Love in a Dry Season

by Shelby Foote

  Instead she pivoted on her hips and swayed toward him. Her head thrown back as if in an effort to recover her lost balance, she kept her arms at her sides and would have slid past him and fallen if he had not caught her. They paused, joined from the knees up, she with her head still thrown back, her hair swinging free of her neck and shoulders, and he with a look not of ardor but alarm, made awkward by the burden of his overcoat and hat. Thus they were poised and then she struck; her head darted suddenly forward and her hair, seeking to regain contact with her shoulders, flared in a curved spread like the hood of a cobra. Drew was not at all prepared for this. The gleam of wide open eyes came toward him, enlarging, already tilting for the contact—they bumped teeth. It was painful; it was somehow ridiculous too. But then he forgot the pain, the ridicule, for she had raised her hands beneath his coat and was stroking the silk panel of his vest; she was feeding on his mouth.

  Afterwards she was to tell herself that she had known from the start, that something had flowed between them at their first meeting. For a moment she thought he was going to take her there in the hall, perhaps on the long refectory table, between the two brass lamps. She was willing, wherever—and the quicker the better, too. Then: ‘Not there,’ she thought she heard him say, as if he had read her mind. But this was unreasonable, she realized in the same instant, considering the extent to which his mouth was occupied; Drew could not have spoken. The voice returned, louder, and this time she heard the words as they were spoken.

  “Who’s there?”

  They started apart, both heads turning at once, and it was Jeff. Standing in the lamplight just outside the study door, one hand on the jamb, he seemed to be looking directly at them, eyes focused. “Who’s there?”

  The outer door had swung open of its own accord while Drew and Amy kissed. With one hand she pushed him through; with the other she closed it behind him. Then, turning and glancing down at her feet, she saw his hat lying upside-down on the carpet. “Who’s there?” Jeff said again. That made four times.

  “It’s me.” She raised her hand to her throat as she spoke, for she was panting a bit. “I took a walk.”

  “Where’s Harley?”

  “I didnt see him,” she said. She took up the hat and smoothed out the dent where it had hit the floor. “Did you fall asleep or something? And did he run off and leave you?” She came toward him down the hall, placing the hat on the table as she passed. “Dont fret, Jeff boy; he’ll be back. I see he left his hat.”

  It was not so simple for Drew, shoved as he was into the night without even his hat, his overcoat clutched in his arms: a cold night, too, though just as a hand removed from a basin of hot water and plunged without delay into a basin of ice water will not register the change until after a certain lapse, he did not realize this until his blood began to cool. Also there was the problem of starting the car: Jeff would hear it. But that was all right; Briartree’s drive sloped down to the lakeside road and his car was already headed in that direction. Careful not to slam the door, he got in, turned the ignition on, pulled the choke half out, and disengaged the clutch. Near the gate he let the clutch in and the engine sputtered and caught. Then it died. “I’m damned,” he said. But that was all right, too; he was out on the road by then and it might have been any passing vehicle with an engine failure.

  After such delays and problems he settled down for the thirty-mile ride to Bristol, hatless with his overcoat collar turned high about his ears, remembering the taste and texture of her kiss, the scratch of her nails against the silk at his back, the small whimpering sound she made after the shock of contact: Man, she was ready, he told himself with elation. It was in his memory now and always would be, that first clench; he drew a certain satisfaction from knowing it was available to him, waiting to be summoned up for warmth the rest of his life on cold and lonely stretches such as this. He even grew philosophical about it, drawing on the experience to deduce broad laws of behavior, attractive because they were at once paradoxical and optimistic. For he had plotted and planned for this from the outset, from the first day he saw her on the links, scuffing about in forty-dollar shoes with the same loose-jointed indolence as the teen age waitresses and shopgirls (whom he also found attractive) in two-dollar ‘loafers’ with pennies in the flaps. He stopped in his tracks at that first sight of her: Man, thats for me, he had thought. And now she was.

  Yet the strange thing was—and here was where he waxed philosophical, striking a paradox—it had come after he had despaired, had given up. Immediately after that first sight of her, now almost eight years ago, she and her husband had gone to Carolina for their inheritance, then to Europe for the five-year celebration. He had met them when they returned, the night Huey Long got his, and at first he had been dismayed at her reaction; he was not accustomed to being disliked. But then, though without much satisfaction, he had told himself it was better than indifference—he could wait; waiting was one of his specialties. Meanwhile he had cultivated the husband, at the cost of no little displeasure and some distaste, being exposed not only to long hours of nigger music, which merely bored him, but also to the risk of being the object of advances the threat of which really frightened him; he had been that way about homosexuals all his life, having early formed the notion that such practices involved a loss of manhood for both parties, and the fact that he was willing to risk even that (though with a shudder) was a proof of the extent of his desire. Yet in this case, apparently his diagnosis had been wrong, for much as the blind man schemed to get him alone, and often as he succeeded, nothing ever came of it, nothing really fearsome anyhow. Drew gradually relaxed, at least as far as Jeff was concerned.

  When Amy was concerned he never relaxed. He chose what he thought was the proper approach and followed it. She had been right in thinking he was trying to establish an air of conspiracy between them, under the blind man’s nose so to speak. That was the approach he chose, and he could not understand why she refused to cooperate, for the situation was perfect on both sides. Wives were faithful for one of two reasons: either they were in love with their husbands (‘satisfied’ he called it) or they were ‘frigid’—a category with many subtypes, from lesbians to nuns—and since Amy was obviously neither ‘satisfied’ nor ‘frigid,’ it was inconceivable that she did not desire him; it was a refutation of all he had learned and lived by. Yet at the end of two years he was obliged to admit this must be so; he gave her another six months and then, just as he was about to abandon the whole campaign, it happened. Thus he returned to the memory of that first embrace, savoring again the warmth and elation of it. He took one hand from the steering wheel and slipped it inside his coat, over the breast pocket of his jacket, above his heart, where apparently the warmth was generated. This time he spoke aloud, his breath fogging the windshield: “Man, you cant tell about women, no way in the world.”

  The lights of Bristol came in sight. As he slowed to enter the speed zone the traffic signal ceased its lidless, peremptory, alternately ruby and emerald glare, and winked a topaz eye for caution. That meant it was midnight. He turned down Marshall Avenue, then into the Pentecost drive, and parked his car in the converted carriage house which still had the faintly ammoniac smell of old Judge Hellman’s matched bays, dead fifteen years. Drew walked back under the porte-cochere, up the steps to his private entrance, and unlocked it with a key on the end of his watch chain. The sitting room was cozy; the grate still held a base of faint red coals. In the adjoining room the bed had been turned down and his pyjamas were under the pillow. He put them on in the sitting room, hanging his clothes on a rack beside the fireplace. The moon had risen late; now as he lay smoking a final cigarette it was framed in the window he had raised at the foot of the bed. Cold air invaded the room and he put out the cigarette and lay warm beneath the covers, his eyes shining in the moonlight. Just before he went to sleep he imitated deep in his throat the little whimper Amy had made, but it was not a very successful imitation and he broke off with a laugh. At the end of two and one-half y
ears his prayers were about to be answered after the flesh. The thing was to waste no time, he thought; strike now. Tomorrow would tell, he said to himself as he sank into sleep.

  But when he woke up that was not what he remembered first. Habit, the alarm clock of emotion, caused him to remember it was Thursday—the first Thursday of the month. This evening he would walk on Lamar Street with Amanda after supper. That was the arrangement: the first Thursday of each month. Then he remembered the other; she had come to him in his sleep, big luminous eyes with jazz being played in the background. Strike now, he remembered thinking as he fell asleep. He thought again of Amanda and his first inclination was to forego the meeting; he could say he was out of town or sick or something. But he rejected this. Amanda was still his first concern, his reason for being here, ‘protecting his investment’: he was not going to be panicked into taking any risk in that direction. Let Amy wait. She probably was expecting him, but let her wait—most likely it was even better that way. And having made his decision he felt a sort of pride in his loyalty to Amanda.

  At eight-thirty, brushed and shaved, he entered the dining room where Mrs Pentecost was seated at the head of the table. “Mr Drew,” she said; “Mrs Pentecost,” he replied, both formal; this scene was repeated every morning. “Sleep well?” “Yes maam. And you?” “Oh yes,” and the cook brought in eggs as crisp as lace around the edges. Such politeness was repaid not only in good cooking and lodging (at forty dollars a month, including maid service); he knew that from the start his landlady had gone from friend to friend, singing his praises: “Such a nice young man, for a Yankee. So genteel.” She still did, though now she even left out ‘for a Yankee.’ “I feel certain he must have been well born,” she added. “And mind you, I can tell.”

  She had in fact a reputation for such insight (in spite of her unfortunate marriage) and Drew credited her with much of his success in getting established. Not that he actually needed her help: he had his position at the bank, once he moved to a desk up front, to bring him into contact with people, which was all he ever needed—he who had supplied the handshakes for a cotton trust—in any situation such as this. And it was not only charm that won them; it was ability too. The year spent in the teller’s cage and back in the bookkeeping department with Mr Cilley had given him a knowledge of what went on behind the façade of a bank that was comparable to a watchmaker’s knowledge of what goes on behind the face of a clock. Tilden frequently had cause to bless the day he hired him; for not only the women liked him now, the men too preferred to do business with him. No one ever refused a loan with such graceful regret; no one ever brushed aside small difficulties with such a flattering air of confidence. It was no time at all before Drew had more than made up for the loss of the Barcroft account.

  Socially his position, though of the highest, was somewhat anomalous. This was because the whole town knew of his arrangement with Amanda. It had been the subject of much conjecture all that first winter and into the following spring. Then it faded as a topic of conversation, and he had their sympathy. But it kept him off the list of ‘eligibles’ compiled by the parents of daughters, even when those daughters were in the frantic stage of passing their marriageable prime. He was the extra man at dinner parties, though occasionally he was recruited as an escort for a visitor. In such cases his conduct was exceedingly proper; he gave them no more than a goodnight kiss when he left them at the door, and only then if the girl seemed specially willing and discreet. If, as sometimes happened, one of these discreet, willing visitors returned to Bristol and asked her hostess to arrange another evening with Harley Drew, the hostess would find him confined to bed with ‘a touch of flu’ or ‘just leaving town on business.’ He had made it clear from the start that he could not afford to get involved, and this added to the town’s respect for him. They admired an existence which, if not monastic, was anyhow faithfully chaste.

  What they did not know of was an arrangement he had with one of the waiters in the hotel dining room where he frequently went for the midday meal, usually with business friends and always sitting at the same table, served by the same waiter. “Charming weather,” the Negro sometimes would say as he held Drew’s chair—in spite of the rain or sleet outside or the press of heat. The friends supposed that this was merely a long-standing pleasantry between them, meaning nothing. But it was a signal, a code: it signified that a new ‘girl’ had arrived, and Drew could judge the impression she had made by the breadth of the waiter’s smile as he said “Charming weather.” He averaged a visit a week, whether there was a new girl or not, going up by the service stair at the rear. By now there had been better than three dozen of them, starting with that first Alma eight years ago. They were nearly always fond of him, especially the young ones, the beginners.

  Mostly his days were like the one he faced when he rose from the breakfast table on the morning after that first clench with Amy. At nine oclock he wished Mrs Pentecost good day; by ten minutes after, he was at his desk. During interviews or while he sat thumbing through papers he found himself glancing from time to time at the door. He had done this several times before he realized that he was expecting Amy. Then he stopped; he did not let himself glance away from his work again. He told himself he was glad he was not seeing her tonight. Anticipation would have lengthened the day, and much as he enjoyed his work, he did not like a day that dragged. The appointment with Amanda, on the other hand, neither added to nor subtracted from its length.

  At eleven oclock there was a National Guard meeting in Tilden’s office, attended by Drew and two other officers on Tilden’s staff. The regiment had been activated two years ago and Tilden was its colonel; he had been spending more time at this than at banking, now that Drew had taken hold so well at the bank. Assistant Vice President really meant Assistant President; Vice President was merely something that went on the letterheads. Drew was a captain in the Guard (S-3: ‘plans and training’) with a promotion ‘in the mill’—a mill, however, that ground exceeding slow. At the meeting the men addressed each other by rank: Tilden had insisted on this from the beginning. “None of this Joe and Harley stuff,” he said. “When we’re military, lets be military.” To everyone’s surprise—perhaps most of all to his own—he was making an excellent regimental commander, and he was celebrating his success by growing a mustache: no mean feat for a man with as scanty a beard as Tilden had.

  The clock on his desk was crowding noon by the time the meeting broke up (it had had to do with the supply of shoes—“If nothing else, I want them shod right,” Tilden said decisively; he might have been speaking of cattle) so they adjourned to the hotel dining room for lunch. By then Drew was thinking of Amy again. “Charming weather,” the Negro said as he held Drew’s chair (this was a further refinement of the code; emphasis on the first word meant a blonde, on the second a brunette. Red heads, having no coded designation, were kept for a surprise) but Drew was so absorbed in thinking of Amy that he did not even look for the breadth of the waiter’s smile—who, as a matter of fact, was beaming his brightest.

  Back at the bank Drew caught himself glancing again at the door. But this time he did not stop; he kept it up till closing time, expecting her every minute. He got very little work done. Then, as he watched Rufus lock the door, he had to admit that Amy was not coming. His reaction was anger: she had done this on purpose, knowing full well what his reaction would be. He took what satisfaction he could from the knowledge that tonight, at Briartree, it would be she who would be watching the door, her anger mounting, and he who would not arrive.

  He cleared his desk, putting the unfinished work in a drawer, and drove out to the club. Nobody was there but the pro, who sat in the taproom drinking beer and playing canfield. After some taunting Drew got him out on the links, which were a wasteland, sear and deserted, like photographs of the surface of the moon. They were the only players out in this weather, and even so they had to share a caddie. Playing for a dollar a hole, Drew topped a couple of his drives and spent three strokes in a
sand trap. They came down number nine in a chill blue dusk. Drew’s tee shot had gone into the rough. After ten minutes of searching—by which time night had almost come and the caddie was mumbling, mutinous and cold—they gave it up and came back into the taproom. Drew paid the five dollars he had lost with a disgruntled air which the pro interpreted as anger at losing money, and was at least partly right.

  What a day, Drew thought, back again in his sitting room and looking into the fire. All because of one foxy bitch; “I’ll make her pay,” he said aloud. And liking the sound of this he said it again: “I’ll make her pay.” There was still half an hour before six oclock dinner, time enough to bathe and dress, but he sat looking into the fire. He was still there when the cook rapped on the door for him to come to dinner. At table Mrs Pentecost found her lodger less congenial than usual. But then we all have our off days, she thought, darting timid, sidelong glances at the young man as he ate.

  There was still time for a bath if he hurried, but he rejected the notion almost savagely, as if that too were some kind of affront, and contented himself with changing his shirt and tie. Then he set out for Lamar Street, on the other side of town. In the beginning these meetings had been once-a-week affairs; later they were reduced to alternate weeks, and at last to once a month. “We must be more and more careful,” he had told her, and Amanda had sighed and agreed. Parking his car around the corner he took his accustomed first-Thursday station in front of the Barcroft house. Where the four large oaks had stood, only two remained. One was lost in the big wind of ’32, during the bank holiday, the other in the ice storm of the following winter; it came crashing down like a cutglass chandelier, cracking the brittle armor of ice that incased each twig and branch and scattering the pieces up and down the street, where they lay reflecting the early morning sunlight like so many points of fire. The depression years had been as hard on trees as they had on people.