Into the twilight of early evening
The sky turned cinder-black, the rain still fell aberrantly but I could feel the telling rise of wind, the smell of the flowers now nearly overmastered, the lights of the stores presupposing the significance of nightfall. I sat under the boardwalk on the square, the courthouse, restored, heroic, quiescent, rising splendidly o'er the verdant green of the lawn, the street, the oleander and magnolia, a low suggestive thunderpeal and then silence, still no rain from the oleaginous heavens but only the smell of rain, the promise, the covenant of rain; I looked up from my reading with each low reverberation, each amalgamation of sound and silence – for indeed that’s what it was; there was no clipped line, cutoff, between the silence and the thunder and the silence again, but only a dim, ill-defined effluvium of half-silence and half-sound, easily as forbidding (and quite possibly more so) than either the pure sound or the pure hush – and then down again with either the anomalous rain/ silence or the invariance of the thundering.
She said it’s too bad it’s going to storm like it is. She told me about the Compson house, pointed it out to me (not the house itself but only where it was) through the scattered rain, said that it was three or four streets down and to the left, antebellum, higher up than most of the other newer houses and I would be able to tell which it was because Benjy’s wall still ran parallel to the street along the side of the house, the fence he used to run along (before they sold the pasture to send Quentin to Harvard). She told me that his grave was easy to find, right up by the road. I will, I decided:
1. Try to beat the storm to Rowan Oak.
2. Finish the ghost story.
3. Take a bath back at the motel.
4. Go eat.
5. Get a camera.
The rain fell but not hard, aimlessly, random, purling from the gunmetal sky, the streets wet yet with wide arcing swaths still dry under the radiation of the ancient oak branches. I followed the fissured rise and fall of the walkway south, in the direction of the storm, alongside the sprawling lawns awash in the petroliferous yellow lamplight that spilled like the rainwater itself through the dripping windows and the plugged holes of screens through the gloaming that had prematurely descended, and then turned, heading west now. It began to rain very hard. I made my way through the viscous curtain of rain to the comparative dryness afforded by a vast elm and waited, the rain torrential, smacking the leaves high up above me, pummeling the already sodden lawns on the other side of the street. I felt the occasional spray of throughfall. I was worried about the new books that I had just bought. I had read most of “Judith.” I didn’t want the books to get ruined. I wondered if my backpack was waterproof.
The rain abated after a short time spent crouching against the scabrous elm bark (or at least I had decided that it had) and I came forth from under the elm into the still ponderous veil of rain, clutching my backpack protectively (and the books) before me, under my arms. I topped the brief rise of the street and through the low hanging trees I could see the empty driveway, the suddenly dense cedars, and I hurried, the wind increasing now, volleys of thunder closer, springing on the heels of the lightning that had once far outdistanced them. Rain sprayed from the flailing branches of the magnolia and cedars as I made my way hurriedly up the gravel path; the house materializing through the wet leaves and needles, white, ghostly, glowing in the preternatural funeral gloom of midafternoon. I rushed to the porch and sat down. The rain fell harder than ever, the wind lashing it almost horizontal, the spray coating my legs and arms, the wind chilling me. I moved up under Rowan Oak’s overhanging terrace colonnade. The house towered over me, shifting and groaning with the storm. I looked in through the nearly opaque windows, past the staircase (I remembered that staircases are often the most haunted places in a house) into the shadows of the empty rooms beyond. I took out my book and read: of Judith and her martyrdom, her lovelorn seppuku, propelling herself recklessly, desperately off of the balcony under which I now took refuge, of her shallow, hastily dug grave under the colossal sweep of the antediluvian magnolia (and how, when one approached the tree at night, they always felt an inexplicable chill just before the equally inexplicable extinguishing – as if from some unfelt gust of wind – of their candle) that marked the end of the walkway I had just quitted. I finished the story and closed the book. I tried not to look into the house again, lest I see Judith’s shadowy form on the staircase - waiting for the Yankee lover who had never come, the man who, innocently enough, impelled her to commit the greatest of sins one long ago, firefly filled midnight – but was unable. The stairs ascended into darkness beneath a long exanimate chandelier, the empty doorways yawned like mouths into lonely adumbration and dust. I hoped the rain would stop soon. I was trapped under the porch, my back to the windows, listening to the fusillade of the thunder and the low, eerie murmur and groan of the empty house, wishing (and also not-wishing, glad for he pleasant and enjoyable fright that I now felt) I were back at the Ole Miss Motel, reading my new book of ghost stories under the bedcovers, watching the storm through the window.
And then the rain did stop, gradually. The sky lightened considerably (though again so gradually that for the longest of moments I believed that it was only wishful thinking on my part) and soon the water fell only from the interlacing branches of the trees. I ventured forth from the porch and made my way to the back of the house, dodging new runnels of water that spilled down the hill, the sky orange now, the sun sensed rather than seen, listening to the strange plangent clang of rainwater spilling from the gutters and over the wide veranda roof onto the metal of a splashboard, the sound enormous in the stillness after the storm. I felt the ghosts as surely as I felt the retreating wind, as sure as the spray from the perfumed cedars and walnuts. I felt them about the servants quarters that languished on the edge of the backmeadow against the mysterious profuse line of luxuriant leaves, about the sagging frame of the barn that squatted purposeless in the middle of the squelchy meadow, under a sky almost valiant in its post storm splendor, the rain and as yet invisible sun still wrestling for ascendancy. I walked back to the house. I stood on the porch and looked in. “Goodbye, Judith,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I made my way back down the walkway, the mist still falling from the trees, the flowers overpowering, rainwet, cloying, the first birds calling ambiguously from the underbrush. Judith’s magnolia marked the end of the walk. I stopped, almost hoping for the indicative breath of cold air, the gooseflesh to rise on my arms and neck, looking up into the expansive crown of broad, corpulent leaves. “Goodbye, Judith,” I said again. The sky continued to lighten as I walked through the tunnel of cedars to the road. “Goodbye, William.” Under riotous skies I walked alone, back to my motel room, the sky threatening to either rain or push forth a torrent of sunrays at any moment. As I reached my door it decided to rain again.
The sky turned cinder-black, the rain still fell aberrantly but I could feel the telling rise of wind, the smell of the flowers now nearly overmastered, the lights of the stores presupposing the significance of nightfall. I sat under the boardwalk on the square, the courthouse, restored, heroic, quiescent, rising splendidly o'er the verdant green of the lawn, the street, the oleander and magnolia, a low suggestive thunderpeal and then silence, still no rain from the oleaginous heavens but only the smell of rain, the promise, the covenant of rain; I looked up from my reading with each low reverberation, each amalgamation of sound and silence – for indeed that’s what it was; there was no clipped line, cutoff, between the silence and the thunder and the silence again, but only a dim, ill-defined effluvium of half-silence and half-sound, easily as forbidding (and quite possibly more so) than either the pure sound or the pure hush – and then down again with either the anomalous rain/ silence or the invariance of the thundering.
She said it’s too bad it’s going to storm like it is. She told me about the Compson house, pointed it out to me (not the house itself but only where it was) through the scattered rain, said that it was three or four streets down and to the left, antebellum, higher up than most of the other newer houses and I would be able to tell which it was because Benjy’s wall still ran parallel to the street along the side of the house, the fence he used to run along (before they sold the pasture to send Quentin to Harvard). She told me that his grave was easy to find, right up by the road. I will, I decided:
1. Try to beat the storm to Rowan Oak.
2. Finish the ghost story.
3. Take a bath back at the motel.
4. Go eat.
5. Get a camera.
The rain fell but not hard, aimlessly, random, purling from the gunmetal sky, the streets wet yet with wide arcing swaths still dry under the radiation of the ancient oak branches. I followed the fissured rise and fall of the walkway south, in the direction of the storm, alongside the sprawling lawns awash in the petroliferous yellow lamplight that spilled like the rainwater itself through the dripping windows and the plugged holes of screens through the gloaming that had prematurely descended, and then turned, heading west now. It began to rain very hard. I made my way through the viscous curtain of rain to the comparative dryness afforded by a vast elm and waited, the rain torrential, smacking the leaves high up above me, pummeling the already sodden lawns on the other side of the street. I felt the occasional spray of throughfall. I was worried about the new books that I had just bought. I had read most of “Judith.” I didn’t want the books to get ruined. I wondered if my backpack was waterproof.
The rain abated after a short time spent crouching against the scabrous elm bark (or at least I had decided that it had) and I came forth from under the elm into the still ponderous veil of rain, clutching my backpack protectively (and the books) before me, under my arms. I topped the brief rise of the street and through the low hanging trees I could see the empty driveway, the suddenly dense cedars, and I hurried, the wind increasing now, volleys of thunder closer, springing on the heels of the lightning that had once far outdistanced them. Rain sprayed from the flailing branches of the magnolia and cedars as I made my way hurriedly up the gravel path; the house materializing through the wet leaves and needles, white, ghostly, glowing in the preternatural funeral gloom of midafternoon. I rushed to the porch and sat down. The rain fell harder than ever, the wind lashing it almost horizontal, the spray coating my legs and arms, the wind chilling me. I moved up under Rowan Oak’s overhanging terrace colonnade. The house towered over me, shifting and groaning with the storm. I looked in through the nearly opaque windows, past the staircase (I remembered that staircases are often the most haunted places in a house) into the shadows of the empty rooms beyond. I took out my book and read: of Judith and her martyrdom, her lovelorn seppuku, propelling herself recklessly, desperately off of the balcony under which I now took refuge, of her shallow, hastily dug grave under the colossal sweep of the antediluvian magnolia (and how, when one approached the tree at night, they always felt an inexplicable chill just before the equally inexplicable extinguishing – as if from some unfelt gust of wind – of their candle) that marked the end of the walkway I had just quitted. I finished the story and closed the book. I tried not to look into the house again, lest I see Judith’s shadowy form on the staircase - waiting for the Yankee lover who had never come, the man who, innocently enough, impelled her to commit the greatest of sins one long ago, firefly filled midnight – but was unable. The stairs ascended into darkness beneath a long exanimate chandelier, the empty doorways yawned like mouths into lonely adumbration and dust. I hoped the rain would stop soon. I was trapped under the porch, my back to the windows, listening to the fusillade of the thunder and the low, eerie murmur and groan of the empty house, wishing (and also not-wishing, glad for he pleasant and enjoyable fright that I now felt) I were back at the Ole Miss Motel, reading my new book of ghost stories under the bedcovers, watching the storm through the window.
And then the rain did stop, gradually. The sky lightened considerably (though again so gradually that for the longest of moments I believed that it was only wishful thinking on my part) and soon the water fell only from the interlacing branches of the trees. I ventured forth from the porch and made my way to the back of the house, dodging new runnels of water that spilled down the hill, the sky orange now, the sun sensed rather than seen, listening to the strange plangent clang of rainwater spilling from the gutters and over the wide veranda roof onto the metal of a splashboard, the sound enormous in the stillness after the storm. I felt the ghosts as surely as I felt the retreating wind, as sure as the spray from the perfumed cedars and walnuts. I felt them about the servants quarters that languished on the edge of the backmeadow against the mysterious profuse line of luxuriant leaves, about the sagging frame of the barn that squatted purposeless in the middle of the squelchy meadow, under a sky almost valiant in its post storm splendor, the rain and as yet invisible sun still wrestling for ascendancy. I walked back to the house. I stood on the porch and looked in. “Goodbye, Judith,” I said. She didn’t say anything. I made my way back down the walkway, the mist still falling from the trees, the flowers overpowering, rainwet, cloying, the first birds calling ambiguously from the underbrush. Judith’s magnolia marked the end of the walk. I stopped, almost hoping for the indicative breath of cold air, the gooseflesh to rise on my arms and neck, looking up into the expansive crown of broad, corpulent leaves. “Goodbye, Judith,” I said again. The sky continued to lighten as I walked through the tunnel of cedars to the road. “Goodbye, William.” Under riotous skies I walked alone, back to my motel room, the sky threatening to either rain or push forth a torrent of sunrays at any moment. As I reached my door it decided to rain again.
Comments