LITMIR.BIZ

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the chicken tasted like meal.

      His mother said, “Jerry, you may excuse yourself and go upstairs to your room. I’ll be up to talk to you in a few minutes.”

      Bill felt the bayonet, warm and strong in his hands. He felt it pressed against him as he ran. He saw a man in front of him, and he watched the end of the bayonet, and he saw the man’s face when they met—

      “Oh, Mother,” Jerry protested, “why? Why do I have to go up now? It’s not even half-past eight yet!”

      Bill got up quickly.

      “I have to go,” he said. “I’ve got a date.”

      “But, Bill, you haven’t had your dessert yet!”

      Bill said, “Save it for me and I’ll eat it later. When I talked to Mary on the phone I told her I’d be by at eight-thirty.”

      He went outside. It was really dark now, and the fireflies were fairy lanterns across the lawn.

      Bill stood in the darkness and breathed deeply and the sickness went away. Then he got into the car and drove to Mary’s.

      Her father came to the door. He was much smaller than Bill remembered him.

      “Well,” he exclaimed, “look who’s here! How are you, Bill?”

      Bill said, “It’s good to see you.”

      They shook hands. Mary’s mother came in from the kitchen with the two sisters, the one who played the piano and the little one with the braces, only she wasn’t little now and the braces were gone.

      Mary came in.

      She was plumper than Bill remembered, and her hair was cut short and fluffy around her face instead of long over her shoulders, but she was still Mary.

      She said, “Hi, there, Bill.”

      “Hello, Mary.”

      Then in the car, she was close and warm beside him.

      “Where do you want to go?” he asked.

      “There’s a party over at Angie’s. We might go there.” She hesitated. “Or we could go to a movie?”

      Bill said, “Let’s skip the party. I’d kind of like to have you to myself this evening.”

      Mary said, “All right. I think it will be a stupid party anyway, and the movie’s a good one.”

      The movie was terrible. Bill sat stiffly in the cramped seat, conscious of Mary’s presence beside him. He could smell her perfume and feel the warmth of her shoulder pressed against his. Finally he stopped all pretense of watching the screen and shifted his full gaze to her and saw that she was crying because the woman in the movie could not make up her mind between the two men.

      Bill felt embarrassed. He had forgotten how Mary cried in movies. Before he had always teased her about it and found it strangely touching. Now, suddenly, it was ridiculous.

      “Come on, Mary,” he said, “let’s go.”

      “This isn’t where we came in!”

      “We’ll see it some other time.”

      He got up and made his way between the sets to the exit. Mary followed him, pouting.

      “Bill, I don’t understand what’s the matter with you.”

      “I don’t know either,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry. The movie was getting on my nerves, and I wanted to go somewhere quiet where I could just sit and talk to you for a while. I guess I can stand the rest of it, though, if you want to go back in.”

      Mary sighed.

      “No,” she said. “Let’s do what you want to do tonight.”

      They got into the car.

      He 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,”

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