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DRIVER
493
in which I must have shared to the extent of .a yellow diamond or
dented gold watch immediately pawned. Anyhow, I drove to college
in my first car, old-fashioned but sufficient, and finished my educa–
tion with honors, having been promised a new car if I did.
What is strange is that my teachers complimented me upon my
excellent mind.
If
only I could think of a single occasion on which I
used it!
Towards the end of the summer following my graduation the
question of what I was to do with my life must at last have arisen
with some intensity. Evenings come back, of straight roads traveled
in fury, the dog on the seat next to me listening while I rehearsed
manifestoes aloud. "No," I told him. "You may be my father but I
refuse to work in the business you have built up. I want to travel,
get to know my country. Besides, I scorn both your methods and
your product. What .are these prosperous times for, if not to . . ."
It
may be that I ended by delivering this speech to the right audience.
More likely it sank without a ripple into those trustful brown eyes
fixed upon me through the warm and whizzing night.
I became, in short-but it does not matter what I became.
If
I
am to set down the truth about my life it will not be found in dates
and labels but in this brief memoir of my supreme pastime and of
those who now and then shared it with me.
My first passenger was the dog I have mentioned. He was
brown, short-haired, virtually nameless--we called
him
Pal. He and
I had loved each other for many years. By the time he began to
drive with me, habit and trust had taken the place of passionate
contact, kisses, exclamations. Neither now had any particular need
of attention. Pal's head would be thrust, tongue flapping gladly,
into a torrent of sunlit odors.
If
I reached to stroke him absently
he would look round, not displeased but puzzled, then turn with
one token thump of his tail back to the window. When I talked,
he would, as I have said, listen, especially at night. His face, no longer
transfigured by adoration, had grown serious, almost ascetic. I felt he
wanted me now merely to illustrate certain still baffling but minor
aspects of human behavior, against the day when his own turn came.
A truck hit him, one morning early, in front of our house. The
