492
JAMES MERRILL
my vehicle, I took on its blazing eyes, its metallic grimace, its beast–
like crouch. Or am I ahead of myself? Were not, at first, humbler
qualities instilled by those early models? They rattled but stood up–
right in sober garb. Fallible, they departed like Pilgrims out of
faith, theirs and mine. But now I suspect I am
behind
myself: I have
no real memory of that Eden of the
~odel
T, in which the car was
yet one more patient beast for man to name and rule. Temptations
of Power, Speed, and Style were already whistling loud in my young
ears. A windshield clearing, I gazed through the forehead of my
genie. Other drivers, rare enough still, 1 hailed silently as having
drunk from the same fountain. At night each learned how to lower
his gaze, conscious of what blinding foresights were to be read in
the oncoming other's. A needle registered the intensity of the whole
experience. When 1 saw my first wreck, complete with police and
bodies under sheets, 1 found in my heart a comprehension, an ac–
ceptance of death that has never--or only lately-deserted me.
My parents were amused, if alarmed. "We gave you the wrong
name, boy," my father would laugh (I am called Walker after
his
father) but he soon learned to make notes of mileage and to deduct
the fuel 1 was using from my allowance. "Walker, if you're going
driving at this hour of the night," my mother would begin. "Your
mother's right," my father would add as 1 rose yawning from the
dark oval table where we ate, brushing to the floor, like any destiny
they might have arranged for me, a constellation of crumbs. For
by then 1 had ceased to take seriously, or indeed to recall, anything
that occurred while 1 was off the road. The abrupt standstill left
me groggy and slow on my feet, as in dreams or on the ocean floor.
My parents gesticulated, their lips moved. 1 cannot explain their
helplessness. 1 was a boy, perhaps in my first year of college: 1 did
not even-but yes! By that time 1 did have a car of my own.
Once more 1 have paused to see if I can remember how it came
about; 1 cannot. 1 can shut my eyes and imagine odd jobs, see my
hand, wrist bare and brown beneath a rolled-up cuff, pressing a
plunger marked VANILLA-a shiny brownish stream braids down–
ward into the glass; or holding a brush and rhythmically, as if to
obliterate any detail that might distinguish such a moment from a
million others like it, covering a clapboard wall with ivory paint. I
can invent, if not truly recall, the death of a grandparent, a legacy
