THE BOXWOOD GARDEN

by

John Thorne

For a while, as they drove through the hot, dusty Southern countryside, the two men were happy. The older man, who was at the wheel, was perhaps thirtyfive. He was growing a little bald on top and a little fat in front, but his baby face still appeared young. His companion was about twenty-five, a pale, thin boy with a timid look. Both were dressed in the quiet, conservative style that had lately been launched in New York, but both were in their shirt sleeves, and in the damp heat their shirts stuck to their backs.

From time to time the older man spoke, to point out something along the roadside a ramshackle cabin with a towering television aerial; a tiny, whitecolumned country courthouse; a low, modernistic, glass and steel factory building set in a wide green lawn-but most of the time they were silent. They felt a certain quiet contentment in the isolation of the automobile, speeding together through a countryside where they knew no one and no one knew them; where, if they stopped at a filling station or a roadside luncheonette, they were just two men driving together from one town to another.

But as they approached the outskirts of a small manufacturing town, the older man's smile gave way to a faintly petulant frown, and the boy, who was constantly looking at the man's face and taking his cue from the expression he found there, grew subdued and moved further toward his own side of the seat.

"Do you think she will like me?" said the boy after a while. "Of course she will," said the man. "She'll be crazy about you."

"She won't suspect?"

"Certainly not! Why should she suspect? It's the last thing in the world she would suspect."

"I wish it was over.

"Now, for heaven's sake, don't get nervous," snapped the man. "You will give it away if you get nervous. Just be yourself. Besides," he continued, after a moment, "what if she does suspect? What business is it of hers?"

They did not speak again for the rest of the trip. Each sat silently on his own side of the seat, deep in his own thoughts. From time to time the boy glanced furtively at his friend, but the man stared straight ahead, and both grew more and more nervous as they drove through the outskirts of town, down the deserted Sunday morning main street, and into a run-down residential section where a few large old-fashioned frame houses still stood amidst a growing sprawl of drive-in restaurants, supermarkets and service stations. They pulled up in front of one of the houses and stopped.

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