I went through a half dozen radio stations as I drove east on I-90 through Idaho and into Montana. I slept in my car at a truck stop in South Dakota for a few hours then continued south on I-29 through Iowa and into the flat lands, prairies, and plains of Nebraska. The landscape changed little over the course of the next ten hours: wispy yellow grass, cows, and miles and miles of open road.
Once into Missouri, I left the interstate on the outskirts of Kansas City and headed east on Highway 36. The flat lands slowly gave way to lush, green hills and copses of leafy, green trees. White clouds stretched thin and sat low on the horizon, further evidence of the increasingly moist and humid air.
It was another three and a half hours until I reached the fertile soil of Audrain County, located in north central Missouri—forty miles north of the Missouri river, ninety miles west of the Mississippi—and home to the small town where Harold grew up.
Tarrin, MO.
Population: 2,153.
I’d seen my fair share of small towns, mostly when I was living in Maine. But Maine was peculiar. It was a tourist destination and many of those small towns were overrun with New Yorkers, Bostonians, Europeans, and others during the summer months. During the off-season, the populations of those towns dwindled, sometimes down into the hundreds.
Small-town Middle America would be starkly different. There wouldn’t be a tourist in sight.
I exited the highway toward Tarrin, drove for a handful of miles, then followed a sign to Main Street. It was a late Sunday afternoon and there wasn’t much activity.
Main Street was wide with diagonal parking on both sides. The street glistened from a quick rain that had passed through some time earlier. Tan, red, and gray two-story buildings ran the length of an entire block. Second stories were peppered with thin rectangular windows gazing down on shingled overhangs.
A few cars, but mostly trucks, filled the diagonal parking in front of a potpourri of shops: a real estate office, a live bait shop, a True Value, a law firm, a barbershop, a tailor, an art gallery, an ice cream shop, an accounting firm, a repair shop, a bookstore, a vet clinic, an insurance office. Many of the businesses had flags hanging in their windows, some the American flag, some a green and yellow flag with a tiger on it, some the St. Louis Cardinals’ flag.
It was, in a word, charming.
I continued through a traffic light.
I passed a community center, a post office, a fire station, and a police department. There were two squad cars parked outside the Tarrin Police Department, and I wondered how many officers it took to police a town of two thousand. I guessed four full-time officers, five tops. This was a far cry from the nearly fifteen hundred it took to police Seattle. Then again, if Tarrin was anything like the small towns I experienced in Maine, they were mostly dealing with petty crime, drugs, DUIs, and maybe the occasional domestic dispute, not the ghastly murders and gang activity that plagued the big cities.
To the right was a high school with a football field in the far distance. There was a sign out front that read “Go Tigers,” which would explain the flags I saw earlier.
Just past the high school were two churches. The first, Lutheran. The second, Baptist. They were both set on sprawling manicured lawns, but still more or less across the street from each other. I imagined the two groups standing on their respective lawns, dressed in their Sunday best, judging each other from across the way. I mean, I don’t think it was like the Yankees and Red Sox, but there had to be a touch of rivalry there.
We have the best choir.
No, we have the best choir.
Past the churches, there was another block of businesses: a feed store, a bike shop, a Sonic Drive-In, a bank, a gas station, a liquor store, a fitness center, a motel, a grocery store, a bowling alley, a dry cleaner, a dance studio, a small hospital.
After the next traffic light, small houses began popping up. I took a left on a side street and drove slowly. The houses were small and sturdy. There were no fences, the yards running together in a melting pot of leafy trees, well-tended lawns, and children’s toys. The vehicle of choice was a truck, with an overwhelming amount of Fords. There were a few sedans, even one Prius, so it wasn’t against city ordinance to own a foreign car.
I found my way back to Main Street then continued on. The Humphries Farm was eight miles from town. I followed the directions I’d printed off the internet, taking a turn onto County Road 34, then another on County Road 52.
One farm led into another, tractors moving through corduroyed fields of budding corn, soybeans, or the like. Opposite one of the farms was a small lake. Behind the lake was a giant house. Immediately, I recognized both from Harold’s stories.
I pulled the Range Rover over on the side of the road and rolled down the window.
The King family lived in the mansion in the 1940s. The Kings owned nearly all the land in the area, and Harold’s father leased his land from them. The lake was the one Harold jumped in to save a girl from drowning. That was how he first met Elizabeth, the young woman he would later marry, and who would give birth to my mother.
I’m not sure if it were thoughts of my mother, or Harold’s death, or guilt for having missed Harold’s funeral, or lack of sleep, or the eight Mr. Goodbars I’d eaten in the last thirty-six hours, but I felt my eyes begin to well with tears.
I wiped the tears with the back of my hand, then glanced at my reflection in the rearview mirror. The extra weight had given my face a certain roundness, my angular jaw hidden beneath a thick sweater of
