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For the time being, the church moaned and wept. When the sermon neared its end and the wringing-wet preacher gave the invitation to come forward, there was a general rush to the front to give our lives to Jesus, including me, Ruth, Charlene, and more than two dozen others, including all the younger people.
    In the confused but saner aftermath it was decided that we all should be baptized just in case hydrogen bombs were actually aimed at our part of the country. In the upper Midwest, no doubt due to the weather, many things are considered chores—including funerals, weddings, baptisms—that need to be accomplished with a certain dispatch. The plan was to meet at the swimming hole on our farm as soon as a picnic could begathered (food is never neglected) and the proper clothing found, which was anything close to white.
    We reassembled by midafternoon and the ceremony went well except for the appearance of a water snake. The weather was so hot that the water felt especially cool and sweet. Naomi looked at Ruth, Charlene, and me in our wet white dresses and said it couldn’t have done us any harm. While I was wiping my face with a towel I heard a bird whistle that I knew had to be Duane. The others went off to eat so I snuck through a grove of trees to where I saw Duane sitting on his buckskin.
    â€œWhat were you goddamned monkeys doing in the river?” he asked.
    â€œWell, we were getting baptized in case the war comes and the world ends.” I felt a little stupid and naked in my white wet dress. I tried to cover myself and gave up.
    He told me to jump on the horse with him, which surprised me because I had never been asked to do so. He smelled of alcohol which also surprised me because he said alcohol was a poison that was killing the Sioux. At the tipi he put his hand on my bare bottom where my wet clothes hiked up as I slid off the horse. He offered me a bottle full of wild-plum wine from Lundquist. I drank quite deeply and he put his arms around me.
    â€œI don’t like the idea of you getting baptized. How can you be my girl if you’re getting baptized and singing those songs?”
    His lips were close to mine so I kissed them for the first time. I couldn’t help myself. He peeled the dress up over my head and threw it in the grass. He stood back, looked at me, then let out a cry or yell. We went into his tent and made love and it was the strangest feeling of my life, as if I were walking up the sun-warmed boards of a cellar door and my feet couldn’t keep my body balanced. I looked into his half-closed eyes but I knew he somehow couldn’t see me, and there was a little humor in the awkward posture because my knees were bent and so far back. I didn’t think I went in that far but he managed and I thought, whatever this is, I like it very much with my hands on his sweat slippery back slipping down to his bottom. When he was finishing he wrenched me around as if he were trying to drag and crush me into his body, and when he rolled off he was breathing like a horse after a hard run.Then he fell asleep in the hot tent and far off I heard Naomi ringing the bell. I went out into the late afternoon and slipped into my damp dress. I ran all the way, except for stopping to take a quick swim. I wondered if I would look different to everyone. That was the last time I saw Duane for fifteen years.

    I’ve stayed in Santa Monica this long partly because of the trees. When we were young Ruth had the notion from books of photographs that the cities of the coasts, now thought of as our dream coasts, looked fragile and delicate. It was an interesting idea to us that in our lifetimes these huge buildings would very probably fall over. The idea is peculiar to the northern Midwest—anything too tall tips over. Stick your head out and you might get it cut off. Only the grain elevators are allowed to emerge, offering a stolid and comforting grandeur to the untraveled.

    I didn’t tell