by Robert Inman
“No’m, I don’t think he’s able to sleep.”
“Well, I won’t be long,” she insisted. She felt like a supplicant.
Luther looked down at his feet and she could see a blood vessel rippling at his temple. Finally he shrugged. “All right, then. I’ll take you to him.”
She could feel the cold stares of the rest of them on her back as he led her around the side of the store to the house. They climbed the steps to the wide front porch and Luther knocked lightly on the door. After a moment Flavo appeared, blinking out into the sunlight. “Miz Bright Birdsong come to see you, Flavo,” Luther said.
There was a long pause and Bright was afraid for a moment that he might turn her away. Then he finally said, “Ahhhh, yes,” and pushed open the screen door. “Come in the house, Bright.”
“Thank you,” she said to Luther, then left him on the porch and stepped into the dim hallway and Flavo closed the screen behind her. She reached and took his hand and gripped it tightly. “Flavo, I don’t have the faintest idea what to say. There’s no right thing. So I just came.”
“That’s the truth, Bright. There’s no right thing to say.” There was an ancient weariness in his eyes and his voice and he stooped more than usual. They stood for a long moment in the hallway with the silence heavy between them. Then he shook himself and she released his hand. “But you were right to come,” he said. “Come on into the parlor and sit for a minute.”
“Is your daughter…”
“Sleeping,” he said. “We finally had to take her to the hospital early this morning. They gave her a shot to knock her out. She’s about half-crazy with it.”
He led the way into the parlor, showed her to a seat on the sofa. It was a neat room with lace curtains at the open windows, stirring faintly in the cat’s breath of breeze outside, solid old furniture, a large kerosene stove in one corner with a black flue that rose up and elbowed into the wall. A massive radio cabinet against one wall, no television set. She remembered Flavo saying one time that he disdained television because it gave people unreasonable expectations like Cadillacs and free sex. She sat now, composing herself on the sofa with her purse in her lap, and Flavo eased himself into a large chair across from her. There was an ashtray on the table next to the chair with a chewed stump of a cigar resting against its edge, and a photograph album, open to reveal pages of old yellowing pictures. Flavo crossed one bony leg painfully over the other. He looked near collapse. She wouldn’t stay long. “You ought to be sleeping yourself,” Bright said.
Flavo squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, then looked at her. “No, I don’t imagine I’ll sleep for a while yet.”
“Flavo, I’d go get him back if it were in my human power.”
“Well,” he said flatly, “you can’t do that.”
“No.”
He closed his eyes again and spoke into the darkness. “No way I could tell you what that boy meant to me, Bright. He was my second chance.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened his eyes, looked away from her at the open window. “I was hard on my own children. Prob’ly too hard.”
“They turned out fine,” Bright said. “They’ve all done well. Your mother would have been proud of them.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “But they don’t come back home much now, and when they do it don’t seem we’ve got much to say to each other.”
She thought of Little Fitz and Roseann. Especially Roseann. Is there a right way? Is it the lot of a parent to always be haunted? When you say to yourself, “I did the best I could,” and it turns out not to be enough, then what? And then she thought of Jimbo. Yes, a second chance there if she were wise enough, wiser than before. “I think,” she said, “I know a little of what you’re talking about.”
He gave her a curious look. “Yes, maybe you do. Anyhow, when Ancie and her husband split up and she and the boy moved back here with me it was like getting a fresh start. I told her right off I didn’t want to be that boy’s daddy. I wanted to be his granddaddy. And …” His voice trailed off and Bright looked down at her purse, giving him a little privacy.
They sat in silence for a while and then he took hold of himself and when he spoke again there was the cold, hard thing in his voice, the same thing she had heard on the riverbank early that morning. “We let you off too easy, Bright.”
She looked up at him, confused. “What are you talking about, Flavo?”
His eyes were bloodshot and angry and the white stubble of his whiskers stood out against the black of his sunken cheeks. She thought of the people out on the front porch of his store, the smoldering resentment she had felt radiating from them. Flavo has started something here, something that may be dangerous. Tread softly. “We should have caused some uproar, some pain,” he said. “Maybe even shed a little blood.”
And then she looked out the window and saw the white fading hulk of the old high school across the street, the one they had closed thirteen years before. “You mean the school business?”
“I mean the whole business. Booker T. and all the rest. But especially Booker T.”
“You think that was easy?” she said, her voice rising. “People sweated blood over that, Flavo.”
He ignored her. “You all thought that was all there was to it. Close down the nigger school and maybe they will shut up and leave us alone. And that” —he nodded slowly —“was exactly what we did.”
“Flavo, I think you’re dead wrong about that. I think you’re overwrought.”
“Damn right I am, Bright,” he said, his voice low. “I’m mad as hell. We didn’t change a thing.”
“You’re talking about the swimming pool?”
“The way people think.”
“But things have changed, Flavo,” she protested. Surely he had to concede that things weren’t the way they used to be, when the atmosphere of fear and hatred and suspicion was so thick you could cut it with a knife, when whites had hunkered down behind the barricades and blindly lobbed their defiance over the top. People had come a long way in a short time. She truly believed that. Not all the way, but a long way.
“What about yourself, Flavo? You’re on the town council. You’re living proof that things have changed. And look at this place.” She waved her hand in the direction of the window. “It has changed. And you’re the biggest reason.”
“Ahhhh,” he said, “but I’m part of the problem, Bright. I accuse myself. I’ve sat there for four years on the council voting on resolutions commending the high school band, purchase orders for new dump trucks. Back in the back room, a little compromise here and a little deal there to get something done. Get along by going along. No, I’m as guilty as anybody.”
“Nobody’s guilty, Flavo.”
“Yes!” He brought his fist down on the arm of the chair with a thump, startling her with his vehemence. She gave a little jump and she realized how on edge she was, sitting here in Flavo’s parlor with all that hostility out there on the front porch of his store and her visit of comfort and condolence gone all wrong.
She tried to keep her voice even. “Flavo, we did what you wanted thirteen years ago. You came to my house and sat in my parlor and said, ‘Let’s close Booker T. Washington.’ And I stuck my neck out. I stuck my husband’s neck out.”
“Yes.” He gave a short, mirthless laugh. “The only time Fitzhugh Birdsong’s neck was ever stuck out was when somebody did it for him. All he did was hunker down. Hell, Fitzhugh Birdsong didn’t retire from Congress, he cut and ran. But …” —he held his hands up, stopping her —“we all went along with going halfway. And now the young’uns, the black young’uns, don’t even know what it’s all about anymore. They go to the big high school, play in the band, join the Beta Club, eat in the same cafeteria as everybody else. On Friday nights they run up and down the football field while the white folks cheer. One of ’em even went off and played football for Bear Bryant and scored a touchdown on national television. So” —he shrugged —“you say the word strugg
le and they look at you like you’re crazy. What’s to struggle for?”
“All right,” she said quietly, “so it’s not over. But it’s not all still to do, either.”
“Maybe the hardest part is.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then you’re fooling yourself, Bright Birdsong. It’s all papered over with laws and court orders. But they don’t mean a damn thing if a little black boy has to go swimming in the river because the white folks don’t want him in their pool. I stood on that riverbank early this morning and I said to myself, ‘Flavo Richardson, you are the worst kind of fool because you have fooled yourself.’ ”
“And you think some pain and some blood would undo it?”
“No, it won’t undo it, Bright,” he snapped. “But it might wake everybody up.”
“You’re wrong,” she said stubbornly, her own anger growing. “There are good people in this town and they’ve done the right thing, by and large. And for you to sit there and say …” She threw up her hands. Then she took a good grip on her purse and stood up. “I came here to say I’m sorry, Flavo.”
Flavo watched her for a moment and then he folded his hands in his lap. “If you’re sorry, then do something,” he said.
“What?”
“Integrate the swimming pool.”
“The swimming pool is already integrated,” she said.
“No, it’s not. White chillun and black chillun don’t swim in it together.”
“They could …,” she started, and then she hung fire. “All right. The season ticket business. But you could have bought that boy a season ticket. You could have bought him a hundred season tickets. You’ve probably got more money than most white people in this town.”
“Yes, I could, Bright. But what’s the use buying a boy a season ticket when his friends can’t have one?”
“Then you could have bought them all season tickets.”
“You miss the point,” he shot back. “It’s not season tickets. It’s not even the swimming pool, Bright. It’s what it all stands for. It’s hate.”
“People here don’t hate, Flavo. Not any more. There’s still some ignorance and a little fear, I imagine. But not hate.”
Flavo shook his head. “How would you know, Bright? You’ve been hidden away in that house of yours for eight years.”
“Well, you haven’t been,” she said hotly. “You’re on the council. Do something!”
“No, like I said, I’ve failed. Now it’s your turn. I want you to do it.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because you’re Dorsey Bascombe’s daughter.”
“This has nothing to do with my father!”
“This has everything to do with your father. He started it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dorsey Bascombe kept us, Bright. Long years ago, he was the man. Need a job? Go see Mr. Dorsey. Young’un sick? Mr. Dorsey fetch the doctor. Need the creek unstopped so the raw sewage’ll float on down to the river instead of stinking up the Quarter? Shuffle over to Mr. Dorsey with yo’ hat in yo’ hand and see what he can do. ‘Cause he the man.’ And you” —he stabbed the air with his finger —“you made this town a shrine to him.”
“I did not!”
Flavo’s eyes flashed. “Then why did you stay, Bright? Why didn’t you go to Washington with Fitzhugh? He begged you, Bright! I know that. But no, you stayed here and kept your fingers in everything. Good deeds, good intentions. Just like Dorsey Bascombe would have done if he hadn’t —“
“Stop!” she shouted, close to tears now. “Don’t you dare!”
She hovered over him, rage gripping her, and for the first time he softened, and his face went slack and he slumped back in the chair.
“I went too far,” he said softly. “I’m sorry I did that.”
She sat down heavily on the sofa and tried to catch her breath, fearful of the pounding of her heart, a tired old heart in a tired old body, inflamed now by this maddening man.
It took a while, but she finally calmed herself, and then she opened her purse and pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it.
“Friends don’t do things like that,” she said.
“I know,” Flavo said quietly. “But I speak the truth, and you know it.”
Bright stuffed the handkerchief back in her purse and closed it with a snap. “So. What do you want?”
“Just what I said. I want that swimming pool integrated.”
“All right,” she said. “I suppose you’ve heard by now about my great good fortune at the Dixie Vittles last night.”
“Yes, the word’s gotten around.”
“Fifty thousand dollars. When I get the money, I’ll go to the swimming pool and buy a season ticket for every black child in this town. And then I’ll put the rest in the bank and we’ll keep doing it every year until it runs out.”
Flavo shook his head. “That’s no answer, Bright. That’s just papering over again. I want change, not paper.”
“And how do you think I’m going to do that?”
“You’ll think of something. You’re a smart woman.”
She stood again, determined to go now. “And what will you do if something doesn’t come along?”
“I will cause this town some pain,” Flavo Richardson said without blinking an eye.
“Why do you always come to me to do your dirty work?”
“Like I said. You’re Dorsey Bascombe’s daughter. You chose to stay here in his town. You have to live with the choice. The man casts a long shadow, don’t he.”
She stood for a long moment looking down at him, resenting him, letting her anger feed on itself, thinking back to the battle over the school thirteen years before. Finally, she became aware again of the morning outside, the coming and going of traffic in front of Flavo’s store, cars in the yard, voices. She thought about the crowd of people out in front of the store, the hostility. You could make a mob out of them if you said just the right things. Or just the wrong things. She felt very tired now and she wanted to go home. She had intended to come here and console an old friend. She hadn’t wanted this.
“Flavo, go to bed. Get some rest.”
He nodded.
“When is the funeral?”
“Thursday,” he said. “Thursday morning.”
“I’ll be there. I’ll see that Fitz is there.”
“I don’t want him to come if it’s politics,” Flavo said bluntly.
“He’ll be there because it’s the right thing to do,” Bright said.
“If the swimming pool business isn’t resolved by then,” he said, “don’t either of you bother.”
And with that, she turned and left, stunned and hurt and angry, blinded by it, so that she was halfway home in her old Plymouth before she came to herself. “Damn you!” she cried out, thumping her hand against the steering wheel. “Damn, damn!” And then she wondered whom she was damning. And beyond that, what in the name of God she was going to do.
13
Harley Gibbons was sitting on Bright’s front porch when she got home, his automobile parked at the curb in front. He stood as she climbed the steps. “Morning,” he called out.
Harley was tall and spare, the kind of man you wanted for a banker. Bright would have been suspicious of a fat banker. But Harley had the look of a man who took home only what he needed from the bank, even a family-owned bank. People trusted Harley with their money and their private affairs. He would not take advantage of you or gossip about you. And they trusted him enough to keep electing him mayor. A fat banker couldn’t have been elected mayor, she thought.
“Morning yourself,” she answered. “What brings you out of the air-conditioned comfort of the Commercial Bank on a warm June day?”
Harley gave her a big banker’s smile as he extended his hand. “Just passing by, and thought I’d drop by and see how you were doing,” he said.
“Just passing by,” she repeated. “Well, sit down for a spell before you pass on someplac
e else, Harley. Can I get you a glass of iced tea?”
“Hmmm. Yes, Bright. That sounds good. Some iced tea would be right nice.”
She left him sitting in one of the wicker chairs and returned in a moment with two glasses of tea, a sprig of mint peeking from the top of each, picked from the small patch by the back steps. She handed him a glass and sat down in the other chair and they sipped their tea for a moment and studied the morning, the occasional cars passing on Birdsong Boulevard, a woman with a double armload of groceries struggling through the door of the Dixie Vittles across the street while a young child hauled hard on her dress. Bright thought about Flavo Richardson and the swimming pool, started to say something, thought better of it. Not just yet.
“Hmmm,’ Harley said after a moment, taking a sip and pursing his lips, “the tea has an unusual bite to it. I never tasted any iced tea exactly like this before.”
Yes, Bright thought, come to think of it, the tea was just a trifle different. “It must be the mint,” she said. “New growth. It may be a little stronger this time of the year. I can get you another glass if you like. Without the mint.”
“Oh, no,” he hastened. “It’s real good, mind you. Just a bit unusual.” He took a big gulp, held it in his mouth for an instant, swallowed. They sat a moment longer, and Harley crossed and uncrossed his long legs and then said, “Well, we sure could use some rain.”
“Yes.” Bright nodded. “I suppose so, Harley.”
“It’s been a couple of weeks, I think.”
“At least that.”
“It’s just too early in the summer to be having a dry spell.” Harley nodded emphatically. “It makes folks a little skittish. Reminds folks of the drought two years ago. Lots of farmers went out of business then. Tough on farmers, tough on bankers.”
“Well,” Bright said, “it seemed like an awfully wet spring to me. Surely a couple of dry weeks won’t drive us to ruin.”
“No,” he said, “I suppose not. But the way folks feel is about as important as the way things are. Psychology, you know. Psychology has a lot to do with things.”
“Yes,” she said, “folks put a lot of store by psychology.”
