At the Jim Bridger: Stories by Ron Carlson Page A

it. This was Texas in the sixties. Some of these buxom girls would grow up and try to assassinate their daughters’ rivals on the cheerleading squad. If sex was the game, some seemed to say, deal me in. And I guess I felt it was a game, too, one I could sit out. I had begun to look a little closer at the ways I was different from my peers, worrying about anything that might be a genius tendency. And I took great comfort in the unmistakable affection I felt for my Plymouth Fury III.
    “Good,” he said. “If you’re interested, then you’re safe; you’re not a genius. Geniuses"—here he leaned closer to me and squinted his eyes up to let me know this was a groundbreaking postulate-”have a little trouble in the sex department.”
    I liked Jeff; he was my first “buddy.” I sat on the round red Naugahyde stool at Alfredo’s long Formica counter and listened to his speech, including, “sex department,” and I don’t know, it kind of made sense to me. There must have been something on my face, which is a way of saying there must have been nothing on my face, absolutely nothing, a blank blank, because Jeff pulled his apron off his head and said, “Meet me out back in two minutes.” He looked down the counter to where old Mr. Shinetower sucked on his soup. “We got to get you some useful information.”
    Out back, of course, Jeff led me directly around to the motel and Mr. Shinetower’s room, which was not unlocked, but opened when Jeff gave the doorknob a healthy rattle. Inside in the sour dark, Jeff lit the lamp and picked up one of the old man’s periodicals.
    Jeff held the magazine and thumbed it like a deck of cards, stopping finally at a full-page photograph that he presented to me with an odd kind of certainty. “There,” he said. “This is what everybody is trying for. This is the goal.” It was a glossy color photograph, and I knew what it was right away, even in the poor light, a shiny shaved pubis, seven or eight times larger than life size. “This makes the world go round.”
    I was going along with Jeff all the way on this, but that comment begged for a remark, which I restrained. I could feel my father in me responding about the forces that actually caused and maintained the angular momentum of the earth. Instead I looked at the picture, which had its own lurid beauty. Of course, what it looked like was a landscape, a barrenbut promising promontory in ņot this but another world, the seam too perfect a fold for anything but ceremony. I imagined landing a small aircraft on the tawny slopes and approaching the entry, stepping lightly with a small party of explorers, alert for the meaning of such a place. The air would be devoid of the usual climatic markers (no clouds or air pressure), and in the stillness we would be silent and reverential. The light in the photograph captivated me in that it seemed to come from everywhere, a flat, even twilight that would indicate a world with one or maybe two distant polar suns. There was an alluring blue shadow that ran along the cleft the way a footprint in snow holds its own blue glow, and that aberration affected and intrigued me.
    Jeff had left my side and was at the window, on guard, pleased that I was involved in my studies. “So,” he said. “It’s really something, isn’t it?” He came to me, took the magazine and took one long look at the page the way a thirsty man drinks from a jug, and he set it back on the stack of Old Man Shinetower’s magazines.
    “Yes,” I said. “It certainly is.” Now that it was gone, I realized I had memorized the photograph, that place.
    “Come on. Let’s get out of here before he gets back.” Jeff cracked the door and looked out, both ways. “Whoa,” he said, setting the door closed again. “He’s coming back. He’s on the walk down about three rooms.” Jeff then did an amazing thing: he dropped like a rock to all fours and then onto his stomach and slid under the bed. I’d never seen anyone do that;