At the Jim Bridger: Stories Read Online Free Page A

weren’t any bears.”
    “Stop,” she said quietly. “You don’t want that game.”
    “It took all night, but I was able to find them because I knew you were waiting.” Leslie could hear the ghost of the old exhilaration in his voice.
    “Edison,” she said, taking his hand. “I’m not there. You need to understand that I’m not at the silver bus anymore. I waited. I saw you give up. Why would I wait?”
    “Where’d you go?” There were seconds between all the sentences. “Where are you?”
    She spoke slowly. “I don’t know. I’m…It’s way north. I’m in town, living in a small town above the hardware store in an apartment.”
    He rose to an elbow and she could feel him above her as he spoke. “What’s it like there? How far is it?”
    “I just got here. No one knows me. It’s getting colder. I wear a coat when I walk to the library in the afternoons. I’ve got to get the kids in school.”
    Edison lay back down and she heard the breath go out of him. “In town,” he said. “Are the leaves turning?”
    “Listen.” Now she rolled and covered him, a knee over, her arm across his chest. “My landlord asked about you.”
    “Who? He asked about me?”
    “Where my husband was.” Leslie put her hand on his shoulder and pulled herself up to kiss him. Held it. “How long I’d be in town.”
    “And you told him I was lost? He likes you.”
    “He’s a nice man.” Leslie shifted up again and now spokelooking down into his eyes. “He said no one could survive in those hills. Winter comes early. He admired you, your effort.” She kissed him. “But you weren’t the first person lost to the snow.”
    “He’s been to your place?” Edison’s arms were up around her now, and she moved in concert with him.
    “He’s the landlord.” She kissed him deeply, and her hands were moving. “He likes my coffee.”
    “I always liked your coffee.” Edison shifted and pulled her nightshirt over her head, her sudden skin quickening the dark.
    “Edison,” Leslie whispered. “You’re not a hell of a guy; you’re not like any of them. Don’t join the team.” She had been still while she spoke, and now she ran her hand up, finally stopping with her first finger on his nose. “Don’t solve for X. Just get all your little people to the bus and drive to town.” She pressed her forehead against his. “I left the keys.”
    “I know where they are,” he said. His hand was at her face now, too, and then along her hip, the signal, and he turned them, rolled so that he looked down into her familiar eyes.
    “Were you scared?” she said. “What was it like when it started to snow and you were still lost?”
    “Everything went white. I wanted to see you again.” Every word was sounded against her skin, her hair. “It didn’t seem particularly cold, but the snowflakes, when they started, there were trillions.”

AT THE JIM BRIDGER
     
    HE PARKED HIS TRUCK IN the gravel in front of the Jim Bridger Lodge, and when he stepped out. into the chilly dark, the dog m the back of the rig next to his was a dog who knew him. A lot of the roughnecks had dogs; you saw them standing in the bed of the four-wheel-drive Fords. It was kind of an outfit: the mud-spattered vehicle, the gear in back, a dog. This was a brown and white Australian shepherd who stood and tagged Donner on the arm with his nose, and when the man turned, the dog eyed him and nodded, or so it seemed. What the dog had done is step up on the wheel well and put his head out to be stroked.
    “Scout,” Donner said, and with a hand on the dog, he scanned the truck. Donner was four hundred miles from home. He knew the truck, too.
    Donner had just come out of the mountains after a week fishing with a woman who was not his wife, and that woman now came around the front of Donner’s vehicle. He stopped her. She smiled and came into his arms thinking this was another of his little moments. He’d been talking about a cocktail and a steak at the Jim