Read Online A Southern Place by Elaine Drennon Little - Free Book Online

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