The Wintering

by Joan Williams

  Amy

  Perhaps you had better not see me. I’m afraid this is all going to get turned into a sorry mess and all that we wanted it to be will be lost beneath and I can’t take that. You are feeling more fully the grasp of that middle-class Southern background. It won’t let you go easily. No one can really break away completely; you can only keep trying. When I didn’t hear from you for so long, I wrote furiously on my book. Then when I heard, I wrote more furiously. But nothing will drive all of this out of my mind. But I keep believing, Amy, that some good is going to come from it all. I hope you do. Somehow, we’ll achieve what we want: your freedom and our being together sometimes. Try to have faith. Inga did not mention the call, naturally; nor could I, or she would have known we had been in touch. We circle one another cautiously, like caged animals. I hadn’t wanted, in the time I have left, to damage a young woman’s life. I had wanted only to help it. So perhaps the risks are too great after all, and perhaps you had better not see me again. Here, then, is the kiss a final time * and will you accept it at last? And please, please forgive me if I have done you only harm. That was the very farthest thing from my mind. You, brief tender and touching as spring, helped me from the first moment I laid eyes on that face.

  Jeff

  That he was to see Amy again filled and sustained Almoner, as he parked his car a short distance from a town square. He remembered her saying that the water tower here had hung in the air so long ahead of her, the first day she had come to see him, that she had taken it as a symbol. It was halfway between her town and his. If she ever passed it that day, she would really see Almoner. Her face had bloomed openly when she said it; always, it was so damned difficult not to touch her when he wanted. What a relief, she had said, when finally she had passed the water tower. Now, he stared up at the old steel structure thinking it had a kind of majesty.

  The summer had droned on, as usual, with the heat relentless, and would have been unendurable without her restorative quality. But how much more time was there to be? The incredible thing was not so much that she had found him but at exactly the time when he had thought he could not go on. He felt desperate, sometimes now, about the frail hold he had on her, on everything. Look to this day, for it is life, he quoted silently: the fragment of an old poem, the rest not remembered. Was it possible that the remarkably clear day he had come out of the pine copse and found her waiting was only a year ago? It stood out in memory so clearly, there seemed nothing in his life before to remember. Though sweltering, he dared do nothing now but sit and wait, despite the pain near his heart his slouched position was causing. For reassurance, he touched a little box of pills in his breast pocket. The hot dry heat in this stillness filled the creases of his face and neck with perspiration. Perhaps his ankles would swell again. For momentary relief, he pushed back an old hat he was wearing low, its band stuck colorfully with fishing flies. Maybe he ought to have worn a false beard and a mustache and glasses, or maybe there was nothing to worry about at all, though he did not believe that. Not here, he thought. He kept cautious eyes turned toward the area around him, only occasionally staring off toward the square where Amy’s bus would stop. Though he would not be recognized here for his ability at the typewriter he might be for his proficiency with the fly rod.

  Beneath the corrugated tin porte-cochere, jutting over storefronts around the square, were the usual old men lounging in clean khakis, though from Almoner’s viewpoint, their weathered and lined and curious faces were not visible. In any of these small towns near his own, he often saw recognition spring to the eyes of retired farmers, like these, spending out their days in indolence on the main street; and he had had younger men, white or Negro, wave to him from atop lumbering farm machinery on their way to or from fields, their strong arms bulging and impressive. Today, easily, word might get around that Almoner, the fishing champion, had been seen on the square. He pulled the hat low again. Some of the old men were playing checkers in leafy arbored places around the Court House, the road in sight beyond them widening into the highway down which the bus would come. He kept his eyes turned there now, wondering if he were a fool, reminding himself of the saying, none like an old one. But he believed in Amy and he was content with his own loss of despair. To him, this anticipatory trembling was worth any risk in meeting.

  He watched through perspiration-blurred eyes women out shopping. The day seemed to shimmer in wavery colors, like prisms reflecting sun. Townswomen were recognizable by rouge and colored small earrings. The country ones had tight hair and dry skins and kids who went ahead but whirled and rushed into their mothers, butting them with their heads. If he were noticed, the magnified story of his being here would reach home long before he did, at sundown. He barely peered from beneath the hat now at the women going by, swimmingly, in lavenders and greens.

  The bus was late and he was fearful. Then in a moment of inattention, it came and went. On the square, Amy stood at the curb. After seeing the car, she turned to face a store window, freezing as if not to be seen, like a doe he had come upon in winter woods, everything crystallized and still. He dared now ease straight enough to stretch his legs. The other passengers had gone. Having studied them, the old men had resumed checkers. Those only lounging again stared with vacant, lived-up faces at the dusty street, as usual in midmorning, quiescent and nearly deserted. Perhaps Amy should not be subjected to this sort of thing, after all, Almoner thought.

  She stood out. Seeming to have foreseen that, she wore dark glasses, but a cheap white plastic kind. He guessed them an afterthought, that she had purchased them in the bus station. Around her hair, almost totally covering it, was her own heavy beautifully colored silk scarf. She wore a plain blouse and skirt, he guessed intentionally inconspicuous, and the schoolgirlish brown sandals he remembered, flat and buckled. Stares followed her. Simply, she did not belong among the bare decrepit storefronts and broken-in sidewalks or to the country quietude. Her walk was noticeably more brisk than that of the other women who passed. Almoner chuckled, speculating on how gossip would bound about supper tables that night: “Fellow with fishing poles on his car wait there thirty minutes before this girl come, then didn’t get out of the car. Opened the door and she got in. They drove off and come back again for the bus in the evening.” You could make a lot out of not much when you had nothing else to think about, he thought, opening the door.

  “Here I am,” Amy said, getting in.

  As quickly as possible, Almoner drove out to the highway. “Yes,” he had said, leaning past her and closing the door. “Here you are again.” Now, taking her hand, he drove slowly along the empty highway thinking, Love, sweet love, and how her face seemed today unbearably young.

  “Isn’t it stupid?” she said. “I had thought when summer came, we could see each other often. But it’s harder than ever. My mother didn’t need the car today but said I couldn’t have it. I think she guessed where I was going, though she wouldn’t ask.” She turned to look ahead at the road a little sorrowfully. “Life makes you lie. I had to say I was going to a swimming party. At the station, I put my swimming things in a locker. But, I’m here. Maybe we ought to be spies instead of writers. We’re getting good at intrigue, aren’t we? Anyway, you’re a writer,” she said, her face mournful.

  He pressed her hand. “You will be, if you work at it hard enough.”

  “No,” she said wistfully. “I don’t think I ever will be. I just don’t have anything to write about. And, Jeff, my mother started in again, saying don’t I realize how my seeing you looks to other people. An old man. You’re her age. She doesn’t call herself old. And your being a writer makes it even worse. That’s a suspect thing. For heaven’s sake, couldn’t you do something sensible, like selling insurance?”

  “Yes, I’m very suspect,” he said. “I hardly work at all, you know. I’ve lived with that here a long time, Amy. You’ll have to get used to it, too, if you’re going to be a writer. Also, apparently, if you’re going to throw in your lot with mine.”

 
; “I have to be honest, Jeff. If you were an insurance salesman, I wouldn’t be here. All this is partly, you know, because you are Almoner. A great man. I can’t be afraid to know you because of them.”

  “Amy, you are brave. And you are coming out of that middle-class shell.”

  “But it’s not making me a writer,” she said. “I keep going from one thing to another.”

  “Yes, I read about you in the paper going to parties,” he said. “I think about you out with all your young friends. Always, you are laughing.”

  “Oh no,” she said quickly. “Jeff, it’s not like that at all. I’m hardly ever laughing. And I go to parties only because there’s nothing else to do. I was talking about starting one story and never finishing it and starting another.”

  “There’s something to do if you want to be a writer,” he said, firmer than usual. “Write. You’ll have to make choices between parties and work.”

  But what was she to write about? Why couldn’t he understand she had nothing to write about. She said defensively, “My mother told me to see you one more time, to tell you I couldn’t see you any more.”

  He let go of her hand to put both of his on the steering wheel. One foot, in a greenish rubber boot, went toward the brake and slowed the car to a stop. The road seemed to fluctuate and shimmer in the heat. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell myself was going to happen,” he said. “Your people and mine are never going to see this situation except from their point of view. And what you have to take in order to come here isn’t fair. I’ve been selfish. I’m sorry. I had better take you straight back. There’ll be another bus shortly. Or should I drive you to Delton?”

  “You’re going to let them win?” In astonishment, her eyes grew darker.

  He took her hand again and gripped it harder. “You are the dearest and bravest thing I’ve ever known. I’m very glad to see you, Miss Howard.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” she said, returning his hand’s pressure.

  On either side, as they drove on, the countryside had a vacant look, being flat and brown. Its emptiness gave them the feeling that nothing could grow here, thrive or live. Almoner was searching for a particular place and indicated the back seat, where there was a picnic basket. “Jessie fixed me a lunch. But I noticed there was enough for two. And in that covered bucket, there’s beer on ice. Somewhere down one of these side roads, there’s a pond in some woods, where I fished once. It’ll be cool there, if I can find it again.”

  To unstick her sweating back from the seat, Amy occasionally sat forward, the heat making her also drowsy. But she felt placid about driving on and on, accustomed to inactivity; her days at home seemed to consist only of fruitless long hours. Inert and miserable, she was unable to attach herself to any project. She felt constantly confused, and her attention when she tried one thing immediately leapt to something else. Still, Almoner travelled the rocky roads; the car drove outward from itself devilish-red clouds of dust, which skimmed fields. Their clasped hands grew moist and slid apart. Amy could not help but think about the missed swimming party, since she was so hot; and she thought about Billy Walter, who was cute and would have been her date. Her thoughts fluctuated, like the heat waves shimmering over the day. To be with Almoner was more important than the swimming party, she decided.

  “Damn it,” he said after a silence, “I’ve been thinking about the lying you had to go through to get here, that you’ll have to go through again when you get home. An artist ought to be free.”

  “You’re the artist,” Amy said. “And you’re not free. If I were a writer, though, would it be easier for us to meet?”

  “We might have more obvious reason to, but it wouldn’t be any easier here,” he said.

  The red gravel road led on, with grassy ditch banks beginning to encroach on it. She stopped watching it to say, “Would you like me if I didn’t want to be a writer?”

  “Like you, yes,” Almoner said. “Perhaps even love you. But I think your wanting to be a writer makes what’s between us stronger. You understand me in a way not many have. No one else has ever called me before—” He stopped, shyly.

  “What?” she said.

  “A great man,” he said, his voice even softer.

  “All your awards must have convinced you of that!” she said.

  “They’re not like having someone you care about tell you,” he said. “Someone who hopes to gain nothing from it. But we’ve had enough of this driving. I’m obviously still lost. That countryman ought to be able to give us some directions.”

  The man came along in a tottering walk on the road’s edge, a cabbage almost as large as his head crooked beneath one arm. “How’s the road ahead?” Almoner said, stopping.

  The man, beaming with pride at being asked, said, “Gravel but tolerable.” Even his ears, stuck out on either side of his head by his hat, seemed to blush. Headed for town, he wore clothes as if for Sunday, despite the heat. A white shirt was held together tightly at his neck by a red tie with a zigzagged yellow streak like cartoon lightning. Grinning further, he held out his cabbage for sale, which Almoner declined politely and respectfully. The man loped off into dust still floating like a phantom all around them.

  Amy, watching him go, remembered the countryman’s calm weathered face and thought of her father’s silly flushed look when he had been drinking or dancing. His friends recently had exclaimed over his knowing the latest and craziest dance steps. Then Edith had found a receipt and confided that, secretly, he had been going to Arthur Murray’s. Having invested in a new company, and appointed to make contacts, he and Edith kept going out dining and dancing, while she grew fatter from rich dinners.

  She was sorry, Amy said later, they had not bought the man’s cabbage. Almoner assured her it would bring a good price in the general-merchandise store toward which the man had been headed. Blending into the landscape, he had simply disappeared, belonging here and to the sun-struck road, in a way, Amy thought lonesomely, that she belonged nowhere. Was she responsible for her nature? Struggling to do what was considered the right thing, she never succeeded. Was that totally her fault? She continued to stare at the rusty-colored roads. They had travelled them like a maze, a test of endurance. The sky bearing down on the car was zealously blue and hot. They continually passed houses where, in fragmentary but windy shade, people sat in their yards and stared at them in countrified dull surprise. Losing his way, bringing them repeatedly past the same houses, Almoner began to laugh. “Think,” he said, “what they’ll all say when they meet in church on Sunday. ‘Dashed right past my house two or three times!’ ‘Did the same at mine!’ ‘Turned around in my driveway twice, with me right there!’”

  Amy, adapting quickly to seeing through his eyes, also laughed. “And nobody will know it was us,” she said, delighted.

  “Nobody will know it was us,” he repeated. Almost giggling, they drove on with a carefree feeling they seldom had. As they backed a second time from a driveway, where people sat stoically beneath a cedar watching, Amy said, “It seems so funny to think of people living back here, so far from cities, from everything. It’s like being lost to the world. But it’s nice.”

  “Yes. And no evidence in the world of what they do to make a living,” Almoner said. “But someone important must live up this road. It’s gravelled to the barn.”

  “Maybe the road commissioner himself!” she said.

  “Of course.” He laughed appreciatively. And, chuckling, they went on retravelling the same dusty roads.

  “Would anybody else like doing this,” she said. “We are alike.”

  “We’re soul mates, I’m convinced. I’m as sure of it as that some form of fate sent you to me. It’s still unbelievable, to me, that we found one another.” Her heart-shaped and smallish face looked happier than usual; he hoped so adamantly that she might someday find a love that would be the reason for her existence; she was his, though he had found her so late. Something akin to complacency appeared on his face.

&nbs
p; Amy was sorry not to be able to match his exact mood. The wild red dust had begun finally to blow into the car, and they could think or talk then of nothing but finding a place to stop. Seeing a deserted house, they decided to explore it. A soft cindery path led toward its rambly front steps. On them, they stopped and listened to the soughing of wind through mighty old cedars. When they were in the house, they gazed feelingly at the bedraggled reminders of lives far sadder than theirs. A crinkled Sears catalogue lay, as if wishfully, open on the kitchen floor; the walls of the house were unplaned and unpainted and smelled of the spotty fires of hard winters; flaky dark streaks went down them, where rain had poured in steadily. Ghosts lingered obviously and Amy whispered when she spoke.

  “I wonder where the people went?”

  “Probably ran away to avoid debts and went someplace just like this, or worse. And they’ll start all over and end up the same.” As he spoke, Amy moved closer. From the porch’s edge, they stared away distantly, as the couple who had lived here might have done to contemplate their lives. Through a crack in the porch, Almoner saw, in the chicken-messed dirt beneath, a cache of empty beer cans. “The man probably hid them under there from his wife, a good Baptist. I’d imagine a beer now and then was all the little pleasure he had in life, too.” The man’s dogged life, his despair and frustrations and poverty seemed that moment their own. Cupping a hand to Amy’s face, Almoner said, “I can’t stand even vicarious unhappiness there. Let me spare you feeling responsible for other people’s suffering, Amy. I’ve had enough in my lifetime for both of us, it seems.”