Maxwell

    The meeting in the school corridor,

    a year and a half later, I keep re-

    living in my mind, as if I were go-

    ing through a series of reincarna-

    tions that end up each time in the

    same failure. I saw that he recog-

    nized me, and there was no use in

    my hoping that I would seem not to

    have recognized him, because I

    could feel the expression of sur-

    prise on my face. He didn't speak.

    I didn't speak. We just kept on

    walking.

I remember thinking afterward, When enough time has passed he will know that I haven't told anybody. .. But I still went on worrying for fear he would think that the reason I didn't speak to him was that I didn't want to know him, after what happened. Which is, I'm afraid, what he did think. What else? ..

Sometimes I almost remember passing him in the school corridors afterward. And I think, though I am not at all sure of this, that I can remember being happy that I was keeping his secret. Which must mean that he was there, that we continued to pass each other in the halls, that he didn't move away. ..

.. I do feel guilty, even so. A little. And always will, perhaps, whenever I think about him. Whether he was spared .. Whether after a while .. Whether he had as lonely a time as I did .. And whether .. all that finally began to seem less real, more like something he dreamed, so that instead of being stuck there he could go on and by the grace of God lead his own life, undestroyed by what was not his doing.

William Maxwell

1908 - 2000

Later Novels and Stories

  (Volume 2 of 2)

  So Long, See You Tomorrow

  1979 (The New Yorker)

Christopher Carduff, editor

The Library of America, 2008©