494
JAMES MERRILL
cook kept marveling over how the driver, "crying like a baby," had
carried him right into the kitchen. I found him there on newspapers
when I came down for breakfast.
I am glad to say that in all my years of driving I have never
been responsible for the death of an animal. Nothing pains me more
than those little corpses that accumulate on our highways. The first
one rarely appears before eight or nine in the morning-a rabbit, or
cat, glittering with fresh dark blood-but as the day wears on they
become uncountable and unrecognizable, a string of faded com–
presses dried out by fevers they had merely intensified. All night they
are mourned by shining green or amber eyes. And by dawn they
have become part of the road itself.
Not long after the death of Pal I left home.
I still preferred to drive by myself. At college, the car had made
me popular. Every weekend filled it with classmates, girls, banners,
flasks. I drank from the flasks, I waved the banners, I kissed the
girls. And yet it was all beside the point. Their emphasis was forever
upon
destinations-the
conventional site of waterfall and moon and
mandolin; or else of the shabby 'club' where liquor could be bought
.and consumed, where one danced to a phonograph in the red dark.
Hours would pass
this
way, pleasurably no doubt. But I think there
were few in which I did not once ask myself: How long will it last?
When can we go back to the car?
This is something that happened not long after I left home:
One lovely autumn day I found myself on a road that dipped
and rose through golden shrubbery and tall, whitened trunks, when
out of nowhere, on a steep curve, two figures appeared. They were
all but under my wheels before I could stop: an old country couple
patiently signaling for a ride. I let them in the back door. They were
brown and wrinkled, dressed in patched blacks and raveling grays.
The woman wore knitted stockings. In both hands she held a coffee
can planted with herbs.
As
we drove I would catch sight of her
in the mirror, watching them, lips moving, giving them courage.
The old can carried on his lap a basket of apples, pocked, misshapen
ones which nevertheless had been beautifully polished. Perhaps he
had not been in a car before; he kept looking about and moistening
his lips. I asked how far they were going. When neither answered I
