The Wintering Read Free Page B

It had receded in his mind into all the university campuses he had ever visited. He went back into the sun, realizing he was appreciative, too late, of the boy’s wanting to comfort him.
    Crossing the porch, going into and out of the speckling shade of the muscadine, he was aware again, with a seasick feeling, of the light and dark of sun and shadow on the grey porch. He descended two steps down from it and crossed the sunlit yard toward the pine copse where it was hot and airless. Lifting the axe with effort, he was grateful for the shade and hacked at heavy tenacious kudzu vine grown in from the road and choking young trees. Old rain loosened, and drops glanced away like flint sparks from the gum-scented trees, while the afternoon grew muggier.
    The work should have been done earlier, before the sun was out or after it had gone down. But it was a kind of punishment to lose through perspiration both liquor and medicine. He felt himself like a candle melting, perspiration flying from his elbows as he swung the axe above his head. He smelled on himself the stale smell of his obliterated days and nights. Beyond the copse, he faced gigantic and now flowerless forsythia bushes guarding the house. They swam before his eyes. Wiping perspiration, he drew an arm across his face and thought, Damn, did he have the d.t.’s? when a maroon Chevrolet appeared. However, it ground real gears beyond his cattle gap after slowing for it, then travelled toward the house with its wheels bearing, Ferris-wheel-fashion, wet leaves. He watched it curiously as if it had nothing to do with him; people in his house seldom had visitors. His brain was still dulled and received slowly a second image: that it was Roy Scarbrook who had just passed.
    Starting toward the house, Almoner set the axe against a tree. He thought of Roy and his ever-wide, proprietary grin as he had seen him last, among his counters with their overhead labelling signs slightly wavering, Men’s, Women’s, Children’s Wear, titillated into motion by an old, revolving-bladed fan fixed to the ceiling. It must have been last summer, Almoner thought, when he had done his most recent shopping for himself and had purchased the khaki pants he wore now. Shaking hands with Roy Scarbrook, presently, would seem a continuation of that day, the year having evolved with his having almost no memory of it.
    Roy, in a shiny plaid suit and with a pink cornflower in his buttonhole, was almost to the front door before Almoner realized the grin seemed recent because of a newspaper picture when Roy was elected Rotary president. It’s going to be some other damn thing about promoting the town as a spa and needing me to help, he thought. He considered going back to the pine copse, but Roy, at the door, stuck his head forward and back, like an apprehensive but curious bird, apparently having been asked to enter and obviously reluctant to do it. Almoner would laugh, later, thinking what was strong enough to propel Roy forward eventually was ingrained, old-fashioned middle-class manners.
    He gained the steps as Roy relinquished the door, having held it to the last possible moment, his hand remaining now behind him and in touch with the screen. Through it, having reached the porch, Almoner saw a face come forward as pale as death and looking disembodied. Thinking back to his dream, he almost instinctively called “Ma!” before seeing it was Inga encased in an invisible-looking dress. It was less than smoke-colored and drifting and its fragility was due mainly to age; the bodice once had been covered with iridescent sequins; now failing, they clung like fish-scale remnants on some half-cleaned fish. She came totteringly on the weak heels of the aged silver dancing shoes.
    God, Almoner thought, she had done it all in exact sequence, the sweetly seductive bath, then her hair and her make-up and a nap in her robe; her dress had been donned a moment before the beau’s arrival. Now,