The Wintering (19 page)

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.

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.”

“But I don't want to be spared, Jeff,” she said. “How would I learn then, as you did? I don't want to go around being unthinkingly happy.”

“All right,” he said. “But if I can't spare you unhappiness, don't let me cause you any.”

“I'm not worried about that,” she said. “Don't you.” Reaching up, she brushed the back of her hand against his forehead, lined with perspiration. Then, through trees, he glimpsed what he thought was water, shining. Was it a pond? Squinting in the direction he pointed, Amy thought so. Bringing things from the car, following one another along an overgrown path, they came out on a bank strewn with willow trees. Almoner gave Amy a lesson with his fly rod. She was more successful than she ever had been before, but they caught no fish. It was the wrong time of day to fish and too hot. “But, at least,” he said, putting away the rod, “I'll go home with my line wet. Around evening, somebody will have a string of fish I can buy.”

They went deeper into the woods, where it was cooler. And though neither of them was hungry, they unpacked Jessie's lunch and ate lackadaisically. Soon, in the heat, sandwiches left exposed began to dry, their edges to curl. Amy sat balanced on a tree root, running a cold can of beer over her face before drinking. Almoner carried a can of beer with him, pacing. Not even a bird sang and nothing else moved. His feet went soundlessly over pine needles but occasionally cracked open an acorn. “I had a speech all arranged,” he said, “in case you were mad about the changes I made in the story you sent me. And thank you for all your letters, Amy. They help keep me going. They are so beautiful but heart-wrenching, too. They make me want to leap onto a white horse and rush to your house to save you. And I feel so damn helpless being able to do nothing.”

“You do something. I can always reach out to you,” she said. “I'm sorry to write you always sad letters. You have enough sadness. But that seems to be always the way I feel. I know that story's not good. And how could I be mad at any corrections you make? I only get mad at myself, for not being able to do better. And for not making myself work more.”

“Before, when I've made corrections in your things, you said you were afraid the work wasn't yours then. I keep telling you it is. We've all learned from someone else, you know. Maybe only by reading, but we learned somehow.” They were both startled as a twig snapped beneath his heel.

After looking around, Amy said, “Tell me the speech anyway.”

He emptied his beer can and said, “It's about giving and receiving and not being afraid of either. Though giving is the hardest, particularly when people don't want to accept what you have to give.”

Amy began immediately to collect acorns into a little pile about her feet, looking down at them; her voice was low. “I'm sorry, but I can't. I just don't feel that way. And it's not,” she said, looking up, “because you're too old. I just don't feel that way.”

He bent the beer can and tossed it to the ground. “I'm not pressuring you, am I?” he said. “I've waited a year. I can wait as long as it takes you to grow up.”

“Are you mad?”

“How can I be mad at a child?” he said.

She said, concentrating on looking at the acorns, “Every time after I see you, I ask myself why I wouldn't. And I'm sorry. I think, maybe next time. Then the next time comes, and I don't want to either.”

“I only thought,” he said, “that it would be easier for me to help you if there were no more barriers between us. You know I'm not going to force you, and I'm not going to beg either.”

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” she said hopelessly. “And what would I do if I didn't have you to talk to about the sort of things we do.”

“Yes, most people don't understand dealings of the heart,” he said, sitting down somewhat tiredly. “They understand only dealing across counters with money.”

Amy began abruptly to cry, turning and leaning against his shoulder. His face went down immediately to the top of her head. “Please,” he said. “Please don't do that.”

“No one,” she said, “understands me here, but you. I've got to go someplace else.”

“Don't keep running,” he said. “There's not any other place. Places don't matter, don't count. It's all inside you.”

“But I'm so lonely,” she said, sitting up. She accepted a handkerchief he handed her and pressed it to her face.

“I've told you, writers have to accept loneliness,” he said. “That's a cliché by now. But I think to accept life at all, you have to accept loneliness.”

“Only when I see you, I'm not lonely. And we can hardly ever see each other.”

“This secrecy is intolerable,” he said. “And there's so little time.”

“Is it time for the bus?” she said, about to get up.

“Oh no, there's plenty of time before the bus,” he said. Leaning forward and toward the ice bucket, he drew out two cans of beer, dripping water. He bent over, opening them, and Amy stared at his back, realizing what he had meant by time. Her life, she thought, seemed so full of time, she had no idea what to do with it all.

He leaned back against the same tree and handed her a beer. After sipping his own, he said, “You've come a long way, Amy. And you're going to grow up some more.” Then he put an arm quickly about her. “Hush. Hush. I didn't mean to make you cry again. I never want to do that.”

“But you are so kind to me,” she said, muffled against his shoulder. “And maybe next time I will.”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe next time you will.”

Someone nearby suddenly began to chop wood, and they drew quickly apart. Amy got up and moved away to sit against a more distant tree; she consoled herself by thinking she had been right to refuse. How embarrassing to have been discovered making love in the woods; and the thought that the woodchopper would have perceived them, an old man and a young girl, would not leave her mind. She cringed at the thought of having been discovered, of jumping up and straightening her clothes; even as a child, on outings, she had hated going behind bushes to go to the bathroom, pulling down her pants in the open air. Always, it seemed, she had been dogged one way or another by fear of exposure and discovery. Opposite her, he sat drinking his beer and not looking at her, until she spoke. “I brought a pencil and paper today.” She hoped to lighten their moods. “I was going to ask you a lot of questions. It seems I ought to know everything about your work, but I never ask you anything.”

“You don't need to ask those things,” he said. “What you learn from this is enough, Amy.” A wave of his hand took in the woods and meant also solitude and silence. Almost at the same instant, an orange and black butterfly lit on one of Amy's shoes. She remained perfectly still and hardly dared breathe. “It would be nice,” Almoner said, “to be a butterfly. Come out and fly about and die in a few days. They have no knowledge of death and can't fear it then. Since they wouldn't harm anything, they have no reason to suspect harm.”

“It's so tiny,” she said. “It seems to have elbows and knee joints.” The butterfly ran a careful antenna over its body, then flew up. Amy drew in a disappointed breath. However, it only drifted onto Almoner's hand. He held it up with the butterfly resting atop it.

“It likes me,” he said.

“Maybe it wants to be a writer, too,” Amy said, smiling.

Opening and closing its preening wings, the butterfly remained on Almoner's hand, while he touched it first to Amy's hair and afterward to her lips; then, it fluttered away with sunlit wings, settling onto one of their discarded beer cans. Pouring beer into his hand from his own can, Almoner held it toward the butterfly, which then flew out of sight.

“Oh,” Amy said. “I'm afraid we made it mad.”

“Maybe it wasn't too disgusted with us,” he said. “It knows we're only human beings.”

“What would I have done if I had never met you?” she said.

“Kept looking,” he said, “as I did. Though, God knows, I'd about given up ever finding you.”

Twilight came on, and bright green moss beneath the trees leapt out sharply, more brilliant. It seemed a soft carpet to lift up and carry away with them into the growing dark, as they carried the things they had brought from the car. As they stood, the sun's shafts drew upward and away from them. And into the cooler air, birds began to sing. Their path was fainter. They stumbled, following it again. The sun sank languidly behind the car and across the sun's path, birds appeared only as black wings. The countryside around them seemed aflame, the fields mellowed. Gullies, in shadows, were like caverns. As they drove back to town, Amy stretched out, realizing she was tired. “It does seem so stupid,” she said, “that we have to hide to sit and talk.”

“It wouldn't be comprehensible to many people,” Almoner said, “that two other human beings would want to spend an afternoon sitting and talking, or not talking, as the notion struck them.”

When they reached town, he parked the car the same distance from the square. Despite lengthened street shadows falling along the sidewalk, the corner where the bus would stop was clearly visible, surrounded by stores with lights on. Negroes, who were waiting on the curb, now bent to pick up bundles.

“The bus must be coming,” Amy said hurriedly.

“Next week?”

“Yes,” she said. “All right.” She leaned across the seat and touched her mouth lightly to his. Then she started to get out.

“Amy,” he said. “Sometimes I wish you hadn't written me that letter. My God, didn't you see what it would mean?”

“No,” she said worriedly, glancing toward the bus stop.

“I wanted to save you any unpleasantness or unhappiness you didn't have to have,” he said. “But I can't go on fighting like this.”

“Fighting?” she said.

“My glands,” he said.