Waltz Into Darkness

31

May again. May that keeps coming around, May that never gets any older, May that’s just as fair each time. Men grow old and lose their loves, and have no further hope of any new love, but May keeps coming back again. There are always others waiting for it, whose turn is still to come.

May again. May of ’81 now. A year since the marriage.

The train from New Orleans came into Biloxi late in the afternoon. The sky was porcelain fresh from the kiln; a little wisp of steam seeping from it here and there, those were clouds. The tree tops were shimmering with delicate new leaf. And in the distance, like a deposit of sapphires, the waters of the Gulf. It was a lovely place to come to, a lovely sight to behold. And he was old and bitter now, too old to care.

He was the last one down from the steps of the railroad coach. He climbed down leadenly, grudgingly, as though it were all one to him whether he alighted here or continued on to the next place. It was. To rest, to forget awhile, that was all he wanted. To let the healing process continue, the scars harden into their ugly crust. New Orleans still reminded him too much. It always would.

A romantic takes his losses hard, and he was a romantic. Only a romantic could have played the role he had, played the fool so letter-perfect. He was one of those men who are born to be the natural prey of women, he was beginning to realize it himself by now; if it hadn’t been she, it would have been someone else. If it hadn’t been a bad woman, then it would have been what they called a “good” woman. Even one of those would have had him in her power in no time at all. And though the results might have been less catastrophic, that was no consolation to his own innermost pride. His only defense was to stay away from them.

Now that the horse was stolen, the lock was on the stable door. The lock was on, and the key was thrown away, for good and all. But there was nothing it opened to any more.

Amidst all the bustle of holidaymakers down here from the hinterland for a week or two’s sojourn, the prattle, the commotion as they formed into little groups, joining with the friends who had come to train side to meet them, he stood there solitary, apart, his bag at his feet.

The eyes of more than one marriageable young damsel in the groups near by were cast speculatively toward him over the shoulder of some relative or friend, probably wondering if he were eligible to be sketched into plans for the immediate future, for what is a holiday without a lot of beaux? Yet whenever they happened to meet his own eyes they hurriedly withdrew again, and not wholly for the sake of seemliness either. It left them with a rather disconcerting sensation, like looking at something you think to be alive and finding out it is inanimate after all. It was like flirting with a fence post or water pump until you found out your mistake.

The platform slowly cleared, and he still stood there. The train from New Orleans started on again, and he half turned, as if to reenter and ride on with it to wherever the next place was. But he faced forward again and let the cars go ticking off behind his back, on their way down the track.