Питер Тейлор - Rain in the Heart

How difficult it is to write a credible love story; how much more difficult to write a love story that is both credible and, in the truest sense of the word, loving. Yet Peter Taylor, more generally known for his sophisticated serio-comic portraits of well-to-do Tennes-seans embroiled in the complexities of their insular society, has achieved it with "Rain in the Heart." This is a story that is both different from most of Taylor's short fiction, yet, in its care and attentiveness to details of speech and behavior, supremely representative of the best of his work.

Born in Trenton, Tennessee, educated at Vanderbilt and Kenyon College, Peter Taylor has lived most of his life in the South. Though his short novel A Summons to Memphis (1986) was published to much acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, Taylor has a reputation as one of the finest craftsmen writing in the short story form, and the bulk of his work has been in this genre. Among his titles are A Long Fourth (1948), The Widows of Thornton (1954), A Woman of Means (1950), Miss Leonora When Last Seen (1963), and The Old Forest (1985). His Collected Stories was published in 1986.

When the drilling was over they stopped at the edge of the field and the drill sergeant looked across the flat valley toward the woods on Peavine Ridge. Among the shifting lights on the treetops there in the late afternoon the drill sergeant visualized pointed roofs of houses that were on another, more thickly populated ridge seven miles to the west.

Lazily the sergeant rested the butt end of his rifle in the mud and turned to tell the squad of rookies to return to their own barracks. But they had already gone on without him and he stood a

moment watching them drift back toward the rows of squat buildings, some with their rifles thrown over their shoulders, others toting them by the leader slings in suitcase fashion.

On the field behind the sergeant were the tracks which he and the twelve men had made during an hour's drilling. He turned and studied the tracks for a moment, wondering whether or not he could have told how many men had been tramping there if that had been necessary for telling the strength of an enemy. Then with a shrug of his shoulders he turned his face toward Peavine Ridge again, thinking once more of that other ridge in the suburban area where his bride had found furnished rooms. And seeing how the ridge before him stretched out endlessly north and south he was reminded of a long bus and streetcar ride that was before him on his journey to their rooms this night. Suddenly throwing the rifle over his shoulder, he began to make his way back toward his own barrack.

The immediate approach to the barrack of the noncommissioned officers was over a wide asphalt area where all formations were held. As the sergeant crossed the asphalt, it required a special effort for him to raise his foot each time. Since his furlough and wedding trip to the mountains, this was the first night the sergeant had been granted leave to go in to see his wife. When he reached the stoop before the entrance to the barrack he lingered by the bulletin board. He stood aimlessly examining the notices posted there. But finally drawing himself up straight he turned and walked erectly and swiftly inside. He knew that the barrack would be filled with men ready with stale, friendly, evil jokes.

As he hurried down the aisle of the barrack he removed his blue denim jacket, indicating his haste. It seemed at first that no one had noticed him. Yet he was still filled with a dread of the jokes which must inevitably be directed at him today. At last a copper-headed corporal who sat on the bunk next to his own, whittling his toenails with his knife, had begun to sing: "Yes, she jumped in bed And she covered up her head —"

Another voice across the aisle took up the song here:

"And she vowed he couldn't find her."

Then other voices, some faking soprano, others simulating the deepest choir bass, from all points of the long room joined in:

"But she knew damned well

That she lied like hell

When he jumped right in beside her. "

The sergeant blushed a little, pretended to be very angry, and began to undress for his shower. Silently he reminded himself that when he started for town he must take with him the big volume of Civil War history, for it was past due at the city library. She could have it renewed for him tomorrow.

In the shower too the soldiers pretended at first to take no notice of him. They were talking of their own plans for the evening in town. One tall and bony sergeant with a head of wiry black hair was saying, "I've got a strong deal on tonight with a WAC from Vermont. But of course we'll have to be in by midnight. "

Now the copper-headed corporal had come into the shower. He was smaller than most of the other soldiers, and beneath his straight copper-colored hair were a pair of a bright gray-green eyes. He had a hairy potbelly that looked like a football. "My deal's pretty strong tonight, too," he said, addressing the tall soldier beside him. "She lives down the road a way with her family, so I'll have to be in early too. But then you and me won't be all fagged out tomorrow, eh, Slim!"

"No," the tall and angular soldier said, "we'll be able to hold our backs up straight and sort of carry ourselves like soldiers, as some won't feel like doing. "

The lukewarm shower poured down over the chest and back of the drill sergeant. This was the second year in the Army and now he found himself continually surprised at the small effect that the stream of words of the soldiers had upon him.

Standing in the narrow aisle between his own bunk and that of the copper-headed corporal, he pulled on his clean khaki clothes before an audience of naked soldiers who lounged on the two bunks.

"When I marry," the wiry-headed sergeant was saying, "I'll marry me a WAC who I can take right to the front with me."

"You shouldn't do that," the corporal said, "she might be wounded in action." He and the angular, wiry-headed sergeant laughed so bawdily and merrily that the drill sergeant joined in, hardly knowing what were the jokes they'd been making. But the other naked soldiers, of more regular shapes, found the jokes not plain enough, and they began to ask literally:

"Can a WAC and a soldier overseas get married?"

"If a married WAC gets pregnant, what happens?"

"When I get married, " said one soldier who was stretched out straight on his back with his eyes closed and a towel thrown across his loins, "it'll be to a nice girl like the sergeant here's married."

The sergeant looked at him silently.

"But wherever," asked Slim, "are you going to meet such a girl like that in such company as you keep?"

The soldier lying on his back opened one eye: "I wouldn't talk about my company if I was you. I've saw you and the corporal here with them biddy-dolls at Midway twicst."

The corporal's eyes shone. He laughed aloud and fairly shouted "And he got me the date both times, Buck."

"Well," said Buck, with his eyes still closed and his hands folded over his bare chest, "when I marry it won't be to one of them sort. Nor not to one of you WACs neither, Slim."

Slim said, "Blow it out your barracks bag."

One of those more regularly shaped soldiers seemed to rouse himself as from sleep to say, "That's why y'like 'em, ain't it, Slim? Y'like em because they know how?" His joke was sufficiently plain to bring laughter from all. They all looked toward Slim. Even the soldier who was lying down opened one eye and looked at him. And Slim, who was rubbing his wiry mop of black hair with a white towel, muttered, "At least I don't pollute little kids from the roller rink like some present."