Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  “You prob’ly got too much sense to go up in an aeroplane,” the man said, “but you also prob’ly the only man here with two bucks in his pocket.” The crowd laughed at that.

  “Hmmmph,” Hosanna grumbled at Dorsey’s elbow. “Ain’t every man that’s got two dollars also got a lick of sense.” And that got another laugh.

  “Well,” Ollie Doubleday said, “it ain’t even going to cost you that, Mayor Bascombe. Every place I land, the mayor gets a free ride. I figure if I can get the mayor up, it’s good for business.”

  Bright studied Ollie’s face. He had a big wide breezy smile, and though he was young, he had a lot of tiny wrinkles around his eyes, probably from being up there in the air so much, so close to the sun. She wondered what he saw up there. She had to see for herself. She tugged on her father’s hand. “How about me?”

  Dorsey gave her a long look. “You wouldn’t be afraid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Shoot,” Ollie said, “I’ve had lots of kids up in my plane. Long as they sit still and don’t try to climb over the side while we’re in the air, they’re okay. You ain’t predisposed to lose your cookies, are you, young lady?”

  “Do what?”

  “Throw up.”

  “No,” Bright said, “as long as I don’t eat pimento cheese.”

  “Can she sit in my lap?” Dorsey asked.

  Ollie looked her up and down. “How much you weigh?”

  “Twenty pounds,” Bright said quickly, trying to make herself look small.

  “Oh, I imagine you’re a tad more than that,” Ollie laughed, “but I reckon the two of you together won’t be too much.”

  “Great God, Mr. Dorsey!” Hosanna exploded. “For sure, you and that child ain’t gonna go tootin’ off in THAT!” She flung a hand in the direction of the plane. “Y’all gone fall out the sky and then they gone have to bury me and Miz Elise from grief.”

  Bright could see the genuine fear in Hosanna’s eyes. She really, truly did care about them. Bright threw her arms around Hosanna’s neck and hugged her tightly. “We’ll be all right,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you worry. My papa will take care of me.”

  “Hosanna, why don’t you go on back to the house,” Dorsey said. “You’ll catch your death of cold out here. But let’s don’t say anything to Miz Elise just yet. Let me tell her about it when we get back.”

  Hosanna thrust her chin out. “I’m stayin’ right HERE,” she said, planting herself defiantly. “You and that child fall outta that thing, I’m gonna be here to catch you.”

  Dorsey smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “All right. That’s fine.” And then Ollie helped them climb up the side of the plane into the rear seat, first Dorsey and then Bright. He strapped them in, adjusting the harness to go around both their bodies. He moved the crowd back a good distance and then went around to the front of the plane and hauled down hard on the propeller several times and jumped back as the engine finally caught and roared to life and the propeller spun in a silvery circle, like one of the big saws at Dorsey’s sawmill. Ollie climbed into the front seat, fastened his harness, and pulled on the leather helmet and goggles. Then he turned around to Dorsey and Bright and gave them a thumbs-up and a big Oklahoma grin. They gave him a thumbs-up back and he gave the plane some gas and it eased forward. They all waved briefly to the crowd and everybody waved back except Hosanna, who stood with her arms crossed over her bosom, hugging herself, glaring at them. Foolishness and nonsense. A bullfrog with wings. Dorsey held tightly to Bright as the plane headed down the length of the pasture, bouncing roughly at first and then smoothing out as it picked up speed, easing gingerly off the ground and then lifting with a breathtaking swoop into the air as it roared over the scattering knot of cows down at the other end. There would be sour milk in Abner Carlisle’s pail tonight, Bright thought.

  The flight must have lasted no more than fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours up there circling the town, time suspended. It was terribly cold and the wind stung her face and sent shivers down inside her coat, but Dorsey’s strong arms around her made Bright feel safe and secure. The awesome roar of the engine made conversation impossible, so they flew in silence, leaning first over one side and then the other as the plane banked and dipped, Dorsey pointing out one landmark after another.

  For the first time, she got a sense of the town as a whole, the way it fit together down below them, everything in plain view with tree limbs still bare from winter—the broad main street that ran for several blocks through the heart of the town, opening up onto the courthouse square, with tiny people on the sidewalks gawking up at them and waving; the squat red brick schoolhouse where she would be an object of powerful curiosity and envy on Monday; their house nestled on its patch of brown grass like a white laying hen, the pecan trees out back under which toadstools would soon be growing as the ground warmed and gave birth. And at the edge of the town, next to the river, the sprawling expanse of Dorsey Bascombe’s lumberyard with its toothpick stacks of drying boards making neat rows next to the railhead, the scattering of tin-roofed sheds that covered the big saws, the growing mound of sawdust a tan tepee at the end of the long chute that carried the sawdust from the mill, and a truck creeping onto the grounds with a load of lumber like an insect dragging a captured foe. The river ran brown and smooth in a great bend at the perimeter of the town, intersected by the single bridge at the end of Claxton Street and the railroad trestle near the lumberyard. From up here she could see how the low hills beyond the town on either side formed the valley through which the river flowed. And on every side, as far as you could see, the green-gray of the forest, pine and hardwood, encircling it all, nestling the town in its bosom. So that’s what it is, she thought. My town. She thought then that Ollie Doubleday, up there in the front seat, was surely wrong. This was no piddly place, her town. It grew up out of the land like a garden, neatly tended rows of living things nourished by the rich brown soil and the river. You could see it all from up here, every street and building and tree, all of a piece. It was small enough to make sense, with a beginning and an end and the rest of the world out there beyond if you cared to venture into it. But she could not imagine that would ever be necessary. This down below her seemed quite enough for anybody to ever want. It fit, like a good, well-worn shoe, and it was anything but piddly.

  And then she heard the music—the wind playing harplike through the thin wires that held the two wings of the plane together, the deep steady bass of the engine, the air rushing past her ears like a thousand woodwinds in unison. She hummed down deep inside herself, becoming part of the lovely, perfect symphony. Her mind stretched out beyond the fragile singing aeroplane into the thin air, up and up past the scudding clouds, and she heard then the tiny crystal notes of her mother’s piano and the soft mellow tones of her father’s trombone. This is where it all comes from, she thought, up here where God lives. She twisted in her father’s lap and looked up into his face. He looked enraptured, mesmerized by the spectacle that sprawled below them, the lines of his face deeper but softer. He smiled and nodded. He feels it too, she thought—the sense of the place, the powerful allure of the land and all that springs from it, the thing that takes him to the woods each morning in his tall leather boots. They were cut from the same bolt of cloth, Dorsey Bascombe and his eight-year-old daughter, up here in this frail craft held aloft by faith. She leaned back against him and he gave her a squeeze and she closed her eyes, feeling her face go numb from the cold, smelling the rich smell of canvas and wood and engine exhaust, listening to the music, hearing after a moment the slight change in pitch in the plane’s engine as Ollie began to bring it gently down to earth again.

  They bumped down softly onto the pasture and rolled to a stop near the crowd, which had grown much larger now. Bright spotted friends—Xuripha Hardwicke for one, Harley Gibbons for another, and just in front of Harley, little Buster Putnam with one overall strap undone and hanging down about his waist. She waved to them and they gawked back at
her, stunned by her incredible great fortune. Ollie left the engine running and stood up in his seat, reaching back to undo the harness, lifting Bright out of the rear seat and handing her to a man waiting below on the ground.

  Then a strange thing happened. Flavo Richardson—small, silent Flavo—slipped free from Hosanna’s grip and dashed up to the plane. “How ’bout me?” he yelled up at them. “How ’bout me?”

  They all stared at Flavo, and a gale of laughter swept through the crowd. Dorsey looked down at Flavo, and he laughed too, a great booming laugh. Flavo did not. He stood planted there beside the plane as if he had sprung up through the sod, a solemn black sprout announcing spring. And it was then that Bright truly took notice of Flavo for the first time, saw how resolutely he occupied his own small piece of earth with a miniature dignity. Flavo looked at Bright Bascombe and their eyes met and he saw that she did not laugh, either. There was a brief exchange of some kind—she could not have said what it meant or even in which language it was transmitted. And then Hosanna was there, grabbing Flavo by the arm, pulling him back. “Law, child, you come away from here. Stay outen the white folks’ bidness!” And Bright watched their backs as Hosanna led Flavo away, through the parting crowd, through their laughter. Flavo did not look back.

  For them all, the day became something of a benchmark, the day when the future arrived in their small town. For Bright, there was something quite beyond the day and the event, something she realized as she sat in the parlor late in the afternoon, describing the adventure in breathless tones to her astonished mother. Elise listened earnestly, hands in lap and brow furrowed in concentration. But Bright realized that she could not understand, not really, what it was like to break free, to soar in a tiny fragile craft just below the place where God lived, to hear music such as Bright had heard. Bright had gone where her mother would never think of going, held in her father’s strong arms. In a way she only vaguely understood, she sensed that she was beginning the long journey out of childhood and leaving her mother behind.

  >

  The road from town followed the river for several miles after it crossed the bridge at the foot of Claxton Street, and then curved away to the northeast. Her father told her that if you stayed on the road long enough, it would take you to Columbus, thirty-five miles away, a town so big that it had a full-time policeman instead of a constable, and a drugstore with a soda fountain where you could sit at a small round table under a paddle fan in the summer months and eat real ice cream in a crystal dish, served up by a young man in a white apron. Dorsey said that someday, their own town would have a policeman and a soda fountain. Dorsey would see to that, as he saw to a great deal. When Dorsey Bascombe spoke of things like policemen and soda fountains, paved streets and manufacturing plants, you believed him, because Dorsey was a man who, by the force of his character, made things happen. That was the main reason people had been glad to see him elected mayor.

  For now, though, there was Columbus—something to aspire to. It was the county seat of the next county, and thus had a courthouse like their own where Dorsey went periodically to record transactions as he bought land and timber rights for his expanding business. It took all day to get to Columbus and back, and if you wanted to go on beyond Columbus to the state capital, it meant an overnight journey. That was beyond comprehension, Bright thought, sleeping in someone else’s bed. Dorsey had promised to take Bright to Columbus on her thirteenth birthday, because she would be a grown-up young lady then.

  Now, on the last Saturday in March, Bright had no idea where they were going as they headed across the bridge in the early morning in Dorsey’s automobile, chugging along the hard-packed clay road toward what Dorsey had told her was a surprise. For now, she thought, a surprise was better than a trip to Columbus, which would be no surprise at all because she already knew all about Columbus.

  The early morning air was chill and damp and Bright was bundled in a blanket in the seat next to her father, her teeth chattering from the cold and from the bouncing of the car as it jarred along the ruts and potholes, made worse by the winter just past. She could see the occasional glint of early sun off the river through the bare trees to their left. The trees were beginning to show the faintest hint of green, and if you looked closely, you could see the buds beginning to break through. In another week or so, they would blush with growth as April yawned and waked itself in the glow of new warmth.

  They had left the isinglass side curtains of the motorcar rolled up on their metal rods. They were practically useless. They did little to keep out the drafts and only served to trap the noxious smell of engine fumes in the passenger compartment. Besides, this way they could see the world better. This way, Bright thought, perhaps she could spot the surprise before they were upon it.

  A mile or so out of town, the radiator boiled over and steam spurted from under the hood with a hiss. Dorsey brought the car to a bouncing stop at the edge of the road.

  “Old horse is lame again!” Bright cried.

  “Reckon we ought to shoot him?” Dorsey pulled an imaginary pistol from the broad belt of his coat.

  “No, let’s fix him up and see if he’ll get us on down the road.”

  They climbed out of the car and Dorsey raised the hood and they surveyed the smoking radiator. “The fellow that laid out this road alongside the river must have had a vision about radiators,” Dorsey said. He got a bucket out of the compartment in the back of the car and while Bright waited, he struggled through the underbrush to the river and got a bucketful of water.

  “Don’t you want to stay in the car?” he asked as he climbed back up the bank.

  “It’s warmer out here,” Bright said. She looked up at the clear sky, the early sun climbing above the trees to their right.

  They sat on the running board, waiting for the radiator to cool down before they poured the water in, and Dorsey put his arm around Bright and drew her close to keep her warm. She nestled in the crook of his arm, cheek against the rough fabric of his coat, feeling like a small animal burrowing into warm earth.

  “One of these days, somebody will invent a radiator that doesn’t boil over,” Dorsey said.

  “Maybe somebody will invent a road with no ruts,” Bright said, massaging her jaw.

  “Oh, they’ve got those already. It’s called macadam. Black stuff. Hard as a rock. It makes a nice, smooth surface and no ruts.”

  “Do they have macadam in Columbus?” Bright asked.

  “No, not yet, but they will have before long. Lots of streets in places like Nashville and Atlanta and New Orleans have macadam already. One of these days, you’ll see macadam everywhere. And then folks will get soft and lazy because they won’t get any exercise fixing cars that fall apart from bouncing over ruts and potholes.”

  “Will this road have macadam on it?” She tried to imagine a ribbon of black stuff all the way to Columbus.

  “Of course.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I can see the future,” Dorsey said simply.

  She looked up at him curiously. “How do you do that?”

  “Nothing hard about it. You just think about the way you’d like things to be, and then you start working to make them that way, and that’s the future. One day, every street in this town”—he waved in the general direction of town—“will be paved with macadam. I’ll see to that.”

  “Because you’re the mayor,” she said.

  “Not just because I’m the mayor. Because I can see the future. What I have to do as mayor is help other people see the future, so they’ll help me work toward it. That’s what progress is all about. Getting other folks to see the future the way you do.” He leaned back against the side of the car, ruminating. “Back some time ago, I went to the bank and told Pegram Gibbons I wanted to borrow some money to buy a truck. Pegram said, ‘What for?’ And I said, ‘To haul lumber out of the woods.’ And Pegram said, ‘What’s wrong with mules?’ I could see I wasn’t making much progress with Pegram, so I painted him a word pictu
re of what it would be like using trucks instead of mules to haul logs, how much faster and more efficient it would be and how much more money I could make. I kept talking until I got Pegram to see the future with me, and then he lent me the money. That’s what you have to do.”

  Dorsey released her from the curve of his arm, got up and walked around to the front of the car and studied the radiator for a moment.

  “Are you the only one who sees the future?” Bright asked.

  He looked around the edge of the car and smiled at her. “Lord, no. Anybody can see the future if they learn how to look for it. It’s just a way of thinking about things.” He glanced over toward the river. “Take the fellow who thought about damming up the river downstream a few years ago so we could have electricity. There wasn’t a soul in these parts with an electric light bulb. Lots of ’em were probably like Pegram Gibbons. Probably said, ‘What’s wrong with oil lamps?’ But this fellow could see the day when lots of people would have electricity. So he convinced other folks to build the dam.”

  Bright got up and walked around to the front of the car and stood next to him. “You see the future like I hear music,” she said.

  “Do what?”

  She tapped her head. “Up here. I hear music all the time. Some of it is Mama’s music, and yours. But some of it I never heard before.”

  Dorsey nodded. “It’s the same thing. Music that nobody has written down yet. That’s the future. Once you write it down, that’s history.”

  “I heard music up there in the aeroplane,” she said.

  “And I saw the future.” Dorsey swept his arm in a big circle. “All this land around here, I saw it the way it will be, with houses and stores and schools and churches on it, and all the streets paved with macadam, and boats on the river taking lumber downstream all the way to the Gulf. A big, wide river with dams all along it making electricity and locks to let the boats through. That’s what I see up here.” Dorsey tapped his own head. “In my mind’s eye.”