A Southern Place (5 page)

But Delores was tired—tired of waiting on something she believed in but couldn’t see, while watching easy couplings of the other kind happen night after night with none of the consequences her Mama had warned about. So Delores had allowed herself to dream, but to only dream, and to keep it to herself, hoping her Mama couldn’t read her mind from the afterlife with some sort of heavenly x-ray vision she wasn’t privy to. Besides, she was going to school in the fall. She’d have a better job than being a bar maid or working in a factory. And that would be enough.

But
he
had said it, and he didn’t care who heard him. He thought she could find work anywhere, at any of those fancy places. In a real town. With apartment houses and city buses, where all the women weren’t married. Where people lived, not just existed.

“I might, one day,” she answered, surprising herself. “I’m going to, later on. After I finish school, I’m savin’ up til I can move, and go work in—” She wondered what she’d say next. She’d never considered actually leaving Nolan. “In Savannah,” she decided.

Delores didn’t know a thing about Savannah that she hadn’t read in
Gone with the Wind
, and she was pretty sure it might have changed since then.

“Savannah,” he said with a smile. “Beautiful town. The squares, the architecture, the food, River Street! Yes ma’am, I can see you behind a bar in a little bistro, dressed like the St. Pauli girl, drawing beer. A beautiful picture.”

Delores didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but it sounded so wonderful that she couldn’t let it stop. Busying her hands to look hard at work, she doled out questions to keep him talking.

“Where would I live?” she asked him.

“Oh, there are great places to live, reasonably priced, in the historic district.”

“The historic district?” she asked, staring straight ahead as she wiped down the immaculate bar. She liked the way he said “reasonably priced,” like he was sensitive to her finances without calling attention to the difference in their economic situations.

“Let’s see, I think you’d like a little flat, maybe one on Bay Street, the floor over the day businesses, the banks, and offices, quaint little shops.”

“Sounds nice,” she said, working hard to keep her interest and excitement in check. As Phil talked, she saw the city of Savannah sweep by in Technicolor, a sneak preview of a coming-soon feature where she was the star.

“Or if you’d rather, there are plenty of apartment complexes with all the amenities, even a swimming pool if you like.”

“That’s okay,” she said, practically drooling as she surveyed the classy brick duplexes, shingled chalets, and mock-stucco flats panning by in that reel running inside her head. It was hard to concentrate on the things he said, there was too much footage to view before he moved on to the next sentence.

“But I still see you as more of a loner, not the typical party girl. I think you belong on the waterfront . . .”

“The waterfront?” she repeated. Delores had never thought about water having a front or a back. It was just water. The movie changed for a minute. She saw the Flint River running through Dumas County, but it wasn’t much more than a narrow stream. How did he know that she was more of a loner? She thought of the first day she saw him, when he’d called her a bitch. She’d been making fun of him; she actually was being a bitch. He’d never put two and two together, figuring out that she and that girl were the same, or maybe he’d forgotten that day altogether. But here, where she was no more than a barmaid, he still treated her with a kindness and respect she considered untypical of those from his class. Delores smiled as she folded the damp rag into a perfect square, savoring the moment as she listened to him talk.

“The historic district, which Sherman spared from fire because of its magnificent southern charm, backs up to the Savannah River, the largest shipping port east of the Mississippi,” Phil continued. He sounded different as he talked about these places, like a radio announcer or a politician. Delores wondered how liquor made other people sound worse, even stupid sometimes, yet this guy’s voice came alive with a few drinks.

“It sounds beautiful,” she said, “but how do you know all this stuff?”

He laughed, the smile in his eyes warm and kind. To Delores, he sounded apologetic, like he was proud of being complimented but had no idea how to react to such gestures. He was silent for a moment, as though gathering his words, and then he spoke again.

“My mom was a history buff, and I’ve been to Savannah with my dad—sometimes—he picks up a lot of his biggest shipments there.”

His biggest shipments,
Delores thought. What could she say as a comeback to that? The only time she’d ever even thought about that word ‘shipment,’ was as a kid, back in better times when they could afford store-bought cereal. Captain Crunch was Cal’s favorite, so it was what her mama bought, when she could. “Contents may settle during shipping,” she’d read on the side of the box, imagining a whole ship full of Captain Crunch boxes, crossing some unknown ocean for a couple of kids in Nolan.

Delores and Phil continued to talk, off and on, for the rest of the night. One of the last two customers, the handsome storyteller stayed until the bar closed. He offered Delores a ride home, and she accepted. They ended up at the river, sharing a bottle of Crown Royal he kept in his car.

They sat on the riverbank, passing back and forth the blue felt bag as he talked of Savannah and Atlanta and Charleston. She saw antebellum houses, cobblestone streets with rows of awning-clad storefronts, out-of-work musicians with open instrument cases claiming their posts along the river. The Flint, shallow in the current drought, lay quiet and stagnant before them, yet Delores caught a whiff of salt in the air, the cry of a far away owl sounding strangely like a gull or other sea bird.

Later, as he spoke of Boston, she crossed her arms and hugged herself, spreading her fingers and rubbing the tops of her arms to warm them. Her panoramic view grew less detailed geographically, then the camera zoomed in on smiling children with big teeth and windblown hair, running after frisky, two-toned little bulldogs, then laughing and eating pies of the same rich colors. By the time Phil reached Denver, Delores was chilled to the bone despite the ninety-degree weather. She listened and drank and basked in the sheer pleasure of hearing someone create beautiful pictures in words, just for her.

Delores woke up as the sun peeked through clouds and the moon was still visible. She was wrapped in his arms and lying on the red woolen UGA blanket he’d taken from the trunk of his car. Her head hurt and her mouth tasted horrible, and the romantic movie she’d envisioned the night before came back as an over-told story in a cheap, dime store romance magazine. Pulling the blanket to cover herself, she noted the dried orange clay on the white Bulldog insignia, then shuddered to imagine what other nastiness clung to the bright rectangle of fabric. Who carried a wool blanket in the South Georgia summer? Rich boys out for easy women, the kind you’d never take to where you lived. And in this case, who could blame him? A girl who stayed out all night with a boy she barely knew—outside, in a public place, where anyone could appear at anytime—was a tramp, pure and simple.

Delores had known some fast girls in high school, but she couldn’t imagine any of them sinking this low. She still wore her clothes and didn’t actually remember any unseemly behavior, but how could she be sure? This was reserved for actual prostitutes, the ones who literally worked the streets and were paid for it. And even they, she imagined, would finish quickly and put their clothes back on. It was what they had to do, in order to survive, Delores thought, remembering disjointed scenes from
Les Miserables
and a Hank Williams’s song she always associated with it, the one about the bad girl that lived down the street.

Some women had no choice, and the God of Delores saw these women differently, and judged them from within, not from the worldly acts life had forced them into. This was one of the few topics she’d never been able to discuss with her mother, and—Delores felt a cold shock of severe nausea with the mere thought of her mother’s face. She stood, jerked the silly blanket from the ground and wrapped it around her as she ran towards the water’s edge, where she quietly vomited the fiery brown liquid of the night before.

Feeling better after her purge, Delores splashed a little of the lukewarm river water on her face. She had made a horrible mistake for which she had no excuse, and for the first time in her life she almost hoped there was no afterlife, no way that her parents could see how far she’d strayed from their teachings.

Shaking out the blanket and folding it into a square, Delores walked back to where Phil lay sleeping. He was out cold, breathing sour breath through his perfectly rounded mouth.

“Hey,” she whispered, “ it’s mornin’. We gotta get up.” She spoke softly and hoped he wouldn’t hear. He was so nice the night before, but what would he think of her now? Delores didn’t want to find out, she only wanted to leave.

Thankfully, he didn’t even budge.

She used her fingers as a comb for her matted curls. Remembering that the day was Saturday, she felt relieved that her brother Cal was most likely at the all-night poker game. Good, she thought, half-smiling for the first time in her new, fallen-woman life. She knew she was changed forever, but perhaps no one else would have to know the details.

She grabbed a stick and made for home. Folks had seen her out fishing before sunrise since before she could read; they didn’t need to know that, this time, the fish in question happened to be a smooth-talking Phil.

Chapter 4: July 1958

Phil

When twenty-year-old Phil first saw the cheap postcard-like community of Nolan, he thought the sad little town and the whole lot of Dumas County should have been dynamited and left for good.

Phil’s father, however, was not of the same belief. Mr. Foster had been born with money—old money—but to his credit, he turned it into much more. Nolan Manufacturing was closed in 1945 when WWII took the men away, and the supply and demand for flannel shirts wasn’t worth the bother. When the war was over, Phil’s dad bought the boarded up building, traded some machinery, and set up shop with a staff of over a hundred poor, southern, uneducated women as his employees. He paid them almost nothing, and they were grateful for any wages at all. Nolan Manufacturing was the largest employer of women in the red clay of southwest Georgia.

Every Christmas he brought home candies, jellies, cakes, and pies made from homegrown gardens, government commodities and a few cents stolen from the mouths of their own children. His family did not eat them, but the servants at their house in Albany enjoyed them. The Fosters never let anything go to waste.

“Other than the boy,” Foster sometimes said. Philip IV, a misfit in his youth, spent his teen years wasted as much as possible. Neighbors, teachers, and local acquaintances summarized Phil as simply “another spoiled rich kid,” but a few close family members and long-time house servants saw the boy in a different light.

Phil was the last of three children and the only male. Truth known, if one of the sisters had been a boy, the Foster clan might’ve ended there. A male child was a must-have, the little prince, the heir to the family businesses.

As far back as Phil could remember, he knew he was a special boy. Though his father never actually vocalized “Your sisters are just girls, Phil, and
you
are what this family was waiting for,” he emphasized his point, just the same. Before entering school, Phil took riding lessons at the Pinebloom Stables, swimming lessons at the Elks, golf and tennis at Radium Springs. On his fifth birthday, Phil was presented with his own dog: an AKC registered Brittany Spaniel sired by a former national champion.

“He’s beautiful,” the boy cried upon seeing him, kneeling and wrapping his arms around the half-grown pup. Phil rubbed his face against the dog’s speckled coat, oblivious to his other gifts and the friends who brought them.

“Let’s put him in his kennel while you open the rest of your gifts,” his mother chided, releasing the boy’s embrace of the dog and taking the dog elsewhere.

After hours of more games, gifts, and food, Phil was almost happy to see his party end, knowing then he was free to play with his new friend.
Mom took it through the kitchen
, he thought,
so he’s probably there, maybe Thelma’s giving him something to eat.

But the dog was not in the kitchen or the family room or the garage. Phil raced upstairs to his room, imagining that the dog was sleepy and already knew by instinct the location of his little master’s bed. But the dog was not in Phil’s room.

“Mom-meee,” he called, running back down the stairs. “Where did you put my puppy?”

Mr. and Mrs. Foster were in the family room, watching the news. The room smelled of Phil’s father’s pipe and his mother’s faint perfume.

“Is he in here with you?” Phil asked.

“Hush, son, can’t you see we’re checking the Dow-Jones?” Mr. Foster said.

“Shhh,” his mother said, then whispered, “is
who
in here with us?” She smiled at Phil, but her quick look at Mr. Foster, then back at Phil, told him they needed to be quiet.

Phil didn’t want to cry, especially in front of his dad, but thought he might if he stayed in the room a minute longer. He looked quickly into his mother’s eyes, feeling runny mucous sliding down his nose, and he ran out of the room.

“Don’t run in the house,” he heard his father say.

Phil went back into the kitchen, out into the garage, and back into the kitchen again, rampantly banging doors and opening cabinets.

“Phil, honey, what on earth are you doing?” his mother asked as she tiptoed in to join him. She closed each pastel door he’d opened, gently touching the wallpaper as if to straighten the posture of the little Dutch people in the design. “You don’t want to disappoint your daddy, do you, especially after that nice birthday party?”

“Where is he?” Phil sobbed. “I’ve looked everywhere, and I can’t find him. What if he ran away? He hasn’t been here that long, he won’t know how to come home. Where is he? I need to take care of him—“

“Are you talking about that little dog?”

Phil nodded, wiping his tears on his shirtsleeve.

Mrs. Foster picked him up and hugged hard, like she’d done when he was only two or three, then set him down again.

“The dog’s fine, and you haven’t done anything wrong. Bless your heart, you thought you’d lost him? The puppy’s gone back to the farm, where your daddy’s been keeping him, with his trainer.” She pushed an errant hair behind her ear.

“But I thought he was mine!”

“He is yours, silly.” She reached up high to some papers lying on the top of the new light blue refrigerator. “See here,” she said. “There’s his name, ‘Sir Ogden Nemestrius,’ and here it says ‘Owner—Phillip Twitty Foster IV.’ That’s you, sweetheart.” Phil’s mom was trying to teach him the alphabet, but he couldn’t read yet.

“Sir Og what?” Phil sniffled.

“The first part is for his father, Sir Ogden. He won a lot of awards in dog shows. Your father picked ‘Nemestrious’ because it means ‘god of forests and woods.’ He’s a hunting dog, a very valuable hunting dog. That’s why it’s important for him to stay with his trainer.”

“I don’t even get to name him?” Phil asked.

His mother smiled, replacing the papers and straightening the trivets hung on the wall. “I think your daddy had to supply a name when he got him, to fill out the papers correctly. But I’ll bet he’ll let you call him whatever you want. I doubt anyone would want to call him Sir Ogden, do you?”

Phil wrapped his arms around his mother’s thin waist, hugging her with all his might. Just as she started to ruffle his hair, he stepped back, looking up at her.

“But I wanted to sleep with him tonight. And play with him everyday, and feed him and take care of him and teach him tricks and—“

“Do I hear a five-year-old boy bellyaching to his mother?” Phil’s dad walked into the kitchen with an empty glass. “Refill?” he said as Mrs. Foster took his glass and walked to the refrigerator. “And what’s going on with my boy—we didn’t score enough presents for you?”

Phil sniffed hard, hoping there were no tears or snot on his face. “I got lots of good stuff, but the best part was my dog.”

“Indeed, son, indeed,” Phil’s father said. “Not just a mere dog but a champion, like his father. I doubt there are many five-year-old boys on this earth who own such hearty stock.”

Phil smiled, not knowing or caring what “hearty stock” might be. “But, Daddy,” he said, “after they get through training him, could he come stay here some time, with me? I wanted to sleep with him, like the girls do with Gigi.” Gigi was a miniature poodle of similar pedigree that belonged to his sisters. Gigi had painted toenails, regular visits to a beauty parlor, and an unexplained revulsion to little boys.

“Of course not, son, Sir Ogden is bred for hunting quail. He needs intensive training and a disciplined environment in order to reach his maximum potential. Besides, sleeping with dogs is a girly thing to do. But if all goes well, we’ll be able to take him quail hunting in the fall.”

“But Daddy, I’ve never been hunting,” Phil said.

“And that reminds me,” his father said, “ I think you have one more gift in the family room. Why don’t you go get ready for bed, then come down and open your last gift?”

Mrs. Foster handed her husband a fresh drink, a napkin wrapped around the bottom. “I’ll go run your bath water,” she told her son as she exited.

“Sure, Daddy,” Phil cried, bounding out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

Phil grabbed some pajamas out of a drawer, stripping off his clothes as he went into the bathroom. He climbed in as the tub filled with bubbles, high enough to tickle his nose. He scooped them up with two hands and fashioned himself a beard.

“Ho ho ho, Meehhhhrry Birthday,” he said in his deepest voice.

His mother laughed and shook her head. “Try not to make too big a mess, okay?” she said as she picked up his discarded clothes and left.

Phil wondered what his other present might be, but he had a feeling he already knew. They were teasing him, making him wait until bedtime to find out that his dog was really there. Maybe they
did
send him to the farm, and now they were calling someone to bring him back. But his parents weren’t teasing him to be mean, they were just playing. Phil dunked under the bathwater, holding his breath as long as he could, then coming up for air. He made up a game, seeing how many dog names he could think of while underwater.

Rover, King, Sparky
, he thought.
Fido, Sam, Duke, Davy Crockett, Hercules
. Phil sat up quickly and breathed deep. His eyes stung a little as he went down again.
Lassie
—no, that was a girl dog—
Laddie, Smokey, Lefty, Joe
—that’s what he’d wanted to call his own dog. Like
Beautiful Joe
, an old-timey book his mother had read to him at night, before his father said that bedtime stories were for babies and girls. Phil squinted his eyes tighter and shook his head.
Batman, Captain America
—that was a good one.
Captain America.
But it didn’t sound anything close to Sir Ogden Nimstree—

Phil’s last big breath made him shiver. He didn’t know why, but figured it was enough of a reason to pull out the plug, reach for a towel, and dry off. He jumped into his cowboy pajamas, then looked in the mirror and combed his inch-long hair. Brushing his teeth, he thought his toothpaste tasted somewhat like the icing on his birthday cake, but he remembered not to swallow. After a few manly spits, he scampered back down the stairs.

Mr. Foster rested in his chair, wearing glasses and reading a magazine.

Seeing the long rectangular box across his lap, Phil’s mouth became dry and cottony. “Daddy,” he said.

His father laid down the book, took off his glasses, and took a long sip of the drink beside him. “Ready for the big one?” He smiled at his son, handing him the gift.

The box was heavy. Phil laid it on the coffee table and unwrapped it, but with none of the excitement and fury of the gifts at his party. Lifting off the box top, he saw a dark-wooden, shiny hunting rifle.

“It’s a .410 Winchester, special edition. A bit of overkill for a rookie, but a good choice for the master of a pedigreed hunting dog. Perhaps this weekend we’ll take it out to driving range, get you started with skeet shooting.”

“Yes, sir,” Phil said, biting his lip.

“Well, what do you say, son? Good birthday?”

“Yes, sir,” he said again.

“Unwrapped it already?” his mother asked as she entered the room.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Excited?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Decided what you’re gonna call the little dog yet?”

Phil’s dad interrupted. “What do you mean? The dog has a perfectly good name already. What’ll it be, Phil? Sir Ogden? Maybe Little Og? Or do we go with the classy moniker, the Greek name of Nemestrious?’

Phil gritted his teeth, but his face remained emotionless. “Could we just call him ‘Sir’?”

Mr. Foster considered the idea. “Excellent choice, son. Simple, not pretentious, but commanding respect. I like it. Take the rifle up to your room, son. We’ll see about loading it later.”

Phil closed the box top and took the heavy package up the stairs.

“Goodnight, son,” his parents called to him. “Happy birthday!”

“Goodnight,” he answered back.

Phil laid the box on his dresser, pulled down his covers, and crawled into bed. He turned off the lamp, then doubled his down-filled pillow, pretending it was his own dog. Phil lay on his side, hugging it in front of him.

When sleep finally came, his pillow was wet, his birthday tears absorbed by the puppy who wasn’t there.

❦

To the outside world, Phil lived one perfect life. Then he started school, and the facade of the Foster’s little prince began to show serious cracks in its veneer.

For his first day of kindergarten, Phil’s mother made his favorite breakfast, helped him into his new clothes, and delivered him to the door of his classroom. It was decorated in primary colors and smelled clean and new. He joined a low rectangular table with two other boys and two girls, and they sat with military posture while listening to a litany of rules, consequences, and expectations. They worked at tracing the letter “A” on thin paper with dotted lines, then colored mimeographed pictures of apples and falling leaves.

There was a time called “recess,” the part that Phil liked best. They could swing or slide or hang from the monkey bars, or they could just run and play and make all the noise they wanted. When recess was over, they stood in a straight line waiting for a drink of bitingly cold water from a metal fountain. Back in the classroom, they each received a stack of papers to be filled out and returned the next day. Stapled on top was a bright yellow paper star, showing the letters P-H-I-L and a smiling circle drawn with a red pen. At the front of the building where parents waited, his teacher helped him into the Foster’s blue Chrysler.

“Phil is a wonderful boy,” the teacher said. His mother beamed.

But the next day was not so wonderful.

“Phil’s visual discrimination skills are less than age appropriate,” his teacher said as she opened the car door. “And he’s the only child in the class who hasn’t mastered the alphabet. Could you come in for a conference next week?”

Phil’s mother brushed imaginary lint from her collar and adjusted the pearls at her throat. “Of course I can,” she said. “When?”

“Monday at two. In the meantime, could you try to work with him at home?”

“Sure,” she answered as the teacher closed the door.

On Monday, Thelma, the Foster’s maid, drove the station wagon to collect Phil from school. His mother returned home later, her eyes red. She went straight to her bedroom, slamming the door. Thelma fed Phil early and put him to bed. He heard his parents arguing, his mother crying as he fell asleep.

The next day, Thelma drove him to and from school, as she continued to do for the next three years. Phil’s kindergarten teacher was smiling and kind, but Phil wondered why she’d stopped looking into his eyes when she spoke to him. She moved Phil to a smaller table at the back of the room, where he and the other boy and girl there were always given the same dull assignments and worksheets every day, the same ones the rest of the class had mastered in the first days.

“Mommy,” he asked one night after dinner. “Why does my teacher keep giving me the same work to do?”