Country Place by Ann Petry

Author:Ann Petry
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2022-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

13

IT RAINED ALL THAT NIGHT. The next day, wind, coming straight from the northeast, pushed rain across the town in long, slanting sheets. Now and then the wind blew hard enough to lift the rain as though it were a flat layer of water to be elevated whenever the mood of the wind turned capricious; and because of this eternal shift and change in direction, the rain had a nervous, unstable quality.

Leaves were blown down from the big elm trees. They covered the streets, forming masses behind the privet hedges and the picket fences; packing in wet thick layers in the corners of the church steps. The leaves came off the trees first. They were followed by twigs and small branches. Very few cars appeared on the main street and those that did appear nosed their way along, cautiously. For the wet leaves and the branches of the trees and the slick wet surface of the macadam road made driving hazardous.

But the town taxi, driven by The Weasel, took the wet road in its stride. There was an extra flourish about the way he parked the taxi in front of the drugstore. He took his time getting out of it, too, despite the driving rain. He looked relaxed, at ease with himself and the world. He had his cap far back on his head, and as he entered the store, he pushed it even farther back.

“Hope there’s no hard feelin’s about last night,” he said.

“Well, no. I suppose there isn’t,” I said, but I couldn’t resist adding, “Don’t you ever kick at my cat again.”

“You made me mad, Doc. A man ain’t responsible for what he does when he’s mad. And I don’t like that cat and she don’t like me. So you might write it off as an accident, because I ain’t ever bothered her before.”

When he went out to get into the taxi, he was still ignoring the rain, walking slowly. He had the easy manner of a man who has, at long last, accomplished some cherished and difficult project.

I stayed at the front window long after he left the store. Just before the town clock struck nine, I saw children hurrying up the street, hastening toward school. They wore raincoats and rubbers. And as usual the rubbers didn’t fit, so the children ran in an awkward, duck-footed fashion, bent over, holding their feet close to the ground so the rubbers wouldn’t slip off.

Comment on the nature of this storm varied. At the postoffice an argument ebbed and flowed all during the morning. One group insisted that a “line” storm caused the rain, the persistent, steadily increasing wind. Another smaller group rejected this theory, saying it was too early in the season for the line storm, and identified the storm as a northeaster, the kind that tore in from the North Atlantic and stayed until it wore itself out after a two-or-three-day blow.

In the drugstore, I pointed to the barometer Mrs. Gramby gave me last Christmas and said: “It keeps falling.

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