At the Jim Bridger: Stories

by Ron Carlson

  When they met, Libby had suggested they attend the fall dance, since the Civics Club was one of the sponsors. It had not occurred to Cooper to go to a dance. Girls had not actually occurred to Cooper. In the old gymnasium, where the decorating committee had made six bus stops around the perimeter with benches and lampposts, and a big blue cardboard bus circled the dancers, Cooper woke to his new world. Libby was a wry girl who wore a vintage brown silk dress run with a single line of black beads that climbed her in a spiral. She started their longtime game on that first night when she asked him if he knew what dancing was. Before them the shiny floor was filled with their classmates, embraced and shuffling to “Moon River.”

  “I don’t know,” he told her truly.

  “It’s a simple space-saving activity. See how neat they fit on the dance floor?”

  He looked at her.

  “Here,” she went on. “It’s like holding hands.” She clasped his hand and lifted it before them. “See?” Then she threaded her fingers between his and he felt an actual naked shock. No one had touched him that way, but when she folded her hand shut on his, he did the same to her.

  “Now we’re saving space,” she said. “Let’s try to dance.”

  She came carefully into his arms for the first time, floating delicately against his tweed sport coat. “Moon River” was waning fast, but they stepped slowly in their little circle, her forehead just against his temple. The music stopped, and still they stood. He could feel the line of beads under his fingers. He knew something had happened because they did not move. When the small combo began the next number, “Chances Are,” they danced further into the old gym.

  Later, in college when he’d visit, they’d twist together on her roommate’s couch, every adjustment meant to save space, and the second summer in a beach motel for some reason called Tumble Inn, in a bed that would have been a better hammock, she looked him in the eye as they made a last adjustment.

  They were at schools four hundred miles apart and saw each other every weekend their senior year. In one letter, she said, “I feel at every moment that there is a good chance I am wasting space up here. Being engaged is a colossal waste of space! Where are you?”

  After their first date, the fall dance, Cooper told Libby he was taking her to a small Italian place he knew. The custom was for couples to go to fancy restaurants after dances, and Cooper drove down Main Street for a while and then cut right for his house. His mother had a red-checked tablecloth on a round table in the basement and his father had melted candles into a Coke bottle, and the ambience was complete. Libby, of course, picked it up at once, and said she’d heard this place was the best Italian in the state.

  “Which state is that?” his mother had said, and they’d started in laughing. Cooper, who had agreed to this dinner plan because he didn’t exactly know the customs of his classmates, was slightly embarrassed; he was always slightly embarrassed. He watched Libby and his mother hit it off as if this had been their plan, and he felt that feeling he’d had when as a boy in center field he’d seen his friends sitting on his lawn, talking to his mother, and he knew for the first time, the feeling was a kind of happiness.

  Condolence flowers started arriving the next day. Cooper worked at home in the morning and the doorbell rang every forty minutes. He had to go across town to the funeral home as a formality. The law required that he identify her there before the cremation. He used the thought to do all the ugly work on his desk, filing and turgid phone calls, stale business with his various clients, going down the list like a man cutting dry weeds with a scythe.

  At the bottom of his sheet, he had written Police, and he couldn’t figure it out for a moment. Then he looked up the local station number and dialed. A woman answered, Officer Betty Dodd, and he explained that this was no emergency, but that he just wanted some simple information on a potato gun; had she heard of potato guns?

  “What, kind of gun is this, sir?” Officer Dodd asked.

  “It’s a kind of a glorified toy; it shoots potatoes. Is there someone there who I could ask about it?”

  “You’re speaking to me,” she said. “Is it a toy gun?”

  “I don’t know. My son has constructed this potato gun and-”

  “Is this a school-sponsored project?”

  “No, it’s not,” Cooper said, immediately wishing he’d said yes, yes indeed. “It’s just a home project that we’re moving along with. It’ll be fine. I’ll call you back when we get close. Thank you for your assistance.” He hung up the receiver. Cooper was an effusive thanker. When people told him to have a nice day, he thanked them. His mother always responded to “Have a nice day” with, “Shoot, I’ve got other plans.”

  In the kitchen Libby had her next semester’s plan spread over the table in three-by-five cards. The red cards were music projects, the blue cards were lectures, and the white cards were rehearsals. She was a scrupulous planner, and after these years of teaching, she wrote each class as if inventing it. She was the mentor for the first-year teachers. “Do you want me to drive with you?” she asked her husband.

  “No, I can make it. The traffic won’t be bad.” If he could keep it all business, he could handle it. There had been moments when his mother’s death rushed him, and breath gone, he’d have to lean against something. This feeling of void was not in his vocabulary. The closest he could come was remembering when they’d taken nine-year-old Trevor to Hoover Dam, and walked the curved sidewalk along the top. There with the other citizens it looked like a promenade, the two art deco towers standing calmly in the massive blue lake. They ate ice cream and Trevor explained hydroelectricity. But Cooper couldn’t help working to the other edge, leaning over the stone rail and having the deep gorge suck the blood out of his head until he saw spots. Then when he was back with his family, a dropped napkin was right there to be picked up, the sidewalk solid, his son’s voice constant. Cooper thought, Behind me four feet is the true nothingness, but if I don’t look, we’ll make it across.

  Now his mother’s death was that open canyon, waiting to be considered, waiting for all of him. He rippled with a shudder, and shook it off. He wouldn’t cry now. Libby stood him up with a huģ, her lips against his cheek.

  The phone rang and Libby answered with a puzzled look, handing it to Cooper. It was Sergeant Meager with the police. As soon as he said, “Mr. Cooper,” Cooper stepped in the game. They had his name and number, for Pete’s sakes. He was good at this, especially on the telephone. “Have you got some problem with a gun?”

  “I’m sorry, Sergeant. What is it?”

  “The referral says potato gun.”

  “Potato bug” Cooper said, his eyes on libby. He was mad and now he’d stay controlled and win this. “I called a minute ago about these bugs. We have got a genuine infestation. But I also just called the etymologist at Natural Resources, and she’s going to call me back.” There was a pause on the line, and Cooper went on: “I told the receptionist—-”

  “Officer Dodd.”

  “I told Officer Dodd this wasn’t an emergency. I sure appreciate you getting back to me, though. You don’t have them, do you? I’m not even sure they’re potato bugs. They may be this white bug or white fly, whatever it is.”

  “Have a nice day,” Sergeant Meager said.

  Cooper put the phone down and said to his wife, “Case closed.”

  The last time Cooper saw his mother was in a small curtained room near the back of the funeral home. She was swaddled in a white cotton blanket and looked comfortable. Her gray hair was combed straight back, which was a way she never wore it, but was the way that Cooper did, and he saw his face in her again. Her forehead was cool now, and he put his fingers on her cheek and said the word “Good-bye.”

  Cooper’s 1956 Chevrolet was a four-door Bel Air like new. It was the actual car that his father had bought in the fall of 1955. It had been the family car, then Cooper had taken it to college. Later it was sold to a neighbor and gone for five years. Cooper’s father had tracked it dow
n in San Diego and restored the car, bit by bit.

  Now Cooper pulled the cloth cover off the vehicle. He pushed it out of the garage and dusted it generally with his soft brush. He poured red fluid into the transmission; it always lost a little when parked for a month or two. The ignition key was worn smooth, but when he turned it, the car cranked twice and fired to life. He fed fuel for a moment and then let the vehicle settle into its purring idle. “Like a sewing machine,” his father always said. While the engine warmed up, Cooper walked around the car with his cloth, dusting and polishing. The prom was in two hours.

  Helping Trevor with the bow tie for his tux ten minutes before, Cooper had said, “This is a new record for ties in a week.” He’d stood behind his son the day before and formed a Windsor knot in a blue stripe tie, which Trevor then pulled apart and redid, saying, “That’s clever how it cinches.” In one minute the boy had mastered ties. That tie had been for the memorial service, which had filled the little chapel. They had all been people his mother had talked to, counseled over the years, a collection of her puzzle buddies, the neighbors, her nieces and nephews. Cooper had given the eulogy, stepping through the stages of his mother’s life by keeping his back to the canyon, not letting his mind look over the edge.

  Now Trevor came out of the house walking stiffly in his tuxedo, carrying a little corsage in a plastic box with both hands.

  The car was running beautifully. First they picked up Justin on the other side of the high school. Cooper tried to imagine where in the house they hid the potato gun, where they shot it. Justin got in the car and saw Trevor’s corsage and ran back into the house for the one he’d forgotten.

  Both girls, Alison and Deanie, were at Alison’s house, and there was an extended photo session in the living room. The girls were in satin spaghetti-strapped gowns, one dark blue and one light blue, and the comedy of five parents, two corsages, and one little sister played for ten minutes before Cooper was able to ascertain that Alison was Trevor’s date. She was a tall, beautiful girl, and with her brown hair up, she was taller than Trevor. She had a mole beside her nose that Cooper thought might have been makeup, a touch, and she wore large glasses that actually looked wonderful on her smooth face. There was some talk about the eyewear, Alison’s mother admitting to Cooper that she could have contacts anytime she wanted. To this Alison had smiled and said to Cooper, “Contacts? When I can wear these?”

  Trevor was a little stiff, but it was clear he liked Alison’s humor. He didn’t exactly stand close to her for the photos, but she took his arm and pulled him over. Justin had snaked an arm around Deanie; this wasn’t their first date.

  When the kids finally boarded the car, all four slid into the backseat and Alison’s father closed one door while Cooper closed the other.

  “How skinny can they be?” Alison’s mother laughed.

  Cooper saluted and started the old Chevrolet.

  They had dinner at Leonardo’s Submarines, a tacky sandwich shop in a small strip mall by the hospital. Cooper opened the car doors, and though he told Libby he was going to disappear, not talk, be the driver, he had to ask, “Why here?”

  Alison smiled and she and Deanie leaned their heads together to sing, “For your birthday or your prom, for your sister or your mom, for your every party plan, it’s Leonardo’s.” It was a radio jingle, and it was vaguely familiar.

  The girls laughed. “It’s our prom,” Deanie said. “We promised we’d come here for the junior prom.”

  Trevor smiled at Cooper and shrugged. “It’s a cheap date.” The two couples turned and strode like royalty into the little shop. Cooper could see the red-checked tablecloths through the window, and a number of people turned to see who was coming in the door. How would he know a cheap date, Cooper thought, he’s never been on a date.

  He closed the car doors again and felt the sickening pull of the abyss. Everything was normal here, he needed not to look over.

  The prom was at the Tamarisk Country Club, way north in the desert. When Cooper had picked the foursome up at Leonardo’s, they were all talking, spirited, and he found himself invisible. It was the last minute of twilight in the high desert. In the backseat the kids talked over one another about Jackson Pollock, Kelvin temperatures, and the phrase “No Fear.” Justin was evidently an expert on things and started his sentences with, “In reality…” and “The fact is…” Alison had a funny bit, which she’d pull out every few minutes when it would get quiet: “If you don’t understand,” she’d say, “then raise your hand.” In the rearview, Cooper could see them all raise their hand every time and then laugh.

  The sprawling pink-roofed developments dropped behind, and Cooper drove up through the undulating desert shelf. Set alone at the foot of the darkening McDowell Mountains, the Tamarisk Country Club looked like a madman’s fortress surrounded by a golf course. The huge circular drive was flagstone lined with the magnificent desert trees, and when Cooper pulled up to the red carpet entry, the valets, eight kids in white satin jackets glowing in the new dark, ran to his door. “It’s just a dropoff,” he told them as he opened the door and the four beautiful young people slid out.

  “Is this a ‘fifty-five?” one of the valets asked.

  "’Fifty-six,” he told him.

  “What a sweet car,” another said. Trevor was already marching off a step ahead of Alison along the lighted walk toward the stone-and-glass edifice of the Tamarisk. He saw her catch him and take his arm. Just before they entered the massive wooden doors, he saw them all raise their hands.

  Now the dark came up for him, and turning down the broad alluvial slope, he could see the city below, beds of dotted lights layered to the world’s edge. There was still one band of dark blue along the horizon like the edge of a serrated knife. He turned on the old radio, AM only, with the two civil defense triangles on the lighted dial. It took a moment and then another to warm up and then it was Ricky Nelson singing “Traveling Man” on KOY, the vintage station he always kept the radio tuned to as a joke, as if the music were coming across the decades. The tune, touring the women of the world, prefigured “California Girls.” Cooper liked the line “my sweet fraulein in Berlin Town.” The wind in the windows helped, but he could taste the vertigo again, the pull.

  At home, Libby had the table set. She was going to put out a midnight buffet for the kids. She put her hands on Cooper’s chest and saw his face. “Come on,” she told him. “Open this.” She handed him a cold bottle of champagne. “You can have one drink. You’ve got three hours before duty.”

  She poured the wine into two of her big white coffee cups from school and led Cooper out into the backyard. As always, there was a lawn chair on the bottom of their swimming pool. It was where Trevor sat when he was out here. He had a set of rubber-coated hand weights, and he used them to walk around the bottom and sit in the chair. Cooper and his wife sat in the old cushion swing and looked down into the grassy common, which gave onto the rocky wash that ran diagonally through the district.

  Cooper knew he should say something. He knew she was worried about him, but he couldn’t move a single word forward. He was stilled and growing brittle. He could feel his mother’s forehead now, and he turned fully to the lip of Hoover Dam and he leaned into the waiting white emptiness as it rose to meet him. His breath was gone and he was falling. There was nothing. Libby took his hand, wove her fingers through his and squeezed. “Hold on,” she whispered, and gravity returned as her arm went around his shoulder and he felt the first tear hit his shirt. “Look,” she said. Cooper opened his eyes and saw the narrow shape of a coyote on the far side of the pool, drinking silently. Another snout appeared from the dark and dipped to the water. Both animals were focused on the two people on the swinging bench, and then the coyotes vanished. Cooper blinked his eyes and checked. Gone.

  “I loved her, too,” Libby said.

  Cooper nodded. He could nod.

  Libby put Cooper’s cup on the little redwood table. “Come on, mister. Let’s go in. What are we doing o
ut here? Our son is at the prom. We could save some space.”

  What was it like in the bed? Physical therapy? Something. Libby helped him with his clothes and moved upon him, placing his leg so, his arms, turning him, talking softly all the while, and then he kindled, claiming himself as he came to life, clashing with her body and her intent, working against her, with her, until the man made of stone was human again in these efforts. At one point, she smiled up at him and said, “Well, there you are.”

  A moment later, he said to her, “Here I am. I was busy for a minute.”

  “We can sleep for a while now,” Libby said. “I’ll wake you at eleven.” She kissed him and wouldn’t let him roll away, rolling with him, and she was there on his back as he crossed the line into sleep.

  His dream was a variation of the old dream: he was floating up without any support and the view was special, the houses, businesses, and streets, but he couldn’t control his speed or direction and he wanted down. He was always a little higher than it was safe to be. Then he saw his mother. Without transition, he was in a dark hallway of an old school, and passing a classroom window he saw her in the class, which must have been a typing class, because each student sat before an old typewriter. There was an expression on her face, a quiet smile, that let him know she knew he was at the window, but she would not turn to him. He was late for something and passed by, stunned by the last thing: she’d had a suntan. She looked about forty and healthy; she’d been working in the garden?

  Cooper drove behind the Tamarisk Country Club and parked in one of the three ranks of limousines. The parking lot lay against the dark mountain. There was an archway of balloons coming out of the club, lined with tables where volunteers were giving keepsakes to the departing promgoers. Cooper couldn’t shake the classroom scene from his dream. It made him smile. He got out into the warm night and opened his trunk. The music pulsed through the trees, something Cooper almost recognized. He thought these things were all thrash, crash, and hip hop. The musical measures he could grasp now evaporated before he could name them, but some part of it was old, some rock melody. He could see two couples on the terrace, two hundred yards off, leaning in tight, passionate twists, making out. Saving space early.