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Show 7/ "What's wrong. Chess?" I didn't see how I could possibly handle changing a tire and the loss of my virginity both in one night. "Chess?" "A damned flat.' Oh hell.'" "Is that all?" "All."' "I'll help you change it." That's all I needed, her beating me at changing tires, and I leaped out the door to get with it. I am still ashamed at how readily I believed in that flat, how I, a farm boy, did not realize that it was only that after the last rain the ditch rider had left ruts in the adobe road, now hard. But I was half blind in the moonless night, and half blind with my trumped up rage, blind enough so that when I jumped out of the car and started out around the open door, I stepped off the edge of the world. Suddenly, nothing. I made one wild futile grab for the door before it and everything else disappeared. I was falling, plummeting through the thin unsupportive air, then through the thicker but still unsupportive water, over my head and down to the much thicker and now supportive mud on the bottom. Standing taere, it came over me that I could not stay, so I pushed off, rising slowly to the surface and grudgingly swimming a few strokes. With willows thick along the bank I drifted in the current on down to an open space, reluctantly swam to shore, grabbed a tuft of grass and pulled myself out. Standing there dripping muddy water, I wondered if maybe I shouldn't jump back in -- at least walk off into the dark night and let everyone think I had drowned. I could spend the rest of my life an outcast on the face of the earth. But I climbed up the bank to the road and then started the long, long walk of fifty yards back to the car. When I heard her screaming my name I didn't answer -- until I realized she might wake up everyone for miles around. Then I yelled back for her to |