person.
Together, we took the tram to the top of Bridal Veil Falls where, like all the other soon-to-be missionaries and their teenage intendeds, we allowed ourselves to be gripped by the granite magnitude of these mountains and the cold, vast horizon of the eternities. He begged me to wait for him, to marry him someday, and, of course, I did not refuse, the way one cannot refuse a drowning person, or a riptide.
And yet I knew, sick inside, that I could not help but fail John Swenson, that all my promises would surely be broken. Which they were, sullenly, late that summer, on a stuffy and boredom-suffused August night, trying to break the monotony of my summer job in the office parks of my orange-grove suburb, my body frozen from eight hours under the industrial air-conditioning, not warming up one bit even in thebackseat of a car, with an old high school classmate (how did I get there? by what strange gravity? so accidental and yet so inevitable?) who lifted up my shirt, while I hovered somewhere a few feet away, witnessing, not feeling. His name was Chris Ramos. His hands on my chest were evidence that I was not capable of keeping promises to John Swenson, chaste and lonesome in faraway Portugal, who would no longer want to marry me when he returned. It was then that the invisible weight of LeVar Royal’s pearl necklace dropped from my neck.
As was specified in the rules, I went to the bishop’s office the very next Sunday. The bishop’s name was Grant Jensen. He was a short, square man, with a face like an owl’s and a brushlike gray mustache. He was a professional Republican party pollster. I had worked for him the summer I was fifteen, in his little air-conditioned office in an industrial office park in my orange-grove suburb, printing out on transparencies, in shades of magenta, cyan, and green pie graphs charting voter opinions on gun control.
Bishop Jensen sat behind the great Formica-top desk in a high-back swivel chair. I sat next to the frosted window in a pool of afternoon light. Methodically, plainly, as was specified in the rules, I told him the events in the backseat of the car. While I confessed, I sat beside myself on the next chair, looking into the fuzzy light through the scalloped glass on the window.
I was eighteen. He was forty-three, maybe forty-four.
Bishop Jensen leaned back in the swivel chair. His lips began to move beneath his brushlike mustache.
“Let me tell you a story.”
Bishop Jensen told me about a school bus driver who every day on his route traversed a hazardously steep hill and a set of railroad crossings. Up one side of the hills he piloted his bus, and then safely down the other, and across the tracks. Up one side, down the other, across the tracks. Every day, without incident.
One morning, with his bus full of schoolchildren, and running just a few minutes late, the driver felt his brakes fail just as he crested the hill. At the bottom of the hill, he saw a herd of goats in the road and the gates on the railroad tracks closing. Without a moment to spare, and yet without any panic, the bus driver took his foot off the gas, pressed the clutch, downshifted into first gear, and pulled on the emergency brake, bringing the bus full of children safely to rest just yards from the herd of goats and the railroad crossing.
A policeman who witnessed the incident rushed to the bus to see that everyone was okay.
“How did you do it?” the astonished policeman asked.
“Well, you see,” said the bus driver, “every day when I drive my route and I bring the bus over the hill, I rehearse what it is that I should do if the brakes on the bus were to fail. In my mind, I imagine taking my foot off the gas, pressing the clutch, downshifting into first, pulling the emergency break, and bringing the bus full of children safely to stop justyards from the crossing gates. Today, when I had to put my plan into action, I was prepared.”
“And you see,” said my bishop Grant Jensen, “I
Together, we took the tram to the top of Bridal Veil Falls where, like all the other soon-to-be missionaries and their teenage intendeds, we allowed ourselves to be gripped by the granite magnitude of these mountains and the cold, vast horizon of the eternities. He begged me to wait for him, to marry him someday, and, of course, I did not refuse, the way one cannot refuse a drowning person, or a riptide.
And yet I knew, sick inside, that I could not help but fail John Swenson, that all my promises would surely be broken. Which they were, sullenly, late that summer, on a stuffy and boredom-suffused August night, trying to break the monotony of my summer job in the office parks of my orange-grove suburb, my body frozen from eight hours under the industrial air-conditioning, not warming up one bit even in thebackseat of a car, with an old high school classmate (how did I get there? by what strange gravity? so accidental and yet so inevitable?) who lifted up my shirt, while I hovered somewhere a few feet away, witnessing, not feeling. His name was Chris Ramos. His hands on my chest were evidence that I was not capable of keeping promises to John Swenson, chaste and lonesome in faraway Portugal, who would no longer want to marry me when he returned. It was then that the invisible weight of LeVar Royal’s pearl necklace dropped from my neck.
As was specified in the rules, I went to the bishop’s office the very next Sunday. The bishop’s name was Grant Jensen. He was a short, square man, with a face like an owl’s and a brushlike gray mustache. He was a professional Republican party pollster. I had worked for him the summer I was fifteen, in his little air-conditioned office in an industrial office park in my orange-grove suburb, printing out on transparencies, in shades of magenta, cyan, and green pie graphs charting voter opinions on gun control.
Bishop Jensen sat behind the great Formica-top desk in a high-back swivel chair. I sat next to the frosted window in a pool of afternoon light. Methodically, plainly, as was specified in the rules, I told him the events in the backseat of the car. While I confessed, I sat beside myself on the next chair, looking into the fuzzy light through the scalloped glass on the window.
I was eighteen. He was forty-three, maybe forty-four.
Bishop Jensen leaned back in the swivel chair. His lips began to move beneath his brushlike mustache.
“Let me tell you a story.”
Bishop Jensen told me about a school bus driver who every day on his route traversed a hazardously steep hill and a set of railroad crossings. Up one side of the hills he piloted his bus, and then safely down the other, and across the tracks. Up one side, down the other, across the tracks. Every day, without incident.
One morning, with his bus full of schoolchildren, and running just a few minutes late, the driver felt his brakes fail just as he crested the hill. At the bottom of the hill, he saw a herd of goats in the road and the gates on the railroad tracks closing. Without a moment to spare, and yet without any panic, the bus driver took his foot off the gas, pressed the clutch, downshifted into first gear, and pulled on the emergency brake, bringing the bus full of children safely to rest just yards from the herd of goats and the railroad crossing.
A policeman who witnessed the incident rushed to the bus to see that everyone was okay.
“How did you do it?” the astonished policeman asked.
“Well, you see,” said the bus driver, “every day when I drive my route and I bring the bus over the hill, I rehearse what it is that I should do if the brakes on the bus were to fail. In my mind, I imagine taking my foot off the gas, pressing the clutch, downshifting into first, pulling the emergency break, and bringing the bus full of children safely to stop justyards from the crossing gates. Today, when I had to put my plan into action, I was prepared.”
“And you see,” said my bishop Grant Jensen, “I
Similar Books
