There Will Be No Divorce.5

And at 5 A.M., I turned the radio on
& an old man's voice sang a short, sweet song

GRANDFATHER: What'd we sell the radio for?
VIRGINIA: The war effort, Grandpa.
GRANDFATHER: What war?
VIRGINIA: No war.
GRANDFATHER: Then where's our radio?
VIRGINIA: We sold it --
GRANDFATHER: -- because of the war, you just said that. I'm deaf, not stupid.
VIRGINIA: You don't understand. There's no war.
GRANDFATHER: How do you have a war effort without a war?
VIRGINIA: The war effort's because there isn't any war. It's to keep war from happening.

Something is coming to get this couple, or else they are coming to get something. I have never been in a hurricane but I imagine that there would be rain falling from the rain spout down, down into the sweet wet mud and that the wind would begin to wail and that it would be a very bad idea to go punch out all the windows. But it would be exciting, wouldn't it? And it's already over, isn't it? There isn't going to be blood for the static, is there?

I have the sense that, sleeping on the floor, this house does not belong to them. They are on borrowed time. Where they go when the storm comes does not matter. The divorce has already come through, and the war is over. What are they doing together?