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Kain had to laugh.
    The song on the radio was “Poetry In Motion” by Johnny Tillotson, and as it wound down, they passed one of the countless farms that dotted the pretty countryside. Iowa really was beautiful. It seemed a place alive, its heart pulsing with the bluest lakes and endless seas of fields. Skies that could only reach to Heaven.
    Don’t fall in love with it, Kain thought. Don’t you do that.
    The kid turned the radio down. “So where you from?”
    Miami. Isn’t that what he’d told the barkeep in Rocheport? Didn’t matter. Right now, Miami was as fine as Phoenix.
    “Where you headed?”
    Wisconsin. The long way.
    “Lookin’ for work? There’s plenty up at Cousin Hank’s farm.”
    Thanks. Just passing through.
    They stopped for a bite in Spencer, and afterward, the kid asked him if he was coming with him to South Dakota.
    “Wisconsin … riiight, ” the kid said. He put out his hand, and Kain took it. Not once did John Wayne from Winterset, Iowa, ask him about the birthmarks that weren’t really birthmarks, and when the kid looked west toward Canton, said he hoped for rain, you know, for Cousin Hank’s sake, Kain Richards nodded politely, and wished the Little Duke well.

~ 4
    He spent the afternoon in Spencer among the shops and the bustle. It was a charming and colorful place, the streets fresh with activity, most of the townsfolk as warm as any in his travels. His first order of business was to find a place to stay, and it wasn’t long before he found a hotel—on the outskirts, a rather dubious establishment that served illicit drink to its patrons, God blessum—that rented by the week.
    The proprietor, rather dubious himself, was a middle-aged crank named Henry Roberts. To call him a crusty, thinning alcoholic was an insult to crusty, thinning alcoholics. Henry worked the bar downstairs and lived in No. 8 at the end of the hall, said he could have No. 6 as long as he needed it, so long as he kept to himself and didn’t bring no whores up. Whores were trouble, Henry croaked, especially that screamer Marge Bonner, the one the men in Spencer (and men all over Clay County) called Banshee Bonner, the one who still owed him eighty-five bucks in back rent and a new set of eardrums. His old hearin’ wasn’t so good no more, he said, but it was damn good enough, and if Kain was caught with a whore he was out on his ass, less deposit, and if he was caught with that ear-splittin’ tramp he was out on his ass with buckshot. We clear on that?
    Kain paid the fee and found the next order of business had him looking for work. Hammell’s Market had a HELP WANTED sign in the door, but the job was only on weekends, a couple of hours. Barbershop? Even if he knew his flattop from his ducktail, fat chance. The grim face in the window looked like it wanted to chop off every last inch of his hair as he walked on by. He wasn’t good with engines, so the GOOD MECHANIC NEEDED at SHANK’S AUTO REPAIR was out. The local ironworks was looking for someone, something he could do, but the owner was gone until next week. Henry Roberts passed a few names, but nothing came up in the next week, even the ironworks job. Maybe it was the stink of drifter on him. The scars. The long hair. Whatever it was, Ken from KEN’S WROUGHT IRON FURNITURE didn’t take to him, didn’t seem to like his look.
    The money was drying up. He managed some quick cash painting, enough to keep him going another week, but as the next wore on it was clear that Spencer was a bust. It was rare for him to stay in one place for so long, especially with work so scarce, but he had to admit, the area had taken hold of him. He wasn’t sure he liked that, not at all.
    He took a walk along the water, marveling at the fine day. The heat was stifling, the air thick, but a sweet breeze drifted in from the river. He passed a cemetery rowed with old, old dead, admired a number of gorgeous turn-of-the-century farmhouses, and when he made his way up past the