running out both directions to the flat country,
the wheat fields and the corn and the native pastures, and beyond the highway the
high school where John Wesley would be going, and far away the blue sandhills in the
hazy distance.
After they had moved to Holt, John Wesley spent the first week up in his room at his
computer writing long letters to his friends in Denver. Then on Sunday he was forced
to attend the morning service since it was the entire family who made up the preacher’s
presence in town and the church expected them all to attend. On the third Sunday he
got a surprise.
There was a girl who attended church who was tall and thin and strange, dressed in
black with bright red lipstick, and with very pale skin. She always sat in the back
pew. She caught up to him after the Sunday service when he was walking away from the
church.
Wait, she said. Are you trying to escape from me?
He stopped and turned toward her.
They told me about you. You’re going to be a sophomore in highschool. It’s too bad you’re not still a freshman, I could initiate you. Well I can
anyway.
She had her own car and they went out at night driving all over the town and out into
the country on the gravel roads as far south as Highway 36 and as far north as Interstate
76, John Wesley in the seat beside her, the windows open, the cassette player playing
her music, the two of them talking, and then they would pull off the road onto a farm
track or an unused side road and she would move him into the backseat and unbutton
him and teach him what she knew, and afterward sweaty and red-faced they would get
back in the front to drive some more. The air would be coming in cool and fresh and
the dust boiling up behind them on the county roads, with rabbits and coyotes and
red foxes and raccoons all out at night on the road, and once suddenly the great white
shape of a Charolais cow broadside in the headlights together with its pale calf,
and occasionally they’d stop again for another time in the backseat. She was on birth-control
pills. Are you stupid? she said. I thought you city boys knew something. I’m not going
to get pregnant and fuck everything up. Don’t worry about it. Come on, preacher’s
boy. Don’t you want to go again.
Then he’d return home. She’d drop him off in front of the parsonage and drive away
and he’d walk up onto the porch and enter the dark quiet house. His father and his
mother would be asleep in their bedroom upstairs, and he’d go back to the kitchen
and make something to eat, and take the food up to his room, and enter the bathroom
and lower his trousers and inspect himself and soothe his soreness with hand salve
and return to his bedroom and turn on the computer and eat the food he’d brought upstairs
and read his messages.
It went on for most of a month this way. He and this older girl, Genevieve Larsen,
out in the country in the dark in Holt County driving and stopping and climbing into
the backseat. And then startingthe car again and turning back out onto the gravel roads and always the dust swirling
and rising up behind them.
You should have known me in Denver, he said. It was different in Denver. I had friends
there. I was known there.
What’d you do? Sit around and play with your computer?
No. We had fun. It was interesting.
Doing what?
It was different. There’s so much to do. We went out at night and talked and saw people.
Ate in the cafés. We laughed and laughed. We hung out at the malls.
We’re out at night. We’re talking. Don’t you like this?
Yes. Of course.
You didn’t have somebody like me there, did you?
No.
Well.
I don’t know, it was just different there. That’s all I’m saying. You’d have liked
it.
You’re going to mess this up, do you know that? You don’t even see what’s in front
of you. You’re like everybody else.
No, I’m not.
You’re dreaming backward.
One night his mother
the wheat fields and the corn and the native pastures, and beyond the highway the
high school where John Wesley would be going, and far away the blue sandhills in the
hazy distance.
After they had moved to Holt, John Wesley spent the first week up in his room at his
computer writing long letters to his friends in Denver. Then on Sunday he was forced
to attend the morning service since it was the entire family who made up the preacher’s
presence in town and the church expected them all to attend. On the third Sunday he
got a surprise.
There was a girl who attended church who was tall and thin and strange, dressed in
black with bright red lipstick, and with very pale skin. She always sat in the back
pew. She caught up to him after the Sunday service when he was walking away from the
church.
Wait, she said. Are you trying to escape from me?
He stopped and turned toward her.
They told me about you. You’re going to be a sophomore in highschool. It’s too bad you’re not still a freshman, I could initiate you. Well I can
anyway.
She had her own car and they went out at night driving all over the town and out into
the country on the gravel roads as far south as Highway 36 and as far north as Interstate
76, John Wesley in the seat beside her, the windows open, the cassette player playing
her music, the two of them talking, and then they would pull off the road onto a farm
track or an unused side road and she would move him into the backseat and unbutton
him and teach him what she knew, and afterward sweaty and red-faced they would get
back in the front to drive some more. The air would be coming in cool and fresh and
the dust boiling up behind them on the county roads, with rabbits and coyotes and
red foxes and raccoons all out at night on the road, and once suddenly the great white
shape of a Charolais cow broadside in the headlights together with its pale calf,
and occasionally they’d stop again for another time in the backseat. She was on birth-control
pills. Are you stupid? she said. I thought you city boys knew something. I’m not going
to get pregnant and fuck everything up. Don’t worry about it. Come on, preacher’s
boy. Don’t you want to go again.
Then he’d return home. She’d drop him off in front of the parsonage and drive away
and he’d walk up onto the porch and enter the dark quiet house. His father and his
mother would be asleep in their bedroom upstairs, and he’d go back to the kitchen
and make something to eat, and take the food up to his room, and enter the bathroom
and lower his trousers and inspect himself and soothe his soreness with hand salve
and return to his bedroom and turn on the computer and eat the food he’d brought upstairs
and read his messages.
It went on for most of a month this way. He and this older girl, Genevieve Larsen,
out in the country in the dark in Holt County driving and stopping and climbing into
the backseat. And then startingthe car again and turning back out onto the gravel roads and always the dust swirling
and rising up behind them.
You should have known me in Denver, he said. It was different in Denver. I had friends
there. I was known there.
What’d you do? Sit around and play with your computer?
No. We had fun. It was interesting.
Doing what?
It was different. There’s so much to do. We went out at night and talked and saw people.
Ate in the cafés. We laughed and laughed. We hung out at the malls.
We’re out at night. We’re talking. Don’t you like this?
Yes. Of course.
You didn’t have somebody like me there, did you?
No.
Well.
I don’t know, it was just different there. That’s all I’m saying. You’d have liked
it.
You’re going to mess this up, do you know that? You don’t even see what’s in front
of you. You’re like everybody else.
No, I’m not.
You’re dreaming backward.
One night his mother
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