Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  “She’s at the beach. She and Rupert.”

  “Rupert, huh? Well, when she comes back to pick you up, tell her to come over and see Roger at the swimming pool.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Roger Sipsey,” Bright said.

  “Yes ma’am.”

  Bright recognized him now. The thinning hair had once been a jet-black, slicked-down ducktail. Roger and Roseann had dated off and on in high school. Everyone Roseann dated, she dated off and on. Roger Sipsey had been more patient than most, but he eventually gave up like the rest.

  “Well, it’s nice to see you after all this time.” Bright placed her purse on the counter between them. “I’d like to bring Jimbo over to swim while he’s here this week, but he doesn’t have a season ticket. Could you explain that business to me?”

  “Well, it’s all right here,” Roger said, indicating a sign tacked to the wall next to him. It read:

  SEASON TICKETS ONLY

  INDIVIDUAL $50

  FAMILY $100

  “But I suppose we can make an exception for Jimbo.”

  “An exception?” Bright felt her eyebrows shoot up.

  “Sure. We’ll just charge him fifty cents. Since he’s from out of town and only gonna be here a few days, it’ll be all right.”

  “Hmmmm. Do you make many exceptions?”

  He gave her an odd look and then he said, “No ma’am. Not hardly any at all.”

  “How long have you had this policy?”

  “Oh, a good while, I reckon. I’ve been pool manager now for five years. It goes back before that.”

  “Do you know why, Roger?”

  “No ma’am,” he said. “I just run the pool. In the summers, that is. Rest of the year, I teach vocational education at the high school.”

  “I see.”

  “Y’all gonna swim today?”

  “No,” Bright said, “but we’ll be back.”

  She turned to go and then Roger Sipsey said, “Anytime. And by the way, Miz Bright, when you talk to Little Fitz, you tell him folks down here are behind him. One hundred percent.”

  “He’ll be here Thursday,” Bright said. “You can tell him yourself.”

  “Yes ma’am. I’ll do that.”

  >

  Heads turned when she and Jimbo walked into the town council meeting room a few minutes after seven o’clock. The meeting had already started. Harley Gibbons, seated at one end of the long rectangular council table in the middle of the room, gave her a curious look and a little wave. The others looked up, but didn’t pay her much attention. A window air conditioner throbbed fitfully at one side of the room and droplets of condensation fell ploink-ploink into a metal bucket underneath the unit. The room looked a little down at the heels, she thought, with dingy beige walls and a crack that ran the length of the ceiling. She hadn’t been here in a long time. She didn’t remember it looking this way.

  There wasn’t much of a crowd tonight, just the council members seated around the table and Ortho Noblett alone in the row of chairs next to the wall with his pad and pencil, scribbling notes for the newspaper. Bright remembered council meetings of the past when the room had been packed and the crowd overflowed into the hallway outside and down the stairs. Bright and Jimbo took seats next to Ortho and he leaned over and whispered, “Understand we got big doings tomorrow.”

  “What?” she whispered back.

  “At the Dixie Vittles.”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Who’s your young friend here?” Ortho asked.

  “My grandson. Jimbo.”

  “Well, bring him along. We’ll get his picture in the paper.”

  Ortho went back to his writing while the council meeting droned on and Bright took stock of the men sitting around the table, the three members of the council who were there. One seat was empty tonight. Flavo’s. Bright knew these men as passing acquaintances, saw their photographs frequently in Ortho Noblett’s paper. But she didn’t know them in the way she had known councilmen in the past when she had been a regular here, when she had come and spoken her mind on one thing or another —the library, the hospital, the schools, recreation, street maintenance. She had known those men as the town’s leading citizens, and she had known what they were apt to do in a given situation. She could call them on the telephone or go by their place of business and reason things out in advance, so that when she got to a council meeting and had her say, she knew with some certainty how the vote would come out. But these men. All but strangers. Buck Stewart ran a barbershop and kept a penny-a-point pinochle game going in the back room. Cicero Parsons called himself a contractor, but what he did was little more than carpentry —additions and renovations. Clyde Lee Lovett was the only one who was under fifty and the only one here besides Harley who was wearing a tie tonight. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt and a blue-and-white-striped tie and a plastic holder in his shirt pocket full of ballpoint pens. And gold-rimmed glasses. Clyde Lee didn’t even work here, for goodness’ sake. He drove every day to Columbus, where he was personnel manager for some sort of factory. And there was Harley, of course. Harley looked out of place, she thought, among these people.

  They were talking about building a concession stand for the high school football stadium.

  Jimbo tugged on her sleeve. “What are they doing, Mama Bright?”

  “Spending money,” she whispered in his ear.

  “Whose money?”

  “Ours.”

  The discussion around the council table was desultory, mired in detail. Cicero Parsons seemed to have appointed himself resident expert on construction, and a great deal of the talk dealt with joists and studs. Then they moved on to wider issues. How big would the concession stand be? No, that was too small. You needed to get five members of the Band Boosters Club behind the counter at a time to serve hot dogs and Cokes, take money and make change. Five? No, that was too big. You’d end up with a concession stand that was bigger than the press box, and that wouldn’t look right. So what? There wasn’t anybody in the press box except a fellow from the radio station and the PA announcer. Ortho Noblett spoke up and said he didn’t need room in the press box because he stayed down on the sidelines, where he could take better pictures. But he sure did hope they’d build a good-sized concession stand so you didn’t have to wait so long in line for a hot dog and a soft drink at halftime, because he had to be back on the sidelines when the second half started. Then, somebody suggested, why didn’t they paint the concession stand a different color from the press box so that you weren’t so prone to make comparisons? What color? Well, how about green. Like the grass. A big green concession stand wouldn’t be all that conspicuous. Harley Gibbons doodled on the back of a manila folder with a pencil. Once, he looked over at Bright and rolled his eyes a bit.

  Jimbo tugged on her sleeve and she leaned down so he could whisper in her ear. “Can we go now?”

  “No, not yet,” she whispered back.

  “When?”

  “In just a little while.”

  “How long?”

  Clyde Lee Lovett turned around in his seat and looked at them. He didn’t say anything, just looked. Clyde Lee looked like he didn’t take to people whispering behind his back at council meetings. Bright looked straight back at him and he turned around again to the table. “Not long,” she whispered to Jimbo. “Why didn’t you bring a book?”

  “I didn’t think it would take this long.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “I’m bored.”

  “I’m bored too,” she said, just loud enough for Clyde Lee Lovett to hear. But this time he didn’t turn around.

  On and on it went and Bright, who had entered the room full of purpose, felt the vitality drain from her and puddle on the floor. It was like wading through molasses, listening to these men. Bright looked over at Jimbo. He was slumped in his chair now, eyes glazed and heavy. She thought she probably should get up and take him home and then come back. But by then the council might have concluded its business
and closed shop for the night, and they wouldn’t meet again for another week. She couldn’t wait that long.

  The concession stand business finally concluded with a motion to appoint a committee to study the matter and report back within a month. And it was ten o’clock before the council stumbled to the end of its agenda by fits and starts. Ortho was nodding off in the chair next to Bright, his thick-leaded pencil making a scraggly slash down the page of his pad from the last word he had written.

  Harley Gibbons closed the manila folder in front of him and looked over at Bright. “Before we adjourn,” Harley said, “I think we should acknowledge the presence of Mrs. Bright Birdsong, the daughter of a former and very distinguished mayor of our community. And the young man, I believe, is Bright’s grandson.” The council members all turned and looked at her and nodded.

  “Good to see you, Bright,” Buck Stewart said.

  Bright stood up. “I’d like to say a word to the council,” she said.

  Harley’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”

  “You used to have an item on the agenda called Comments from Citizens. The last item, I believe.”

  “We ain’t had a citizen want to speak in a good while,” Cicero Parsons said. “We figured everybody thought everything was fine.” That brought a little round of polite laughter.

  Clyde Lee Lovett said, trying to be very pleasant about it, “We do accept comments in writing. A week in advance.”

  “No, I’d like to speak out loud right here and now,” Bright said firmly.

  “It’s getting pretty late …,” Buck Stewart whined.

  But then Harley leaned across the table and spoke up, his voice good and strong. “Gentlemen, I move we suspend the rules of the council and let Mrs. Birdsong speak.” His gaze swept the table and then he quickly said, “Without objection it is so ordered. Bright, the floor is yours.” He sat back in his chair and the rest of them shifted around in their seats while Bright moved around to the other end of the table so they all could see her without craning their necks. Ortho was wide awake now, pencil poised above pad, and Jimbo was sitting up straight in his chair, watching her.

  “It’s about the swimming pool,” she said. “ We have a public swimming pool in this community but the public can’t use it. Not all of the public.”

  “Of course they can,” Buck Stewart piped up, but then Harley cut him off. “Buck, let’s hear Bright out.” Harley was looking straight at her now. He had figured out what was up and she could tell he didn’t like it. Some old mischief here.

  Bright plowed on. “The rule says you have to have a season ticket. Fifty dollars for an individual, a hundred for a family. That alone is ludicrous. And I happen to know that exceptions are made to the rule.” She took a deep breath. “The bottom line is, black children can’t swim in the public pool.”

  “Of course they can,” Buck Stewart chimed in again. “All they have to do is buy a season ticket.”

  Bright stared at him. “How many black children do you know who can afford a fifty-dollar swimming pool ticket?”

  An awkward silence settled over the room, except for the ploink-ploink of the air conditioner and the faint scratching of Ortho’s pencil. She wondered if Ortho would put this in the paper in his account of the council meeting. Ortho didn’t always put everything he saw or heard in the paper.

  “Bright,” Harley said gently, sitting up straight now with his elbows on the table, “the policy isn’t meant to exclude anybody. It’s designed to give us an idea of how much money we’ll have to operate on at the start of each summer so we can budget properly.”

  “Of course,” Clyde Lee Lovett said. “You can’t just run a swimming pool willy-nilly. You’ve got to pay Roger Sipsey’s salary and hire lifeguards and buy chlorine and so forth.”

  “And lounge chairs,” Cicero Parsons said. “We had to replace every one of them lounge chairs this year. Do you know how much lounge chairs cost? Good ones?”

  “No,” Bright said, “and I don’t want to know. I don’t give two hoots about lounge chairs, Cicero. I know this” —she pointed at the empty chair —“the grandson of one of your fellow council members drowned in the river last night because he and his friends don’t have season passes to the swimming pool. And they don’t have lounge chairs and lifeguards at the river.” She tried to keep her voice steady but it was rising now, like the hairs on the back of her neck. “Now what you good gentlemen need to do, before Flavo Richardson comes back here, is do away with that silly rule. It’s unfair and it’s unconscionable.”

  They all just sat there and stared at her. Then Clyde Lee Lovett took one of the ballpoint pens out of his pocket and looked at it, clicked it a couple of times, stuck it back in the holder. Cicero Parsons looked down at his lap, coughed, ran his hand through his thinning hair. And finally Buck Stewart said, “Well, we ain’t gonna do that.”

  And they wouldn’t, she could see that plainly. They were pigheaded men. And she had to assume that at some point in the past they had reasoned themselves into a corner where prejudice masqueraded as logic. They were a motley collection of nobodies and upstarts. All except Harley Gibbons. “Harley …”

  Harley ducked his head, opened the manila folder in front of him, closed it again. And then she saw very clearly how it was with Harley, with this council, indeed with this town.

  “Dolts,” she said, and then she reached for Jimbo’s hand and he scrambled out of his chair and took her hand and she fairly pulled him out the door, leaving the council members slack-jawed behind them.

  Harley Gibbons caught up with them before they had turned the corner at Putnam’s Mercantile. “Bright!” he called, and she stopped and looked back and saw him walking fast, the street lamps casting long shadows, black on amber, as he strode toward them, his manila folder under his arm. “Bright, wait!” He was a little winded by the time he reached them and he stopped and stood there for a moment on the corner, catching his breath. “Why did you do that?” he asked finally.

  She looked past him at City Hall halfway down the block, saw the light go off in the council chamber upstairs. “Harley,” she said, “there’s going to be trouble.”

  Jimbo stood next to her, looking first at one and then the other, mouth slightly ajar, taking it all in. She hadn’t told him anything about this business, just that they were going to the council meeting. She hadn’t told anybody, in fact, except Flavo.

  “What kind of trouble?” Harley asked.

  “Flavo. And his people. The Quarter’s in a stew, Harley.”

  “He sent you? Why didn’t he come himself?”

  “Because he’s in mourning. Grieving for a little brown boy they pulled out of the river early this morning.”

  Harley’s voice was accusing. “Why didn’t you come see me first? Why didn’t you tell me this morning? Did you think you could just walk into the council meeting and turn things upside down?”

  “I suppose I thought people would listen to reason.”

  “Reason?” he exploded. “That wasn’t reason. That was beating folks over the head. You of all people should know you don’t do it that way.”

  “Why didn’t you do something?” she shot back.

  “Do something? You backed us all in a corner, demanding we change the rules right on the spot and then calling us dolts when we didn’t.”

  “If the shoe fits …”

  “Like it or not, Bright,” he said angrily, “we are the elected representatives of the community.”

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but then it struck her suddenly that she might indeed have blundered. One time, after all these years, she had stuck her neck out. And failed. Had failed to get them to see the future. But then, she thought, you could look at that bunch around the council table and tell that they couldn’t see any farther than their own noses.

  It seemed that Harley read her thoughts. “It’s not like it used to be, Bright.” He thumbed back over his shoulder in the direction of City Hall, where the rest of the council mem
bers were leaving now, calling to each other as they climbed into their cars at the curb.

  “No, it’s not, Harley,” she said. “I’ve been away too long. I suppose it’s not much fun for you anymore.”

  “No. That’s why this is my last time around.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “There used to be men of stature on the town council.”

  Harley looked at her long and hard. “You still want it to be Dorsey Bascombe’s town, don’t you.”

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she took Jimbo’s hand and they turned and walked away, leaving Harley on the corner under the street lamp. She didn’t look back. It was his problem now.

  “What happened, Mama Bright?” Jimbo asked at her side.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Well, what was all the fuss about?”

  “About nothing happening,” she said.

  “Are the little black kids still gonna swim in the river?”

  “I don’t know,” she snapped.

  He fell silent then and she could feel him drawing away from her in the dim light, even though she held fast to his hand as they walked.

  “I didn’t mean to snap,” she said after a moment, but he didn’t answer.

  They crossed Birdsong Boulevard in front of the Dixie Vittles now, then walked up the driveway toward the front steps.

  “How’d it go?” Buster Putnam’s voice came from the dark of his front porch. She couldn’t see him, just the glowing end of his cigar.

  Go on in and get ready for bed,” Bright told Jimbo. “I’ll be in in a minute and tuck you in.”

  “I don’t need tucking in,” he said and there was something stubborn there, an echo of the child his mother had been years before.

  “All right.” He climbed the steps without her and as he went through the screen door she called out, “Don’t forget to brush your teeth.” The door slammed behind him.

  Buster was sitting in a rocking chair on his porch, legs stretched out, and she could see a tall glass of something on the floor next to the chair. The smell of whiskey and cigars clung to the warm night air. She stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Can I get you a chair?” he asked.