deal shifted into gear. Bright held on to Fitz’s arm as the convertible pulled away with a bit of a lurch, and she glanced back at the street sweeper. It was a big green machine with a small enclosed cab up top for the driver. The big round brush in front was held high off the pavement by two thick metal arms. It looked like a huge insect with a great bushy mustache. Big Deal looked back and waved it forward, and it growled into motion with a clashing of gears. It was very loud and very slow. It would take a long time to get to the high school. The street sweeper was not a good idea, she thought. It bordered on the ridiculous. But she didn’t say anything to Big Deal.

  Birdsong Boulevard was empty except for the units of the parade, with barricades at every intersection to keep other traffic at bay. There weren’t any people along the street here either, just a few up on their porches out of the sun, mostly old folks. Bright could see her own house ahead, and Buster Putnam’s sagging monstrosity next door. She didn’t expect much of a crowd until they got to where Birdsong intersected with Bascombe. At the Christmas parade every year, the crowd mostly gathered along Bascombe.

  “Francis …,” she said loudly.

  Big Deal sat like a statue in the front seat. He couldn’t hear her, she realized, with the street sweeper groaning and grinding behind them. It drowned out everything except the occasional whumping of the bass drum in the band up ahead. That was just fine, she thought. They could have a private conversation, right here in the middle of the parade. She turned to Fitz, leaned close to his ear. “We’ve got to talk about the money.”

  “Yes.” He nodded. “We do.”

  “I’ve got it all in cash,” she said.

  Fitz pursed his lips. “Yes, I know. Remember, you called me from the bank. You’ve cut a pretty wide swath since yesterday.”

  “A what?” She craned her ear toward him, trying to catch the word.

  “A wide SWATH.” He held his hands wide. “Two banks, the highway patrol, and the National Guard.”

  “Two banks?”

  “Harley Gibbons told me about that, too.”

  “Oh.”

  Fitz smiled. “Seems everybody wants your money.”

  “Yes. Before I won it, I didn’t need it. Now that I’ve got it, I need about three times as much. One thing I’m not going to do is give it to the government.”

  Big Deal turned to them from the front seat. “Y’all say something?” he yelled.

  “No!” Fitz yelled back. “Mama and I were talking to each other.”

  “Oh.” Big Deal looked back at the street sweeper. “Kinda loud!”

  “Yeah!” Fitz stuck his fingers in his ears. Big Deal grinned and went back to his driving.

  “You’ve got to pay taxes on the money, regardless of what you do with it,” Fitz said.

  She tossed her head. “What are they going to do with an old lady, send me to jail?”

  “Yes, Mama. They will do exactly that.”

  Bright looked ahead, over the top of the city police car in front of them, and she could see that the parade was beginning to spread out. The units up front were making good time, but the street sweeper was slowing things down here at the tail end. The driver of the truck towing the Vacation Bible School flatbed kept leaning out his window, looking back. There was a considerable gap developing between the flatbed and the sheriff’s car just ahead of it. And time was taking its toll on the flatbed’s occupants. Two of the kids on the rear were struggling over a shepherd’s crook and one of the teachers was trying to separate them. Bright thought if they could get a full-scale riot going, it might keep the crowd along Bascombe entertained until Fitz’s convertible got there.

  They were at the intersection where Claxton joined from the left now, with the Dixie Vittles Supermarket on the corner, and there was a small knot of people standing in front of the store under the awning—Doris Hawkins and Hank Foscoe the manager, wearing their little white hats and red jackets, and several other people she assumed were customers.

  “Hey, who’s that up yonder on the back seat of that fancy car with Miz Bright Birdsong?” Doris yelled with a horselaugh. “Miz Bright, you spent all that money yet?”

  “Howdy, Miz Doris, Hank,” Fitz called back.

  Bright smiled and waved. She wasn’t about to start yelling back at people in the crowd. And it was really none of Doris Hawkins’s business what she had done, or planned to do, with the money.

  Bright looked to her right, over at her own house. The Winnebago was gone, and she thought with a pang of Rupert and Roseann and Jimbo, driving back home now. Then she thought about the briefcase. She really must get it back to Mr. Purcell at the bank in the capital. Perhaps, she thought, Fitz could carry it back with him in his limousine after the luncheon, drop it off at the bank. She tapped Fitz on the arm, pointed. “I’ve got the money in my car there.”

  His eyes widened. “The cash?”

  “Under the front seat.”

  “My God, Mama!”

  “As safe a place as any,” she said. “Who would think to look under the front seat of a car for fifty thousand dollars?”

  Fitz laughed, then shook his head. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”

  “Me either.”

  “You’ve never been one to do the usual thing.”

  Bright shrugged.

  “Do you remember the time you stood in front of Putnam’s Mercantile with the sign that said THIS BUSINESS UNFAIR TO WOMEN?”

  “Of course I remember it,” she said.

  It had been when Fitz was a teenager. O. P. Putnam had girlie magazines under the counter, which he sold on the sly to men and older boys. Bright found one under Fitz’s mattress, made him tell her where he got it, then marched downtown and demanded that O. P. sell her one. He refused; she returned with the sign. O. P. could either sell to everybody or nobody, she said, planting herself on the sidewalk just in front of the door. When people passed by and asked what the sign meant, she said, “Go ask Mr. Putnam.” It took perhaps thirty minutes, because O. P. was a stubborn man. But he came out finally with his hands up. And he went out of the girlie magazine business, at least as far as teenaged boys were concerned. Bright remembered it even now with a bit of satisfaction. She had cut a wide swath then too. But that had been a good while ago.

  Fitz gave the house another long look. “The house needs a coat of pain
t, Mama. And a new roof.”

  She pointed to the house next door. “Well, it’s not as bad as Buster’s. The roofing man fell clean through his roof around in the back.” She searched his face. “Do you think I’m going to seed, Fitz?”

  He scrunched up his mouth, considering it. “No, Mama, I don’t. A few days ago, I might have. But now …” He shrugged.

  Now. Yes, she thought, things had changed. And the fifty thousand dollars was the least of it. Bright leaned close to Fitz’s ear. “I’ve thought about you a great deal the past few days.”

  He stared at her for a moment. “Oh? In what way?”

  “Mistakes,” she said bluntly. “Mine.”

  Fitz’s mouth formed a big O of surprise. “Yours? What kind?”

  “I thought it had mostly to do with going to Washington. Or rather, not going. But I’m beginning to believe that was only part of it.” She paused a moment and then said, “You’ve always been very angry with your father, haven’t you.”

  She saw the flash of pain in his eyes then and he turned away from her. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Not here, not now. Then he looked back and said, “Yes.”

  “And with me.”

  He considered it. She could see the struggle there. Fitz was ever the good son, chary of giving offense. But he nodded slowly. “Maybe so.”

  “It’s been a hard thing for you, hasn’t it.”

  “Yes.” No argument there. She remembered Fitzhugh’s funeral. It had been Little Fitz who had been inconsolable. And after that, they had not had a great deal to say to each other. There was a good deal they should have spoken about. But he got on with his life, and she retreated into hers. A drifting away. History repeating itself.

  “Why did you go into politics, Fitz?” she asked him now.

  He pondered it for a moment. “I’m good at it,” he said. “And I got that from Papa. But I think in a way I was trying to find something I lost somewhere. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why I can’t figure out why I’ve made such a complete ass of myself. When I intended just the opposite.”

  “Don’t be too hard …”

  He nodded.

  She studied him. “We should have had this conversation a long time ago.”

  “Probably.”

  “I’m trying to figure out some things myself.”

  He nodded. They would talk. There was a good deal to say. Some of it would be difficult, but that made it all the more worth saying.

  Big Deal turned around in the front seat, grinned back at them. “You folks all right back there?” he yelled.

  She and Fitz stared at him; then Fitz grinned and gave him a thumbs-up. “Just fine, pardner. Just hold ’er in the road.”

  “Crowd’s a little thin right now,” Big Deal shouted. “Most folks are probably around on Bascombe.” He looked very hopeful. He did so want things to go well. Bright leaned over toward him. “It’ll be just fine, Francis. You’ll see.”

  “Yes ma’am.” He gave her a big smile.

  Then the band up ahead struck up a march. “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Bright gave Fitz’s arm a squeeze, remembering with a smile the night in the glittering ballroom at the White House. That had been very fine, something to treasure. Nothing, not all the mistakes before and after, could take that away.

  They could see the corner of Birdsong and Bascombe now, and yes, there was a good-sized knot of people on the left near corner, another on the far side in front of the Gulf station, some of them sitting on the hoods of cars. The color guard and Homer Sipsey’s patrol car and the high school band and the highway patrol car had already made the turn, and the dark blue Cadillac carrying Mayor Harley Gibbons was easing into the intersection. The tinted windows of Harley’s car were rolled up, and she could barely see the driver on the near side. Harley rode in air-conditioned comfort. Bright thought that only a mayor who had been in office as long as Harley, and probably one who was a banker too, could get away with riding in a parade in a Cadillac. She heard Hosanna’s voice: Big-Ikey. As Harley’s car cleared the intersection and headed up Bascombe, several kids edged off the curb into the street, peering back down the parade route toward them. A police officer herded them back.

  There was a sprinkling of people along the sidewalk on either side of the street here too. Fitz straightened, coming to life, waving and flashing his big sunshine smile. She watched his eyes, saw how he did it. They darted quickly from one onlooker to the next, fixing for just a split second on each individual face so that every single person could say later, “The governor looked right at me.” He nodded and waved, reaching out to them with his eyes and his hands and his smile, pulling them toward him. They seemed to lean forward. Remarkable.

  He turned suddenly, caught her watching him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Your father,” she said.

  “What?”

  “You looked exactly like him just now. He had a way of making you feel you were the only person in the world worth talking to.”

  Fitz lowered his hand then, looked directly at her, ignoring the people alongside the street. For just a moment, it seemed it was just the two of them there, surrounded by the grinding noise of the street sweeper and the whumping of the band up ahead. “I blew it,” he said.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said.

  “Yes, I do. You’re my mama. I could always tell you anything.”

  She felt tears spring to her eyes. “And you’re my boy.” She wanted to put her arm around him, draw him very close to her. But that would not do just here, just now.

  His face went very soft then, the way she remembered it when he was a small boy, when he would curl up next to her on the wicker love seat on the front porch on a summer night, just the two of them there with Roseann finally asleep inside after her nightly tantrum, filling the evening with their talk of things great and small, mostly small. Books read, ideas pondered, the thousand small incidents that made a day and accumulated into a life. It was in those quiet shared moments that Bright Birdsong believed most fervently that she had done the right thing by staying here, by giving him that time and this place to grow to maturity. And looking back on it, was that so wrong? There were those things, and others, that were fine and true about all their lives, going back to the beginning. If they were all lucky, there would be time enough to dwell on that too.

  “Yes.” He smiled now. “I’m your boy.”

  Big Deal turned around to them again just at that moment, breaking into their little world. “What’d I tell you!” he yelped. “Just look at ’em.”

  They were at the intersection—Birdsong and Bascombe. The meeting of this town’s two most famous names, she thought. If there was one piece of this town that belonged to her, to her and everything connected to her, this was it. As they began to turn the corner, she could see the people thick along both sides of the street here at the intersection, and on down Bascombe, more people lining the sidewalks, four and five deep, it appeared, with a huge crowd down around City Hall, midway the street. Big Deal gave two loud honks on the horn, and people in the crowd called back, yelling and waving. Up ahead, the band launched into another chorus of “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Then the street sweeper lumbered around the corner behind them and its roar echoed off the sides of the buildings, crashing around them like continuous rolling thunder. It was deafening.

  “Good heavens!” she called out to Fitz. “I didn’t know there were this many people in the whole town!”

  “There aren’t,” he shouted back with a grin. “Big Deal ran buses from all over the county.”

  It was a big, noisy, friendly crowd. These were Little Fitz Birdsong’s home folks, and regardless of the pickle he had gotten himself into, they were still with him. They held hand-lettered signs: GIVE ’em HELL, LITTLE FITZ and FOUR MORE YEARS!; and big blue and white printed campaign posters that said simply BIRDSONG. It was a sea of noise and color, and Bright felt her skin tingle. F
itz grabbed her right hand with his left and held it up high and the crowd screamed with delight. Bright smiled back at the spectators, waving to an occasional person she knew.

  They passed the first intersection on Bascombe, recognizable only by the gap in the buildings. The crowd was unbroken along the street, held in check by a wooden barricade guarded by a sheriff’s deputy who gave a little salute as the car passed.

  Then she spotted Buster Putnam, standing right in the front of the crowd on the corner outside Putnam’s Mercantile. Buster, wearing the flannel shirt and faded pants, but clean-shaven now, his hair slicked down. And right next to him, Gladys. Gladys?

  “Is that Gladys?” Fitz yelled into her ear.

  “The dog hasn’t ventured past the backyard in ten years,” she said incredulously. Good Lord! The aging beast could die of heatstroke out here on the street like this. And all these people. Gladys wasn’t used to people. But there she sat on her haunches next to Buster, head cocked quizzically, looking rather satisfied with herself. And then she thought, Perhaps no stranger for Gladys to be sitting there on the curb than it is for me to be sitting up here in this convertible.

  Fitz gave Buster a wave and Buster blew back a kiss to Bright. She blushed with embarrassment.

  Fitz leaned close to her again. “Has General Putnam come courting?”

  She looked at him sharply. “Buster Putnam’s too young for me.” Fitz threw his head back and laughed.

  They were nearing City Hall now, and the band had stopped there and re-formed on the opposite side of the street. In front of City Hall itself, just under the big banner that said WELCOME HOME, LITTLE FITZ, Big Deal and his committee had set up a platform with a microphone so Fitz could get out of the car and make a speech. There was a row of chairs at the rear of the platform where the dignitaries could sit, and Bright could see Harley Gibbons and the other bigwigs up there already. Then she spotted Holly Hardee and her Live Eye 5 cameraman at the front edge of the platform, edging now toward the car as it approached.

  She studied Fitz for a moment. What could he say to the crowd? No doubt a stem-winding, rip-roaring political speech full of fighting words. She had heard him give that kind a few times before, and in that he was more the master than his father had been. Congressman Fitzhugh Birdsong’s speeches had been full of gentle wit and calm wisdom, the kind you expected from a man who held the nation’s security and destiny in his hands, or at least wanted you to think he did. He could give a speech like that to the simplest of people and make them believe that they too had a hand in the nation’s security and destiny, that he had shared with them a vision handed straight from the fellows who signed the Constitution. Governors, on the other hand, weren’t security-and-destiny people. You expected them to do the mundane things like patch the roads and hire the teachers and put crooks in prison and pay old folks’ pensions and send in the National Guard when there was a disaster. And you were lucky if they didn’t steal you blind in the process. Fitz was a governor-type politician, and his speeches evoked the earthy business of everydayness—going to school and church, raising a family, holding a job. Governor Fitz Birdsong could make people feel like he was one of them, but one who had made it, at least for a moment. Bright remembered Hosanna talking about how people regarded God. Folks want God to be just like them, but cuter. It was a little bit like that with a successful politician. Fitz Birdsong and his father wore the mantle as if it had been made for them. Perhaps it had.