Love in a Dry Season

by Shelby Foote

  Four days later he was in no hurry to read the letter either, for he had anticipated its contents as well as its arrival: ‘Why havent you come for me? Why are we waiting, Harley?’ or some such words. He pushed the stack of mail aside and it toppled, spreading fanwise off the blotter, the thick, square envelope left uppermost, displaying his name like a cry of distress: Mr Harley Drew, Planters Bank, City. He sighed. His original plan had been to leave if this happened, to catch the next train out if Florence died first; he had told himself he would go without explanation or farewell. But now two things had come to pass that he had not figured on when he made those early calculations. First, he had done so well at the bank that he could not afford to leave, especially considering the fact that Tilden had no child, no proper heir and successor. And second—chronologically, but first in importance, in its bearing on this—a terrible thing had happened to him. He had fallen in love.

  It had begun with that clench eight months ago and the hatless cold drive home, had continued with the following long day’s wait at the bank, the first Thursday in February, and next morning—Friday—he was at his desk, in conference with an applicant for a loan. “Mr Drew: telephone,” someone called from down the line.

  “Excuse me.” He took up the phone. “Hello,” he said crisply, businesslike, straightening the crease of his upper trouser leg as he crossed his knees. He even had time to uncross his legs and polish the already gleaming tip of one shoe against his calf.

  “—Why didnt you come last night?”

  “Maam?” Having said it, he winced; he felt like a fool. This was the first time he had heard Amy’s voice over the phone, disembodied, and he had been so engrossed with the applicant that he had neither recognized it nor understood the words. But now he did.

  “—You heard me.”

  “Yes. Well …” The man across the desk was watching, big and thickset in a mackinaw, with two days’ gray stubble of beard, and it seemed to Drew that he was smiling at his discomfort. “I’ll call you back. Where are you?”

  “—Where would I be? I’m home. But you dont need to call; just come to supper. Seven-thirty.” Amy said this not as if she were asking him, but rather as if she were acceding to a request or answering a general advertisement in the newspaper, under the Personals: Gentleman available as dinner guest, with possible further services in addition. Call H. Drew, Planters Bank, this city.

  “That will be fine,” he said coldly, and just as he was about to relent and thank her, the line clicked and then went dead; she had hung up in his face. Drew replaced the receiver, looking blankly at the man in the mackinaw. “I’m damned,” he said.

  “How was that?” the man said. Drew’s eyes came into focus.

  “Excuse me,” he said, all business again. “Now then, as to collateral—”

  This turned out to be merely a prolog to the first act of a comedy of errors, one of those farces of mistaken identity and cross-purposes which sometimes are funny to the observer but which at the same time are invariably painful to the persons involved, the actors. Drew was at Briartree shortly after seven oclock, bathed and shaved, brushed and groomed, but still wearing the summery hat he had worn last night on Lamar Street. The houseboy answered the bell and Drew came past him into the hall. “Who’s there?” he heard Jeff say from the study. Amy was nowhere in sight.

  “Harley,” he said, and Jeff appeared in the doorway. He seemed pleasantly surprised.

  “Hello hello. Youre just in time for dinner. Come on in. Amy—” No answer. “Amy!”

  “Yes?” Her voice came from the living room, but Drew looked around the door and did not see her.

  “Tell them to lay another place for Harley.”

  “Youre up: you tell them,” she said, and then he saw her. Only her legs and one arm were visible past the side of a fan-back chair drawn up to the fireplace at the far end of the room; she was hunched deep in the cushions, turning the pages of a magazine. He noticed, however, that she had put on high-heeled pumps and black silk stockings, and she wore a diamond bracelet on the wrist of the arm he could see. Jeff laid his hand on Drew’s sleeve and they went into the study. Presently the houseboy returned, announcing dinner, and as they entered the hall and Amy got up from her chair and came toward them, Drew saw that she was wearing a black taffeta dinner dress. He took all this—the pumps, the bracelet, the dress—as a sign that he had been expected, though she continued to make him play the role of an unbidden guest.

  Except for an occasional sidelong glance, interrupted as soon as Drew returned it, this was no different from all those other evenings the three of them had spent down here at Briartree. He might almost have doubted the phone call that morning and even the kiss exchanged here in the hall two nights ago. The biggest difference was that when he left, saying good night to Jeff at the door soon after eleven—Amy had gone to her room an hour ago—he took two hats. Back in Bristol, preparing for bed before midnight, he shook his head and muttered to himself. Was this some kind of game she was playing, some kind of cat-and-mouse affair? Whatever it was, he did not like it; he didnt like it at all.

  But next morning—Saturday—Amy was on the phone again, and this time he was not in conference; he could talk. She said, “It didnt go so good, did it?”

  “It certainly didnt.”

  After a pause they both began to speak at once:

  There was another pause. This is pure crazy, Drew thought. But she spoke first: “Come Monday night. Same time. We’ll try again.”

  “Now wait a minute …”

  “You want to come or dont you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Well then, come. All right?”

  “All right …” And again he was holding a dead phone. He put it back on its cradle, shaking his head and thinking of the hotel girls, forty-odd of them over the past nine years, who asked only a little money and whatever signs of affection he felt he could spare.

  Monday was even less different, up to a point. She had not even dressed; she was wearing the low-heeled shoes, the tweed skirt, and the cashmere sweater of all those other nights. Drew came early, bringing his briefcase, and Jeff urged him to stay for dinner—so at least this time he was there as one invited. Soon after nine they were sitting in the living room and Jeff excused himself, going into the study where his ground-floor bathroom was. As soon as he had closed the door behind him, Drew turned to Amy. But she had already begun to speak. “This is no good, is it?”

  “No,” he said promptly. “It isnt.”

  What followed was not really a pause. It just seemed so because of his surprise at what she said next; it took him a while to assimilate the words. “Are you free weekends?”

  “I can be,” he said.

  “This weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll come by the bank. What time?”

  “What time what?”

  “Do you get off.”

  “Four oclock, about.” He had a feeling of being led by the hand and he did not like it; he would have preferred to be doing the leading himself.

  “All right. I’ll pick you up.”

  “Friday?”

  “Saturday.”

  “Friday,” he said.

  “All right, Friday: at four.”

  Then suddenly she looked doubtful, as if she had just remembered something. She was about to protest and he was prepared to counter it (having snatched the lead he was determined not to yield the smallest point) but Jeff returned and the three of them sat together about the fire. It was as always; it was even as if he had fallen asleep and dreamed the conversation, for Amy gave him not even a sidelong glance. Presently she yawned and went upstairs. Drew rose and watched her go, the two-way swing of her skirt. ‘Look back!’ he told her in his mind, attempting telepathy; but she passed up the stairs, eyes front, and out of sight. Not long afterwards Drew rose again, saying he had a hard day at the bank tomorrow. Jeff helped him into his coat.

  He made arrangements to be gone for the wee
kend: “A duck hunt over in Arkansas,” he told Tilden. The days limped by and at last it was Friday; he came back early from lunch and had his desk cleared by three. At a quarter to four he put on his hat and coat and took his post at the top of the concrete steps in front of the bank. At four she had not come; he was pacing up and down the portico, thinking again of those hotel girls whom he saw at his convenience, not theirs, and whom he had not visited for more than a week now, saving himself—for what? for pacing up and down past the fluted pillars like an actor depicting rage, back and forth across the proscenium, muttering imprecations. The sky was lowering, livid, like the whorled surface of molten lead when it cools. At a quarter past four Rufus put his head around the door. “Mr Drew. It’s somebody wants you on the foam.”

  Inside he said, “Yes?” gripping the phone with both hands. He was trembling.

  “It’s me …”

  “All right. What now? Now what?”

  “I cant come.”

  “Why? Why not?”

  “It’s Friday,” she said.

  He waited for her to explain, but she stopped as if this were all the explanation needed. He took a deep breath. “I know it’s Friday. I ought to: Ive been counting the days. Whats Friday got to do with it?—except of course it’s when we said we’d meet.”

  “Friday was your idea.… I thought maybe I could, this once, but I cant. I never go anywhere on a Friday; I had a friend was killed once in a car wreck on a Friday.”

  “So?” he said coldly, glaring down at the mouthpiece as if he could see her in the Bakelite cup. “I had a friend was killed once on a Thursday, but it doesnt keep me home.” He paused and a heavy hum came over the wire. “Hey!”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought youd hung up.”

  “No: I’m here.” There was another pause. This time he thought he heard chuckling. Was she laughing at him? Was this some more of her cat-and-mouse carryings on? She said, “Anyhow …”

  “Yes?”

  “Anyhow, I cant go.” She wasnt laughing.

  “How about tomorrow, then?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes. At ten oclock.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oo, that sounds kind of immoral,” she said. A pause. “Anyhow, I always sleep till ten.”

  “All right: eleven.”

  “Well …”

  “Yes?”

  “All right. In front of the bank.”

  “Promise,” he said.

  “Promise what?”

  “Youll be here.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Promise—”

  “I promise,” she said.

  This tells the tale, he said to himself that night as he undressed for bed. If she’s not there tomorrow I’m through trying.

  He did not mean it; he knew he did not mean it—he was just snatching at straws of self-respect. But he was not called upon to put it to the test, for to his considerable surprise she was waiting in the station wagon in front of the bank when he came out next morning at eleven. “You drive,” she said. She slid over, wearing another in her sequence of cashmere sweaters and tweed skirts, and he got in beside her. The door closed with a thick, expensive cluck, not at all like the sound of his Ford, and the steering wheel had a well-greased, ponderous feel, like the wheel on the door of the big vault at the bank.

  “Where are we going?” she said. She watched him but he was busy threading traffic. The car drove like a boat.

  “Where did you say you were going?” he said at last. They were on the highway now, entering open country where last year’s cotton stalks stood bare in a mizzling winter rain. All the cabin doors were closed; each chimney let fall a feathering of smoke.

  “Shopping. In Memphis.”

  “Lets go there, then.”

  “All right.” She settled back and closed her eyes. “Wherever you say. I dont care. I’m not due home till tomorrow.”

  They did not make it all the way to Memphis. Just short of the Tennessee line, Amy cried “Look there!”—she was pointing and he saw neon glowing rosy through the mist. CABINS. BIDE-A-WEE; then he was past it. He turned around and came back. Beauty Rest Beds. $2. No ups was printed in smaller letters at the bottom.

  Inside, the cabin had that clammy, penetrating, almost liquid cold peculiar to houses uninhabited in winter. Following the attendant, they breathed steam. He tripped a switch and an overhead bulb, screwed unshaded into the center of the ceiling, came on with a sudden yellow glare that made them wince and shield their eyes. Presently, when their pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, they saw that the room contained a dresser of birch veneer, one split-bottom chair, and a bed already turned down, with dank gray rough-dried sheets, two cotton blankets, and a tufted spread of a shade called nigger pink. The attendant knelt and lit a butane heater; it hissed on a single note which, after continued hearing, seemed to mount to a scream—you kept waiting for it to pause for breath. Their only luggage was Amy’s overnight bag. Though the attendant apparently saw nothing unusual in this, he paused beside the door. “It’s in advance,” he said mournfully, gray-haired, wearing steel-rim spectacles. Drew gave him the two dollars and he left them alone in the cabin. It was not at all as Drew had imagined it so often this past week.

  Attempting to hide his anxiousness, he moved about the room: first to the dresser, then to the bed, testing the mattress—the sign had not lied; the mattress was one of those patented inner-spring models called ‘a fast-feeding work bench’ by Negroes—and at last to the door of the bathroom, a cubicle partitioned into one corner. “You want to go in here?” he said. These were the first words he had spoken since they were alone. Amy looked. The seat on the commode was split and a coffin-shaped stall was lined with galvanized metal; the shower head dripped steadily, like the tick of some enormous clock.

  “Good God no.” She said it fervently, with a sort of determined revulsion, standing on the other side of the room and watching him. This made him nervous. Now he had what he had been wanting: he was in charge. Yet he felt awkward. Nothing was going at all the way he wanted. It was like the fumbling honeymoon of runaway adolescents.

  “Then I will,” he said. “You go on, get in bed; I’ll be right out.” This was said bravely enough, but as he entered he stumbled over the raised sill, more conscious than ever of seeming ridiculous, and closed the door behind him. Undressing in the dark, he gave her plenty of time—too much in fact; “Hi!” she called and he opened the door, barefoot in pale blue drawers and a sleeveless undershirt, his toes curled away from contact with the icy linoleum. The light was still on and again he had to wait for his pupils to shrink. At first he thought the bed was empty. Then he saw that she was drawn up in a ball, knees under her chin; only the top of her head showed from under the covers. Her clothes, thrown at the dresser, had landed mostly on the floor beside it. “Hurry!” she cried, teeth chattering, voice muffled under two blankets and the spread. “Hurry! Come on in! Come on; I’m freezing!”

  They returned to Bristol the next afternoon and Amy let him out in front of the bank; his car was parked in back. He stood watching her go, then drove home through the quiet Sunday streets. Thus his prayers had been answered after the flesh, after the week-long comedy of errors. He feared it might be an end as well as a beginning, for as he stood watching her go she had not looked back and they had made no definite arrangements for another meeting. He feared it was probable that he had failed the test, for time after time—while, eyes rolling, she moaned “Not yet! Not yet!” writhing and panting like a swimmer in high surf—he had been unable to restrain himself. Accustomed to the docility of the hotel girls, who were as circumspect in their pleasures as they were in their displeasures—the customer was always right—he had been infected with Amy’s frenzy: except that whereas in her case it had meant a prolongation, with him it had precipitated matters. Before long the butane heater had increased the temperature of the room to somewhere up near blood heat; he groane
d like a wrestler, slick with sweat, spread-eagle on the mat, and each time he had risen he had risen to be thrown. His performance had been sophomoric at best, and he feared that he had been admitted to a single intimacy—for after all, Amy had been all over; she had lived up East and even in Europe, where he understood men worked like dogs to acquire the very proficiency he lacked. As the days went by and she made no attempt to get in touch with him, Drew became more and more convinced that he had failed, that he would never be readmitted, that he had lost his chance.

  However, he might have spared himself these fears. On the fourth day, Thursday, she was on the phone again: “You doing anything tonight?” He breathed a sigh of pure relief. They were together that night and it was all right, or nearly all right; he had recovered from his initial excitement, or rather he had it under control, at least to some extent. And over the span of the following months—as winter merged into green and leafy rain-washed spring, with a few raw days thrown in to mock their pleasure, and as spring gave way to summer, dusty and hot and waxing hotter, until finally in early August the nights were as hot as the days—they met often; there was hardly a tourist court within a hundred miles that could not claim their patronage; they had been on three trips to Memphis and two to New Orleans. Drew kept score on a calendar, a tick for every meeting, and they had averaged better than a meeting a week since that first one back in February, up near the State line.