Is there ever a good time to tell somebody as hot-tempered and high-strung as Sara something like that?

Sitting there about a mile away from me in my dad’s blue Studebaker Champion, she just glared at me as we sailed across Illinois through a shimmering green sea of soybeans.

ILLINOIS LINE BY STEVEN MARSHALL NEWTON 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 18

As a blast of sizzling hot air roared up out of the south and sucked the breath right out of us one muggy, bug-splattered Iowa summer afternoon, it was all my girlfriend Sara, my little sister Suki, and her Jumpin’ Jack Flash boyfriend, RJ, and I could do to unglue our sweaty butts from our blistering green metal lawn chairs, stomp out our roaches, and drive across the Illinois line to a roadhouse called The Oaks, where they still served booze on Sunday.

And in the light of a fake blue moon we danced, swaying back and forth on rubberized legs, twirling in slow motion under a tent in the warm rain to a mediocre junior college cover band that was busy butchering the Box Tops song, My Baby She Wrote Me a Letter. Welded to Sara, I sweltered inside my c…