Meridian Read Free

him. It was wasted and rough, the skin a sallow, unhealthy brown, with pimples across her forehead and on her chin. Her eyes were glassy and yellow and did not seem to focus at once. Her breath, like her clothes, was sour.
    Four men had brought her home, hoisted across their shoulders exactly as they would carry a coffin, her eyes closed, barely breathing, arms folded across her chest, legs straight. They had passed him without speaking as he lay, attempting to nap, on the porch, placed her on her sleeping bag, and left. They had not even removed her cap, and while she was still unconscious Truman had pushed back her cap as he wiped her face with his moistened handkerchief and saw she had practically no hair.
    “Did they hurt you out there?” he asked.
    “They didn’t touch me,” she said.
    “You’re just sick then?”
    “Of course I’m sick,” snapped Meridian. “Why else would I spend all this time trying to get well!”
    “You have a strange way of trying to get well!”
    But her voice became softer immediately, as she changed the subject.
    “You look just like Che,” she said, “while I must look like death eating a soda cracker.” She reached up and pulled at the sides of her cap, bringing the visor lower over her eyes. Just before she woke up she had been dreaming about her father; they were running up and down steep green hills chasing each other. She’d been yelling “Wait!” and “Stop!” at the top of her lungs, but when she heard him call the same words to her she speeded up. Neither of them waited or stopped. She was exhausted, and so she had woke up.
    “I was waiting for you to come home—lying out on the porch—when I saw these people coming carrying a body”—Truman smiled—“which turned out to be you. They carried you straight as a board across their shoulders. How’d they do that?”
    Meridian shrugged. “They’re used to carrying corpses.”
    “Ever since I’ve been here people have been bringing boxes and boxes of food. Your house is packed with stuff to eat. One man even brought a cow. The first thing the cow did was drop cowshit all over the front walk. Whew,” said Truman, squeezing her hand, “folks sure are something down here.”
    “They’re grateful people,” said Meridian. “They appreciate it when someone volunteers to suffer.”
    “Well, you can’t blame them for not wanting to go up against a tank. After all, everybody isn’t bulletproof, like you.”
    “We have an understanding,” she said.
    “Which is?”
    “That if somebody has to go it might as well be the person who’s ready.”
    “And are you ready?”
    “Now? No. What you see before you is a woman in the process of changing her mind.”
    “That’s hard to believe.”
    “It’s amazing how little that matters.”
    “You mean that kindly, of course.”
    “Yes.”
    “Tell me,” said Truman, who did not want to show how sad he suddenly felt, “did you look inside the wagon yourself?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “I knew that whatever the man was selling was irrelevant to me, useless.”
    “The whole thing was useless, if you ask me,” said Truman, with bitterness. “You make yourself a catatonic behind a lot of meaningless action that will never get anybody anywhere. What good did it do those kids to see that freak’s freaky wife?”
    “She was a fake. They discovered that. There was no salt, they said, left in the crevices of her eyesockets or in her hair. This town is near the ocean, you know, the children have often seen dead things wash up from the sea. They said she was made of plastic and were glad they hadn’t waited till Thursday when they would have to pay money to see her. Besides, it was a hot day. They were bored. There was nothing else to do.”
    “Did you fall down in front of them?”
    “I try never to do that. I never have. Some of the men— the ones who brought me home—followed me away from the square; they always follow me home after I perform, in case I