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probably be buried.
    A light fog rises off the ground, conveniently blurring the general store, the fly-specked mecca where he’d go for after-school ice cream with Ruby. He’s thankful for the mist that softens the junkscape of the Turner farm, the rusted trucks, the busted fridges with illegally left-on doors beckoning neighbor kids to crawl inside and smother. He’s glad even for the deepening blackness that separates him from Sherrie, walling him off in a lozenge of solitude in which he can face the fact that what truly depressed him about the meeting was neither Bentham nor his colleagues, neither the spartan Founders Chapel nor all that pilgrim self-regard, nor even the shock of finding himself, stranded all these long years, in the heart of the stony heart of Puritan New England.
    No, what really bothers him—and he can hardly admit it to himself; if he weren’t driving through the half-dark, he couldn’t let himself think it—is that he was too stupid or timid or scared to sleep with those students. What exactly was he proving? Illustrating some principle, making some moral point? The point is: he adores Sherrie, he always has. He would never hurt her. And now, as a special reward for having been such a good husband, such an all-around good guy, he’s got the chill satisfaction of having taken his high-minded self-denial almost all the way to the grave. Because now it’s all over. He’s too old. He’s way beyond all that.
    He was right to do what he did. Or not to do what he didn’t do. He gropes in the dark for Sherrie’s hand. Her fingers weave around his.
    â€œWhat was that sigh for?” Sherrie says.
    â€œDid I sigh?” says Swenson. “I was thinking I’ve got to do something about this molar.” Turning toward her, he points to it with his tongue.
    â€œDo you want me to call the dentist?” she says.
    â€œNo thanks,” he says. “I will.”
    His marriage means everything to him. That’s what he imagined telling the admiring students if it ever came to that—which it never did.
    Sherrie says, “It’ll sure make my life easier.”
    In a better mood, he’d enjoy the intimacy that lets his wife pick up an old conversation or start a new one without introduction, or explanation. Just now, it annoys him. Why can’t Sherrie say what she means? Because he knows what she means. Crisis counseling is part of her job, and if the sexual harassment policy takes hold, she’ll see fewer students destroyed by faculty Romeos. Sherrie has enough information to bust the entire school, but she’s remarkably discreet and tolerant about what she sees in the clinic. She would not be discreet or tolerant if Swenson slept with a student. She used to boast about being Sicilian on both sides of the family, from villages where straying husbands were routinely thrown off mountaintops by the wronged wife’s uncles and brothers. She used to say that if he cheated on her, she’d divorce him, and then hunt him down and kill him. That she hasn’t bothered to say that for years only depresses him more.
    â€œLucky you.” He feels Sherrie flinch in the dark.
    â€œExcuse me ,” she says. “What did I do?”
    â€œMy nerves are shot,” Swenson mutters.
    â€œYeah, well, mine too,” says Sherrie. “You would not believe the nightmares that came into the clinic today.”
    Swenson’s supposed to ask, What nightmares? But he doesn’t want to.
    â€œYou know,” says Sherrie after a while, “you can relax. No one’s going to fire you for teaching dirty student stories.”
    How dare she underestimate the horrors he faces each day! He’d like to see her go into the classroom and lie about what she loves most in the world, then crawl back into her hole and try to work on her novel. Just as he’s deciding whether to say any of the hostile things that could start