by Shelby Foote
He rose when she returned from hanging his hat on the rack in the hall, and then when she sat down he sat down too, fists clenched loosely on his knees. The major watched with approval. However, all this was done with a certain hesitancy, like that of a foreigner anxious to be polite but made awkward by his fear of committing a gaffe because of his unfamiliarity with the customs of the country. The ten years of seclusion had left their mark on his manner as well as on his face, which Amanda thought was the saddest she had ever seen. He was talking with the major and she looked at him. Seated he seemed tall, though when she had seen him standing on the porch and in the hall he had appeared to be of average height. Now she saw that this was because his legs were very short and his trunk was long. His hair was blond, his skin rather pallid: from lack of sunlight, she supposed—And then she stopped, amazed; she could not understand how she could have failed to notice it before. The resemblance was unmistakable. Add a mustache, lengthen and smooth the hair, liven the features, stretch the legs and shorten the trunk (all of which she did in her mind’s eye) and he was the very image of Harley Drew.
She did not look at him again, but sat with her hands in her lap, staring straight ahead—much as Florence had done when the major sketched her haircut for Sam Marino—until Nora announced that dinner was on the table. The men rose. For a moment they stood watching her. “Amanda,” the major said. She looked up, startled. “After you,” he said. He made a flipper gesture with one hand, indicating the door, still with that false gallantry, and she got up and hurried into the dining room. Henry followed to hold her chair but she was already seated before he reached it. Major Barcroft gave his head a slight but rapid shake of disapproval which made his pince-nez glitter; his eyes behind the lenses were hard as agates. This soon passed, however, for he became absorbed in carving the turkey. Another ten years and carving would be one of the lost arts, he said, watching the slices of white meat as they sheared back over the knife. He took great pride in his carving.
All through the meal he maintained a running fire of comment on the war, the cotton market, and the weather, drawing his daughter into the discussion from time to time with brief but direct questions fired point-blank: “Wasnt that so, Amanda?” or “Did it, Amanda?” or “Wouldnt they, Amanda?” and she would reply, more or less according to whichever applied: “Yes, papa” or “No, papa,” looking at him out of the corners of her eyes, then down at the food on her plate. The young man glanced uneasily at her from time to time, then quickly back at his host. It was obvious from his expression—like that of a captive among savages, not quite certain whether he is to be fed or to be eaten—that the major never talked this way on Cotton Row.
Henry put in a word from time to time, much as Amanda did, but whenever Major Barcroft paused for chewing, a heavy silence fell and the three of them sat motionless save for the up-and-down and slightly sidewise thrust of the major’s jaw—as if, chewing, he were still talking, incurably garrulous though no words came. When they had finished the dessert the major laid his napkin unfolded on the table (a concession to the guest) and said, smiling, “I congratulate you, Amanda. An excellent meal.”
“Yes indeed,” Henry said. “I too: I do too.”
Aware (as her father was also) that her contribution to the preparing of the meal had been limited to occasional peeks into the kitchen to see how it was ‘coming,’ Amanda said nothing. They returned to the parlor, where she and the young man sat merely silent, whereas the major, dejected and glum in contrast to his former volubility, seemed doubly silent, like a rundown talking machine. Yet she could see that he was about to begin again—he raised his chin and cleared his throat, and she knew that she could not bear it. She rose, excused herself, and left the room without waiting for permission or noting Henry’s astonishment and the major’s disapproval. Upstairs, she heard the drone of her father’s voice downstairs, punctuated from time to time by the brief murmur of the young man’s assents and acknowledgments. Not for long, however. Soon she heard them in the hall and the sound of the front door closing. The silence that followed was like the interval that falls between a drawn breath and a scream. Then it came: “Amanda!”
When she was halfway to the door it came again: “Amanda!” and from the head of the stairs she saw her father standing in the hall below, foreshortened, looking up at her as on the night of the renouncement.
“Yes, papa?”
“You werent very hospitable to your guest.”
“Yes, papa.” Your guest, he said: not ‘my’ or ‘our,’ but your. Waiting for what was coming next, she gripped the banister rail and looked down at her hands. But he turned away, exasperated by her combination of docility and resistance, and Amanda went back to her room.
Henry was there the following Sunday, however, and the next, and the one after that; he was a regular Sunday dinner guest. His resemblance to Drew was nothing like as striking as Amanda continued to suppose. It was remarked by no one but herself—certainly not by the major, who (in contrast to what she originally imagined when she thought that he had brought the young man into the house to taunt her, as with a wretched reproduction of the lost original) would rather have gotten rid of him merely on the grounds of resembling a scoundrel—for in fact he resembled Drew but grossly, like an unfinished bust, or vaguely, like a watercolor left out in the rain. Yet to her they not only resembled each other, she came to believe that if they were placed side by side before her she would have trouble telling them apart. This was because she was seeing Henry every Sunday, whereas (though she never suspected this, and would certainly have rejected the notion if it had been suggested to her) she was already beginning to forget the shape of Drew’s face, the play of his mannerisms, and even the inflection of his voice; that one time she had seen him since their separation, in the station wagon with the smooth-haired woman, she had been surprised at how much he had ‘changed,’ though the truth was he had not changed at all; the actual image had merely failed to match the image in her memory. Nevertheless it seemed to her, one following thus hard upon the other—and rhythmically too: once a week, where formerly it had been once a month—that she was being placed in double jeopardy.
All this time, encouraging the young man, Major Barcroft wore the obsequious, false joviality of a procurer, a pander, an attendant even—lacking only the basin and towels, a jar of petroleum jelly and a box of coffin-shaped bichloride tablets—and Amanda, though she did not (could not) push the analogy this far, saw clearly enough what he was leading them to, her and the backward young man. Soon it came. On a rainy Sunday in late April they were sitting in the parlor after dinner, the major looking from one to the other from time to time, covert and speculative behind his glasses. Suddenly he rose; “Excuse me,” he said decisively, and went toward the back of the house. Amanda and Henry sat silent, the fine rain coming faint as whispers against the windowpanes. The major returned, buttoning his raincoat. “I just remembered,” he said. He held out a book wrapped in last night’s paper to protect it from the rain. “It’s due today.” As he turned to go, Amanda saw that he gave Henry a meaningful look, and she knew what was coming.
The front door closed; they were alone, and again the rain whispered on the windows. She would not look at him. After what seemed a very long time she heard him clear his throat. He paused, then said in a desperate, choked voice: “Miss Barcroft—Amanda …”
“Dont,” she said. She kept her eyes down. “Dont.”
“All right.” He said it quite calmly; she was not at all prepared for what she saw when she raised her eyes. He was halfway across the room, then into the hall, and she realized that he had not only sounded calm, he had sounded relieved. Then he was gone; the front door closed behind him. She could hardly believe it was over so quick—a proposal and a refusal, both in less than twenty seconds.
The rain continued, steady, sibilant, and presently the door came open again. She heard her father stop beside the rack in the hall, the rustle of his raincoat coming off. He entered
speaking: “Well—” Then he stopped, seeing Amanda alone. The brightly polished caps of his shoes were speckled with tiny raindrops. “Where’s Henry?” he asked, taken aback. He looked at her and she looked at him, and now that he understood he seemed to swell; rage purpled his face; he drew himself up, looming, prepared to launch a flood of hot reproaches. She raised one hand before her eyes, palm outward in a gesture of defense. But then he stopped; he shook his head as if that were part of a deflation process, for now he seemed to shrink. He said, “I give you up, Amanda. Ive tried: God knows Ive tried. Ive done my best and now I give you up.”
He left and she was alone again. The rain hissed steadily. Yet the dazed expression on her face was not in reaction to Henry’s proposal (which had been expected) nor even to her father’s announcement that he was abandoning all concern about her (which for that matter would have been far more likely to produce relief, apart from the fact that she had scarcely heard it, or at any rate, having heard it, had put it out of her mind); no. The trouble was interior. She had inherited Florence’s malady: bad recurrent dreams: except that in her sister’s case they had been confined to sleep, whereas in Amanda’s they were carried over into the daylight world as fantasies. This was her original dream—the others were merely variations on it:
She is walking on smooth turf, apparently in some kind of park for there is a cast-iron fence around it, each picket ending in a spear point, like the one around the courthouse (the one the City Council was debating whether to donate to the rearmament program for scrap; and two years later did)—yet the courthouse is not there, nor the marble Confederate soldier on his shaft; this is not the courthouse lawn. This is an asylum. But where are the people, the inmates? She herself is a visitor, not a patient, but whether she is here by permission of the authorities she does not know, and this is a source of some uneasiness. ‘After all,’ she tells herself, ‘I didnt sneak in; I just found myself here, the way it nearly always is in dreams. Surely they wouldnt persecute—prosecute me for something in a dream.’ Somewhat reassured she looks around, shading her eyes with the flat of her hand—an unnecessary gesture, like certain stylized movements in ballet, for the light is pearly and sourceless—until she sees in a far corner of the grounds a clump of stunted cedars with the end of a park bench showing around one side. ‘Ah,’ she thinks, relieved (for everything up to now, though charged with a sort of nervous deliberation like the opening pages of a Balzac novel, was merely preparatory. In later repetitions of the dream, when she already knew what was to follow, this prelude seemed interminable; yet even the first time, seeing the bench, she felt relief, knowing it marked a turning-point in the dream, like the tap that alters the snowflake pattern in a kaleidoscope), and moves toward the clump of cedars. There she stops, for directly in front of her a man and a woman are seated at opposite ends of the bench, wearing the vacant faces of madhouse tenants let out for an airing. The man ignores a newspaper unfolded on his lap. But Amanda does not pause to look at him; the woman is the striking one, painted like a harlot, lipstick and rouge and mascara daubed so thick that the slightest change of expression, it seems, would crack them like a mask. Yet now she smiles, turning her head slightly toward the man, and lo, the mask is pliable. Amanda too looks at the man and it is Harley Drew. He darts sidelong glances and fumbles with something hidden beneath the paper in his lap, evidently plotting an attack; his face is cruel, crafty. But the painted woman—Florence (even in the original dream Amanda accepted this without surprise, and in the repetitions she looked forward to this moment; ‘Now I’m going to recognize her,’ she would tell herself)—seems not to fear him, seems rather to welcome the attack, for she is luring him with the painted smile. Amanda looks at the man again, and now she sees the half-hidden weapon: her father’s ivory letter opener, she thinks. Then he attacks; the newspaper falls and she sees that the weapon is not a letter opener, but rather a kind of tusk attached down there. His face is the face of a murderer, the teeth bared in a grimace as he flings himself at Florence, and suddenly they are entangled, arms and legs. As Amanda moves forward to help her sister, whose face is hidden by Drew’s shoulder, all she can hear is a growling sound, like a lion devouring his prey. Then she is near them and Florence looks out of the tangle of limbs, panting breast to breast with her attacker. ‘Is he hurting you, Florence?’ Amanda cries; she stands there, wringing her hands. But Florence only broadens her painted smile. ‘I like it, I like it,’ she says. Amanda, as she recoils, feels a hand gripping her arm above the elbow; ‘Here now,’ a voice says, ‘Who let you in?’ and, turning, she sees a guard in a blue uniform with a double row of buttons on his coat. He leads her away without waiting for an explanation—her guilt is only too obvious. Behind her, though she does not dare to look around, she hears Florence giving little throaty cries at regular intervals. Then they are out of earshot; she and the guard are at an iron gate, where he stops without releasing her arm, selects the largest key from a ring at his belt, and fits it into the lock. He wears Major Barcroft’s face, but the uniformed body below is much too husky; this is not her father. The face is only a pliable rubber mask, cunningly fitted to answer the play of the different features beneath. ‘And dont come back,’ he says, pushing her through. This is not her father’s voice. What is more, the exertion of opening the gate has caused the mask to slip, exposing part of the face. It is as she has thought. This is not her father; this is a Negro, a black man.
That was her dream; she had that to live with, just as Florence had had hers, except that when Amanda woke there was no one to say, as she had said, ‘It’s all right. Shh. I’m here: I’m with you. Shh,’ for she was alone. Florence had shared her love affair by proxy, verbally. Now she was sharing Florence’s—and with the same man, too—but visually. The fact that her sister was dead was not incongruous; Drew was every bit as dead for her. Worse by far, when she looked back on the dream (particularly when she looked back on the repetitions of it) she discovered that, for all her pretended uneasiness and fear, what she really experienced was pleasure—anticipation during the prelude, excitement during the park-bench scene, and a delicious sensation of fear when the black man, wearing her father’s face, took hold of her arm. That was where the true horror lay: in just the absence of horror. “I’m some kind of a monster,” she said, and she covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud.
This agitation grew, this commingling of guilt and desire, not only in dreams but in daylight fantasies too. It accounted in a large part for what followed.
What followed was that Henry Stubblefield, when he came to work on a Tuesday in mid-May, found that Major Barcroft (whose comings and goings were regular as clockwork, who missed a day for only the gravest reasons: to attempt to enlist in a war or to bury a daughter or suffer a heart attack) was not there. That was strange, and doubly strange, for this made twice; he had not come to the office Monday either. On the Monday—yesterday—Henry had been surprised to find the major’s desk still locked when he arrived, the hatrack holding only the bookkeeper’s hat. Yet the bookkeeper himself was hunched above his ledger, making entries as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Presently (but only when the bookkeeper paused at the foot of a row of figures, for he brooked no interruption) Henry asked: “Did he say anything to you?”
“Not me,” the bookkeeper said, and returned to his ledger, the old-time dip pen squeaking.
The morning wore on. Henry half expected to find the major there when he returned from lunch, but it was not so. He stood looking at the locked roll-top desk, upon which a thin film of dust already had settled. The bookkeeper was back at work, and this time Henry interrupted him. “I’m—I’m uneasy. Oughtnt one of us go to the house and see if there’s anything wrong?”
For a moment the older man said nothing. Then he turned on his high stool and peered at the clerk from under the green eyeshade. “Maybe youll go there,” he said. “Not me. Staying away from that house is the best way I know to keep from getting your nose shoved out of joint.
”
“But if he’s—”
“Not me,” the bookkeeper said. He turned, holding the pen poised above the pink and faint blue lines of the ledger sheet like a figure in an allegorical painting, indicating a name in the doomsday book. He spoke with his back to Henry. “Come October I’ll have been here thirty years, and all the dealings I ever had with any Barcroft were tended to right here on Cotton Row.”
