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For several months after I left Rochester, I called Anna once a week—until one day, she told me that she had met a friend from Hungary. His name was Miklos and, as she said, they had “fought together in the streets of Budapest.”
“You fought?” I said. “You mean you actually shot people?”
“Terry—what do you think one does in war?—pitch pennies?”
In any event, her relationship with Miklos had deepened into love, and hence, ours had to end. Years later, browsing in a bookstore, I came upon a history of the Hungarian Revolution containing many pictures. One was a picture of a very young Anna—with a rifle slung on her shoulder.
Two years after entering the firm of W. W. Kilcourse, I married Pamela Winnington. We divorced five years later. By that time, her blue eyes had grown hard, and her haughty look had become a stern and tiresome reproof. Neither of my two sons chose a career in advertising.
I found a pleasant little home in the hills of Macon County in North Carolina. I play golf wherever I roam and even ski in the nearby mountains. One weekend not long ago, I drove up through the Shenandoah Valley to Harper’s Ferry and spent a lazy Sunday afternoon wandering around town, sipping lemonade and reading the markers. Toward evening, I strolled down past Jefferson’s Rock, ending up on the foot bridge that runs beside the trestle. I paused there, leaning against the railing, and gazed at the confluence of the two famous rivers. There were swimmers splashing in the Potomac, and a group of boys fishing from a bank of the Shenandoah.
The thought came to me—as it often had in recent days—that I had spent my life skipping over the surface of human existence, like a flat stone flung across the water. I stood at the railing while the sun descended and the nearby hills darkened, until I noticed a boy on the bank staring up at me, perhaps sensing my despair. Turning away and leaving the bridge, I hiked back up the hill and through the old town, so famous for flood and fire.
About Robert Watts Lamon
