Lamb

They would have been on the east-west tollway, bright white farm-field daylight, when Lamb sped past the last county sign for Rock Island, Illinois. The girl sat beside him in her new yellow sweater, watching the road as if the reels of flat highway needling fast and straight ahead were the opening credits of some film she was either bound to watch or in which she had just willingly agreed to perform.

They’d left the hotel in the dark, didn’t stop for breakfast until a rest stop past Aurora. And because she was his lookout, his sidekick in the passenger seat, he bought her a syrupy hot chocolate from a machine and made a little wide-eyed show of adding extra packets of sugar. The lookout, he said, stirring the cocoa, has to keep her wits about her, has to be alert, must be the eyes and ears.

“Unless,” he said, starting the truck, “you want to turn around and go back home now?”

“Nope.”

“You’ll tell me when?”

“Okay, but I won’t want to.”

“I’m serious. You tell me when.”

“I will.”

Down the road they tapped their cups together at the hour when school would have started, and she wanted to toast again when she figured Sid and Jenny were being questioned for the first time.

“Were they so very awful?” he asked her.

She nodded.

“What was the worst thing they did.”

She turned and stared out the window. “What they said.”

“What did they say?”

“The worst?”

“The worst.”

“They pretended like no one else was in the room and had this really loud talk while we waited for the teacher. Sid said it was no surprise that I hooked up with you. And Jenny said I must be used to it since my stepdad makes little visits to my room every night. And, you know, everybody was looking at me.”

“Did you leave the room?”

“He’s not even my stepdad. They’re not even married.”

“You stayed. Did you cry?”

“No.”

He glanced at her. “Is it true about Jessie?”

“No. He takes me swimming in the morning and they make this big thing out of it.”

“I see.”

“I guess it doesn’t sound as bad as it really was.”

“No,” he said. “It sounds pretty bad.”

The girl turned to him. “Gary?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why didn’t you ever get married?”

“I suppose I never found the right girl.”

“Oh.”

“Did you ever have a boyfriend? Like Jenny and Sidney?”

She shrugged and looked out the window. “Not like that. Not serious.”

“What’s serious? Like you weren’t in love?”

“Not hooking up or anything.”

“Hooking up.”

“Like messing around.”

“You never?”

She rolled her eyes.

“What is that?” Lamb said. “Like it’s no big deal?”

She shrugged.

He slowed down. “I don’t like that, Tommie.” He steered the truck onto the shoulder and put it in park.

“What are we doing?”

“I’m going to tell you something really important,” he said. “Are you listening?” He reached into his front pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. He sorted them, and held up a penny. He turned it over in his hand. “What year were you born?”

“Nineteen ninety-six.”

“I was forty-four years old.”

“Whoa.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t say whoa. Makes me feel like I should take you back home.”

She slid her hands beneath her bottom and tipped her head. “What were you doing back then?”

He stopped turning the penny and looked at her.

“I might tell you sometime,” he said, as if he were surprised to be saying it.

“Okay.”

“Do you know how much a stamp costs?”

“Like fifty cents?”

“In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, a first-class stamp cost a man three cents.”

“Whoa.”

“In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, the United States federal government spent about sixty-eight billion dollars. Total.” He looked at her. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

“Not really.”

“We need to do a better job learning about the world around us.”

“Don’t do that. Jessie does that.”

“Does what?”

“Says we when you mean me.”

He put his hands in his lap. “You’re right.”

She shrugged.

“Shrug it off. Get real good at shrugging. That girl? She’s a shrugger. Nothing gets to her.”

She looked at him sideways and rolled her eyes.

“It hurts my feelings that you shrug and roll your eyes. That you talk like you’re already grown up. That you don’t know about nineteen fifty-two. I’m trying to help you here, I’m trying to tell you something important.”

“Sorry.”

“Christ, the people your age. There isn’t a wild place left on the planet for you. There isn’t a code of decency or manners left for you to break. And what do you do? You shrug.” He took her hand and turned it over and pressed the penny into it. “Your piece of the year I was born. Don’t lose it. That might be all you get.”

She looked at the penny in her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Someday,” he said, “we’ll rent a trailer. A silver one. Just like it was fifty years ago. And you’ll be seventeen and we’ll put you in a long skirt and tie your hair back with a dotted yellow scarf and drive across the country, from ice cream stand to ice cream stand. We’ll map it out just right, so that every city we hit is in the peak of springtime, cool wind and green puddles and white blossoms and all of that. Bright sun and rain shaking out of the trees and new birds and you and your yellow scarf.”

“Will you pick me up at school?”

“In the silver trailer.”

“Deal.”

“Listen, Tom. Can I ask you a serious question?”

“What.”

“Yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“You haven’t hooked up with a boy, have you?” Her skin went pink behind her freckles. “You maybe lied to Sid or Jenny and said you did, but you never really did, did you?” She shook her head. “Because it’s a very big deal,” he said. “The biggest deal. And listen. I want you to hear me. In case you’re having funny thoughts. I am not going to kiss you. It’s my way of honoring you. Do you understand? It’s my way of honoring nineteen fifty-two. And the little cabin out there. And the river.”

“That’s all real?”

“What do you mean?”

“The cabin and the river?”

“Isn’t that where we’re going?”

“I mean the shop with the pickle jar. The horse. That’s all pretend.”

“It’s all real, Tommie.”

“For real for real?”

“I’m not a liar.”

“Me either.”

“Good. I know you’re not. You sometimes talk silly, but you’re basically a pretty good girl, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I know,” he said. “Hey, where’s that penny?”

She opened her hand and he took the coin, put it on the end of his thumb, and pressed it to the center of her forehead.

“Ouch.”

“Ssh.” He pressed hard. “There,” he said, “the year I was born, printed right on your beautiful freckled forehead.”

She touched it but couldn’t make it out.

“Can you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Heads or tails?”

She felt again. “Heads.”

“It’s tails.” He grinned. “Know what that means?”

“It means you win.”

“No,” he said. “Don’t think of it that way.” Beside the truck a semi hurtled past, then another. “I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’re my good luck.”

She smiled.

“I sort of knew it the minute I saw you.”

“You did?”

He rolled down the windows. “Stick your hand out there, will you?” Sunlight flashed on her little gold ring with the fake pink stone. “Memorize that,” he said. “There will be days when you’re back in Chicago, all grown up, lines in your face, and there will be no tall grass and be no birdsong and no wide-open road and you’ll wish you were back here. You’ll wonder what ever happened to that one old guy who drove you around that one September.”

The road was still. No cars, nothing but the highway and the bright sky and the fat sun. No witness but the hushed and high green corn.

“Gary,” she said. “I know it’s not just for a week.”

He looked at her.

“I know you had to say just a week or we never would have left.”

“Don’t say that,” he whispered. “It isn’t true.” He stared at her, his face suddenly very warm.

She stared back at him.

“Is this a bad idea?” His voice was clear and careful in the new quiet. “I think this might be a really bad idea. I think maybe we better turn around.” He picked up Tommie’s hand. “Listen,” he said. “I want you to think about how this looks. You’re in middle school. You’re smart. You know some things. You’ve seen the news, right? Say right.”

“Right.”

“Good. So I want you to imagine you’re that truck driver.” He nodded at the windshield. “And you stopped the truck because sometimes with a load like that, the spools can rock and come unhitched. And you’re a really careful driver, and you check every two hundred miles.”

“Okay.”

“And you’re walking around to the back of your load, and you’re thinking about the lemon iced tea and chicken salad sandwich you’ll have at the Jette Diner in Iowa City. And you’re thinking a little bit about your little boy in South Bend—that’s in Indiana. You hope he’s doing his math homework, and you’re adjusting the ball cap on your head, when you see us. You see me, and you see yourself, a man and a girl just like we are, in a truck like this, and the man is holding the girl’s hand, just like this, and talking to her very earnestly, just like we are. What would you think? Tell me. And don’t spare me.”

Tommie considered, tipped her head sideways and lifted her chin. “Well. I guess I’d think some guy and his kid.”

“A guy and his kid. Like his granddaughter?”

“Yeah. No. Like his daughter.”

He nodded. “And if somebody asked you, you could look them in the eye and say that’s what we are?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s practice.” He let go her hand. “Hey, kid, who’s that guy you’re with?”

Tommie straightened her neck, looked off into the middle distance. “What guy? Him? You mean my dad?”

They both laughed. “You’re good,” he said. “You’re very good. You could be an actress.”

“Thank you.”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” he said. “Hey. We could be a guy and a girl pretending to be an actor and an actress. How about that?”

She scrunched up her nose. “You’re confusing me.”

“You make it so easy to do.” He laughed and she crossed her arms but she was grinning. “And you’re sure you want to drive all the way through Iowa with me? And into Nebraska and Colorado and all the way out to that great ridge of rock?”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m not kidnapping you. And I don’t want to hug you or kiss you or be, you know, that way.”

“I know.”

“Good. So we’re really on?”

“On.”

“I’m serious, Tom.”

“Me too.”

“Then Rocky Mountains, here we come.” He extended his hand, and again, they shook.

While the girl was in the bathroom at a Chevron in a travel stop off I-80, Lamb bought two postcards and walked outside to the edge of the broken asphalt where trash and weeds grew in a ragged line and broken glass glittered. It was hot, and everything looked new, lighter, open. He was cut loose from the world, off the screen. He lifted his face into the heat, turned on his phone and checked for messages as he watched the front of the Chevron. He stepped over a flattened silver can, its label bleached by sunlight. A plastic straw. A yellow paper burger wrapper. He dialed Linnie.

“I got your message. I’m sorry I missed you.” The sun was high and it seared off the windshields and mirrors of cars in the filling station lot. A man in a blue jumpsuit was hosing down the lot beside a gas pump and the water sprayed like liquid light. “Are you set to go? Let me know if you’re coming.” Tommie stepped out, shielding her eyes with her hand and looking for him. “I want you to picture me thinking of you, Linnie. That’s how it will be. Call me. I have my cell. It’ll be on when I’m not out of range.”

He shut the phone as the girl approached him. “Who you talking to?”

“One of my many bosses.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No. Why? Are you?”