Chapter One
As a kid, Charles had called them the “tickly hills,” these sharp drops on the roller coaster road from Lockwood to the Missouri border that leave a tingle in your stomach. His dad often laughed about people who say Iowa is flat. “They haven’t been to this part of the state, that’s for sure!”
If he had thought about it, Charles would have said he liked this landscape: the heavily-wooded hills with fields of corn and soybeans tucked in between. When someone askedWhere you from?, this was the picture his mind conjured up. And yet, he had to admit, he didn’t know the first thing about growing corn or soybeans. Last year at church camp, a counselor had whipped up adolescent faith by challenging the campers to consider working with the church in another country.You’re all from Iowa! You can help farmers in Kenya or wherever grow better crops.Well, yes, he was from Iowa, but how all these things grew was pretty much a mystery to him. As far as he could remember, he had never even sat on a tractor.
There was undoubtedly a closer place to buy condoms, but Charles knew for sure he could get them from the machine on the bathroom wall of the truck stop not far over the state line. Even if a trucker saw him put his quarters into the machine and teased him, it wouldn’t be someone he knew. He planned to get two, so he could practice putting one on.
He envisioned how the rest of the day, the third Saturday in May, would unfold. First, the graduation ceremony where he’d be cheered as valedictorian of Lockwood High, class of 1967. Maybe not cheered, but at least acknowledged. Then, the graduation dance in the over-decorated high school gym, although he and Nancy wouldn’t stay long. She may have helped decorate the gym, even enlisted him to put up streamers, but hadn’t they gone to enough of these school events over the past two years? And waiting beyond the dance was therealparty at Randall’s farm, because his parents were guaranteed to be gone and Randall knew where to get beer. He had even hinted at other procurements, although Charles wasn’t exactly sure what he had in mind.
A car met him as he approached the top of a hill, appearing over the ridge without warning. The driver raised his index finger off the steering wheel, the local form of greeting between motorists. Charles realized he was going over sixty, which tingled his stomach and caused his father’s Buick to bounce over seams and asphalt patches in the little-used road. Although in a hurry, he slowed to fifty.
After a beer or two or three, he would get Nancy alone and tell her it was time to go all the way. No, maybe he wouldn’t say anything at all; he often talked too much at times like that and messed things up. He would just begin to unbutton her blouse—she was usually okay with that—but then he would keep going. Except she might still have on her dress from the dance, in which case he would have to improvise. He tried to picture her naked, but the image of the dress, with lots of fabric and what she told him was an overlay of lace kept getting in the way.
He crossed the state line and in less than ten minutes reached the east-west highway. On one corner of the intersection, with its flashing light—red in his direction, yellow in the other—was a fireworks stand, on another corner Don’s Café and Tavern, and on the third the filling station with its diesel pumps for trucks and buses. He put two dollars of gas in the car, so there wouldn’t be any question why he was using the restroom, which to his relief was empty. But then he found that the machine wanted three quarters per condom, not two, so he had to ask for change from the smiling girl at the counter. He pretended to survey the beef jerky supply, before sidling into the restroom, only to find it now crowded with loud-talking truckers. Finally, after slipping out and in again, he made his purchases and headed back to Lockwood.
Everyone called it the Stringville Road bec
