500
JAMES MERRILL
but superfluous to take the wheel again in search of casualties.
I see now that I did not belong. My heroics were prompted by
exuberance, not humanity. My passengers suffered and prayed and
died like the natives of a country I was content merely to visit. I
had myself photographed smiling in front of grand Roman arches
preserved for centuries in that climate. And then I went home. Sand
covered them quickly. The war was won and lost, both.
Ours was now the oldest in a cluster of similar bungalows, each
occupied by an older couple or single woman waiting, like Muriel,
for her hero to return. This colony, having taken my wife to its
heart-"you clever, darling child," I heard her addressed with my
own ears-welcomed me avidly. Neighbors came to the door bearing
covered dishes. Muriel kissed them, led them to where I squirmed.
Poor, popular, outgoing Muriel. I was outgoing, too, in a sense.
"Sorry," I would say, leaping up. "You caught me on my way
to
work."
My restlessness neither fazed nor puzzled them. It did me. Often
I turned back after an hour on the road. People were buying any–
thing, I could have sold rocks. And yet-
One day I drove home to witness the following scene. A car
had stopped, motor running. My wife stood leaning across the gate,
talking to the driver. A bleak wind lifted her hair and skirt, she was
having to raise her voice. I heard nothing. As her eyes darted my
way the car moved on. Its driver had got lost, Muriel said; she had
given him directions. I shrugged. We did live off the main road.
Two nights later I heard the truth. We were returning from a
drive-in movie. We had sat, not touching, in the car and watched a
couple of starlets barely out of grammar school learn "the hard way"
(burned biscuits, Madame de Merteuil for a neighbor, a miscarriage
leading to a reconciliation under moonlit palms) that it took two to
make a marriage. A mile from home Muriel spoke. "Walker, let's
stop here." She had to touch my arm. "Can't we stop."
"If
that's how you feel."
"I mean the
car."
"Of course you do." I pulled uneasily to the side of the road.
"Now let's get out."
"What's got into you? We could be home now."
