“Right.” She motioned with her hand. He turned the key, and the engine started. Bouncing, the truck moved along the lane toward the road.

He leaned over and reached into the glove compartment^[114], his forearm accidentally brushing across her lower thigh. Looking half out the windshield and half into the compartment, he took out a business card and handed it to her. “Robert Kincaid, Writer-Photographer.” His address was printed there, along with a phone number.

“I'm out here on assignment for National Geographic,” he said. “You familiar with the magazine?”

“Yes.” Francesca nodded, thinking, Isn't everybody?

“They're doing a piece on covered bridges, and Madison County, Iowa, apparently has some interesting ones. I've located six of them, but I guess there's at least one more, and it's supposed to be out in this direction.”

“It's called Roseman Bridge,” said Francesca over the noise of the wind and tires and engine. Her voice sounded strange, as if it belonged to someone else, to a teenage girl leaning out of a window in Naples, looking far down city streets toward the trains or out at the harbor and thinking of distant lovers yet to come. As she spoke, she watched the muscles in his forearm flex when he shifted gears^[115].

Two knapsacks were beside her. The flap of one was closed, but the other was folded back, and she could see the silver-colored top and black back of a camera sticking out. Behind her feet were two tripods. They were badly scratched, but she could read part of the worn label on one: “Gitzo^[116].” When he had opened the glove box, she noticed it was crammed with notebooks, maps, pens, loose change, and a carton of Camel cigarettes.

“Turn right at the next corner,” she said. That gave her an excuse to glance at the profile of Robert Kincaid. His skin was tanned and smooth and shiny with sweat. He had nice lips; for some reason she had noticed that right away. And his nose was like that she had seen on Indian men during a vacation the family had taken out west when the children were young.

He wasn't handsome, not in any conventional sense. Nor was he homely. Those words didn't seem to apply to him. But there was something, something about him. Something very old, something slightly battered by the years, not in his appearance, but in his eyes.

On his left wrist was a complicated-looking watch with a brown, sweat-stained leather band. A silver bracelet with some intricate scrollwork^[117] clung to his right wrist. It needed a good rubbing with silver polish, she thought.

Robert Kincaid pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one halfway out, and offered it to her. For the second time in five minutes, she surprised herself and took the cigarette. What am I doing? she thought. She had smoked years ago but gave it up under the steady criticism from Richard. He shook out another one, put it between his lips, and flicked a gold lighter into flame, holding it toward her while he kept his eyes on the road.

She cupped her hands around the lighter to hold the wind and touched his hand to steady it against the bouncing of the truck. It took only an instant for her to light the cigarette, but that was long enough to feel the warmth of his hand and the tiny hairs along the back of it.

Francesca Johnson, farmer's wife, rested against the dusty truck seat, smoked the cigarette, and pointed. “There it is, just around the curve.” The old bridge, red in color, tilting slightly from all the years, sat across a small stream.

Robert Kincaid had smiled then. He quickly looked at her and said, “It's great. A sunrise shot.” He stopped a hundred feet from the bridge and got out, taking the open knapsack with him. “I'm going to look around for a few minutes, do you mind?” She shook her head and smiled back.

Francesca watched him walk up the country road, taking a camera from the knapsack and then slinging the bag over his left shoulder. He had done that thousands of times, that exact movement. As he walked, his head never stopped moving, looking from side to side, then at the bridge, then at the trees behind the bridge. Once he turned and looked back at her, his face serious.

In contrast with the local folks, who fed on gravy and potatoes and red meat, three times a day for some of them, Robert Kincaid looked as if he ate nothing but fruit and nuts and vegetables. Hard, she thought. He looks hard, physically.

It was quiet. A redwing blackbird^[118] sat on fence wire and looked in at her. A meadowlark^[119] called from the roadside grass. Nothing else moved in the white sun of August.

Just short of the bridge^[120], Robert Kincaid stopped. He stood there for a moment, then squatted down, looking through the camera. He walked to the other side of the road and did the same thing. Then he moved into the cover of the bridge and studied the beams and floor planks, looked at the stream below through a hole in the side.

Francesca put out her cigarette, opened the door, and put her boots on the gravel. She glanced around to make sure none of her neighbors' cars were coming and walked toward the bridge. The sun was very hot in late afternoon, and it looked cooler inside the bridge. She could see his silhouette at the other end until he went down toward the stream.

Inside, she could hear pigeons burbling softly in their nests and put the palm of her hand on the side planking, feeling the warmth. Graffiti was scrawled on some of the planks: “Jimbo-Denison, Iowa.” “Sherry + Dubby.” The pigeons kept on burbling softly.

Francesca looked through a crack between two of the side planks, down toward the stream where Robert Kincaid had gone. He was standing on a rock in the middle of the little river, looking toward the bridge, and she was startled to see him wave. He jumped back to the bank and moved easily up the steep bank.

“It's real nice, real pretty here,” he said, his voice reverberating inside the covered bridge.

Francesca nodded. “Yes, it is. We take these old bridges for granted around here and don't think much about them.”

He walked to her and held out a small bouquet of wildflowers. “Thanks for the guided tour.” He smiled softly. “I'll come back at dawn one of these days^[121] and get my shots.” She felt something inside ofher again. Flowers. Nobody gave her flowers, even on special occasions.

“I don't know your name,” he said. She realized then that she had not told him and felt dumb about that. When she did, he nodded and said, “I caught the smallest trace of an accent. Italian?”

“Yes. A long time ago.”

The green truck again. Along the gravel roads with the sun lowering itself. Twice they met cars, but it was nobody Francesca knew. In the four minutes it took to reach the farm, she felt that she wanted more of Robert Kincaid, writer-photographer, that's what. She wanted to know more and clutched the flowers on her lap, held them straight up, like a schoolgirl coming back from an outing.

The blood was in her face^[122]. She could feel it. She hadn't done anything or said anything, but she felt as if she had.

He turned the truck up the lane. “Richard is your husband?” He had seen the mailbox.

“Yes,” said Francesca, slightly short ofbreath. “It's pretty hot. Would you like an ice tea?”

He looked over at her. “If it's all right, I sure would.”

“It's all right,” she said.

She directed him – casually, she hoped – to park the pickup around behind the house. What she didn't need was for Richard to come home and have one of the neighbor men say, “Hey, Dick; havin' some work done at the place^[123]? Saw a green pickup there last week. Knew Frannie was home so I did'n bother to check on it.”

Up broken cement steps to the back porch door^[124]. He held the door for her, carrying his camera knapsacks. “Awful hot to leave the equipment in the truck,” he had said when he pulled them out.

A little cooler in the kitchen, but still hot. The collie snuffled around Kincaid's boots, then went out on the back porch and flopped down while Francesca removed ice from metal trays and poured sun tea from a glass jug. She knew he was watching her as he sat at the kitchen table, long legs stretched in front of him, brushing his hair with both hands.

“Lemon?”

“Yes, please.”

“Sugar?”

“No, thanks.”

The lemon juice ran slowly down the side of a glass, and he saw that, too. Robert Kincaid missed little.

Francesca set the glass before him. Put her own on the other side of the Formica-topped table^[125] and her bouquet in water. Leaning against the counter, she balanced on one leg, bent over, and took off a boot, then the other one.

He took a small drink of tea and watched her. She was about five feet six, fortyish or a little older, pretty face, and a fine, warm body. But there were pretty women everywhere he traveled. Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted^[126]. That's why he found most young women unattractive, regardless of their exterior beauty. They had not lived long enough or hard enough to possess those qualities that interested him.

But there was something in Francesca Johnson that did interest him. There was intelligence; he could sense that. And there was passion, though he couldn't quite grasp what that passion was directed toward or if it was directed at all.

Later, he would tell her that watching her take off her boots that day was one of the most sensual moments he could remember. Why was not important. That was not the way he approached his life. “Analysis destroys wholes. Some things, magic things, are meant to stay whole. If you look at their pieces, they go away.” That's what he had said.

She sat at the table, one leg curled under her, and pulled back strands of hair that had fallen over her face. Then, remembering, she rose and went to the cupboard, took down an ashtray, and set it on the table where he could reach it.

With that silent permission, he pulled out a pack of Camels and held it toward her. She took one and noticed it was slightly wet from his heavy perspiring. Same routine. He held the gold lighter, she touched his hand to steady it, felt his skin with her fingertips, and sat back. The cigarette tasted wonderful, and she smiled.

“What is it you do, exactly – I mean with the photography?”

He looked at his cigarette and spoke quietly. “I'm a contract shooter – uh, photographer – for National Geographic, part of the time. I get ideas, sell them to the magazine, and do the shoot. Or they have something they want done and contact me. Not a lot of room for artistic expression^[127]; it's a pretty conservative publication. But the pay is decent. Not great, but decent, and steady. The rest of the time I write and photograph on my own hook^[128] and send pieces to other magazines. If things get tough, I do corporate work, though I find that awfully confining.^[129]

“Sometimes I write poetry, just for myself. Now and then^[130] I try to write a little fiction, but I don't seem to have a feeling for it. I live north of Seattle and work around that area quite a bit. I like shooting the fishing boats and Indian settlements and landscapes.

“The Geographic work^[131] often keeps me at a location for a couple of months, particularly for a major piece on something like part of the Amazon or the North African desert. Ordinarily I fly to an assignment like this and rent a car. But I felt like driving through some places and chose them for future reference. I came down along Lake Superior; I'll go back through the Black Hills. How about you?”

Francesca hadn't expected him to ask. She stammered for a moment. “Oh, gosh, nothing like you do. I got my degree in comparative literature^[132]. Winterset was having trouble finding teachers when I arrived here in 1946, and the fact that I was married to a local man who was a veteran made me acceptable. So I picked up a teaching certificate and taught high school English for a few years. But Richard didn't like the idea of me working. He said he could support us, and there was no need for it, particularly when our two children were growing. So I stopped and became a farm wife full-time. That's it.”

She noticed his iced tea was almost gone and poured him some more from the jug.

“Thanks. How do you like it here in Iowa?”

There was a moment of truth in this. She knew it. The standard reply was, “Just fine. It's quiet. The people are real nice.”

She didn't answer immediately. “Could I have another cigarette?” Again the pack of Camels, again the lighter, again touching his hand, lightly. Sunlight walked across the back porch floor and onto the dog, who got up and moved out of sight. Francesca, for the first time, looked into the eyes of Robert Kincaid.

“I'm supposed to say, 'Just fine. It's quiet. The people are real nice.' All of that's true, mostly. It is quiet. And the people are nice, in certain ways. We all help each other out. If someone gets sick or hurt, the neighbors do whatever needs to be done. In town, you can leave your car unlocked and let your children run without worrying about them. There are a lot of good things about the people here, and I respect them for those qualities.

“But” – she hesitated, smoked, looked across the table at Robert Kincaid – “it's not what I dreamed about as a girl.” The confession, at last. The words had been there for years, and she had never said them. She had said them now to a man with a green pickup truck from Bellingham, Washington.

He said nothing for a moment. Then: “I wrote something in my notebook the other day for future use, just had the idea while driving along; that happens a lot. It goes like this: 'The old dreams were good dreams; they didn't work out, but I'm glad I had them.' I'm not sure what that means, but I'll use it somewhere. So I think I kind of know how you feel.”

Francesca smiled at him then. For the first time, she smiled warm and deep. And the gambler's instincts took over. “Would you like to stay for supper? My family's away, so I don't have too much on hand, but I can figure out something^[133].”

“Well, I get pretty tired of grocery stores and restaurants. That's for sure. So if it's not too much bother, I'd like that.”

“You like pork chops? I could fix that with some vegetables from the garden.”

“Just the vegetables would be fine for me. I don't eat meat. Haven't for years. No big deal^[134], I just feel better that way.”