In The Garden Of The North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff Page B

what’s up front that counts,” Talbot answered. We were smoking Marlboros, not Winstons, and the joke was lame, but I guffawed anyway.
    â€œBetter keep it down,” Eugene whispered. “Big John might hear us.”
    Big John was the senior dorm master. He wore three-piece suits and soft-soled shoes and had a way of popping up at awkward moments. He liked to grab boys by the neck, pinching the skin between his forefinger and thumb, squeezing until they cried. “Fuck Big John,” I said.
    Neither Talbot nor Eugene responded. I fretted in the silence as we finished our cigarettes. I had intended to make Eugene look timid. Had I made myself look frivolous instead?
    I saw Talbot several times that week and he barely nodded to me. I had been rash, I decided. I had made a bad impression on him. But on Friday night he came up as we were leaving the dining hall and asked me if I wanted to play tennis the next morning. I doubt that I have ever felt such complete self-satisfaction as I felt that night.
    Talbot missed our appointment, however, so I dropped by his room. He was still in bed, reading. “What’s going on?” he asked, without looking up from his book.
    I sat on Eugene’s bed and tried not to sound as disappointed as I was. “I thought we might play a little tennis.”
    â€œTennis?” He continued reading silently for a few moments. “I don’t know. I don’t feel so hot.”
    â€œNo big deal. I thought you wanted to play. We could justknock a couple of balls around.”
    â€œHell.” He lowered the book onto his chest. “What time is it?”
    â€œNine o’clock.”
    â€œThe courts’ll be full by now.”
    â€œThere’s always a few empty ones behind the science building.”
    â€œThey’re asphalt, aren’t they?”
    â€œCement.” I shrugged. I didn’t want to seem pushy. “Like I said, no big deal. We can play some other time.” I stood and walked toward the door.
    â€œWait.” Talbot yawned without covering his mouth. “What the hell.”
    As it happened, the courts were full. Talbot and I sat on the grass and I asked him questions I already knew the answers to, like where was he from and where had he gone to school the year before and who did he have for English. At this question he came to life. “English? Parker, the bald one. I got A’s all through school and now Parker tells me I can’t write. If he’s such a goddamned William Shakespeare what’s he teaching here for?”
    We sat for a time without speaking. “I’m from Oregon,” I said finally. “Near Portland.” We didn’t live close enough to the city to call it near, I suppose, but in those days I naively assumed everyone had heard of Portland.
    â€œOregon.” He pondered this. “Do you hunt?”
    â€œI’ve been a few times with my father.”
    â€œWhat kind of weapon do you use?”
    â€œMarlin.”
    â€œ30-30?”
    I nodded.
    â€œGood brush gun,” he said. “Useless over a hundred yards. Have you ever killed anything?”
    â€œDeer, you mean?”
    â€œDeer, elk, whatever you hunt in Oregon.”
    â€œNo.”
    Talbot had killed a lot of animals, and he named them for me: deer, moose, bear, elk, even an alligator. There were more, many more.
    â€œMaybe you can come out West and go hunting with us sometime.”
    â€œWhere, to Oregon?” Talbot looked away. “Maybe.”
    I had not expected to be humiliated on the court. My brother, who played tennis for Oregon State, had coached me through four summers. I had a good hot serve and my brother described my net game as “ruthless.” Talbot ran me ragged. He played a kind of tennis different from any I had ever seen. He did not sweat, not the way I did anyway, or pant, or swear when he missed a shot, or get that thin quivering smile that tugged my lips whenever