said, “Tonight’s the first time I’ve driven a car for six months.”
“What was the last time?”
“It was a Jeep, and I didn’t drive it very far.”
He drove out along the river road to their old parking place by the water, but when he reached it there were two cars already there. He swore a little under his breath and stepped on the gas.
A side road loomed up on his left. He slowed down, turned the car into it and stopped.
The wind came up from the river and breathed through the car windows, soft and cool.
“Thanks for writing so much,” Bill said at last to break the silence.
Mary said, “You hardly wrote at all.”
“I know. I didn’t have time.”
“I didn’t either,” Mary said. “It’s hard to do all the things you really have to do in college, much less write letters. But I made time for that.”
“It was swell,” Bill said. His voice was strained.
What’s the matter with me? he asked himself angrily. I’ve been away two years, and now I’m with my girl and there’s nothing to say!
Always before there had been too much to say, things that would not go into letters when he sat down to write them. He would get as far as Dear Mary, and the paper would stare up at him, white and empty, and the things he wanted to tell her would not be written down. Instead he would say, There have been some men sick, but never how they looked with the sickness and how they smelled and how he felt when he saw them; or, A man was shot yesterday, but never a description of a man with half of his face missing, a man who used to chew gum and play a guitar. He did not write, I’m lonely. I’m sick. I’m scared. Those were things he whispered to Mary in the secret night and saved to tell Mary when he got home and they were together.
Now he took a deep breath.
“Mary,” he said, “I killed a man.”
He waited for her to shiver, to gasp, to be horrified. He waited for the tears that came so easily at a movie.
Instead she said, “I guess everybody did, didn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “I guess they did.”
He wanted her to share the horror of it, and in that way perhaps the horror would go away.
“After all,” Mary said, “that’s what you were there for, to protect our country.”
“But he was a man,” Bill said, “and I killed him. He was a live man, and now he isn’t alive.”
He shuddered and the old familiar sickness went through him.
“Bill,” Mary said suddenly, “have you met another girl?”
“What?”
“I said, is there another girl?”
For a moment Bill was sure that she was joking, but then he realized that he was not.
“No,” he said. “There’s no other girl. How on earth could I have met another girl?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just that you’re acting so odd. I thought maybe you had met someone else.”
“No,” Bill said again. “There’s nobody but you.”
He put his arms around her and pulled her to him and kissed her. When he kissed her the strain went away and the years between them were gone; it was the night of the Senior Prom, and he was very young and in love. He lifted his face and pressed it against her hair, and for a moment he was filled with peace. He was home and everything was all right.
“Mary,” he whispered, “oh, honey, I missed you so!”
“I missed you too, Bill.”
“Mary,” he said, “let’s get married. Let’s get married now.”
He could feel her start.
“Get married?”
“We’d have the rest of this leave together before I have to go back. Please, Mary!”
She pulled away from him and looked at his serious face.
“Bill,” she said nervously, “Don’t be silly. I couldn’t stop college and get married now. Daddy would have a fit if I even suggested such a thing. And what good would it do? You’d be away all the time.”
Bill released her and leaned back against the seat.
“Yes,” he said wearily, “of course, you’re right. It would be a nutty thing to do. It’s just that you’d belong to me then, and I’d belong to you. Right now I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. Everything’s so different from when I left.”
“I’m not different,” Mary said.
“Yes, you are. We used to not even have to talk, we understood each other so well. Now it’s like we didn’t know each other at all.”
“You do have another girl,” Mary said miserably. “I can tell.”
This time Bill did not try to deny it. He started the motor.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “I’d better take you home.”
When they reached the house Mary opened the car door and started across the lawn.
“It’s all right,” she said, “I can walk to the door by myself.”
“Mary!” Bill caught her.
She stopped and turned back to him; there was no anger in her face, only unhappiness.
“Mary, there isn’t any girl!”
Mary said, “I know there isn’t any other girl. I almost wish there were. At least then we’d know what was wrong!”
Bill stood in the yard and watched the hall light go off and later a light go on upstairs. Then he got back into the car. He started it and pressed the accelerator to the floor and watched the needle creep up across the speedometer. He drove out along the river road again, faster and faster until the sound of the wind past the window was a dull roar. He had driven like this once before, in a Jeep, but suddenly the road had ended and the Jeep had gone off into the underbrush where a man was sleeping. Bill and the man had stared into each other faces, and the man had groped in the bush beside him for his gun, and Bill had picked up his bayonet …
Bill slowed down and drove quietly back to town. He drove home, because there was no place else to go.
He crossed the yard and went up the porch steps and opened the door. It was like going into a stranger’s house, a house that was oddly familiar as from a dream, but not a place where he
