Vintage Ford by Richard Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

Carter’s. “Just don’t say that. This is not that kind of conversation. This is Buck here.” The voice said something else, and in my mind I suddenly saw Dr. Carter in a very unkind light, one I will not even describe. “Now you raise your bones at four a.m. on Thursday, Commander Rogers,” my father said in his high-falutin’ style. “Ducks are early risers. I’ll collect you at your house. Wear your boots and your Dr. Dentons and nothing bright-colored. I’ll supply our artillery.”
    It seemed odd to think that my father thought of the great house where we had all lived, and that his own father and grandfather had lived in since after the Civil War, as
my
house. It was not my house, I felt. The most it was was my mother’s house, because she had married him in it and then taken it in their hasty divorce.
    â€œHow’s school, by the way,” my father said distractedly.
    â€œHow’s what?” I was so surprised to be asked that. My father sounded confused, as if he’d been reading something and lost his place on a page.
    â€œSchool. You know? Grades? Did you get all A’s? You should. You’re smart. At least you have a smart mouth.”
    â€œI hate school,” I said. I had liked Jesuit where I’d had friends. But my mother had made me go away to Sandhearst because of all the upset with my father’s leaving. There I wore a khaki uniform with a blue stripe down the side of my pants leg, and a stiff blue doorman’s hat. I felt a fool at all times.
    â€œOh well, who cares,” my father said. “You’ll get into Harvard the same way I did.”
    â€œWhat way,” I asked, because even at fifteen I wanted to go to Harvard.
    â€œOn looks,” my father said. “That’s how southerners get along. That’s the great intelligence. Once you know that, the rest is pretty simple. The world
wants
to operate on looks. It only uses brains if looks aren’t available. Ask your mother. It’s why she married me when she shouldn’t have. She’ll admit it now.”
    â€œI think she’s sorry about it,” I said. I thought about my mother listening to half our conversation.
    â€œOh yes. I’m sure she is, Buck. We’re all a little sorry
now
. I’ll testify to that.” The other voice in the room where he was spoke something then, again in an ironic tone. “Oh you shut up,” my father said. “You just shut up that talk and stay out of this. I’ll see you Thursday morning, son,” my father said, and hung up before I could answer.
    This conversation with my father occurred on Monday, the eighteenth of December, three days before we were supposed to go duck hunting. And for the days in between then and Thursday, my mother more or less avoided me, staying in her room upstairs with the door closed, often with William Dubinion, or going away in the car to her singing lessons with him driving and acting as her chauffeur (though she rode in the front seat). It was still the race times then, and colored people were being lynched and trampled on and burnt out all over the southern states. And yet it was just as likely to cause no uproar if a proper white woman appeared in public with a Negro man in our city. There was no rule or logic to any of it. It was New Orleans, and if you could carry it off you did. Plus Dubinion didn’t mind working in the camellia beds in front of our house, just for the record. In truth, I don’t think he minded anything very much. He had grown up in the cotton patch in Pointe Coupee Parish, between the rivers, had somehow made it to music school at Wilberforce in Ohio, been to Korea, and had played in the Army band. Later he barged around playing the clubs and juke joints in the city for a decade before he somehow met my mother at a society party where he was the paid entertainment, and she was putting herself into the public eye to make