Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  “Bright! Bright Birdsong!” Clayton called to her from his front porch. She couldn’t see him for the crepe myrtle bush between them.

  “Yes, Clayton. We’re all right. How about you?”

  “What the hell are we going to do?” he cried.

  Bright looked at the water again. It was midway up the steps now, lapping against the concrete. If you studied it for a moment, you could see how the great mass of water moved off toward the right. It struck her. They were now in the middle of the river. It covered the entire town. She looked across the street at the small grocery store on the corner of Claxton. The water had pushed open the front door, like a throng of eager shoppers, and was floating items out through the opening—a parade of vegetables, boxes of flour and salt, joining the growing tide of household items swirling about in the streets, as if they were setting up house on their own. The buildings along Claxton seemed to bob in the tide, and she wondered if they would float away, if the river would sweep the town clean and leave the land as bare as a baby’s bottom.

  “I’m worried about my father,” she called back to Clayton.

  “Hell, he’s got an upstairs,” Clayton said. “He’ll be fine. What about us?”

  Bright felt a rush of sheer, mindless panic. That, and boiling anger. Fitzhugh Birdsong, off in Washington saving the country from itself. And who would save her from the flood? She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman, at home with a child not quite four years old. And about to have a house full of water. Damn Fitzhugh. Damn Franklin D. Roosevelt.

  Then she calmed herself. There was simply nothing else to do. She would deal with Fitzhugh and the president later. Right now, she had all she could take care of right here.

  “Something will come along, Clayton,” she cried out. “You and Myrna just hold on over there.” Then she called to the Putnams in the other direction. “Mr. Putnam. Are you folks all right?”

  “Gardenia is worried about her fur,” Mr. Putnam called back in a tremulous voice. “She’s had it since we went to the World’s Fair. It wouldn’t do to get it wet.”

  Bright considered that for a moment. “Tell her to hang it from a light fixture, Mr. Putnam. Surely the water won’t get up as high as the light fixtures.”

  “Yes!” he called back. “That’s the ticket! I’ll tell her to do that.”

  “Just hold on for a little while, Mr. Putnam,” Bright said. “Someone will come along presently to get us, I’m sure of it.”

  It helped her to say it. They wouldn’t drown. If necessary, they could climb up on the roof. She wasn’t exactly sure how she would do that with a small child, but she would think of something. But she imagined that help would arrive before she had to do that. So she went back inside and packed a small valise and woke Little Fitz. “Honey, I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said. She picked him up, tucking a blanket around his pajamas, and carried him to the front door. He slumped against her, still groggy with sleep, then finally rubbed his eyes with his fists and looked out. “Where did all the water come from?” he asked, wide-eyed now.

  “That’s the river. It’s flooded.”

  “Will we float off to China?”

  “Maybe so. If you see any Chinamen come by, you’ll know we already did. Right now, I think we best get ready to take a trip.”

  “Where to?”

  “Wherever we can get to from here. As long as it’s dry.”

  “Are we going to walk?” he asked, staring at the water.

  “No, it’s too deep for that now. I imagine we’ll go in a boat. Or the bathtub.”

  He giggled at that, looking over his shoulder at the water as she carried him back to the bedroom and dressed him. Then she sat him and her valise on the dining room table and went back to check the water. It was at the top step now, only inches from the porch. Another few minutes and it would be into the house. She took off her shoes, went to the dining room and put them on the table next to Fitz, dragged up a chair and sat on the edge of the table with her bare feet on the chair seat. This would do for now.

  “Mama,” said Fitz, “it’s not nice to sit on the table.”

  “I know, honey. Just this once, all right? Let’s imagine it’s a boat.”

  “I’ve got to wee-wee,” he said.

  She looked toward the front hall a few feet away, saw the first trickle of water nudging its way in the open front door. Then she felt the house shudder, heard the groan of protesting beams. My God! she thought, the house is going to float off its foundation. The water would start seeping up through the floor any moment, and then it would lift the house off the brick piers. She sensed the immense ominous power of the water, like a huge growling beast under the house, rising up to smash them …

  “Mama, I’ve got to wee-wee!”

  “Then do it!” she bellowed, frightening him. He began to cry.

  Bright reached for Fitz, hugged him to her. “It’s all right, honey,” she said. “Mama didn’t mean to scare you. We’re going to be all right. Here.” She released him. “Just stand up at the edge of the table and wee-wee on the floor.”

  Fitz stared at her, wide-eyed. “It’ll mess up the floor.”

  She stared back, then started laughing. “Oh, I don’t imagine that’s going to matter,” she said. “Just this once, it won’t matter even a little bit. Do you need some help?”

  “No, Mama,” he said solemnly. “I can do it by myself.”

  He stood up and turned his back to her, and in a moment she heard the dribble of water hitting the floor. And then a loud bump out on the front porch. She jumped, thinking something big had hit the house.

  “Miz Bright!” the voice called.

  “Flavo?”

  “Yes’m. I’ve got a rowboat out here. Y’all come on out so I can take you someplace.”

  Flavo! God bless Flavo Richardson! “We’re coming!” she cried. She helped Fitz button his trousers, handed him her shoes, then took him in one hand and the valise in the other and headed for the door. By the time she reached the front porch she was sloshing in cold, red water.

  Flavo had the rowboat right up on the porch where the wicker furniture had been. She saw a piece of it now, floating out near one of the pecan trees in the front yard. Flavo was sitting in the rear of the boat with the oars shipped, holding on to one of the porch pillars to steady the boat. “I’da been here sooner, but I had to get Miz Estelle Dockery out of a tree,” he said.

  “Flavo, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” Bright said.

  Flavo leaned forward to take Bright’s valise and then helped them over the gunwale onto the small wooden seat.

  “My father…”

  “He’s fine. I just come from there. He’s upstairs, looking out his window and directing traffic.”

  “Directing traffic?”

  “Yelling instructions out the window. Like he was still the mayor or something. He seemed pretty excited.”

  “Can you take me over there?”

  Flavo looked out at the sea of water swirling about the trees in the front yard. “That’s where we’re going. Mama said for me not to come back without you.”

  Fitz stared at Flavo, eyes wide, mouth open. “Are we gonna drown, Flavo?” he asked.

  “No sir,” Flavo said. “Not if you hold on tight. You take care of your mama while I row the boat, you hear?”

  “Yes sir,” Fitz said, gripping Bright’s hand tightly.

  Flavo took one of the oars in both hands and used it to shove them away from the porch. When they were clear, he placed it back in the oarlock and began rowing toward the street, the ropy muscles of his arms straining with every stroke.

  She thought suddenly of Hosanna and Mose. “Flavo, where are your folks?”

  “Mama’s at the house with Mr. Dorsey, and Daddy’s gone to get the trucks,” he said.

  “What trucks?”

  “From the lumberyard. He and Jester went to see could they get the trucks out ’fore the water got to ’em.”

  Bright looked back, saw the water
well up in the house now, probably a foot deep or so. It was rising very rapidly. There must have been an enormous amount of rainfall, even more upstream than here. The river had reclaimed the land, just as Dorsey Bascombe had said it would. She wondered if it would have made any difference if people had believed him. Probably not. They had built their town on the banks of the river and made a life here—a middling good life—and they would rebuild it when the river had given the land back. People could be incredibly stoical, she thought. Or stupid. Or both.

  They were out onto what had been Hill Street now, and as she watched the house receding behind them, her mind wandered through its rooms, taking inventory of all the things the floodwaters would soil and plunder—furniture, bedding, clothing, photographs, her piano. It would be ruined, she thought. The piano Dorsey Bascombe had bought for his young wife some thirty years before, had insisted that Bright take to her new home. You could refinish furniture, you could wash clothing. But a piano would never be the same. Cold, muddy water would destroy the delicate balance of rare woods and strings and felt and ivory. Another piece of her life gone. Things seemed to be forever slipping away from her. Things and people. I will not cry, she thought. I just damned well will not cry.

  She had never realized there were so many rowboats in town. Every third house or so must have had a boat stored away in a backyard shed, and they were all out now, a veritable armada of small wooden craft, gliding about in the floodwaters and occasionally bumping into each other, the town trying to save itself. As Flavo rowed their own boat the three blocks to Dorsey’s house, they passed perhaps a dozen others, many of them loaded to the gunwales with entire families, others with a lone man at the oars, looking for somebody to rescue, turning suddenly toward a house where people yelled for help from the windows or roof or stood knee-deep in water on their front porches.

  One boat precariously held a large Victrola cabinet and two men who were arguing at the top of their lungs about where to take it. Their dilemma was solved when the current carried them under a maple tree and a limb caught the cabinet and sent everything into the water. When the men came up, the water was at their armpits. They climbed into the tree, soaked to the skin but still fuming at each other.

  Another boat held the police chief, a large florid man named Burkhalter, who seemed fairly angry at what the river was doing to his town. Another man rowed and Burkhalter sat at the bow with a shotgun cradled in his arms, calling out to everybody who passed, “You see any looters, let me know. I’ll blow their damn heads off.” Looters? Here? This wasn’t Chicago or Munich, for goodness’ sake. My God, Bright thought, it’s made them all a little crazy! There was an air of frantic unreality to it: the town submerged—trees without trunks, only branches; houses half their normal height, the whole business appearing to sink into the water; people dazed and irrational. They clearly needed somebody to take charge. They needed Dorsey Bascombe the way he used to be. Where the devil was Pegram Gibbons? Probably saving his own hide, she thought, or at the back door of his bank with a rowboat, loading money. Pegram was not a bold man, not the way Dorsey had been. It was, she supposed, the difference between a man who spent money and one who lent it.

  Flavo could sense the panic. He rowed hard, his eyes wide and his breath coming in labored gasps. He steered well clear of the other boats, stopping against a tree or the edge of a building to let them pass. It took perhaps twenty minutes to reach Dorsey’s house, and as they glided through the gate, she saw her father stick his head out the window of the second-floor bedroom where she had spent her childhood. He had a huge pistol in his hand, and before she could open her mouth, he lowered the barrel of the pistol and fired, aiming somewhere just ahead of their boat. The sound was enormous. “Papa!” she screamed, grabbing Fitz and pulling him against her, trying to shield him with her body. Another shot, then another, the roaring echo ricocheting across the hard flat surface of the water and off the house across the street. There was a violent thrashing behind her as Flavo tried to stop the progress of the boat and put it into reverse. Swirls of angry red water from his flailing oars eddied around them. Fitz bellowed with fright. Dorsey fired again, and then she looked in horror as two halves of a blasted water moccasin went flying from a lower branch of the big oak tree in the front yard and flopped into the water.

  “Papa, don’t shoot us!” Fitz cried.

  “Mr. Dorsey, put the gun away!” Flavo yelled from behind them.

  Dorsey stared at them, blinking, bewildered. Bright could see the wild, fevered look in his eyes. “Bright!” he cried out. “Look what they’ve done to my town!”

  “It’s all right, Papa!” she called up to him. “The river will go away. It’ll be all right. We’re here now.” She turned to Flavo. “How are we going to get up there? Can you row into the house?”

  Flavo surveyed the situation. “No’m, I don’t think so. The boat won’t fit in the front door, even if it was open, which it ain’t. I reckon y’all gone have to climb up on the porch roof and get in the winder.”

  The water was halfway up the front porch now. The weight of it had smashed in the windowpanes and the river was all in the downstairs. She could see smaller pieces of furniture floating about inside. Flavo maneuvered the boat to the edge of the porch and grabbed one of the porch pillars, hugging it tightly to steady the boat. The roof was just a few feet over their heads. Bright rose gingerly with Fitz in her arms. “Honey, I’m going to lift you up onto the roof and I want you to crawl up to Grandpa’s window and climb inside.”

  Fitz gaped at her, clung to her neck fiercely. “No!” he whimpered. “I’m ‘fraid, Mama!”

  “Fitz, stop it this instant! Hitch up your britches, boy, and do what I tell you! Exactly what I tell you!”

  He clamped his mouth shut, but his eyes were wide with terror and silent tears streamed down his face. She couldn’t let it take hold of them. I have to get him up. I have to get up myself. I have to get to Papa! She hoisted him very slowly, trying not to rock the boat and spill them all into the water. She got the upper half of his body over the edge, but he froze there with his legs dangling off. “I want my daddy!” he wailed.

  She smacked him on the fanny, perhaps harder than she needed to, but it got him moving again and he wriggled up the rest of the way. “Don’t stand up now,” she commanded. “The roof’s slick. Crawl on your stomach. Like an alligator.” He disappeared and she heard him slithering across the roof and then scrambling in the window, finally cutting loose with a scream of fright as he reached the safety of his grandfather’s arms.

  Bright sat down for a moment to catch her breath and compose herself.

  “If you wait a little bit, maybe the water’ll go on up some more and that’ll make it easier for you,” Flavo said.

  “No!” she said fiercely.

  She took off her shoes, tossed one of them in a curving arc up on the roof above, trying to aim in the general direction of Dorsey’s open window. She heard it hit, then rattle across the shingles as it tumbled back down and toppled off the edge into the water, ten feet or so from the front edge of the boat. The shoe floated for a moment; then a tiny wave hit it and it took on water and went down at the heel.

  She stared at the spot where it had gone under, beginning to feel a little hysterical.

  “You want me to go get it?” Flavo said softly.

  Bright turned and stared at him, and then they both started laughing. Bright felt instantly better. God bless Flavo Richardson. Perhaps the truest and sanest man in the entire town right this moment. She tossed the other shoe after the first, and it hit the water with a splash and disappeared. “Hosanna always told me never to go barefoot before the first of May, but what the devil!”

  “Here, I got an idea,” Flavo said. He eased up amidships, still holding on tightly to the porch post. “You step up real slow-like on my shoulders, and that’ll give you a little boost.” He knelt in the bottom of the boat, facing her, and she did as he said, planting her feet on his broad shoulders, digging h
er toes into the hard muscles of his upper back, using the post to steady herself. She reached for the roof and then began to pull herself over the edge as Flavo straightened up below. She threw one leg over the edge of the roof, then the other, and she was up and she could see Dorsey and Fitz in the open window. Dorsey didn’t have the gun now. Fitz had stopped crying and he was watching her, fascinated. “Like an alligator, Mama,” he called out. She eased slowly toward them on her belly, reached the open window, where Dorsey reached out with his good arm and helped her crawl through. She threw her arms around his neck. “Are you all right?”

  “The town,” he said, his voice quavering. “And my lumberyard.”

  “I know, Papa. We’ll fix everything. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “I’ve got to get to the lumberyard!” he insisted. “I’ve got to save my logs! It’s all that’s left!”

  He grabbed her arm, his grip so firm that it hurt. “Papa!” She squeezed his hand with her own, trying to stay calm, trying to soothe him. “It’s all right, Papa. The water will go down soon, and we’ll get to the lumberyard. You’ll see. It’s all right.”

  “It’s gone,” he said, his voice a paper-thin whisper. “All gone down the river.”

  “Will it float off to China?” Fitz asked, staring up at his grandfather.

  “Shhh,” Bright hushed him. “Papa doesn’t feel well, honey.” She tried to edge him toward the doorway. “You need to lie down for a while, Papa. Get some sleep. We’ll take care of everything now.”

  He gave in to her then with a great sigh, peered up at her with his pale, watery eyes. There was a tiny glimmer for just a moment, a flicker of light in the bleakness. He released his iron grip on her arm and she could feel the blood coursing back through her veins with a flash of heat. “It’s all yours,” he said. “All of it.”