Old Dogs and Children

by Robert Inman

  She led him gently to his own bedroom and he sat quietly on the edge of the bed while she took off his shoes. Then she lifted his thin legs onto the bed and pulled the covers over him. He lay there, staring at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s all yours,” he said again. “You can have it.”

  “Sleep, Papa. You’ll feel better.”

  She pulled down the shades, darkening the room, kissed him on the forehead, then left him there in the stillness, closing the door softly behind her.

  She froze in the doorway to her own room. Fitz was sitting in a chair, holding the great weight of the pistol with both hands, pointing it out the window.

  “Fitz!”

  He jerked around toward her, startled, and the gun went off with a roar that shattered the room, and a vase on top of the dresser beside Bright exploded as the bullet hit. She felt shards of it sting her face. Then Fitz dropped the gun and it clattered to the floor. He bellowed with fright and she rushed to him, kicking the pistol furiously aside with her foot, and enveloped him in her arms. She crushed him to her, felt the blood wet on her face. Everything inside her seemed to break loose at once. She screamed, giving way to the rage and hurt, the terror. Oh God! Fitzhugh, come home and save us!

  >

  The river crested at fifteen feet above flood stage at midafternoon of the first day, and at that depth it had invaded every structure in town. On the smaller houses only the roofs were showing, and the only automobile to be seen was one that had floated on the rising tide and been wedged sideways in an alleyway behind Putnam’s Mercantile downtown. Not that anybody was downtown to see it, once the rowboats finished their scurrying about. They ferried many of the townspeople to higher ground east of the river, where a steady stream of cars began arriving from nearby communities to pick up the chilled, soaked refugees and take them to temporary shelter. Every two-story house in town was packed, the windows filled with dazed people staring out at the swirling red water. Late in the afternoon, they heard a drone overhead and looked up to see an Army Air Corps biplane circling the town. The man in the front seat was leaning over the side with a large camera, taking pictures. Some of the flood victims shook their fists at the plane. To hell with pictures, they said. When darkness came, they closed their windows and bedded down wherever there was room, exhausted and hungry.

  They awoke the next morning to find that the river had receded during the night, leaving small ponds of standing water in low places. The town looked as if it had been ravaged by war—trees pushed over by the relentless force of the water, automobiles and wagons overturned, several houses tilted crazily off their foundations. There was an incredible tangle of debris everywhere—furniture, pieces of clothing, mattresses, tree limbs—all of it coated with a dull red slime of mud.

  Bright and Hosanna looked out the front window of the Bascombe home and watched a dog feasting on a ham that had floated out of somebody’s kitchen.

  “Ain’t gone take much for me to go fight that dog over that ham bone,” Hosanna said. “I don’t believe I ever been so hungry.”

  It was a bright, blustery day. The wind rippled the surface of the standing water and picked at the raw faces of the handful of people who wandered out of their ruined houses and stood ankle-deep in mud, gaping at the destruction, blinking with disbelief in the sunlight. The morning crackled with intermittent gunfire: People shooting at snakes. One thing they had rescued from the rising water was their guns.

  “The lumberyard,” Bright said.

  “Ain’t nothin’ to do for the lumberyard,” Hosanna scoffed. “They lots of trees where those come from.”

  “But the machinery. It’ll ruin.”

  “Humph. I ‘magine it done ruint already.”

  “Maybe we can save at least some of it,” she insisted. “It’s the only thing I can do for Papa.”

  She dispatched Flavo and Mose, told them to scavenge for grease and oil and do what they could to lubricate the big saws in the planer mill and the steam engine before rust set in. With the trucks saved, she thought, Dorsey could be back in operation fairly soon.

  Help started arriving by midmorning. At first it was a motley collection of cars and trucks from neighboring communities, loaded with blankets, food, and clothing. People who didn’t have very much in the first place had stripped their beds and cupboards and sent the supplies to the towns along the river that had been ravaged by the floodwaters. The vehicles couldn’t get into the town proper, but word spread quickly, and people began to slog through the muck to a hill on the edge of town where a temporary relief headquarters had been set up in a farmer’s barn.

  The upstairs of the Bascombe house was packed to the rafters with refugees, thirty people or so, young and old. They were tired and sore from sleeping on the hard pine floors through the chilled night, hungry and thirsty. Nobody seemed to know much what to do now. In another time, Dorsey would have been issuing orders, organizing the chaos. But he lay now in his bed with the covers clutched up around his chin, staring at the ceiling. He seemed not to hear when Bright spoke to him. So she took charge, organized a delegation to go for help—several of the able-bodied men, among them Clayton Pulyard and Buster Putnam’s younger brother Donnell. They returned two hours later, covered with mud but laden with supplies including a jerry can of drinking water and several cardboard boxes of foodstuffs. A scouting party she sent out came back with an iron washpot, an ax, and some dry boards they had found in the rafters of a woodshed. Bright had them pile up pieces of brick debris in the front yard to make a cook stand, and she and Hosanna built a fire under the washpot and began to make a huge stew. It bubbled and simmered for hours, cooking vegetables and bits of meat into a thick, rich concoction. The aroma drifted down the street, taking the edge off the stench of river mud, and others brought what they could find to the mixture. At midafternoon, Bright and Hosanna served it up to a crowd of more than fifty people—red-eyed, dazed, grimy, exhausted folk who ate ravenously using whatever utensils they could find, or their fingers. Bright carried a bowl of it up to her father and sat by his bed, spoon-feeding him. He ate, but his mind seemed to be far away. She didn’t try to talk to him. Let him be. Let him seek refuge where he can.

  Police Chief Burkhalter came by in the afternoon on a horse, picking his way carefully down the littered street, stopping where he found people to tell them the National Guard was on the way. A convoy of trucks from the state capital would be there by dark and would take everyone to Columbus, where emergency shelter had been set up in church basements and the high school gymnasium. Burkhalter got off his horse at the Bascombe house long enough to have a bowl of stew.

  “Miz Bright,” he said when he was finished, “you run a good soup kitchen.”

  “We’re making do.”

  Burkhalter wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat, looked around at the ruination. “I’ll be glad to get everybody out of here. Can’t get a thing done with folks wandering around getting in the way.” He looked like he had been without a drink of whiskey for a good while and needed one badly.

  “We’re not leaving,” she said.

  He looked at her, surprised. “But Miz Bright…”

  “We’ll be all right for another night, Chief. Papa and Fitz and I will stay here until Fitzhugh comes home. Hosanna and her family will stay with us.”

  “But…”

  “And that’s that.” She was determined to stay, determined to make Fitzhugh come and fetch her. She wanted him to see all this, to be shocked by it.

  Burkhalter shrugged, thanked her for the stew, got on his horse and left. Just about everybody else left over the next hour or so as word came that the convoy had arrived at the relief headquarters. They straggled out in knots, carrying the few pitiful possessions they had saved, their feet making awful sucking sounds as they labored through the mud.

  Bright stood on the porch and watched them go, and when the street was dark and empty she went back inside. Flavo and Mose arrived soon after, lighting their way with a coal oil lantern
. They looked as if they had spent the day wallowing in a grease pit. Monkey Deloach, they reported, had been there when they arrived, and the three of them had spent the day dismantling the lumberyard machinery and coating it with grease and oil. God bless Monkey. Flavo and Mose helped themselves to the contents of the stewpot and then they all went back inside, leaving the remains to whatever animals were roaming about in the dark.

  She woke in the bed she had slept in as a child, felt the movement of her own child next to her as he stretched his small body, still deep in sleep. She blinked in the sunlight splattering the wall next to her, turned over and saw Fitzhugh standing in the doorway.

  He crossed the room, treading softly so as not to wake Little Fitz, and sat on the bed next to her. There were tears in his eyes. He truly did love them, she thought, and the hurt and anger left her. Then he took her in his arms and they clung silently to each other for a long time. “It’s all right now,” he whispered. “I’m home.”

  “Don’t leave me,” she said softly. “Don’t ever leave me again.”

  Outside now, she could hear men’s voices, one of them shouting orders, the roar of a truck’s big engine. Men come to take them to safety.

  >

  When they returned two months later, the town seemed a shell of its former self. It had been picked clean by the water—smaller structures smashed and washed away, much of what people owned carried far downriver. The debris had been cleaned up and hauled off, houses righted and repaired. But there were only buildings and streets here now, none of the things large and small that marked a place as inhabited: ferns hanging in baskets on porches, bicycles leaning against picket fences, street lamps casting a soft glow against the summer evening. It would be a long time before it had the comfortable, scruffy look of a lived-in place. And there would be reminders of the disaster for years, particularly the dull red stain that went to a certain height on trees and buildings. No use in trying to wash it away. It was deep in the pores of wood and brick. Only time would fade it.

  Fitzhugh had moved them during the interim to a large, rambling boardinghouse in Columbus—Bright and Little Fitz in one room, Dorsey in another next door—while he stayed to help organize the restoration. He came to them on the weekends, but in between there were long, silent hours. Dorsey spent most of them in a rocking chair on the wide front porch of the house as the weather warmed into April and May, his eyes unfocused, his jaw slack. He asked no questions about his town or his lumberyard. He seemed to be wasting away, sad and defeated.

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt had taken a personal interest in the enterprise. He federalized the National Guard and sent in an additional contingent of regular Army troops with heavy machinery and a company of young CCC men. They all set up camp in a pasture on the edge of town, rows of big green Army tents and a field kitchen and young officers puttering about in jeeps with clipboards. Good training, FDR said. They might be pitching their tents in Europe before long, he told Fitzhugh privately. FDR depended upon Fitzhugh for regular progress reports. He had come to depend upon him for many things. The young congressman was already one of his mainstays in the House at a time when Republicans and Democrats alike yapped at his heels like puppies, bleeding his domestic initiatives and thwarting his cautious attempts to prepare the nation for war. Fitzhugh had stuck with him. This, this rescue effort, was payback. And there was to be more, he promised. Roosevelt told the WPA to draw up plans for a levee around the town, with a canal to drain off the river’s excess and floodgates at the bridges. There would be a new, metal bridge across the river at the foot of Claxton Street to replace the old wooden one the flood had washed away. Fitzhugh Birdsong’s town would not flood again, not if FDR had anything to say about it.

  Fitzhugh Birdsong’s town. That’s what they began to call it now, in the way they had called it Dorsey Bascombe’s town for so many years. He could hold their seat in Congress for as long as he drew breath, they said. Damn the man who dared run against him.

  Fitzhugh steered the car, a new Buick, into the driveway and helped them out, and they stood there for a moment, looking at the house.

  “Did you build us a new house, Papa?” Little Fitz asked, eyeing it suspiciously.

  “No,” he laughed, “it just looks that way.”

  Indeed, it was a different house from the one Bright had departed from in Flavo’s rowboat two months before. It had a fresh coat of white paint and dark green shutters. But the most striking change was the attic addition with windows peeking out of the roofline. They would never again have to flee in a rowboat, she thought. There was a nice new set of wicker on the front porch, white with bright green cushions, two rocking chairs and a settee and two tables. It looked very comfortable, the kind of porch where you could spend a warm soft evening and feel safe and at peace. Inside, there were a few familiar pieces of furniture, all cleaned up and refinished. But there was much that was new, including the gleaming white Kelvinator refrigerator in the kitchen with its motor in a round housing on top. It hummed ever so faintly, and when Bright opened the door, she felt a wave of cool air wash over her. No more ice deliveries. And in the parlor, a new tall black Story and Clark upright piano to replace the one the flood had ruined. She sat down for a moment and ran her fingers lightly over the keys. It had a nice touch, a nice sound. Hopeful. A beginning. Then they clomped up the new set of stairs built off the back porch to the attic and stood in the middle of the big room shaped like a cross, with a double set of windows on each of the four sides and four small closets tucked under the roofline at the inside corners. A big empty room, waiting to be filled with things.

  Fitz ran quickly to the window that looked out over the backyard. “Papa,” he called. “I can see all over!”

  “It’s a pretty good view, huh?”

  “Can you see the whole world from up here?” Fitz asked.

  “Well, not all. But a good bit of it, I guess.”

  “I feel like we’re starting over,” Bright said, taking Fitzhugh’s hand.

  “In a way, we are,” he said ruefully. “We’re in hock up to our eyeballs.”

  “All this …”

  “Borrowed, of course. The car, the furniture, the piano, the attic.” He smiled, ticking off their debts. “I’m not sure I even own my underwear outright. But we’re no different than anybody else in town. People have to rebuild, get on with their lives. Pegram and Harley Gibbons are lending, folks are borrowing. It’s an act of faith.”

  “Then you’d better get busy,” she said. “And maybe I’d best think about finding some more piano students.”

  “That would help. I’ve got the law office cleaned up. Even managed to save a few books that were on the top shelves. And I have some more on order. Maybe I can sweet-talk a few little old ladies out of their life savings before we go back in session in September.”

  “I thought perhaps you’d stay home,” she said quietly.

  He gave her a surprised look. “These people elected me. I can’t just walk away from it.”

  She dropped his hand. “You could. If you wanted to. You could stay home and tend to your own business.”

  “It is my business. Mine and theirs. Especially now, after what’s happened here.” His voice pleaded for understanding. “It’s what I’ve chosen to do, Bright. It’s good work, with a purpose. I can make things happen for people, not just here but all over the country. And the President needs me.”

  She turned away, walked over to the front window of the attic, looked out through the bright green of the pecan trees on the lawn. From this high, you could see above the trees all the way to the foot of the street where the river had torn away the old bridge. It dropped off precipitously there, and the Army troops had put up barricades to keep people from driving off into the river. The river. For most of its life it had seemed a placid thing, meandering nowhere in particular. Now the river took on a whole new meaning—ominous, threatening. It could take away your very life in a heartbeat. It could wrench your soul from your body.
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  “Bright,” Fitzhugh pleaded. “Let’s don’t argue.” He came to her, put his arm around her. “We’re home now. All back together. I’ve tried to make it nice for you.”

  She turned to him, looked directly into his eyes. “I need you, Fitzhugh. That’s what would make it nice for me.”

  “Then come with me,” he said urgently. “Come to Washington. Just for the session. There’s so much to do, so much to show Fitz. They’d love you there.”

  “I can’t leave Papa.”

  “Then bring him too. A change will do him good.”

  “Oh, Fitzhugh,” she said with an impatient shake of her head, “don’t! I’m not going to Washington, Papa’s not going to Washington! You’re the only one who’s going to Washington!”

  “Mama.” They looked down to see Little Fitz standing next to them, one hand on his father’s pants leg, the other tugging on his mother’s dress. “Are you fussing?”

  Bright knelt to him, enclosed him in her arms. “Just a little, honey.”

  “Well,” he said gravely, “I don’t want you to fuss.”

  She pulled his small head to her breast, stroking his hair. Then she looked up; their eyes met. “Stay with us.”

  “I can’t,” he whispered, his voice anguished.

  He cared, deeply and genuinely, she thought. He was a good and honest man, a passionate man. And that was why she needed him so badly just now, when the other good and honest man in her life seemed to be slipping away by the day. She wanted to wail, be angry, be selfish, be terribly hurt. Instead, she said, “All right, Fitzhugh. Go to Washington. But next spring, when the session is over …”

  She saw the great pain in his face, the agony of choosing, of being forced to choose. He closed his eyes, nodded. “Next spring …” But he didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he turned away and went downstairs to unload the car.