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?”
Just outside of West Des Moines, set back among the ash and oak and a dozen miles off the interstate, no neighbors but a filling station and a mom-and-pop burger joint where they cut the french fries themselves, there’s a little motel spread out in fourteen tiny green cabins like game pieces on a sloping grassy board. The parking lot is breaking apart, gradually elevated by a plain of grass rising up beneath it, lifting and bearing the asphalt away as a giant sea drains off the edges of a newborn world. Each cabin is neat and newly painted. Behind the desk in the little office, they rent you rolled-up bath towels and sell nickel bars of white soap. It is as though the hands of all the Midwestern clocks had done nothing for fifty years but spin on battery-powered bolts.
“This is the world’s most perfect motel.” Lamb drove the Ford onto the uneven lot. “Now we know we’re on our way.”
There were twin beds in cabin number four. The girl sat on one of them and kicked off her filthy Keds.
“You need some new shoes.”
“I know. My toes are popping out.”
“Didn’t your mother take you shopping for school shoes?”
“Not yet.”
“Let’s put it on the list of necessary supplies. Make a mental note.”
“Okay.” She leaned back into the pillows. “I’m pooped.”
“Aren’t you going to let me turn down the bed for you?”
“Turn down the bed?”
“You’re the kind of girl,” he said, walking between the beds, “who ought to have some poor old guy turn down the bed for you every night of your life.” She laughed, but he was very solemn and waited for her to stand. He lifted the pillow and folded the heavy striped bedspread down to the footboard, then turned back the corner of the white sheets and bright blue woolen blanket into a neat triangle.
“This is like my grandma’s.”
“Michigan?”
“Yes.”
“That’s where your mom is from?”
“Yep.”
“Are you missing home?”
“No. A little.”
“That’s good,” he said. “If we’re going to be partners, we have to be square with each other, right?”
“Sure.”