The Stones of Summer
By Dow Mossman

When August came, thick as a dream of falling timbers, Dawes Williams and his mother would pick Simpson up at his office, and then they would all drive west, all evening, the sun before them dying like the insides of a stone melon, split and watery, halving with blood. August was always an endless day, he felt, white as wood, slow as light. Dawes shifted about in his seat, uncomfortable, watching the land slide past. It was late, a steady progression of night; the conversations inside the car were like great wood eyes and, driving west over Iowa, the evening was always air vague with towns, blue fences, and crossroads vacant of cars. He watched the deserted country porches slide by like lonely pickets guarding the gray, outbreaking storm of sky; like juts of rock.

They were going to the farm again, like all those other summers, he thought. He grew restless, like something stuck to his seat in a movie theatre; like something being made only to watch everything at once, and his mother, Leone, Arthur's daughter, would feed him crackers and Coke and tell him they couldn't possibly stop at another service station because her parents, Arthur and especially Gin, were growing older now so they must reach the farm before midnight. The new '50 Chevy was silent and green, smelling almost of iron linen, as they rode down the last of day, and the boy would ask about the greyhounds again, and why his grandfather didn't simply raise corn like the other farmers. Simpson would take the cold cigar from his mouth and say:

"Yes sir, old boy. Art still grows some corn for the science of it, but Arthur's a smart man for a farmer, and knows that greyhounds are the best crop that can be taken from Iowa."