At the Jim Bridger: Stories

  Acclaim for Ron Carlson’s At the Jim Bridger

  “Carlson goes beyond conventions to create characters who in their strangeness become suddenly rich with life, their situations lying just beyond the edges of commonplace existence…. This collection of stories about people in the uncertain moral terrain of the American West consistently surprises and delights.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “In At the Jim Bridger…Carlson does not throw one air ball. In these nine short stories and two elegant little sketches he concentrates on people—relentlessly American and almost all men—at internal crossroads.”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “Carlson is one of those rare writers who has remained true to the literary form he seems to love best and at which he excels: the much maligned short story…. Readers of At the Jim Bridger will be glad that he has.”

  —Journal Sentinel (Milwaukee)

  “In the hands of Carlson, a writer of subtle force, these stories are engrossing and at times profound.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “Ron Carlson’s stories burst from the pages, filled with humor and pathos…. Few writers can match Carlson when it comes to creating stories rich in character and plot, stories that actually tell a story…. The nine stories in this volume are each gems.”

  —The Charlotte Observer

  “[Carlson] writes the kind of intimate, layered portraits of American life and its bittersweet comedies that everyone should read and not enough do.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Beautifully written, with small details…that easily conjure up a time and place.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “This collection of short stories could be used as a how-to manual for budding writers. Each of the eleven pieces is crafted to perfection, without a misplaced word or thought.”

  —Booklist

  “Filled with Carlson’s trademark warmth and humor.”

  —The Salt Lake Tribune

  “Enchanting…seductive.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “Ron Carlson knows men and women, fire and snow, loss and discovery. His stories are not glimpses, but whole landscapes of real life, well lit.”

  —Amy Bloom, author of A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You

  “[A] taut, focused collection…sharing graceful, unadorned prose and elegant metaphors…. With a precision and consistency rarely achieved in similar collections, this volume should earn Carlson continued, well-deserved recognition.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Carlson can be funny, quirky, domestic. He continually surprises, generating a unique world that, while marred by loss and inadequacy, is redeemed by moments of tenderness and grace.”

  —Book magazine

  “Ron Carlson—long one of our finest storytellers—is in peak form in At the Jim Bridger. If you wish to understand how it is we live at the beginning of the twenty-first century, you must read Ron Carlson.”

  —Robert Olen Butler, author of Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

  “All these stories are immediately engaging. They create places and people that are recognizable…. Yet there is also something magical and marvelous about them: a great, sweeping feel that is usually found in novels…a sense of history, of things gone before…an understanding, if not a meaning, of what it is to be human.”

  —Creative Loafing

  “In these stories, we see a master at work. The language, the humor, the compassion—all blending splendidly together to reveal humanity at our finest. I love this book.”

  —Chris Offutt, author of Out of the Woods

  “Considered one of America’s great short story writers, Carlson is at it again. In At the Jim Bridger you’ll feast your eyes on some of the funniest and saddest stories ever written.”

  —Phoenix Monthly

  “These stories are masterpieces in miniature—lives captured at crossroads that might be invisible to less astute hearts and pens. To me this is as good as it gets: bold writing about things very tender. I loved this collection.”

  —Elinor Lipman, author of The Inn at Lake Divine

  “These are short stories written by a master of the form and you will be glad to have read them.”

  —The Bloomsbury Review

  “Ron Carlson’s poignant, funny, bittersweet stories provide a stunningly differentiated field report of life in the West…And his distressed and out-of-kilter characters are just as various: grifters, mathematicians, wildlife managers, television news reporters, the lost souls of wealth and progress. He listens and sees and writes like no other. Read him and be beguiled.”

  —Ron Hansen, author of Mariette in Ecstasy

  “Like all sublime fiction, the stories in Ron Carlson’s At the Jim Bridger never make sense. Instead, they make love, war, peace, trouble, and truth. Read this book.”

  —David Schickler, author of Kissing in Manhattan

  ALSO BY RON CARLSON

  Stories

  Hotel Eden

  Plan Β for the Middle Class

  News of the World

  Novels

  Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Truants

  At the

  JIM BRIDGER

  Stories

  Ron Carlson

  PICADOR

  NEW YORK

  AT THE JIM BRIDGER. Copyright © 2002 by Ron Carlson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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  “Towel Season,” “At the Jim Bridger,” and “The Potato Gun” appeared in Esquire; “The Clicker at Tips,” “Evil Eye Allen,” and “At the El Sol” appeared in Tin House; “Disclaimer” and “Single Woman for Long Walks on the Beach” appeared in Harper’s; “The Ordinary Son” appeared in The Oxford American; “At Copper View” appeared in Five Points; “Garry Garrison’s Wedding Vows” appeared in Glimmer Train.

  Additionally: “Towel Season” appears in The Big Esquire Book of Fiction and Symphony Space Selected Shorts Audio Vol XIV; “At the Jim Bridger” and “At Copper View” appear in The Ο. Henry Prize Stories 2001; “The Ordinary Son” appears in The Best American Short Stories 2000 and The Pushcart Prize Anthology 2001; “Disclaimer” appeared in Witness and The Human Project; “Single Woman for Long Walks on the Beach” appeared in The Hawaii Review.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Carlson, Ron.

  At the Jim Bridger : stories / Ron Carlson.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-312-28605-8 (hc)

  ISBN 0-312-30724-1 (pbk)

  1. United States—Social life and customs—20th Century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3553.A733 A92 2002

  813’.54—dc21

  2001059065

  First Picador Paperback Edition: May 2003

  D 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  For Elaine

  CONTENTS

  I

  Towel Season

  At the Jim Bridger

  The Clicker at Tips

  Disclaimer

/>   II

  The Ordinary Son

  Evil Eye Allen

  At Copper View

  Single Woman for Long Walks on the Beach

  III

  The Potato Gun

  Gary Garrison’s Wedding Vows

  At the El Sol

  I

  TOWEL SEASON

  SUDDENLY IT WAS JUNE AND there were strange towels in the house. There were stacks on the table in the entry, two or three towels that Edison knew were not their towels. In the hall, he’d step over large striped piles of strange wet towels waiting to be washed. The kids, Rebecca and Toby, pedaled home in bathing suits, alien towels hung on their necks. Twice Edison tripped as he sidled through the laundry room carrying his files, his feet tangled in a great heap of these damp things. The commotion brought Leslie from the kitchen and she looked down at him, the absentminded professor, his papers around his head. “You’re kind of too young for this kind of thing,” she said. He didn’t look uncomfortable. She knew if she left him there and went back to her potato salad, there was a good chance he’d simply go to sleep. He was up past one almost every night working on his largest mathematical project. This was his final experimental journey for the firm; if it worked, he was going to be able to go on and on toward the edge. If not, he would join all the other middle-level engineers.

  “Whose towels are these?”

  The answer was, depending on the day, the Hanovers’, the Plums’, the Reeds’; close-radius towels, the Hanovers and their pool just down the street, the Plums and their pool around the corner, and the Reeds and their pool not three blocks across from the elementary school all the children (nine total) of these people attended.

  “These, dear, are the Plums’ and we’ll be returning them this evening when we go over there for a cookout, so get your work done.” She picked up his files and laid them on his chest. “Okay? Swimming? Drinks on their patio? Remember? Don’t worry, when the time comes, I’ll drive us all over.”

  Edison crawled to his feet. “All right.” Leslie watched him go into his study, and then she stuffed the towels in the washer. He was working on the most advanced and important calculations of his life. The firm only kept one or two theoretical mathematicians, and this project would determine if Edison would make the cut.

  The summer developed into these dinners and all the shifting towels. That night, they loaded the car and drove five hundred yards to the Plums’ and drifted with the Hanovers and the Reeds toward the gate, carrying their coolers and casseroles and Tupperware containers and the bundle of towels. They seemed like zombies in a fog to Edison, because he was in a fog most of the time himself, so many hours working at his computer screen, and inside the greetings continued even though they’d all seen one another at the Reeds’ three nights ago. Edison and Allen Reed opened bottles of Corona and sat out on the picnic table in the steady heat of the season. These outings always disoriented Edison, who saw them as some kind of puzzle. Part of him was still at his green screen mulling equations while he watched the children spill into the green pool and the women set out the food.

  “How’s the project going, Ed?” Allen asked him. Allen Reed, large and tan, was an applications engineer for the firm. Ed looked at the man’s skin, so dark from the sun he seemed part of the strangeness. What kind of engineer has such a tan? Allen was about five years older than Edison and had an affectionate condescension for theoretical math.

  “I’m working every day,” Edison said. He was looking at the bench where all the towels had gathered in stacks: fourteen towels. There was no way those towels were going home with the right families. Folded there in multicolored order, they seemed part of some problem Edison had solved this week or dreamed of or was working on now.

  “Yes, well, you let me know when they find a market for chaos and its theory, and I’ll come over with my slide rule and give you a hand.” Allen was going to pat Edison on the shoulder, which he did with people he was kidding, but he saw that Edison was about two seconds from getting the joke. They were all used to these odd moments with Edison.

  The thing that was said about Edison at least once every party, after he’d been asked a question and then waited five or ten seconds to answer, or after one of his rare remarks, was “I’m glad I’m not a genius,” which was meant as a kind of compliment and many times simply as a space filler after some awkwardness.

  And even early in the summer on the way home from a cookout, Toby, who was six years old, started crying and when questioned about his grief, stuttered out in a whisper, “Daddy’s a genius!” He cried as Leslie carried him to the house in one of the large pale blue towels that Edison knew was not their towel, and he cried himself to sleep.

  Undressing for bed, Leslie said, “Ed, can you lighten up a little, fit in? These are my friends.”

  “Sure,” he said as she got in bed beside him. “I think I can do that.” A long moment later, he turned to Leslie and said, “But I’m not a genius. I’m just, in a tough section of this deal now. Can you tell Toby? I’m just busy. I need to finish this project.”

  “1 know you do,” she whispered. “What should I tell him it’s like?” When they were dating, he’d begun to try to explain his work to her in metaphors, and she’d continued the game through his career, asking him for comparisons that then she’d inhabit, embellish. Right after they were married and Edison was in graduate school, he’d work late into the night in their apartment and crawl into bed with the calculations still percolating in his head. “What’s it like?” Leslie would ask. “Where are you now?” She could tell he was remote, lit. They talked in territories.

  “I’ve crossed all the open ground and the wind has stopped now. My hope is to find a way through this next place.”

  “Mountains?”

  “Right. Okay, mountains, blank, very few markings.” He spoke carefully and with a quiet zeal. “They’re steep, hard to see.”

  “Is it cold?”

  “No, but it is strange. It’s quiet.” Then he’d turn to her in bed, his eyes bright, alive. “I’m way past the path. I don’t think anyone has climbed this route before. There are no trails, handholds.”

  Leslie would smile and kiss him in that close proximity. “Keep going,” she’d say. “Halfway up that mountain, there’s a woman with a cappuccino cart and a chicken salad sandwich: me.”

  Then a smile would break across his face, too, and he would see her, kiss her back, and say it: “Right. You.”

  Now in bed, Edison said, “Tell him it’s like…” He paused and ran the options. “Playing hide-and-seek.”

  “At night. In the forest?”

  “Yes.” He was whispering. “It’s a forest and parts of this thing are all over the place. It’s going to take a while.”

  The Hanovers’ party was like all the parties, a ritual that Edison knew well. The kids swam while the adults drank, then the kids ate and went off into the various corners of the house primarily for television, and then the adults ate their grilled steaks or salmon or shish kebabs and drank a new wine while it got dark and they flirted. It was easy and harmless and whoever was up was sent to the kitchen or the cooler for more potato salad or beer and returned and gave whatever man or woman whatever he or she had asked for and said as a husband or wife might, “There you are, honey. Can I get you anything else, dear?” And maybe there’d be some nudging, a woman punctuating the sentence with her hip at a man’s shoulder or a man taking a woman’s shoulders in both hands possessively.

  At some point there’d be Janny Hanover and Scott Plum coming out of the house holding hands and Janny announcing, “Scott and I have decided to elope,” and he’d add, “I’ve got to have a woman who uses mayonnaise on everything.” In their swimsuits in the dark, arms around each waist, now parting and rejoining the group, they did look as if it were a possibility. The eight adults were interchangeable like that, as swimsuit silhouettes, Edison thought, except me, I’m too skinny and too tall, I’d look like a woman’s father walking out of th
e patio doors like that. I’d scare everybody Around the pool, the towels glowed in random splashes where they’d been thrown. Edison listened to the men and women talk, and when they laughed, he tried to laugh, too.

  Days, while Leslie took Toby and Becky to the shoe store, the orthodontist, tennis lessons, Edison worked on his project. He was deep in the fields, each problem more like a long, long hike. He had to go way into each to see the next corner and then there to see forward. He had to keep his mind against it the entire time; one slip and he’d have to backtrack. Edison described his work to Leslie now the same way he began to think of it, as following little people through the forest: some would weave through the trees, while others would hide behind trees and change clothes, emerging at a different speed. He had to keep track of all of them, shepherd them through the trees and over a hill that was not quite yet in sight and line them up for a silver bus. The silver bus was Leslie’s contribution. He’d work on butcher paper with pencils, and then after two or three o’clock, he would enter his equations into the computer and walk out into his house, his face vague, dizzy, not quite there yet.

  Summer began in earnest and women began stopping by with towels. Edison would hear Janny Hanover or Paula Plum call from the front hall, the strange female voices coming to him at first from the field of numbers progressing across the wide paper. “Don’t get up! It’s just me! See you tonight at the Reeds’!” and then the door would shut again and Edison would fight with his rising mind to stay close to the shifting numerals as they squirmed and wandered. He felt, at such moments, as if he were trying to gather a parachute in a tricky and persistent wind.