Camouflage

Mississippi looked interesting. Maybe someday it would turn into a huge catfish and explore it.
    It waited out a thunderstorm, since that’s what a human would do, and then walked to the bus station. With a two-hour wait, it read two Iowa papers and reread, in its mind, The Sun Also Rises, which was clear but mysterious: why were these people so self-destructive? The war, it supposed; the previous one. Though it looked as if there might be just one World War, with breathing spaces for rearming, that would last until somebody won.
    The ride to Iowa City was interesting; the bus rumbling past mile after mile of constant green, farmland occasionally punctuated by wild prairie or forest. There were individual farmhouses with barns, always red, but no towns until they pulled into Iowa City.
    The bus was going on to Cedar Rapids, but the driver directed him to the train station, the Cedar Rapids and Iowa City Interurban Railway, which went up to North Liberty. The changeling walked through the university campus to get there, noting that students dressed about the same way they did in Berkeley. A little more casual, not as much obvious wealth. More pipe-smoking among the males, fewer women in slacks. Dresses to midcalf.
    It had been listening carefully to conversations. There was a characteristic Iowa accent, but it had been more pronounced in the Davenport station. It would try to maneuver into a situation where it could overhear Stuart.
    Stuart went to high school in Iowa City, the changeling knew from his records, so on a hunch it let two trolleys go by. Sure enough, when school was out, teenagers started arriving in groups of two and four.
    Except Stuart, who walked alone, reading a book. He didn’t talk to any of the others, and they ignored him.
    The changeling maneuvered close to the boy and studied him surreptitiously while appearing to read its own book. He was slim and muscular, with a delicate manner.The book he was so absorbed in was the twenty-year-old Coming of Age in Samoa, which the changeling had read as an undergraduate in 1939.
    When the trolley came, the changeling got on behind Stuart and sat next to him. “Interesting book.”
    Stuart looked up sharply. “You’ve read this?”
    “My father had a copy of it,” the changeling improvised. “One of his textbooks in college.”
    “He let you read it?”
    “No . . . I put the dust jacket from another book around it. He never noticed.”
    Stuart laughed. “My dad took it away from me. This one, I keep hidden when I’m home. But hell, I’m old enough.”
    The changeling nodded vigorously. “They’re afraid you’ll get ideas.”
    “As if that was bad.” He looked at the changeling. “You’re new?”
    “Just passing through. Visiting relatives.”
    “What, in Liberty?”
    The changeling thought fast. North Liberty only had a few hundred people; Stuart would know most of them. “No, Cedar Rapids.”
    “Where you from?”
    “California. San Guillermo.”
    Stuart looked introspective. “Always wanted to go there. I was accepted at Berkeley. Didn’t get a scholarship. Are you a student?”
    “Taking some time off.” It checked its watch. “Anything to do in North Liberty? I have a couple hours to kill.”
    “They would die,” Stuart said. “Ice cream parlor, really just a soda fountain. Go out and look at the quarry.”
    “What do they mine?”
    “Sandstone.” He laughed and jerked a thumb back at Iowa City. “Did all the sandstone for the Capitol Building there. Then they moved the capital to Des Moines.”
    “And carelessly left the building behind,” the changeling said in an attempt at humor. The boy gave him an odd look and laughed.
    “You could kill an hour with a soda. Or go on to Cedar Rapids and get an actual beer.”
    “A soda sounds good. I like small towns.”
    “You could see all of Liberty in about ten minutes.” They talked for awhile more, the changeling mostly listening or mining the memory of the day’s papers.
    They both got off at North Liberty, along with a couple of dozen students. Almost everyone went down the main street. When they went into the ice cream shop, a girl behind them said in a soft singsong, “Stew-ie’s got a boy friend.”
    He turned pink at that. “Stupid girl,” he muttered, as the screen door smacked shut behind them.
    Interesting, the changeling thought. Could free-thinking Stuart be homosexual, attracted to the exotic out-of-towner? Dark and handsome, with a body almost a