502
JAMES MERRILL
anything-and had thrown back the top before setting out. It was
late June in the South. My road led without warning to a group
of old-fashioned buildings, shaggy with ivy and vacant behind pale
buff windowshades. A black and gold sign in their midst read
STATE TEACHERS' COLLEGE. I had slowed down for no rea–
son-the place was clearly deserted-when a young man stepped
from under a lintel that bore in large block-lettered relief the word
POULTRY. He raised a careless hand, as if saying, "There you
are!" to a friend.
Although I take no riders nowadays I stopped for him. He was
dressed with an undergraduate's nattiness: white shoes and seer–
sucker. In my day he would have carried a mandolin.
Mter
we
began to move he named a town some fifty miles distant-some fifty
miles out of my way, too, if a "way" was what I had-then closed
his blue eyes, enjoying the ride, I supposed.
He opened them soon enough and, turning to me, made, in the
pleasantest of voices, a series of wholly uncalled-for remarks. Cars
had grown (he began) too ugly for words. So pompous, so unwieldly.
He only rode in them when absolutely essential. The seats were no
longer covered in cloth or leather, but some hideous synthetic material.
The dashboards were cushioned.
As
for the color-schemes-well, why
not put a bedroom on wheels and get it over with? I decided he was
a fairy. I suppose
you
fly, I nearly said.
As
if
he had read my mind he burst into laughter. His name
was Sandy, he continued. He had known I was coming. Hadn't
I
felt, too, that something unusual lay ahead that morning? "Look," I
said firmly, but he went right on. I could expect something far
more unusual than him. A woman, a Princess, was waiting for
him–
for us. Already I was part of their mission, his and hers. I felt
him
watching me closely. The Princess was a medium. I knew what that
meant? Good. They had been for many months in communion with
a guide-did I understand ?- a guide who at last had judged them
ready to receive and carry out a set of elaborate instructions. They
were to fly that very afternoon to the West Coast, thence to an island
in the South Pacific. They had been given quite a timetable of duties,
contacts with strangers minutely described by this guide as to both
appearance and spiritual pedigree-one of the most useful was to be
a thirteen year old fisher-boy who in a previous life had been Sandy's
