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condition.
    â€˜We’ve got to find things for her to do,’ said Jen. ‘She’s got to be entertained!’
    â€˜With what?’ asked Andy. ‘That’s the big question.’
    â€˜Trips, mainly,’ Jen replied. ‘All that beautiful nature. The oaks!’
    â€˜And the corn,’ Caroline added drily. She was actually just as fond of oaks as the others, she was even chair of the Association for the Preservation of Oaks, but they were far from being a tourist trap.
    â€˜Not just corn,’ said Andy. ‘Soybeans too.’
    â€˜Maybe Tom can drive her,’ Jen said, as though the thought had just struck her. ‘When he’s not working, I mean.’
    Caroline closed her eyes. The innocent tone wasn’t fooling her. My goodness, she thought. The woman had barely been in town two days and Jen had already started offering up its young men to her altar. Though, to be fair, it might just as well have been the woman being sacrificed. Like the oaks, the town’s bachelors weren’t exactly a tourist attraction.
    For once, Andy and Jen didn’t seem to be on the same wavelength. ‘Tom?’ he asked dumbly, though anyone could have guessed where Jen was heading.
    She hesitated. ‘Yeah, Tom …’ she said. ‘I was wondering whether they might not … get on well?’ Her gaze was fixed somewhere above Caroline’s head. ‘Don’t you think a holiday romance would be just the thing to get her to enjoy her time here?’
    Andy laughed. ‘Yeah, why not? Tom’s never been much good at picking up women. And this Sara, she seems like she’d need a push too. I’ll talk to Tom and warn him about his duties.’
    Jen didn’t seem to want to go that far. ‘I wonder if it’s not better to just let things happen a bit more naturally …’
    â€˜It would be better not to let it happen at all,’ said Caroline. If she knew Jen, she wouldn’t be satisfied with a simple holiday romance – which would have been bad enough. She was probably already dreaming about a wedding and then yet another person to add to the population statistics, maybe even several, with special editions of the newsletter on weddings, births and christenings following one after another.
    â€˜We can ask Tom to drive her in any case,’ said Jen.
    â€˜George can drive her,’ said Caroline. ‘We can pay him for it. Symbolically anyway. We can start a collection.’
    Anything worth doing was worth doing with a collection.
    She caught the quick glance Andy and Jen exchanged but she didn’t care. All towns needed a woman who kept an eye on what was what. She knew that they laughed at her behind her back, but at least she got things done. And no one dared laugh when she was within earshot.
    â€˜But is poor George …’ Jen seemed to be searching for a euphemism but eventually gave up. ‘… sober enough?’
    â€˜He hasn’t had a drink in a month,’ Caroline said. ‘His hands hardly even shake any more. He needs something useful to do, rather than just sitting at That Woman’s drinking coffee all day.’
    â€˜A good man,’ Jen mumbled.
    â€˜George is driving her,’ said Caroline, and with that it was decided.

 
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    Broken Wheel, Iowa
    October 9, 2009
    Sara Lindqvist
    Kornvägen 7, 1 tr
    136 38 Haninge
    Sweden
    Dear Sara,
    Broken Wheel isn’t actually much of a town. There’s very little about it that’s interesting. There’s actually very little of it in general. But I like it. I was born and raised here, and that makes all the difference.
    There’s one big street called, quite simply, Main Street, and then there are three others crossing it. They’re called Second Street, Third Street and Jimmie Coogan Street. The last one might need some explanation. Until ’87 it was called Fourth Street (we’re a prosaic,