At the Jim Bridger: Stories Read Online Free

children in the pool, their groupings and regroupings, and then he’d have a new cold beer in his hand, talking again to Scott Plum about chlorine. He sat in the circle of his friends on folding chairs in the reflected swimming pool light, with Paula or Janny right behind him, hip against his shoulder, and he held everyone’s attention now, describing with his hands out in the air a game he’d designed to let the children choose who got to ride in the front seat. “It’s called First Thumb,” he said, lifting his thumbs from each fist; one, then the other. Edison named the different children and how they played the game, and who had gotten to sit in the front seat today and how. His hands worked liked two puppets. The women laughed, the men smiled, and Janny pulled Edison’s empty beer bottle out of his hands and replaced it with a full one.
    “You’re too much,” Dan Hanover said. “This is a hell of a summer for you. I’ll be glad when you get this spec project done and get over and give us a hand in applications.” He leaned forward and made his hands into a ring, fingertip to fingertip. “We’ve got engine housings—”
    “Not just the housings, the whole acceptor,” Allen Reed interrupted. “And the radial displacement and timing has a huge window, anything we want. We’ve got carte blanche, Ed.”
    “Fund
ing! You’d be good on this team,” Dan Hanover said.
    “Solve,” Allen Reed said, tapping Edison’s beer bottle with his own, “for X.”
    Wrapped in a towel like a little chieftan, Toby waddled up and leaned between his father’s legs for a moment, his wet hair sweet on Edison’s face. Then he called his sister’s name suddenly and ran back in to play.
    “Right.” Edison did not know what to say. He picked up Toby’s wet towel in both hands and looked at the men.
    Later, as the party was breaking up and the friends clustered at the gate, Dan Hanover said, “It’s a relief to have you joining the real world,” and Allen Reed clamped his arm around Edison and said, “It’s been a good run. You’re a hell of a guy.”
    Melissa Reed took his upper arm against her new bosom and said, “Don’t listen to him, Edison. He says that because you remind him of what he was like ten years ago.” She squeezed Edison’s arm and kissed him on the lips, but his face had fallen.
     
    That night after everyone had left, Edison was agitated and distracted while they cleaned up. He shadowed Leslie around the deck and through the house and at some point he dumped a load of towels in the laundry room and continued on into his study. After Leslie had cleared the patio, blown out all the candle-lanterns, and squared the kitchen away, she found Edison at his desk. She stood m the doorway for a minute, but he was rapt on his calculations.
    He was there through the night, working, as he was in the morning and all the long afternoon. He accepted a tuna sandwich about midday. She found him asleep at five P.M ., his face on the large sheet of paper surrounded by his animated figurings and the nubs of six pencils.
    She helped him into bed, where he woke at midnight with a tiny start that opened Leslie’s eyes. “Greetings,” she said.
    His voice was rocky and uneven. “I went back in. I walked all the way over the low hills, and I climbed up and back over and into the woods—I found the same woods—and I gathered most of the little people. They’re like children, I mean, sometimes they follow, and so now I think I’m headed the right way.” He sighed heavily and she could hear the fatigue in his chest.
    “Get some sleep.”
    He was whispering. “I don’t have them all, and I see now that’s part of it; I’m not sure you ever get them all. There are mountains beyond these I didn’t even know about.”
    Leslie lay still. He knew she was awake.
    “But that’s another time. Now I can keep these guys together and come down. Do you see? I can wrap this up.” She was silent, so he added, “There