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Show 7i 240 THE WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW my own room, so blind was I, I gave up trying to be a window peeper. I had excitement enough anyhow: my father got the job and die next Sunday we drove to Grand Junction and rented a house. The only city I'd ever seen, even with one stoplight, it stunned me widi its size, frightened me some but excited me more, this new wider world rich with possibility. During the next twelve days we packed - or rather, Mother cleaned for ten days and we packed for two - and in the bustle I forgot all about her, yellow hair, sunbaths, nude visions, all. I forgot all about Shirley too; with us in different towns there seemed no point to being in love with her. And my pre-sleep dreams were of Grand Junction and the future now, never again of that androgynous buckskin girl in distress. The only person I regretted leaving behind was Ted: we had grown up together and it was like saying goodbye to die childhood of my life. I almost forgot my treasure too. It took two days to move, two trips with a Dodge truck my father had borrowed, and not until die morning of the second day did I remember that I'd stashed Gay Paree under my mattress. I had intended to smuggle it along with me but somehow it and France and all diat seemed unimportant now beside the reality of Grand Junction and so I rolled it up inside two old copies of Life and carried them out back and buried them in die trash pile. It was still early, as clear and fresh as a drop of dew on a rose in Eden, all about me I felt the hush of a new day awakening to the sun, and even more to savor that time than to avoid the work inside, I walked slowly down the driveway toward the street. Then, remembering, I glanced her way and there she sat upon the edge of her bed exactly as I had often imagined her, legs crossed, combing her hair, and real, so real that I was shocked still. I simply gawked at her nakedness until, abruptly self-conscious, I glanced around me, ashamed. But it was as quiet and still as if we two were alone in the world, and hastily I looked back at her, fearful now that she had seen me. But she combed her hair as if the window weren't there, combed her soft-yellow, butter-yellow hair as if the sun did not illumine her, as if she were alone in that Eden morning. And her own tranquil absorption calmed me, released me from fear and shame, and at that moment, instead of seeing merely a naked neighbor, my eyes opened to her beauty. I looked upon her with wonder, as if she were the first woman I had ever seen, as if I were the first man ever to look upon a woman; I looked upon her with awe, looked upon her rounded belly and her rounded nippled sun-fired breasts as if to memorize them forever. I had never seen anything so white, so real, so immediate, so glorious, and I stood there in an awed daze, full of a strange ringing. Then she dropped die comb aside and I looked down and kicked at a rock, pretending to have found something valuable in die dust But my eyes |
