He took a folded copy of the Omaha World-Herald from the pocket of his fall coat. “Prices doubled overnight,” he said. “Cars lined up two blocks down the street from the station.”
Irene read the headline and skimmed the story: it had a sidebar about the best times to avoid long lines. “That’s crazy,” she said.
“It’s crazy,” he said. “People are bringing their own cans to carry away extra. The guys at the station were trying to discourage it, but people are determined.” Lisa was at the Parcheesi board throwing dice from the shaker again and again, saying the numbers out loud.
“What in the world,” said Irene.
“Politics,” he said. “All the oil used to come from Texas. I just paid twelve dollars for a tank of gas.”
“What on earth,” she said.
“Well, I know, but I can’t exactly walk to work from here,” he said: that light tone, the easy cheer. It was his strength. “Could get worse by next week. I filled it up. It’s an expense for now.”
“Nine!” said Lisa.
“An expense, sure,” said Irene, wheels turning: in two months they were supposed to drive home to Tama for Christmas.
“Just a short-term situation, most likely,” he said. “Back in July when the car was in the shop I rode in with Bill. We could try that some more.”
Irene started hurrying around the kitchen, pulling a few steaks from the freezer. “That will be nice,” she said.
“Sure,” he said. “Some company on the way in is nice.”
“Twelve!” Lisa cried in triumph.
“How many twelves is that?” her father asked.
“First one!” she said.
*
A lot of people have never really been to a small town, not even to stop for gas. They have ideas about how small towns should look: they’re supposed to have maybe only one building taller than two stories, usually the bank, standing tall in the middle of a two-block downtown. There’ll be a school and a high school and a grocery store and a library, and maybe a department store and maybe a Texaco and a Shell. More people on the sidewalks than cars on the streets. Several parks with swings and slides and baseball diamonds.
There are towns like that in Iowa, plenty of them; Nevada fits the bill. More than six thousand people live there, and the sign on the Lincoln Highway that welcomes you there declares Nevada the “26th best small town in America.” It has soil testing labs, water testing labs, a high school football team. There’s a little espresso and cappuccino place just outside of downtown. Java Time. People shoot scenes for movies on soundstages and try to make it look like Nevada, but the claustrophobia they’re trying to invoke is more native to a place like Crescent, whose length you can walk in a day.
It’s not a ghost town; there are a couple of motels, and a restaurant or two. There’s a church, and a bar. There are just fewer of these places than you usually think of when you picture a town where people go to live. If you were to visit for a weekend, you’d be able to see all of it on foot; and you might say, later, that it looked like there was hardly anything there—that you didn’t know what people did there, why they didn’t just move into Omaha. I don’t think I could live there, you might say. But it’s more likely that you won’t have occasion to say any of this, because you won’t visit Crescent at all, unless you maybe have family there, which, statistically speaking, you probably don’t.
The Samples were spending their Saturday morning in Omaha, down at the Old Market; for a while they’d been able to come in every weekend, but after the gas crunch hit they made it every other weekend. They’d had their usual big breakfast; Lisa finished about half of her pancakes and was presently running around in a toy store while her parents browsed the shelves. Everything seemed a little pricey. Irene remembered her mother telling her they raised the prices right before Christmas.
“Keep an eye on Lisa,” she said to Peter, retrieving her coin purse from her handbag. “I’m going to make sure there’s still time on the meter.”
“I don’t think they’ll ticket you if we run just a little over,” he said.
“I’m just going to go check the meter,” she said.
There were still eight minutes left on it when she got to the car; she put another dime in. Better safe than sorry. On the sidewalk a few meters down she saw a young man with a beard reaching into a garbage can. He had a long army-green overcoat on; it was wrinkled and dirty. She could see the crust of a sandwich poking up from the coat’s breast pocket.
The scene made her feel terrible; it was November now, and getting colder, and the shop windows were all lit up with Christmas scenes and snowflakes. In her purse was a doggie bag with the rest of Lisa’s pancakes from breakfast; they’d probably sit in the refrigerator for two days before getting thrown out, and Lisa wouldn’t miss them.
“There’s a little breakfast left,” she said, approaching—gingerly, without making eye contact.
He took the pancakes out of the bag and began eating, quickly, with his hands. She turned away, not wanting to stare, but he said: “Ma’am?”