Kansas by Stephen Dobyns

Stephen Dobyns (1941) Kansas THE BOY HITCHHIKING on the back-country Kansas road was nineteen years old. He had been dropped there by a farmer in a Model T Ford who had turned off to the north. Then he waited for three hours. It was July and there were no clouds. The wheat fields were flat and went straight to the horizon. The boy had two plums and he ate them. A blue Plymouth coupe went by with a man and a woman. They were laughing. The woman had blonde hair and it was all loose and blew from the window. They didn't even see the boy. The strands of straw-colored hair seemed to be waving to him. Half an hour later a farmer stopped in a Ford pickup covered with a layer of dust. The boy clambered into the front seat. The farmer took off again without glancing at him. A forty-five revolver lay next farmer's buttocks on the seat. Seeing it , the boy felt something electric go off inside of him. The revolver was old and there were rust spots on the barrel. Black electrician's tape was wrapped around the handle. "You seen a woman and a man go by here in a Plymouth's coupe?" asked the farmer. He pronounced it "koo-pay." The boy said he had. "How long ago?" "About thirty minutes." The farmer had light blue eyes and there was stubble on his chin. Perhaps he was forty, but to the boy he looked old. His skin was leather-colored from the sun. The farmer pressed his foot to the floor and the pickup roared. It was a dirt road and the boy had to hold his hands against the dashboard to keep from being bounced around. It was hot and both windows were open. There was grit in the boy's eyes and on his tongue. He kept glancing sideways at the revolver. "They friends of yours?" Asked the boy. The farmer didn’t look at him. "That’s my wife", he said. I am going to put a bullet in her head. He put a hand to the revolver to make sure it was still there. "The man too," he added The boy didn’t say anything. He was hitchhiking back to summer school from Oklahoma.