Last Summer

       ...Last Summer

                   by

L. Clint Welch

Acknowledgements:

Jessie first said that I should write this book.  Janeth, Dixie, Kent, Stephanie, and Carol, critically read, and thereby found numerous errors and suggested beneficial editorial changes, but I must bear sole responsibility of the final product–for better or worse.

Dedication:

To my parents and extended family who provided a fertile ground for the growth of a boy.

        Chapter I

            On Thursday afternoon, June 7, 1951, the final bell of the school year rang and the homeroom of the Vaughn Elementary School fifth grade exploded with flying paper wads, kids erupting from seats, and school bags being slung over shoulders.  Guys yelled and punched each other on the shoulder.  Girls squealed, bounced about, and hugged each other.  A long and shrill whistle from a student captured the room.  Mrs. Chavez, the teacher, sat at her desk, leaning forward resting on her elbows.  Even she, whose frown at times seemed frozen, smiled.  Last week she mentioned a summer vacation to Yosemite.

            I was out of the fifth grade and had a whole summer with no school and no homework.  Next year will be the sixth grade with, probably, Mrs. Clay.  Me, Johnny Baker, in the sixth grade–hard for me to believe.  But first a whole summer free–a whole summer in two week chunks–a summer in which I would return to Cuervo and see Cora.

            I stuffed my final report card in my school bag, grabbed my lunch box, and headed for the door.  Rushing kids crowded the walls.  Those going one way tried to dodge those going the other.  Echoes of steps, dropped books, and chatter filled the halls.  “Bye,”–“See you next year,”–“Adios,”–“Call me,”–“Hasta Luego.”            I joined the flow out the main entrance of the two-story sandstone building into the bright New Mexico sun.  I walked past the high school toward the gate of the parking lot where parents waited.  Some high school boys drove away with horns honking and tires spinning, causing gravel to clatter behind and puffy dust clouds to hang in the air.  They were behaving like idiots and only trying to impress the girls.

            Two other students and Davey, my brother, and myself lived on the far north side of town and rode a school bus, which was not a bus at all, but a woody station wagon.  There were supposed to be five of us, but Don, who was one grade ahead of me, seldom rode.  Don’s big brother, a junior in high school, had his own car, a Cadillac, and drove the two of them most of the time.  Don hadn't ridden this morning.  Don was a bit of a snob.  He never offered to give Davey and me a ride even though we were directly on the route.

            Sam was the school bus driver.  He was sort of fat and sank into the seat as if it were molded to fit him.  His arm, tattooed with a heart and arrow, hung out the window.  Sam’s thinning gray hair lay plastered on his head.  I never saw him outside the woody.

            I was the first to get to the woody and climbed into the back seat.  “Hi, Sam.  No more school.  Great, huh?”  Sam grunted.  I sighed and leaned back.  School was over.  I'd miss my friends for the whole summer, but the free time would be terrific.  Every two weeks we’d move and there would be a new place to hunt lizards, new places to bicycle, and new things to do.

            “The summer will be over 'fore you know it.”  Sam took a last puff from a cigarette and flicked the butt to the ground.  As the butt lay dying among the dozens of others scattered on the gravel, a thread of smoke curled up and disappeared.

            “Whatta you gonna do in the summer, Sam?”

            “Rest.”  Sam tried to sound gruff, but it was an act.  I liked Sam a lot.  He said wise things sometimes.

            “Not me.  I'm gonna do a lotta exploring and hunting and things.”

            “Youth is wasted on the young.”  I wondered what Sam meant by that, but didn't ask.

            Davey and Maria scrambled through the gate.  They were in the second grade.  Davey's shirttail was hanging out on one side and his hair was all messed up.  His shoelaces were untied.  Maria was a Mexican girl whose family worked on a ranch.  Last Christmas, Sam gave Maria a big beautiful doll.  Sam said it was a prize for living the farthest away.  I figured that Sam gave it to her because he knew she wouldn't get much, if anything, else.  Sam did nice things like that sometimes.  Last Easter, he had chocolate rabbits for all of us.  He claimed they hopped out in front of the bus.

            Davey got in the back seat with me, and Maria climbed in the front seat beside Sam.  She would be the last to get off.  The only one missing was Sarah, a high school girl.

            “School's out.  School's out,” Davey sang as he bounced on the seat.

            “Why don't you shut up,” I hissed.  Davey stuck his tongue out at me.  I pretended that I was going to hit it.  Instinctively, he raised his arm for protection.

            At times during the summer, Davey would be the only kid I'd see for weeks.  We played lots of games, but most of them ended in arguments.  We had the most fun doing things like hunting lizards and bicycling where there wasn't a winner and a loser.  But sometimes we'd count the lizards killed or we'd race the bicycles–then we'd argue and it wasn't fun anymore.

            Maria got her report card from her lunch bag and looked at it.  Sam asked, “Did you get good grades, Maria?  You gonna getta go to the third grade?”

            “I thenk so.”  I could see mostly C's and a couple of B's.  Maria never spoke much and had trouble with some English words.

            “Looks plenty good to me,” Sam said.

            “Hey, your girl friend will still be with you,” I muttered to Davey.

            “She's not my girl friend,” Davey whispered as he dug his elbow in my ribs.  I pushed him away and looked out the window toward the gate.

            “Well as usual, we're waiting for Sarah.  Where is she?”  Sarah would be late.  She was always late and today would be worse because she'd have to say good-bye to her friends.

            “You might as well get used to it,” Sam said.  “You'll be waiting for women all your life.”

            I watched the dust clouds settle.  It was Thursday–two days before Dad would come home for the weekend.  We'll have to pack everything and get ready for the train to get us Saturday.  On Monday, we'd be in Hermanas.

            Tomorrow, Mom planned to go to Tucumcari to visit Aunt Patty, who was sick in bed.  Mom tried to visit her often.  I was born in Aunt Patty's house and she was my favorite aunt.  Mom told me that Aunt Patty saved my life.  I was born with my cord wrapped around my throat and the doctor laid me aside because Mom was having problems.  I wasn't breathing and was very blue.  Aunt Patty started rubbing my back and chest and I just started crying.  The doctor was totally surprised.  That's what Mom and Aunt Patty told me.

            The tailgate door opened and Sarah dropped her French horn next to the spare tire, walked to the side of the woody, and slid into the seat beside me.  “Finally,” I mumbled loudly.

            “Quiet, pip-squeak,” Sarah said as she settled in causing the car to lean a bit toward her.  She was a little bit fat.

            “You gonna play that thing this summer?”  Sam asked as he turned the key in the ignition.  The engine started.

            “What else is there to do way out there?”  Sarah moaned.  She complained a lot about living so far from town.  She couldn't go to many parties and movies with her friends.  Sometimes she'd stay overnight in town with a girl friend.  Most of the time she was fun and we teased each other.  She'd call me her little boyfriend, Johnny and put her arm around me sometimes.  I would push her arm away and pretend to be angry.

                ***

            The old woody station wagon bounced over the Santa Fe tracks and turned left on the way out of town.  The dirt road was corduroy and even if Sam missed the worst spots the ride was rough.  I looked behind at the big cloud of dust we left trailing us.  The Southern Pacific, the Santa Fe, and a couple of highways crossed at Vaughn.  Dad worked on the Southern Pacific Railroad–he called it the SP–as a signal maintainer.  I knew some of what he did and it was an important job because he kept the signals working.  The signals were needed to keep the trains from running into each other.  He had to know many things.  He talked about insulators and bonds and circuits and rebuilding batteries.  Each workday morning he would ride on his motorcar on the railroad tracks to some signal in his district.  In the old days, from what I'd seen in a movie, motorcars had to be pumped by hand, but Dad's motorcar had a gasoline engine.  If he were going to rebuild a battery he'd load the motorcar with cans of lye, water, and little bottles of oil and putt-putt down the railroad track.  I had asked for some lye one time for my chemistry set.  He gave me a tobacco can full of the big white crystals and told me to be careful.

            Dad hadn't always worked for the railroad.  After Dad and Mom were married, they had started out trying to farm like my grandparents, but had to give up.  Dad started to work for the SP when I was about three years old.  He didn't have enough seniority yet to have a permanent district, so was assigned where he was needed.  Most of the time, especially during the summer, he moved around to relieve the signal maintainers who were going on vacation.  Two weeks here–two weeks there.  And during the summer, when school was out, Mom, Davey, and I went along.

            We lived on a railroad siding in an outfit car.  An outfit car was a boxcar made into living quarters.  It had a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom, all with windows.  The kitchen was at one end and the bedroom at the other.  The kitchen had a wood burning stove and running water from an overhead tank.  Davey and I slept in the living room on a hideaway bed next to a dresser in which we kept our clothes.

            Wherever we went, we had to figure out how to get water to fill the tank, where to set the clothesline, and where to put the outhouse.  Dad usually got the men from the section gang to dig the hole for the outhouse.

            The section gang, bossed by the section foreman, were the men who make sure the track was in good shape.  They replaced rotten ties and made sure there was enough slag underneath the rails.  They didn’t have anything to do with the signals.  Most of them were Mexicans and spoke Spanish with each other.  Dad could speak Spanish and got along well with them.  When they got letters they couldn't read from the government, Dad would help them understand.

            Dad was handy at solving all sorts of problems.  He could fix cars and leaky faucets and things like that.  He could do almost anything, but when things went wrong, he had a bad temper and cussed a blue streak.  Mom, Davey, and I would be very quiet and let him get over it.

            Besides the outfit car there was another boxcar that went with us.  The coupling was never unhooked.  We called it the tool car and it was used mainly to store stuff in–like the washing machine and other big stuff.  When we moved we'd lay the outhouse and the clothesline poles down in the tool car.  Dad kept most of his tools in there too.  Things like shovels, wheelbarrows, and picks.  At one end of the tool car there was a little room that Dad called the bachelor's room.  It had just enough space for a bed, a closet, and a little table for a kerosene lamp.  It had a small heating stove that served for cooking as well.  Davey and I would sleep in the tool car sometimes in the summer.

            During the school year, Dad asked the SP to park us on a spur at Vaughn so that Davey and I could go to one school for the whole year.  Dad usually came home on weekends, unless he was close–like Corona or Santa Rosa–and could return every night.  This last year was the second year that we had gone to Vaughn.  I had gone half of my first grade year at Duran and half at Cambray.  We were in California for my second grade year because Dad was helping install something called CTC–centralized traffic control.  Halfway through the year they advanced me from the second grade to the third.  We came back to Vaughn for my fourth grade.  Last summer, Dad was also on relief duty and we moved around as well, so I was familiar with many of the towns in which we would live.  Now the fifth grade was over.

***

            During the winter, in the midst of a snowstorm, the outfit car would get very cold.  Snowbanks would form underneath and icy wind would blow through the walls.  To fight against the cold, Mom would rise and feed the fire several times a night.  By the time Davey and I got up, everything would be warm and cozy.  In the morning, Mom would get up first, light a kerosene lamp, stoke the fire, and cook breakfast.  Cream-of-Wheat was my favorite.

            My friends were always surprised that the trains passing thirty feet away on the main track didn't wake me during the night.  You just got used to them.  If they blew their whistle I'd awake, but otherwise, I wouldn't hear a thing.

            Usually on the Friday before we were going to move, we wrapped all the dishes and stuff in towels and put them in boxes on the floor so they wouldn't break.  Then on Saturday we'd drive to the new place and wait for the train–usually the local–with our boxcars to arrive and park us on a siding.  Two weeks later we'd do it all again.  Our first move, in two days, Saturday, was to Hermanas.  Hermanas was isolated about twenty miles west of Columbus close to the Mexican border.  It had a population of about thirteen.  There wouldn't be any other kids there.  We had gone there last summer and there wasn't much to do, but this year Davey and I had our bikes to ride so we could explore farther.

            I was looking forward to Cuervo.  It was the last place we'd go in the summer before we came back to Vaughn.  There were a couple of other kids at Cuervo who we spent a lot of time with last year.  Cora is a girl about a year older than I and she has a younger brother, Ray, about Davey's age.  We made picnic lunches and hiked two miles to Red Hill, a small red mesa with huge rocks and caves.  We played pretend games.  Davey, Ray, and I played as if we were soldiers fighting the Korean communists and Cora was a nurse.  If we were wounded she always saved us.  Sometimes, we'd just explore looking for rattlesnakes or Spanish gold.  It would be good to see Cora again.  She had sandy blond hair and ice blue eyes.  I’m not sure why, but I liked being near her.

Chapter II

            Thinking of Cora, I peered dreamily out the window of the woody and saw the garbage lady walking on the side of the road toward town.  I nudged Davey, “There's the garbage lady coming back from the dump.”  She walked to the garbage dump every day and returned with a bag full of stuff slung over her shoulder.  She always dressed in black with a tattered shawl draped over her head.  She wasn't very big and walked with her head bowed.  She was old and Mexican.  She shuffled along looking down at the road in front of her.  Mom had told us never to bother her and just let her alone and said she was probably crazy.  Davey and I tried to stay far from her.

            The garbage dump was a big hole, halfway up the side of a hill, beside the road three miles out of town.  I don't know if the hole was natural or if someone had dug it.  People drove up, stop, backup, and dump their garbage or whatever.  Sometimes people burned parts of the garbage dump.  On a hot summer day, the smoke from the fire mixed with the smell of rotting garbage and made you gag.  If the wind was from the north the whole town could smell it.  Some parts of the dump smelled worse than other parts.

            Sometimes Davey and I hiked to the dump.  There were fun things to do.  If we could find any old tires we'd take them across the road where we'd give them a big push down the hill, aiming to miss any large boulders.  They'd roll faster and faster and start bouncing higher and higher.  If they made it to the bottom of the hill they rolled for a long way.  We weren't the only ones to roll tires.  There must have been a hundred tires lying on the ground at the bottom of the hill.  If you could roll one beyond the farthest tire you were the Supreme Champion.  Sometimes the tire wouldn't get very far before it'd hit a rock or a yucca plant and wobble around and fall over.  We couldn't find many tires in the dump, though.  When we found the first one we'd argue about whose turn it was to do the pushing.

            We'd see the garbage lady sometimes.  She always searched through the fresh garbage looking for bits of stuff she could eat.  She knew exactly when Aragon's Grocery Store threw away fruit that was just starting to rot and she'd gather it.  She always grabbed any piece of clothing she could find.  I wondered if she had any family.  I never spoke to her and she ignored us as if we weren't even there.

            Wild cats lived in the rocks around the dump.  They weren't actually wild, but were cats that people had dumped.  Some of the cats may have been born there.  The cats acted wild and maybe some of them were.  I guess they lived off the rats and garbage.  There were plenty of rats around.  If you were very quiet for awhile and no one drove up, the cats would think there was no one around and come out of their holes.  They looked just like ordinary house cats.  High school boys would sometimes bring their 22's and shoot at them.

            Davey and I would often bring our BB's and have target practice.  We would scrounge through the garbage, gather six or so bottles, set them up in a row, and take turns to see who could break the most of them.  We seldom missed.  If we saw a rat or a cat we'd shoot at them too, but usually the rats were too quick and the cats were too far away for a BB gun.  Davey and I had Daisy Red Ryder Special BB guns.  The Special had a horse embossed in the stock and some checkering on the grip.  Dad and Mom had bought them for us for Christmas.  We shot a lot of BB's–costing a dime for a box of hundred BB's.  You had to pour the BB's in a magazine that surrounded the barrel.  If you tilted the gun the BB's would rattle as they rolled down the magazine so you had to be careful not to rock the gun if you were sneaking up on something.  A lever action cocked the gun.  They were accurate to about ten yards.  We hunted lizards mostly.

            Sometimes, we would find useful, good things in the dump, but Mom wouldn't let us keep them.  I found a fantastic clock that almost worked.  It would run for a minute or two and then stop.  Mom called it a piece of junk.  Mom didn't like for us to bring anything home from the dump.  She said we were just like the garbage lady.  Davey found a perfectly good hammer one time.  I figure it got dragged out accidentally when someone emptied his pickup.  Dad did keep the hammer.  I found a quarter one time underneath a piece of old roofing.  Davey thought I should share it, so I bought some BB's and gave him some to shut him up.

                ***

            Our outfit car was parked a half-mile off the dump road down the depot road.  Sam dropped us off and turned around to drive back to the dump road.  Sam warned, “You kids have fun this summer, but be careful.  See you in the fall.”

            “Bye, Sarah.  Bye, Maria.  Bye, Sam,” Davey yelled as we both waved.  It wouldn't be until the end of summer that we'd see them again.  Maria moved her hand back and forth without bending her wrist.  I could barely see her.

            Sarah waved and blew me a kiss.  “Bye, my little boyfriend, Johnny.”  I waved my fist at her.  She winked back.

            As Davey and I walked to the outfit car the woody disappeared behind a cloud of dust.  Mom had laundry hung on the clothesline behind the outfit car.  The washer and the washtubs were still out, waiting to be put away.  The washer had a gasoline engine that churned the clothes.  My Grandma Baker thought it was a newfangled thing and didn't want to have one even though Dad had offered to buy her one.  It would've saved her a lot of work.  She said it was too noisy and would make her crazy.

            Out on the farm where my Dad grew up, by Corona, my grandma washed clothes once a week in her back yard by building a large fire underneath a black cast iron washing pot filled with twenty or thirty gallons of cistern water.  She used a broom handle to stir homemade lye soap and the dirty laundry together in the boiling water.  When clean, the boiling hot laundry was draped over the stick and put into galvanized washtubs filled with clean water to be scrubbed on a washboard and to rinse out the soap.  The white things were given a final rinse in a tub of water that had bluing added.  After rinsing, the clothes were wrung dry by feeding them through a wringer.  Grandma's wringer had to be turned by hand.  The clothes were then hung on clotheslines to be sun dried and wind whipped.  When dry, they were taken inside to be ironed, folded, and put away.  The clothes smelled very fresh.  It was an all day job.  Grandma Baker wasn't big, but she worked extremely hard.  She always seemed in a good mood and I never saw her angry at anything except animals.  If the chickens got into the garden she'd go crazy.  She hated hawks and skunks.

            Since Mom's washer had an engine, she didn't have to do much scrubbing.  Mom heated the water on the cooking stove and then poured it in the washer.  The wringer could be connected to the engine so that it turned mechanically.  Mom was always afraid that Davey or I would get our hands caught in the wringer.  “It'll pull your arm off,” she'd warn.  The engine made washing a lot easier.  The engine used gas that Dad got from the railroad.

            Davey and I made miniature toy pistols out of clothespins.  We'd use the spring to propel small rocks, but the heads of kitchen matches were more fun.  Usually when the match head was shot, the friction ignited it and you'd have a flaming match head flying through the air.  You couldn't aim them very well so Mom always made us go outside to play.

            Mom used laundry bluing for ant bites as well.  There were so many ants it was impossible, if you played outside, not to get stung.  There were black ants and red ants.  The stings of red ants hurt more.  When Davey and I were little, ant bites caused us to cry.  Mom would remove the cap–made with a cork stopper–from the bluing bottle and dab bluing on the bite.  The blue circle around the swelling made us feel better and we'd stop crying.  Now that we're older, we still get stung by ants, but not as often.  They don't hurt as much, it seems, but we still put the bluing on, if we can.  It can’t hurt.

            A scorpion once bit Dad as he crawled into a battery box.  A battery box is a large trunk-sized wooden box that is half-buried beside the railroad signals.  It has a hinged lid with a lock hasp.  Inside the box are the chemical batteries that made the signals work.  The scorpion apparently was on the lid and fell into the collar of Dad's shirt and stung him on the back of the neck.  Dad's neck had a swelling the size of a softball on it.  He went to the doctor and after a week or so the swelling went down, but it left an ugly scar.  Dad never said it hurt.  When I see a scorpion, with its tail curled above its back, I get goose bumps and cringe imagining one inside my shirt.

               ***

            Davey and I climbed the steps to the kitchen door of the outfit car.  Mom had already packed most of the stuff and boxes were lying about on the floor.  “We're home, Mom,” I yelled as we put our lunch boxes and school bags on the kitchen table.  We got Kool-Aid from the icebox.

            “I'm in the bedroom folding sheets.”

            Mom and Dad married when Dad was nineteen and Mom was seventeen.  They eloped.  Mom wasn't particularly happy at home and life was hard for her at times.  Dad had graduated from high school and Mom had finished the sophomore year.

            Mom did all the housework and took pride in her cooking and how the house looked.  She called the outfit car a house.  I think she was so happy to have a home of her own that she believed it was her job to keep it as nice as possible and be the best housewife she could be.  The house was always clean and neat.  She was a good cook and baked all sorts of pies, cakes, and cookies.  She'd always wash the dishes soon after we ate.  Davey and I never ran out of clean clothes.

            When she had time, Mom crocheted.  She made tablecloths, napkins, edging, and all sorts of doilies.  Some doilies had pineapple designs and some had red roses.  The crocheting instructions for the pattern looked like code.  It was abbreviated, Ch 1, sc in same loop, (ch 7, sc in next loop) around.  I wanted to learn the code and it looked like fun, so I asked Mom to teach me to crochet.  I started a small doily with some thread that Mom gave me.  Variegated, she called it.  It had all different colors.

            I was crocheting once at Grandma's and Dad was teasing me that I was doing sissy stuff.  Dad had ideas about what proper men's work was and what proper women's work was.  “Why Davey,” Grandma started.  She called Dad, Davey and called Davey, Junior.  It could get confusing sometimes.  “Don't you 'member learnin' tattin' when you were a young'un?”  I couldn't believe it.  Dad–tatting.  I looked at Dad and grinned.  I didn't know what tatting was, but knew it was another way of making doilies and edging.

            “Oh, Mom, you had no need to mention that,” Dad said and left the house.  Dad didn't tease me anymore, but after I finished the doily I didn't crochet anymore.  Mom said that if she had known I was going to finish the doily, she'd have given me better thread.

            When Mom had her housework done, she would sit in a rocker, crochet, and listen to the radio.  The radio sat on a library table and had wires running to the batteries that were underneath the table.  When the batteries got low, the sound would get low and soon you couldn't pick up any stations.  You had to keep buying batteries.  Last year, when Dad wanted to listen to the Sugar Ray Robinson boxing match, the batteries were too low.  Dad had the section foreman, Mr. Owens–Dad called him Paul–over and they were going to drink a couple of Coors while they listened to the fight.

            “Mary, why didn't you buy some goddamn batteries?”  Dad stormed as he left the house.  He and Mr. Owens sat in the car and listened to the fight on the car radio.  Snow covered the ground and they ran the motor to keep warm.  I went and sat in the back seat for awhile, but it was cold back away from the heater.  Dad hadn't been able to find any American station broadcasting the fight, so they were listening to a Mexican station from Juarez.  I couldn't understand Spanish, so I only stayed for one round.  “Johnny, close the damn door,” Dad yelled as I left to return to the outfit car.  Sugar Ray won in thirteen rounds.

                ***

            “If you're hungry, have some cereal.  How was the last day of school?”  Mom asked from the bedroom.

            “Boy, Mom, you're packed, all ready to go,” I observed as Davey and I went into the living room, sat, and drank our Kool-Aid.

            Mom came out from the bedroom.  She was wearing a white dress with large black polka dots and a wide, black, shiny, plastic belt.  She always wore dresses.  I never saw her wear trousers or anything like that.  She usually wore an apron but not now.  Her black hair was naturally curly, like Granddad Henderson's, and cut short.  She worried about gaining weight, but I think she looked beautiful.  She had one front tooth on the left that was crooked a little bit, but you couldn't actually see it unless she opened her mouth wide–like when she laughed loudly.  Her eyes were dark brown–maybe black.  She plucked hairs from her chin sometimes because they were dark and could be seen so easily.

            “Had to get it done today, so we can visit Aunt Patty, tomorrow.  How are your report cards?”

            “I gotta B in History and a B in Music,” I answered.

            “The rest A's?”

            “Yeah.”

            “And you Davey?”

            “I gotta A in Arithmetic and in Reading.  Do I gotta go to Aunt Patty's?”

            “Any C's?”  Mom asked.

            “Yeah–in stupid Art and in dumb Spelling.”

            “I hope you boys keep your grades up.  I never got a chance at good education.  It makes a world of difference.  I want you guys to go to college and not have to do hard work all your life.  Make us proud.”

              “Do I gotta go to Aunt Patty's?”  Davey whined again.  I think Davey didn't like to visit Aunt Patty because she sort of favored me.

            “I wanna go,” I said.

            “Yes, you do,” Mom spoke to Davey, “What am I gonna do?  Leave you here all by yourself all day long?”

            “I'll be OK.”

            “Something might happen.  You're coming with us.  I'm gonna need you guys to help me put the washing machine away in a bit, so don't go off anywhere.

       Chapter III

            The next morning we rose early and left for Tucumcari on route 54.  It was about a hundred miles away and Mom wanted to get there and back before Dad returned home.  Riding in the back seat of the Plymouth was boring.  Vaughn is on a flat grassy plain where people grow cattle and sheep, so there isn't much to look at.  The first town we came to was Pastura–a few railroad houses and a small general store.  We had never lived there.  The district of the signal maintainer from Vaughn covered that far.  We drove straight through.

            “Why do we gotta go see Aunt Patty all the time?”  Davey whimpered.

            “ 'Cause she's very sick and this will be our last chance before we move to Hermanas.”

            “Is she gonna get better?”  I asked.

            “Probably not.  She's got cancer.  There's not much that the doctors can do.”

            “What's cancer?”  Davey asked.  “Is it like polio?  Will I get it?”

            “No, it's a terrible disease that mostly old people get.  Young people mostly get polio.”

            “Is she gonna die?”  Davey asked.

            “Sometime, but we hope not soon.”

            “Why doesn't she go to the hospital?”

            “She was in the hospital, but they sent her home.  They couldn't help her none.  She goes back from time to time for a check up.”

            “So why do we gotta go see her all the time?”  Davey continued.

            “To show her we love her.  She's part of the family.  She's always been very nice to us.  Helped us when we needed help and now we need to show her that we care.  Most of her family lives far away and Uncle Fred, who works on the railroad too, has to be gone a lot.  We're the family that's closest and now we're gonna be moving about, mostly far away,” Mom explained.

            Uncle Fred was a big man and didn't talk much.  He did like to talk with Dad about railroading, though.  He was a train engineer.  Aunt Patty had some church people and neighbors who helped her.  She had a couple of grown daughters–Mom's cousins–who lived in Albuquerque and they came down when they could.

            “There's nothing for us to do at Aunt Patty's,” Davey complained.

            “Play in the back.”

            Mom got a Pall Mall out and pushed in the lighter on the dash.  Davey looked at me and grinned.  He put his finger to his grinning mouth to shush me–as if I didn't know.  “This cigarette lighter still doesn't work.  I wonder what happened to it,”  Mom mused.  Davey and I weren't going to tell.  Mom got her Zippo lighter from her purse and lit her cigarette.

            Last fall when Davey and I were waiting–it seemed like forever–in the car, we were scrounging through the glove compartment, seeing what was there.  We found a tire-patching kit, a bunch of papers, a flashlight, and a box of 22 shells.  Dad kept the shells there in case he ever ran out when we were rabbit hunting.  Davey took a shell out, removed the lighter, and put the shell in the socket where the lighter went.  He put the lighter on top of the shell and pushed it in with his thumb.  It was probably a silly thing to do.  There was a loud bang.

            “What happened?”  I asked Davey.  The smell of gunpowder filled the car.  I looked for blood.

            “I don't know,” Davey answered with his voice quivering.  He was scared.  He was sucking on his thumb.

            “Are you shot?”

            He looked at his thumb.  “No, I don't think so.  It sure stung.”  His thumb looked OK to me.  I didn’t see any blood.

            “Where's the lighter?”  I asked, looking around the floor.

            “I think it flew in the back seat.”

            “Let's roll down some windows.”  I wanted to get rid of the smell so Mom wouldn't be curious.  Davey crawled over the front seats into the back and rolled down the windows.

            “I found it.  Here it is,” Davey said as he held up the lighter.  I took it.  The heating coil was dented, but it looked OK otherwise.  I put it back in the socket.  The cigarette lighter never worked after that and we never told Mom or Dad why.  They wouldn't've liked us going through the glove compartment and we're not supposed to play with shells and things like that.

                ***

            “We're coming to Santa Rosa.  We'll live here later this summer,” Mom announced.  We crossed the bridge over the Pecos River.  We had lived in Santa Rosa last summer.  Santa Rosa was interesting and different, because the river was there.  There weren't many rivers in New Mexico.  On the south side of Santa Rosa, there was a huge natural spring, an Artesian well that flowed out of a large hole.  The well, the center of a city park, had had a fence built around it.  The water was very clear and you could look deep in the hole and see fish swimming.  A sign called it the Blue Hole.

            “Can we go fishing again?”  Davey asked.

            “Probably, I'm sure Dad will take you fishing again.”

            “We gonna stop in Cuervo?”  I asked wanting to know if we were going to be able to see Cora and Ray.  I wondered if they knew we'd be coming later in the summer.

            “Oh, Johnny, let's drive straight through so we can get back home before Dad.”

            “We wouldn't have to stay long, Mom.  I just wanna tell Ray and Cora we'll see them later this summer.”  I wanted to see Cora so she would know I was coming back.  When I last saw her last summer, I didn't know if Dad would be doing relief this summer or not.  We didn’t know from one summer to the next what we’d be doing or where we’d be going.

            “They probably aren't home.  Maybe we'll stop on the way back if we have time.”

            “OK,” I agreed sulking.  I always give up arguing too early.  I never get what I want.  Davey keeps arguing and gets what he wants lots of times.  I flopped back in the seat and pouted.  I knew we wouldn't have time on the way back.  As we drove through Cuervo, I looked out the window, hoping to see Cora.  I didn't see her.  Lopez's store and Smith's filling station were almost empty.  The Cuervo Bar and Liquor Store had a couple of Mexican men sitting on the bench in front.  From Cuervo through Newkirk and into Tucumcari the country became wooded with cedars and junipers on mesas and rolling hills.  It was probably good deer hunting country.

            It was midmorning when we got to Tucumcari.  Mom turned right onto Ash Street.  Uncle Fred and Aunt Patty lived in a white house six blocks down on the right.  The house looked cozy from the outside.  A swing hung in a porch that was surrounded with morning-glories, black-eyed Susans, and hollyhocks.  There were tall trellises at the ends of the porch that gave it a boxed-in feeling and kept it cool in the summer.  The front yard had a lush grass lawn and a brick walkway.  Mom stubbed her cigarette out and combed Davey's and my hair.  “Be good and don't fret.”  Mom wanted us to look our best when we visited anybody.

            The front door was open, but the screen door was held closed by a spring.  “Aunt Patty, it's me, Mary,” Mom shouted as she opened the screen door and walked in.  Davey and I followed her.

            “Come on in, child.  Good grief.”  Her voice came from a back bedroom.  “Is Johnny with you?”

            “Both of the boys are here,” Mom replied as we walked through the living room and down the hall.  The window shades were down and the lights were out so it was dim.  Davey and I were quiet.  It was a house that was hard to talk in.

            We walked into her bedroom.  She was propped up in a bed and was covered to her waist by white sheets and a white bedspread.  She was wearing a blue silk-looking housecoat.  Her gray hair was pulled back and held by a plastic clip.  She had glasses that were half-moons and perched at the end of her nose.  A pencil was stuck behind her ear.  She looked thin, but I think she looked beautiful–like a queen.  A reading light was on and there were books and crossword magazines scattered around.  The window was open about six inches and a slight breeze was waving the white lace curtains.  A bunch of medicine bottles and a pitcher of water were on a bedside table.  A radio was playing softly.  The room smelled like rubbing alcohol.  She smiled and held out her hand.  I ran into the room and gave her a hug.  I could feel the bones in her shoulders.  She put an arm around me and squeezed.  She stunk.

            “Johnny–little Johnny.  I remember the day you were born.  You came pretty close to dying, you know?  You were as blue as my house coat, you were.”  She told the story every time I saw her, but I liked hearing her tell it.  She tousled my hair.

            I had to say something.  “Yeah, but you saved me.”

            “Me and the good Lord.  And look at you now.  Did you get good grades again?”

            “Pretty good,” I answered.

            Mom answered, “They were very good.  All A's except for a couple of B's.”

            “You're the smartest kid I’ve ever known,” Aunt Patty said.  She took a quarter from the bedside table and put it in my hand.  “That's for you and Davey.”

            “You're looking good, Aunt Patty,” Mom said as she bent over and hugged her.

            “Sure glad you came.  What about you Davey?  Don't I get a hug from you?”

            Davey then gave her a hug.  “Wish I could've been there when you were born, too.  But it looks like you did OK without me, huh?”

            “Yes, ma'am,” Davey answered.

            “Why don't you boys look in the kitchen.  There're some cookies in the cookie jar, and I think Fred left some lemonade in the fridge.”  When we had left the bedroom, Davey held his nose with his fingers.

            “She stinks,” Davey whispered.

            “She can't help it.  She's very sick.”

            “What did she give you?”

            “A quarter.”

            “Can I have my half?”

            “How can I cut a quarter in half, goofball?”

            “Well, don't lose my half.”

            The fridge ran off electricity and was taller than our icebox and made ice by itself in the top section.  You just had to put water in trays, put them in the freezer section, and, presto, they'd freeze.  Since we didn't have electricity, all we had was an icebox.  The SP left us big blocks of ice that we put in the icebox.

            I was pouring the lemonade when Mom came in.  “You boys take your lemonade out back and stay there for awhile.  I'm gonna give Aunt Patty a bath.”

            “There ain't nothing to do in the back,” Davey said.

            “Then, go swing on the porch in front.  Do something and don't come in till I call you.”  Davey and I walked onto the porch.  Each of us had three cookies in one hand and a glass of lemonade in the other.  We sat on the swing.  It was like a bench with a back that was hung by small chains.  We couldn't swing too high because the swing would hit the trellis.  We were sitting, swaying back and forth, when a hummingbird zipped to the morning-glories.

            “Shhh,” I cautioned Davey, “Look.”  The bird darted from flower to flower and sometimes hang suspended in midair.  We stopped the swing.

            “Think you could hit one with a BB gun?”  Davey asked.

            “You wouldn't wanna shoot a hummingbird.”

            “Why not?”

            “They're too little and cute.”  I gave the only answer I could think of.

            “We shoot cottontails and they're little and cute.”

            “We eat the cottontails.  Besides the cottontails are a lot bigger than a hummingbird.”

            “I think I could hit one.  ‘Specially when they're hovering,” Davey said as he pretended to aim a gun.

            We finished the lemonade and stayed quiet.  The hummingbirds kept coming.  We saw a couple of dozen, sometimes three or four at the same time.

            “You can bring your glasses in now,” Mom said through the screen door.

             Mom made soup and sandwiches for lunch.  Aunt Patty had grapes and peaches that we ate for dessert.  After lunch, Davey and I played in the back, but it was just an empty yard, so there wasn't much to do.  We stayed a few more hours.  We each hugged Aunt Patty good-bye.  She smelled better.

            When we left, Mom had a dozen Life magazines that Aunt Patty had given her.  Mom hadn't had much education, but she liked to keep up with the news and what was happening around the world.  Sometimes, when the family was sitting around the table at supper time, she'd bring some topic up to talk about.  The Life magazines were interesting to look at.  I liked the Campbell Soup advertisements with the little poems.

            Mom's Mom–my Grandmother Henderson–died when Mom was a small girl.  Aunt Patty was Grandma Henderson's sister and I think that's why Mom went to her house when I was born.  I, of course, never knew Grandmother Henderson, but I did know most of my great‑aunts and great‑uncles–the Gaines' family.  Mom tried to see them whenever she could.  Uncle Lou had a deep baritone voice and could spin yarns for hours about fishing and hunting.  Uncle Will had been a sheriff and could talk forever about chasing outlaws.  Uncle Hugh had been a mayor, and was a preacher in a church, but he never talked religion with us.  Aunt Mary, for whom Mom was named, lived on a big ranch and managed it mostly by herself.  She was always on a horse.

            When I asked how grandmother died, I was told that she died of kidney problems.  She died leaving Mom, and Mom's little brother, Johnny, for whom I was named.  A couple of years later, Johnny died from tonsillitis and was buried beside my grandmother in Duran.

            Last fall Mom was finally able to buy a headstone for her mother's grave.  Her father was too poor to buy the headstone.  My grandfather, soon after my grandmother’s death, married again.  My Mom and her stepmother didn't get along very well.  I think that's why Mom dropped out of school and married so young.

            At the head of the mound of dirt in the middle of the Duran cemetery Dad set the granite headstone in cement.  On Memorial Days we visited the cemetery.  Prickly pear cactus and yucca was overrunning the barbed wire enclosed graveyard.  We'd clean the graves, arrange the rock borders, pull weeds, and fill any holes dug by animals.  Going to the cemetery was an eerie experience when I was a kid.  I didn't understand dead people.  I had nightmares after Memorial Day.  I didn't ever want to be put into a hole in the ground.

            As we left Tucumcari, I looked at the magazine covers and sort of flipped through them.

            “Johnny, don't you start reading those in the car.  You know what happens.”

            “I was just looking at the pictures.”  Mom was referring to the fact that reading in the car made me carsick.  I'd get sicker than a dog.  Had to do with the motion of the car, I guess.  Once when we were going somewhere–I've forgotten exactly where–I was reading in the back seat, right behind Dad, and suddenly got violently dizzy and sick.  I puked all over the floor in the back of the car.  I'd eaten spaghetti.  The smell was terrible.

            Dad, who was driving, immediately pulled over to the side of the road.  He was gagging.  “Goddamn it, Johnny, it's always something,” he said as he opened the door, jumped out, and slammed the door shut.  He was five steps from the car when he started puking.  Davey jumped out.  Mom moistened a handkerchief from the water bag and wiped my face.

            “You OK, Johnny?”

            “I think so.  I feel dizzy.”

            We all had to get out of the car because of the smell.  “What the hell are we gonna do now?”  Dad asked. “We're out here in the middle of nowhere and the goddamn car stinks to high heaven.”  He could get extremely angry.  I felt sorry that I caused so much trouble.  I wish Dad would at least ask me how I felt.

            “Dave, I'll clean up the mess.  Just give me a few minutes,” Mom answered trying to be a voice of reason and calm.  Dad got a drink of water and walked away rolling a cigarette.  Davey followed him.  I felt ashamed by it all.

            “Can I help, Mom?”  I asked.

            “Why don't you just take it easy.  If you feel like you're gonna get sick again, say something.  Let us know.”  I went and sat on a rock and held my head in my hands.  Things weren't spinning so much, but my head had a dull aching pain.  Mom opened all the doors on the car, got some old tow-sacks from the trunk, and started cleaning the back seat.  She had a very high tolerance for bad smells and things.  Eventually we drove on with all the windows rolled down.  When we got home, Mom got some ammonia and scrubbed for a couple of hours.

            Since then, I haven't read in the car, which meant that things could get really boring when we're driving.

***

            We, as I expected, didn't have time to stop in Cuervo on the way back.  Seeing Cora again was probably the best thing that would happen this summer.  I wonder if she still wore her hair in a ponytail.  She'd talked about cutting it real short.  At least, she couldn't change the color of her eyes.  Why did I care?

Chapter IV

            As we drove back to Vaughn, I leaned back, closed my eyes, and daydreamed.  Aunt Patty has known me since I was a baby.  I wonder what I was like as a little kid?  I tried to remember.  My earliest memories aren't clear.

            I remember living on a farm at the foot of Duran Mountain.  I remember lying in bed and looking at the nails holding the cardboard ceiling to the rafters.  I remember looking up at a box of Arm & Hammer baking soda in a cupboard and asking Mom whose arm was on the box.  Mom told me that it was Dad's.  I remember we had a collie, named Queenie, on the farm.  She was a friendly dog and wagged her tail a lot when I played with her.  This was before Davey was very big.  When we left the farm to move into town, after Dad got the railroad job, we left Queenie behind and I remember crying because we didn't bring Queenie.  Mom and Dad said we'd come back to get Queenie, but we never did.  I remember looking back at Queenie barking at us as we left.  Sometimes when I see a collie, for a moment I think it's Queenie, realize it's not, and get sad.  I hope that whoever moved into the farmhouse after us, took good care of her.

            The Christmas after we moved into town, Aunt Patty sent me a set of twelve brightly colored wooden blocks with interlocking slots.  On the sides they had the letters of the alphabet and pictures.  The red block had an 'A' with a picture of an apple.  The 'E' block was blue and had an elephant on it.  I didn't know what an elephant was then.  I thought it was a sick cow.  I wonder what happened to those blocks?

            Another gift was a Lionel mechanical train set powered by a wind-up spring.  Enough track came with it to make a large oval or a figure eight.  It had a coal car, a boxcar, a tanker car, a flat car, and a caboose.  The engine was painted shiny black and the caboose was bright red.  I was excited by that train.  When I held it the first time, My hands trembled.  The engine had a small stone wheel in the smokestack that rubbed against a metal flap and produced sparks as the train moved.  After a year or so, the flap wore away and the sparks stopped.  I lost the key that was used to wind up the spring and Dad showed me how to use pliers instead.  The pliers wore the shaft to circular shape.  In a couple of years all the cars and most of the track had been lost.  But I had the engine for a long time and I kept it clean and oiled.  It was all I had left of that train and I treasured it.

            Last winter, I had taken the engine apart and soaked its pieces in kerosene to remove dirt and grime.  I put it back together and placed it in the coal bucket to drip until dry.  In the night, to keep the fire going, Mom got up and threw some coal out of the coal bucket–along with the engine–into the kitchen stove.  I got it out of the ashes the next day, but it was melted and twisted.  I had had a lot of fun with that train.  Mom felt bad, but it wasn't her fault.  I shouldn't've put it in the coal bucket.

***

            We returned home from Tucumcari about five o'clock.  Dad would ride the train and get home about six.  He was working in Alamogordo and he'd catch train 39.  Sometimes Dad would catch the freight trains and ride in the cab.  Depended on where they were scheduled to stop.  He rode the trains free, but 39 was the only eastbound passenger train that stopped everywhere.  Train 3, the Sunset Limited, was a streamliner passenger train that ran west and train 4, was the eastbound streamliner, but they didn't stop at most of the towns.  Trains 3 and 4 were very slick looking with stainless steel cars and brand new diesel engines.

            Mom cooked some fried chicken, gravy, green beans, and fried potatoes and had it ready when 39 stopped at the depot and blew its whistle.  Mom drove the Plymouth and picked Dad up, leaving Davey and me listening to the radio.  Dad and Mom were always all kissy and huggy when Dad came home after the week.  Both were always in a good mood.

            Dad wore his overalls and had a suitcase in his hand.  A Prince Albert tobacco can was in his front pocket.  His watch chain crossed his chest.  A pencil was stuck in a thin pencil pocket.  He had a deep tan–from working outside so much.  His hair was freshly combed, parted on one side, and had a cowlick in front.  He looked like a movie star.  I hoped that I would look like him when I grew up.  Davey and I were glad to see him when he came home.  Sometimes, he'd get on the floor and wrestle with us.  He used musk after-shave lotion and I liked being near him.

            “Hi, Dad,” Davey yelled as he jumped up and ran to him.  Dad stooped and held out his arms.  I was a little too grown up to act that way, but I gave him a hug anyway.

            “You guys ready to move in the morning?”

            “I'm ready,” Davey answered with a shrug.

            “Got the water tanks emptied?  Got the outhouse loaded?  Got the hatches battened down and gear stowed?”  Dad was teasing us.  “Did both of you guys get promoted?  Get good grades?”

            “They did pretty good,” Mom answered as she showed him our report cards.  “What time is the local due in the morning?”  Mom asked as she put the food on the table.  Dad put our report cards down without saying anything about them.

            “About ten.  Won't get into Hermanas until Sunday late, so we'll have to stay in a motel–probably in Deming.”

            “Oh, boy.  Oh, boy–a motel!”  Davey cheered.

            “Why so late?”  Mom asked.  She was always eager to get set up quickly.

            “The train stops at El Paso and there ain't another out till Sunday noon,” Dad answered.  Mom sighed.

            As we sat, Mom asked, “Well, what shall we talk about tonight?”  None of us answered.  “Let's talk about television.”

            “What's television?”  I asked.

            “Television is like the movies except it's in your house like a radio,” Dad answered.

            “Where would you put the screen?  We don't have room,” Davey asked.  Dad laughed.

            “Oh, it has a much smaller screen,” Mom answered.

            “Can we buy one?”  I asked.

            “Wouldn't do us much good,” Dad said.  “You need a station like radio.  There ain't no stations out here.  We couldn't pick up anything.”

            “But, next year,” Mom continued, “Albuquerque is gonna get some stations and maybe we can pick ‘em up from out here.”

            “Can we watch Winchester '73?”  Davey asked.

            “I don't think so.  The magazine said they have programs just like radio.  And now the same program goes all over the country.  And, besides, you already saw Winchester '73,” Mom replied.

            “It's my most favorite movie,” Davey announced.

            “You liked Shelley Winters?”  Dad asked.

            “I liked the gun,” Davey smirked.

            After supper, Mom washed the dishes and when she was finished Davey and I took our Friday night bath in the kitchen.  We used the large washtub that Mom had used yesterday to wash clothes.  Mom would fill it up with warm water and we'd take turns.  Sometimes we'd use the same water, sometimes not.  Depended on how dirty the water became.  After our baths we didn’t need any more water so Dad went outside and emptied the water tanks by opening the drain faucet on the side of the outfit car.  It took awhile for all the water to drain.  Davey and I were in bed in the living room and the sound of the gurgling water was soothing.  Almost like rain.

            The next morning Mom rose early.  We ate cold cereal for breakfast.  Mom stored the last few dishes and made sure the kerosene lamps were safe.  Mom loaded our little trailer that hooked onto the back of the Plymouth.  Dad had built the trailer.  It had a single axle and wasn't very big, but we hauled important stuff, like suitcases, in it.  We tied a tarp over the top.

            Dad and a couple of the guys who worked with him on the railroad had taken the outhouse up and stored it in the tool car with the clothesline posts.  I helped shovel dirt to fill in the holes.  At that point, Davey had to go to the toilet, of course, and went to a culvert that was hidden.

            “Don’t want to forget these,” Dad said as he pulled up the horseshoe stakes and put them together with the horseshoes in the tool car.

            “If you need anything out of the outfit car, you better get it now,” Dad cautioned us.

            “Oh, I need to get the treasure map,” Davey said.  He hurried into the outfit car and returned with a folded up sheet of paper in his hand.  “Almost forgot it.”

            “Don't wanna forget that.  Anything else?”  Dad asked.  No one said anything so he took the steps to the kitchen door and put them in the tool car.  They were always the last things to be stored.  He, then, locked the doors.

            At about ten o'clock the local showed up on the main track and Dad walked down to the siding switch.  The train stopped in a cloud of white steam and the switchman got off.  “All ready to go?” he asked Dad.

            “Take 'er away.”

            The switchman uncoupled the caboose from a flat car and the train pulled ahead enough to clear the switch.  The switchman had some trouble throwing the switch.  It hadn't been moved for almost a year and was a bit rusty.  Dad helped him and the two of them got it thrown.  The engineer released the brakes with an explosive hiss of steam and the train backed up onto the siding.  The switchman was using arm signals to show the engineer how close they were to the outfit car.  The train was creeping when the couplings hit each other.  Mom cringed.  The outfit and the tool car jolted, but the coupling held tight to the flat car.  Mom thought they always hit too hard.  I guess it was hard to control a whole train.

            The switchman checked the couplings and hooked up the steam hoses for the brakes.  The train pulled onto the main track, stopped, backed up after the switch was thrown again, and coupled onto the caboose again.  The train left as the engine puffed big clouds of gray smoke from the smokestack and spewing white steam to the side.  The local wasn’t a diesel.

            The train disappeared in the distance and the puffs of smoke got smaller.  I felt strange looking at the spot where our home had been and seeing nothing.  It seemed as if we didn't have a home anymore.  There was a big muddy spot where the water had been drained.  The school bus path ended at a vacant space.  I felt empty.  Everything was gone.

            “Well, we might as well get going,” Dad said and we got into the car.  As Dad drove from Vaughn down route 54, we were all quiet.  I felt sad about leaving the things we knew best.  Dad broke the silence, “Mary, did you remember to go to the post office?”

            “Yeah, I told them just to hold any mail that comes and we'd pick it up when we can.”

            “What time is it?”  Davey asked.

            Dad looked at his watch.  “Ten thirty-three.  Why?  You got medicine to take?”  Dad teased.

            “I was just wondering,” Davey delayed for a moment before continuing, “Dad, why can't we stay in one place?  Why do we gotta move all the time?”

            “We will someday, Davey.”

            The union decided who worked which jobs based on seniority.  Sometimes a district would become open–someone would quit, retire, or die.  The other signal maintainers in the division would then “bid” on the job.  The winner would be whoever had the most seniority.  Whoever had worked in the signal department the longest and wanted the job got it.  This would cause another vacancy and another bidding process would start.  So in time the most senior men would have the best districts–like Tucumcari, Corona, or Deming.  Those with less seniority had to be satisfied with Cuervo or Animas.  At most districts the railroad furnished housing, running water, kerosene, coal, and ice.

            If a job had to be eliminated, the signal maintainer whose job was eliminated could “bump” anyone with less seniority–that is, take his district.  The bumped man could bump someone further down the seniority roster until either the most junior man was out of a job or someone just quit the railroad.  Mom and Dad worried as long as the bump was ahead of Dad on the seniority list because Dad could be bumped and we'd have to change jobs and homes.  They relaxed when the bump skipped around Dad.  Generally, though, it was known which men wanted which districts and so we knew ahead of time if Dad was going to have to change jobs before it became official.  We knew that sometime in the future we would settle down more or less permanently when Dad got enough seniority.

            “I'm thirsty,” Davey complained about five miles from Carrizozo.  Dad pulled off the road and we got out and passed the water bag around.  As I drank from the circular spout, water dribbled from the corner of my mouth, and ran down my neck.  It was cold and refreshing.  I wet my hand and wiped my forehead.

            When Dad went out on the motorcar he had to take drinking water with him and the SP furnished canvas bags.  I didn't understand exactly how canvas held water, but it did.  Seems as if the water should just run right through.  Dad would hang the bag from the front of the motorcar and as he rode, the water became cooler.  I didn't understand that either, but it sure worked.  Dad said it had to do with evaporation through the bag and that's why it was made from canvas.  If the family took a car trip, sometimes Dad would hang the water bag from the little boat that was the hood ornament.  Then if we got thirsty, we could stop and drink from the bag.  I think Davey just pretended to be thirsty sometimes.

            We got to Deming late in the afternoon.  Deming was twenty miles from Cambray.  Cambray is where we lived during the last part of my first grade.  The school was at Lewis Flats–about halfway between Cambray and Deming–and I would have to ride the bus from Cambray to Lewis Flats.  The first part of the first grade was at Duran where I walked to school.  It wasn't very far.  I really didn't want to ride a school bus.  I didn't know any of the other kids at Lewis Flats when we moved there.  Mom tried all sorts of arguments to convince me, but I was afraid of riding the bus twice a day for a long distance.  Finally, knowing I enjoyed writing, she bribed me.  Remembering the crisp brightly colored letters on the Christmas blocks, I would try to write the letters perfectly on a sheet of paper.  If I failed at 'E', I'd start with 'A' again on another sheet of paper.  I was as careful as possible.  I used a lot of paper.

            Mom said that if I'd ride the bus she'd buy me a fountain pen for my very own.  With my very own fountain pen–and practice–I’m sure I could get neat enough to get all the way through all the letters.

            Mom drove me into Deming on a weekend.  The drug store had a display case of beautiful pens–Parkers, Shaeffers–one of which was soon to be mine.  I looked at the black ones, the blue ones, and the silver ones.  I had to make the right choice.  Mom interrupted my thoughts by showing me something I'd never seen before.  She said it was a ballpoint pen.  It didn't look like a real pen to me.

            “Where do you put the ink?”  I asked.

            “It doesn't use liquid ink, so you don't have to worry about spilling it or anything,” Mom explained.  “Try it and see how smoothly it writes.”  I knew that Mom wanted me to choose the ballpoint instead of a real fountain pen.  I guess it was cheaper.  If I insisted on the fountain pen, I knew Mom would be upset.  It wasn't as nice looking as the real pens.  I agreed to take the ballpoint.  I wish Mom, after promising me a fountain pen, would've just bought me a fountain pen.

            When we returned home, I tried to form an 'A'.  I moved the pen slowly to the top and lifted the point.  A nasty glob appeared.  I drew other lines.  When the point left the paper a messy bit of ink remained.  It was ugly.  On the second day of school, I threw the ballpoint out the window of the bus.  When I told Mom that I had lost the ballpoint, she exclaimed how lucky we were that we hadn't bought an expensive pen.  I would still like to have a real fountain pen.

Chapter V

            After spending the night at Deming, we drove to Hermanas on a dirt road.  Dry arroyos and sand dunes wrinkled the country.  There were lots of cactus, mesquite, and yucca.  Off in the northeast of Hermanas, there were three little bare mountain peaks called Tres Hermanas, which Dad told us meant Three Sisters.  The road from Deming ended at Hermanas at a 'T' junction with the road that ran east-west between Columbus and Hachita.  The roads were gravel and never had much traffic.  Hermanas had three railroad houses–one for the signal maintainer, one for the section foreman, and a long one divided into apartments for the section gang.  There was a water tower on a spur beside an unused depot.  Dad parked the Plymouth in the shadow of the water tower.  The spur was a good place for the outfit car because one could use a water hose and not have to haul water.  We lived there last year.

            Davey got out of the car holding the treasure map.  “Let's go to the Indian graves and see if our treasure is still there.”

            “OK, but we gotta walk,” I answered, regretting that our bikes were in the tool car.

            “Take a drink of water before you go,” Mom ordered.  “We're gonna go see the Wallers.”  Mr. Waller was the section foreman.  Mr. and Mrs. Waller were sort of old.  They didn't have any kids, but they were nice and fun to visit.  He was a tall thin man and she was tiny for a grown woman–not much bigger than me.  He always had a pipe in his mouth and she always wore an apron.

            The Indian graves were about a mile away–a hundred yards or so from the track beside the Hachita road.  Everyone called the spot Indian Graves because someone had found some Indian bones there long ago, but it was more like a small oasis.  A trickle of water came out of the ground and fed a small bog.  There were about thirty large cottonwood trees around the bog–the only ones for miles around, except the shade trees in the yards at Hermanas.  It was a cool shady secluded spot in the desert.  It smelled fresh and humid.  If it rained a lot I'd bet that the spring flowed quite a bit, but usually not much water came out.  At night you could hear the bog frogs croaking.  Pieces of broken Indian pottery and flint chips were scattered on the ground, and someone, a long time ago, had dug a few big holes.

            We walked off while Mom and Dad went to the Wallers’ to wait for the train.  We didn't have our BB guns.  When Davey and I walked together we'd do silly things sometimes.  We started walking backward and, of course, that led to trying to walk backward faster than each other.  We fell down probably a dozen times.  When Davey wasn't arguing he was fun to play with.  Dirt covered us.  In about a half-hour we got to the Indian graves.

            “The bog is drier than it was last year,” I observed.  Our treasure was a tobacco can that we had buried last year into which we had put a couple of pennies, an old rusty key, and some mossy agates.  We had the map that showed where the treasure was buried, but we both remembered and didn't need the map–five steps toward the track from a large, flat rock that had sparkling quartz crystals in it.  All we had to dig with was our pocketknives, but the dirt was still soft and we dug the tobacco can out quickly.  It was rusty, but the stuff was still inside.

            “Let's bury it again for next year,” I said.

            “OK, but let me bury it by myself and draw a map,” Davey answered.  You won't know where it is and can dig it up next year by using the map.”  Davey had some good ideas sometimes.  It was sort of dumb to look for a treasure that you buried yourself, by using a map you didn't need.

            “Good idea.  What'll you make the map with?”  I asked.

            “I'll remember where it is and when I get paper and pencil I'll draw the map.”

            “Don't forget, then.  I'll go wait by the road,” I said as I walked back.

            “Don't peek.”

            I sat underneath a cottonwood at the edge of the oasis and waited.  A breeze was blowing through the trees and the leaves were rustling.  A couple of vultures were lazily circling up high.  I whittled on a twig with my pocketknife.

            Tomorrow, I figured we'd have to go into Columbus and rent a post office box for the mail and maybe buy some groceries.  Columbus was closer than Deming and we went to Deming only to buy clothes or large items.  Columbus was right on the Mexican border and wasn't a very big town.  It had a grade school, a filling station, and about ten other buildings.  It was once invaded by a Mexican General named Pancho Villa.  Mom talked all about it once at supper.  Some adobe buildings had almost been destroyed and hadn't been repaired yet.  Mom said that the Americans chased him into Mexico, but he got away.  I don't know where she learned about it.

            “OK, I've buried it.”

            “Remember where?”  I asked as I folded my knife and put it in my pocket.

            “Of course, goofball.  I just now buried it.”

            We were about halfway back to the car when we saw the distant smoke of the train coming from El Paso.  “Yea, it's here,” Davey shouted as he started running.  Mom and Dad were leaning on the car watching the train and smoking a cigarette.  Davey and I fell panting into the back of the trailer.  Mom and Dad had unloaded and unhooked the trailer.  The suitcases were beside the track where Dad wanted the outfit car to be.

            “You guys are all dirty,” Mom scolded.

            The train stopped and the whole procedure at Vaughn was reversed.  The train backed the outfit car and the tool car onto the spur beside the water tower.  Dad told them exactly where to stop so that the water hose would reach.  They uncoupled, reassembled the train, and took off.  Dad opened the tool car first and got the outfit car steps out and propped them up against the kitchen door.  He climbed the steps, unlocked the door, and went inside.  Mom, Davey, and I followed.  Things looked in good shape.  Sometimes things really get battered around and broken.  Dad checked the ice in the icebox.

            “Don't look too bad,” Dad said, “I'll see if I can set up the outhouse and get the water hooked up.”  I went with him as he hooked up the water hose and opened the faucet.  The water sputtered and gurgled through the hose as the tanks filled.  “Let's get some help to set up the outhouse.”

            We walked to the section gang quarters.  Dad knocked on a door, a Mexican man opened it, and Dad started speaking Spanish.  I couldn't understand, but the man nodded his head.  “Sí, sí,” he said and as we walked back to the outfit car, the man gathered a couple of other Mexicans and they followed us carrying picks, crowbars, and shovels.  Dad got his shovel from the tool car and started digging a hole a few yards from last year’s hole.  The section gang helped him and in about an hour the hole was dug and the outhouse set up.  They talked Spanish while they worked and Dad said things that made them laugh.  They more or less ignored me and I felt ignored.  I wish I could speak Spanish.  Even Dad seemed not to know I was there.

            It's odd that Dad got along so well with the Mexicans.  The Anglos and the Mexicans never mixed very much.  Most of the Mexicans were Catholics and the Anglos were Methodists or Baptist and things like that.  Mom told me never to date ‘Mexscans’ when I grew up.  When there were fights in school it was usually between the Mexicans and the Anglos.  Most of the kids in school were Mexican.  I tried to avoid fights, but couldn't always.  I was an easy target.  I was the youngest in the class because I had skipped a grade and I was small for my age.  Usually in the beginning of the school year, after the school day was over, some bully, accompanied by four or five of his friends yelling Spanish, would meet me.  He'd knock my books to the ground, push me, and torment me to the point where I'd lose control.  I'd swing my fists trying to see something to hit through my tear filled eyes.  I never understood.  Just because I was Anglo.

***

            When we went back into the outfit car, Mom had the kerosene lamps lit, the stove burning, and supper cooking.  It felt as if we hadn't moved, and, unless you looked outside, you wouldn't know that we weren't at Vaughn.

            “Do you know who General MacArthur is?”  Mom asked as Dad took some pork chops after we had sat.

            “Isn't he in the Korean War?”  I answered.  I had heard his name on the radio and seen his picture on a Life magazine.  He was smoking a pipe.

            “He was in the war.  He was the top General–but he got fired,” Dad said.

            “Who fired him?”  Davey asked.

            “President Truman,” Mom answered.

            “Why?”  I asked.

            “Wasn't he a good fighter?”  Davey asked.

            “He was too good.  He wanted to fight the Chinese, the Russians, the Koreans–all at the same time,” Dad responded.

            “I bet he'd've won.  America has never lost a war, isn't that true, Dad?”  Davey asked.

            “Not yet.”

            “And we have the A-bomb and the H-bomb,” Davey added.

            “The Russians have the A-bomb too and are probably working on the H-bomb,” Dad countered.

            “Can the President fire anybody?”  I asked.

            “Not anybody.  Just certain people.  And he can't fire anybody that doesn't work for the government.  And some of the government people can't be fired either–no matter how much they should be,” Dad replied grinning.

            “Can he fire you, Dad?”  Davey questioned.

            “No–but he doesn't know me from Adam.  Why would he wanna fire me?”

            Davey shrugged, “I don't know.”

            “No dessert tonight, unless you want peanut butter and syrup,” Mom warned.

            After supper, Dad took a lamp and went to the tool car to make sure everything was OK.  Davey drew the treasure map and hid it while I read a Life magazine article about General MacArthur.  Mom made us take a bath and scrub ourselves.  “OK, boys, tomorrow we gotta go to Columbus.  I'll give you your allowance to spend when we get there.  You better get in bed now.”

                ***

            The next morning Mom parked in front of the post office at Columbus.  “I'll meet you in the grocery store in about fifteen minutes.”

            “Mom, can you get a post card so I can write Aunt Patty?”

            “Sure.  Whatta good idea, Johnny.  Remember to tell her that we're gonna go to Corona next, in case she wants to answer.”

            Mom gave Davey and me each fifty cents–Dad called it four-bits–and we sort of hopped, skipped, and jumped our way to the grocery store.  We each needed some BB's and, of course, we'd get some candy.  We entered through a screen door and Davey went directly to the counter to look at the candy.  I started down an aisle to look around for stuff to ask Mom to buy.  There was a box next to the apples, which was empty except for one brownish-reddish thing.  The sign said 'pomegranates - 10¢'.  I had seen a picture in one of Mom's magazines of a pomegranate that was broken open.  It was filled with kernels that looked like juicy red jewels.  It grew in the Sahara desert or someplace and looked as if it would taste fantastic.  I had never seen a real one before.  I picked it up.  It felt leathery and was heavy for its size.  It had an old flower bud on one end.  Amazing.  I wondered how it got to Columbus.  It wasn't anything like an apple or an orange.  I wondered what it actually tasted like.  Ten cents.  I put it back.  I walked around and then returned to the fruit aisle.  I decided to buy it.  I'd still have enough money for BB's and candy.

            “What's that ugly thing?”  Davey asked when he saw what I was buying.  I felt a bit silly.

            “It's a pomegranate.  Did you get the BB's?”

            “I got my BB's.  What's a plum granted?”

            “It's the best fruit in the whole-wide-world when you crack it open,” I sneered.  “How many BB's did you get?”

            “I got two tubes.  How much does it cost?”

            “Ten cents.  But this is the last one.  They don't have anymore.”

            “You gotta share.”

            “Maybe.  Maybe not.”

            “Could I please have two tubes of BB's and a Baby Ruth?”  I asked the man behind the counter.

            He placed them on the counter.  “Anything else?”

            I held up the pomegranate.  “Yes, this.”

            “OK–the BB's, ten cents each–the Baby Ruth five cents and the pomegranate, ten cents.  With tax, thirty-seven cents.”  I gave him the silver half dollar and got the change.

            “You wanna spend the quarter Aunt Patty gave us?”  I asked Davey.

            “Yeah–get some more BB's and some LifeSavers.”

            I gave the man the quarter and he gave me two more tubes of BB's and a roll of LifeSavers just as Mom came in.  I started eating my Baby Ruth.

            “Johnny bought a plum granted and he won't give me any.”

            “I didn't say that.  Besides it's mine.  I bought it with my own money.”

            “You bought a what?”  I took the pomegranate from the bag and showed it to her.  “Hmmm–maybe he'll give us a little piece, Davey.”  I could tell Mom was curious about it as well.  “I got you guys some new straw hats.  They're in the car.”

            “Goody, goody,” Davey exclaimed, momentarily forgetting the pomegranate.

            After Mom bought the groceries, we drove back to Hermanas.  When I finished eating my candy bar, Davey got his Three Musketeers out and ate it very slowly.  I tried not to look, but couldn't help myself.  Davey glanced at me to make sure I was watching him.  I wanted to stuff the candy down his throat.

                ***

            After we put the groceries away, I started peeling the pomegranate.  I tried removing the kernels without bursting their delicate skins and collected a pile of them.  I ate the whole pile at once.  They tasted very different from anything else I had ever eaten.  They were sort of cool and tart.

            “Can I have some, please?”  Davey pleaded wearing his new hat.  I gave him about a half–dozen.

            “Mom, do you want some?”

            “Sure, if you got plenty.”  I gave her a hand full.

            “Ever had a pomegranate before, Mom?”

            “Nope, but I have now.  Thanks.”

            “How did you know what it was?”

            “I saw a picture in one of your magazines,” I answered.

            “I'll save some for Dad.”

            When Dad came home he tried them.  “They taste as sour as hell.”

     Chapter VI

            “Mom, can we have a couple pie pans?”  Davey gasped as we rushed into the kitchen.  She was washing breakfast dishes.  The smell of fried sausages lingered.

            “Whatta you need pie pans for?”

            “We're gonna pan for gold,” Davey answered.

            “Where're you gonna find any gold?”  She wiped her hands on her apron.

            “The dry creek in the big arroyo on the Columbus road,” I announced.

            “You mean where we had the picnic last year?”

            “Yep, and we need something to keep the gold in.”

            “Where're you gonna get the water for the panning?  You have to have something to slosh the sand around with.”

            “We thought we’d take Dad's spare water bag and the gallon canteen.  That should be enough,” I answered smugly.

            “Don't expect to find a lotta gold.  See if there's an empty tobacco can in the tool car you can take to put it in.  I'll make you some lunch.  Don't forget your canteens.  And wear your hats.  It's gonna get blazing hot today.”

            Davey and I stowed our stuff on our bikes and pedaled off.  The road followed the railroad and after about three miles we turned onto a dirt road over a cattle guard.  When we rode together on a dirt road, we'd ride in the ruts–Davey in one and I in the other.  In the ruts, we didn't have to worry so much about prickly pear cactus and we wouldn't get in each other's way.  We each wore our new straw hats and had our BB guns.

            “Whatta we gonna buy with the gold, Davey?”

            “I want a new bike and a new BB gun.”

            Davey's bike was an old one that had been painted dull black.  I don't know what brand it was.  It didn't have anything except the frame and fenders.  No plastic handles or reflectors or anything.  The seat covering was coming off at one corner.  The rear tire was new, though.

            Uncle Thomas had given me my bike.  He had it when he was younger.  He had had it as long as I could remember.  It was a Schwinn and when it was new it was fully equipped–headlight, a horn, and red reflectors on the rear fender.  It had plastic handles with tassels and a bell on the handlebars which you could ring with your right thumb.  There had been bags similar to saddlebags that you could throw over the rear fender.  Of course, most of that equipment was gone now.  The compartment for the horn batteries was empty.  Only the screw holes remained where the headlight had been.  I don't know what had happened to the saddlebags.  The plastic handles on the handlebars were there, but the tassels had been pulled off.  The bell didn't work anymore.  The front tire was getting old and running over a prickly pear often caused a flat.  Even goat-head stickers could be a problem.

            “Why do you want a new BB gun?”

            “I want one with a telescope on it.”

            “They don't make BB guns with telescopes on them.”

            “They do too.  I saw one in the Monkey Ward catalog.”

            “Why do you want a telescope on a BB gun?  You can't shoot far enough.”

            “I can.”

            “No, you can't.  You need a rifle like a 22 or Dad's 270 to shoot far enough.  BB's just don't go far enough.”

            “You can shoot more accurately with a telescope.”

            Maybe he was right.  “What else?”

            “A watch just like Dad's.”

            Dad had to have an accurate watch to work on the railroad.  He had to know exactly when the trains were coming so he could get his motorcar off the track and onto a set-off.  The SP sent a watch inspector around every three months to check that the watch was still on time.  It was important that Dad keep the watch wound.  If he forgot and the watch stopped, he'd have to go to the depot and reset it by another railroad watch and fill out a report.  He couldn't put the motorcar on the track until he had done that.  Some railroad men kept two watches and had them both inspected so if one broke they'd have a spare.  Dad's watch was a silver Hamilton with a small second hand at the bottom.  There was a special watch pocket on his coveralls that he carried it in.

            “Why do you wanna watch?”

            “To tell what time it is, goofball.”

            “And exactly why do you need to know what time it is, twerp?”

            “For the school bus and things like that.”

            “Yeah, sure.”  We pedaled silently up the last rise before the arroyo.  A covey of quail–a couple of dozen–crossed the road in front of us and, as we approached, erupted with a flurry of wings.  They flew about a hundred yards and settled among the mesquite again.

            “Me, I'd buy the world's biggest chemistry set–with real flasks and test tubes.”

            “Yeah, and blow your head off!”  Davey had heard Mom say that.

            We arrived at the edge of the wide arroyo and I pointed to a large mesquite bush.  “Let's leave our bikes there.  No sense in taking them all the way down and then just have to push them back up.”  The arroyo had near vertical sides in most places.  It was about sixty feet deep.  The bottom was about a hundred yards across and had gravel, lots of sand, and scattered large rocks on the dry creek bed.

            I carried the lunches, my BB gun, and the water bag and Davey carried the pie pans, the gallon canteen, and his BB gun.  We left our canteens with drinking water on the bikes so we'd have them on the trip back.  We scurried down the side of the arroyo as fast as we could without losing our balance.  The gravel cascaded in front of us.

            “I'll hold the pan and you pour the water in,” I suggested.

            “Why can't I hold the pan?”

            “We'll take turns.”

            “I wanna be first.”  Davey was a real pip-squeak sometimes.

            “You don't know how to slosh it around,” I warned.

            “I do too.”

            I knew that if I didn't give in we'd never get anything done, but stand and argue all day.  “OK, you can be first, twerp.”

            We threw our loads on the ground and Davey grabbed a pie pan and ran to the creek bed.  I followed with the water bag.  He rammed the pie pan in the sand filling it about half full.  I started pouring the water into the pan as he held it.

            “Slosh it around, Davey,” I commanded.

            “Not supposed to till it's full of water.”

            “The water is supposed to come out gradually and bring the sand with it.  How can it do that if the pan is full?”

            “Keep pouring.  It's my turn, you know.”

            I poured some more water and he tilted the pan letting the clear water pour onto the ground.  It didn't carry away sand or anything else with it.  “This is a waste of water.  We'll never get any gold this way.  Let me show you how.”

            Davey threw the pan down.  “OK, Mr. Smarty Pants, let's see you do it.”  I picked the pan up and got some more sand from the bottom of the creek.

            “OK, pour the water.”

            “No, I'm gonna go hunting.”  He picked up his BB gun and started to walk away.

            “Hey, I need your help.”

            “You didn't help me.”

            “I did, too.  I poured water for you.  Come on.  It's my turn now.”

            “My turn didn't finish,” Davey said as he walked toward the edge of the arroyo at the bottom of the cliff.

            I'd have to do it myself.  I poured some water into the pan and sloshed it as he held the pan at a slight tilt letting the water spill.  I continued sloshing until there was just a little bit of sand left in the bottom.  I tried to see glitter in the bottom.  I had to get the pan in the right position to catch the sunlight.

            “Hey, Johnny, a rattlesnake!”  Davey yelled from a pile of rocks a hundred yards away.  Ever since we were little we had been warned about the danger of rattlesnakes.  “If you hear the rattle, freeze till you see the snake,” was Mom's advice.  “Rattlers leave you alone if you leave them alone.”  Dad never left them alone, but killed them and Davey and I learned from him.  Rattlesnakes were lots of fun to hunt with BB guns.  They'd coil up and stay put rather than racing away like a bull snake or a lizard.

            Dad said that the snake grew another segment on its rattles every year.  The rattles often were broken and a complete rattle was hard to find.  The largest rattle I remember had thirteen segments.  The largest snake I've seen was a timber rattler that was about seven feet long.  Dad killed it as it tried to swallow a cottontail.  Uncle Tom said that timber rattlers could grow huge and they were darker, sneakier, more deadly, and hard to find.

            “Great.  Don't kill it yet.”  I put the pan down, grabbed my BB gun, and ran.  When I got next to Davey, I could see the snake coiled up in the sun on a flat rock.  Its rattles were buzzing so fast its tail was a blur.  Its head was raised and its tongue was flicking in and out.  We each lifted out BB guns to our shoulders.

            “I go first 'cause I found it.”

            “OK, but hurry.  It won't wait all day.  Aim for its head.”

            “I know that.”  Davey shot, but missed.  I shot and missed.  Davey cocked his gun, stepped closer, and shot again.  The snake collapsed.  Blood ran out from an eye.

            “Good shot.”  The snake didn't even move.  Davey cocked his gun again as I got close enough to poke the snake with my gun barrel to make sure it was dead.  It was dead.

            “How many rattles?”  Davey asked as he walked up.

            “Looks like about seven, but they're broken off.”

            “I'm gonna cut them off,” Davey said as he took out his pocketknife.  We had a matchbox at home in which we kept rattles.  Probably had a dozen or so.

            “Maybe there's another one,” I speculated.  I walked around the rock pile looking in the crevices.  Nothing rattled.

            Davey draped the dead snake over the end of his BB gun and dropped it on top of the largest rock.  “The vultures can find him easier.”

            I walked back to the pan and looked at the grit in the bottom.  It wasn't much and it didn't glitter.  I got another pan full of sand and panned again.  If gold was there, I sure didn't see it.  I was disappointed.  It would've been exciting to find just a little bit.  I never figured we'd get rich or anything like that unless we found a nugget or something, but I thought we might find a little bit.

            Davey walked up shaking the rattles.  “Find any gold?”

            “Naw.”  I dropped the pan.

            “Let's hunt lizards.”

            I picked up my BB gun.  “OK.”

            There are two types of lizards.  There are blue racers and browns–each growing to about six inches long.  The blue racers had stripes along their length, were shinier, ran faster, and were more difficult to kill because they always seem to be moving.  The browns weren't nearly as careful and stopped a lot so you could get a good shot.

            Usually we also saw lots of horny toads.  We didn't shoot horny toads, because they ate ants and they were slow as molasses.  They didn't even try to run away.  We'd just catch them and put them on anthills.  The ants would scurry around and try to sting the horny toad.  Zap would go his tongue and an ant would disappear.  It was fun to watch.

            Anthills were interesting to search–if you were careful not to get stung–for turquoise Indian beads.  The little round circular beads were just the right size for the ants to grab by the hole in the center and carry back to their hill.

            When I found a bead, I'd wonder about the Indian that made it hundreds of years ago–was it an old squaw or a medicine man's wife?  Did a young warrior or an old chief wear it?  How did the bead get lost?  Could they even guess what would happen to that bead and that I'd find it centuries later?  Mysteries like that are annoying because you can never find out the answer, no matter what.  If one could know the entire story of a bead one would know a lot.  We found six or seven sometimes in a single anthill.

            Sometimes, we would find very small horny toads– the size of a dime.  We found baby lizards, too.  Sometimes we'd see lizards and horny toads and little snakes stuck on the barbs of a barbed wire fence where the butcher birds had left them.

                ***

            As we were climbing over the rocks looking for lizards, a cottontail jumped and ran.  Davey raised his BB gun and shot, but missed him by a mile.  “Do you think we'll ever kill a rabbit with our BB guns?”  Davey asked.

            “No.  Even if one was standing five yards away and you got a clear shot, I think it'd just sting the rabbit and it would just run away.  BB's don't have enough power.”

            “Maybe Dad will let us take the 22's hunting someday.”

            It was mid-afternoon when we grew bored, ate our sack lunch, and headed home.  When we climbed to the top of the arroyo and stood next to our bikes, I looked down and saw a vulture stretching the snake taut by holding the tail of the snake with a claw and pulling the head with its beak.  The snake snapped in two.  Three more buzzards landed on the rock.  We pedaled off.

            “Will you be glad to get to Cuervo?”  I asked Davey.

            “Yeah, I guess so.  We can explore more caves in Red Hill.”

            “I'll be glad to see Cora and Ray again.”

            “Yeah, me too.”

            As Davey and I pedaled home, I thought of Cora.  Once, the four of us were playing army and I pretended that a communist had shot me in the arm.  Davey and Ray were off somewhere sneaking up on a submachine gun nest.  “I'll make it well by kissing it,” Cora said.  She bent and kissed my arm before I could react.  She just sort of did it.  It was the first time a girl ever kissed me.  I got goose bumps.  Why?

            “I've been shot here,” I motioned to my cheek as I lay on the ground.  She didn't say anything, but leaned and kissed my cheek.  I silently put my finger to my lips.  She stooped and kissed me fully on the lips.  She smelled like roses.  Her lips were warm and very soft.  She kept her eyes closed.  I touched her hair with my arm that wasn't shot.  Were we playing?

            “Nurse, nurse,” Ray yelled, “Davey has been shot.  The machine gun got him right in the gut.”

            “Let him die!”  I shouted back.

            Cora giggled and playfully slapped me.  “I'll be there,” Cora said and ran off.  I lay on the ground not wanting to move and destroy the tingling in my spine.  God, I'd been kissed–and I seemed to enjoy it.

            Why do I get chills when I remember that kiss and the aroma of roses?  I'd always thought kisses were all smoochy and stupid in the movies.  When we return to Cuervo, I wonder if Cora will try to kiss me again.  Maybe Davey and Ray could find a game just for themselves.

Chapter VII

            On Sunday, the local parked us on a siding at Corona.  There was no spur next to the water tower, so after we set up the outhouse–with the section gang's help–we put the two empty water barrels from the tool car in the trailer, drove to the water tower, filled the barrels, and drove back to the outfit car.  Dad had a hand pump mounted on a long pipe that one could screw into the bunghole on the top of the barrel.  The pipe almost reached the bottom of the barrel.  On the outlet of the pump we attached a hose that connected to the inlet faucet of the overhead tanks.  Turning the crank pumped the water from the barrel to the tanks.  Dad could empty a barrel in ten minutes.  If there were time, he'd let Davey and me pump the second barrel.  It took us at least forty-five minutes.  Davey couldn't pump very long and my arm would get dead tired.  Two barrels of water lasted about a week.  Once the barrels were emptied, we put them back in the tool car and we'd do the same thing again next weekend.

            Corona lay in the foothills of the Gallinas Peak among cedar trees.  Dad grew up in Corona.  Grandma and Granddad Baker lived about twenty miles from Corona.  They had immigrated to New Mexico from Texas and homesteaded.  They grew pinto beans and had a bunch of chickens, cattle, pigs, and children.  My grandma's family came from Germany.  My granddad's family had lived in Texas for a couple of generations.  He always seemed angry and unhappy.  He talked a lot about how, if he had stayed in Texas, he would have been rich from oil.  He was a broken old man and liked to sit in a rocking chair and smoke a pipe.

            Often when we visited them, we'd go arrowhead hunting.  After a strong rain, the hunting was best.  A rare find was a perfect obsidian arrowhead; most of the arrowheads we found were broken.

            Dad and his family did a lot of hunting.  Deer hunting was the favorite.  When a boy went deer hunting for the first time, it was a rite of passage.  He was treated like a man.  Dad let Davey and me go to deer camp last year, but he didn't let us hunt.  We stayed in camp and shot lizards and targets with our BB guns.  A couple of Dad's friends also came along.

            I loved deer camp.  Before dawn Dad shook us awake to the smell of coffee perking on the campfire.  Even though Dad never cooked at home he always cooked in camp.  Dad let us drink coffee and whiskey in deer camp.  In the chilly morning, a cup of hot coffee with lots of sugar and milk, followed by eggs, bacon, and cinnamon rolls hit the spot.

            At night before bed, the men sat on logs around the fire and talked about hunting, cars, pickup trucks, and old times and shared a bottle of whiskey.  The men drank straight from the bottle and passed the bottle on.  If Davey or I were next in line, the bottle was passed to us.  I discovered that if you drank very fast you wouldn't choke, but I couldn't keep from gasping.  I smacked my lips and wiped the back of my hand across my mouth.  My throat felt as if I had drunk battery acid and my eyes would water.  I was afraid someone would think I was crying, so I blinked several times quickly.  One man asked me if smoke was getting in my eyes.  Davey just took a little sip.  The bottle slowly circled until nobody wanted another drink or the bottle was empty.  Dad never drank more than a couple of gulps.

            Anyway, deer hunting was in November–a long time away.  Dad hadn't said definitely yet whether I could carry a rifle and hunt this year.  I think he wants to wait until Davey is old enough too, so that Davey wouldn't be left alone in deer camp.  Being the oldest was unfair sometimes.

            On Monday, Davey and I started exploring to see what had changed in Corona from last year.  The day was a beautiful day with bright blue skies.  Davey and I were wearing our straw hats.  We found a stack of scrap lumber that must have fallen off a train and had been thrown by the section gang against the right-of-way fence underneath a giant cottonwood tree.  It was small stuff and most of it was broken.

            “Hey, let's make some swords,” I suggested.  “We can use some of these slats.”

            “I want this one,” Davey claimed as he picked up a redwood one.  I grabbed a pine slat, which had no knots.  The slats were a couple of inches wide and maybe a half-inch thick.  We carried them to the tool car, put them in a vise, and cut them with a crosscut to about four feet long.  We cut a point on one end and used a couple of short pieces to nail on the other end to make the hilt.  Once we had the right shape we used a rasp to put an edge on the blade and to make the handle round.  I swung the sword in a wide arc.

            “Take that, you devil,” Davey said plunging his sword into the stomach of a pretend bad guy.  I sliced away the arm holding the gun.  “Let's go to the hills,” Davey urged as he climbed down from the tool car.  In the hills we could yell, play pretend games, and have lots of room without someone seeing us and thinking we were crazy.

            We stopped at the outfit car to tell Mom where we were going.  “Eat your lunch first.  Watch the clouds.  The radio says it's supposed to rain this afternoon.”  She had made sandwiches and pork and beans for lunch.

            We whacked our way through a hundred communists, Indians, and outlaws as we followed a dry arroyo into the rocky hills north of town.  It was early afternoon and starting to get hot.  We came into a clearing that was filled with cholla cactuses, most of which were over five feet tall.  Some of them looked like men holding their arms high.

            “Shhh–a whole army of communists,” I cautioned Davey.  “You take the ones on the right and I'll take the ones on the left.  Yell if you need help.”

            “Bonsai,” I yelled as I ran at the nearest cactus, swung my sword, and cut off an arm.

            “Take that, you bastard,” Davey cussed.  I turned and gaped at Davey.  Dad and Mom didn’t approve of us cussing at all.  They would wash our mouths out with soap or give us a spanking or cut our allowance or all three.  Of course, Dad cussed a lot when he got angry.  Davey scowled and turned to attack the next cactus.  “Death to you, you fucking bastard.”

            I swung my sword, “Die, you goddamn son-a-bitch.”  The cactus crumpled, sliced off at the knees.

            “Go to hell, you fucking goddamn son-a-bitching shitting bastard,” Davey yelled as he mortally wounded a communist.  He swung so violently that his hat came off.  A contest had started.  We each tried to add new cuss words and string more of them together.

            We spent almost two hours yelling every cuss word we could think of and combining them in clever ways to discourage the enemy.  We were dripping in sweat.  It was fun doing something that was against the rules.  No one was hurt.  We'd probably still be there cussing and swinging if we hadn't destroyed all the cactuses.  All the cactuses were slaughtered and lying about dismembered.  Our swords had several nicks in the edge from particularly hard opponents, but, generally, were in good shape.

            “Let's go fucking home,” Davey suggested, “I'm goddamn thirsty.”

            “OK, but we better quit cussing.”

            We started walking back.  My arm was tired from all the swinging.  “Do you think we'll go to hell for cussing?”  Davey asked in a soft voice.

            I paused.  Hell and heaven were scary ideas for me.  The idea of God sitting up in the sky looking down and seeing everything I did was spooky.  God would know when I didn't help Mom with the dishes.  When I got angry with Davey, God knew.  God knew when I wondered if Dad really liked me.  I felt crummy when I thought about God and heaven and hell and the things I did wrong.  I was probably going to hell anyway.

            “Dad cusses a lot when he's mad,” I avoided answering.

            “Will Dad go to hell?”

            “Dad does a lot of good things, too.  Besides he never says any of the nasty words–just the normal cuss words.”  Some billowing white summer clouds were gathering.  Their bottoms were dark gray.  Off in the distance toward the west it was showering and you could see the rain sheets.  “Maybe he'd only be in hell for a couple of days, or something like that.”

            “Do you believe hell is real?”

            “Sure, Mom and Dad told us, and it's in the Bible,” I answered.

            “Only Mom told us.”  Davey was right.  Dad never talked about religion.  Mom was sort of religious.  She read the Bible sometimes, but we never said grace before a meal.  She went to church sometimes in Vaughn and took us to Sunday school, but I could never remember Dad going to church.  I heard a distant deep rumble of thunder.  A breeze stirred and helped cool us.

            “Mom wouldn't lie to us,” I stated.  Davey's sword drug behind him as he walked.

            “What about Santa Claus?  Do you believe in Santa Claus?”  Davey asked.

            “I don't think so.  I think Mom and Dad bring the presents.”

            “Why do they lie by saying that Santa Claus brings them?”

            “I don't know.  Maybe it's just something that kids are supposed to believe in.”

            “Why would Mom lie to us about Santa Claus and not about God?”

            “Maybe because God is too important.”

            After a moment, Davey said, “I think Santa Claus is important, too.”

            “Hey look,” I said pointing to a piñon tree that was oozing pitch, “We can make some gum.”  I found a piece of solid resin about the size of a nickel and pried it off with my pocketknife.  I cleaned the bark off and put it in my mouth.  Davey had found himself a piece as well.  The resin was hard and had a very strong pine flavor–almost bitter–but if you kept chewing it, it became soft just like chewing gum.  The bitterness didn't last long, but the pine flavor stayed for a long time.

            As we arrived home, it started sprinkling.  A flash of lightning was followed by a huge thunderclap, which rattled the windows.  The rain fell harder.

            “Boy, you boys just made it,” Mom said as she cooked over the wood stove.  “Help me shut the windows before the rain gets in.”  When she cooked in the summer, with the hot stove inside, she opened all the windows and doors to try to get a breeze through.  “I worry about you getting hit by lightning.  I hope Dad isn't caught out in the middle.”  It was starting to rain hard–a real gully washer.  Lots of thunderclaps and lightning flashes.  Puddles of water collected.

            “Oh, Johnny, Aunt Patty sent you a letter,” Mom said as she pointed to the table.  I opened the letter and was surprised to find a five-dollar bill inside.  Aunt Patty didn’t write much.  She hoped I was having a good summer and looked forward to seeing me again.  She was feeling a little bit better.  She said that I should share the money with Davey and not to spend it all in one place.

            “Davey, Aunt Patty sent us some money.  Five dollars!”

            “Let me see,” Davey said.  I held up the bill, but that wasn't enough.  He wanted to hold it.  Finally, Mom told us to quit arguing and put the money in our bank.  Davey, of course, wanted to be the one to actually put it in the bank.

            Two hours later the rain had stopped and the clouds cleared somewhat.  The sun started to show through.  We heard the putt-putt of Dad's motorcar as he came home at quitting time.

            “Did you get caught in the rain?”  Mom asked when Dad got inside.

            “I crawled underneath a bridge.  Stayed dry as a bone.  It looks like Fred left things in fairly good shape,” Dad said as he entered the kitchen.  Fred Barnes was the permanent signal maintainer who was on vacation.  Some signal maintainers, when they went on vacation, would leave lots of work for the relief.  They would delay building some batteries, so Dad would have to do it when he arrived.

            “Dad, Aunt Patty sent Davey and me five dollars.”

            “Five dollars!  That's a lotta money.  What're you gonna do with it?”

            “Save it for something special,” I replied.  I thought of a fountain pen.

            “Lotta candy,” Davey said.

            Mom had cooked hamburger patties, mashed potatoes, gravy, and peas.  I took a hamburger patty, some mashed potatoes, and some peas.

            “You should take some gravy, son,” Dad said.

            “I don't really like gravy.”  I tried to sound respectful.

            “It's just milk, flour, and bits of meat.  What's in it you don't like?”

            “It feels funny in my mouth.”

            “I sure don't understand someone not liking gravy,” Dad said, shaking his head.

            Mom cut in; “I read that some university president from back east thinks television will turn us all into a bunch of morons.”  The supper topic was chosen.

            “How will it do that?”  Davey asked.

            “He thinks that people will watch so much television that they'll stop thinking.”

            “I heard,” Dad said, “that they're working on making color TV.”

            “I wish we had a television,” Davey said.

            “You wanna be a moron?”  Dad asked.

            “I'd keep thinking.  I'd think about what I was watching.”

            “Some programs are showing the fighting in Korea,” Mom said.

            “Do they show soldiers actually getting shot and being blown up?”  I asked.

            “I hope not.  War is bad enough without having to watch it.  Davey, finish your peas and then you can have some pineapple-upside-down cake.”

            “You guys wanna go to Red Cloud on the weekend?”  Dad asked.  Red Cloud is a mountain camping and picnic ground on Gallinas Peak in the middle of tall pines and small streams.  We'd gone there a couple of times.

            “Yeah.  Can we stay overnight?”  I asked.

            “I think so.  Whatta you think, Mom?”

            “Sounds OK.  We'll have to see what the weather looks like.”

            “Fourth of July is coming up, too.  You guys bought your fireworks, yet?”  Dad teased us.  He knew we hadn't.

            “Oh goody, fireworks.  When can we get them?”  Davey asked.  “I want some cherry bombs and Roman candles.  We can use the five dollars to buy fireworks!”

            “Sparklers are fun,” Mom said.

            “Sparklers are for sissies.  Right, Davey?”  Dad said.  “We'll get some things and take them out to Grandma and Granddad's.  So this weekend we'll go to Red Cloud and next Wednesday we'll go celebrate the Fourth.  Whatta you wanna get, Johnny?”

            “Some rockets and firecrackers.”  Last year Davey and I had put cherry bombs and firecrackers in tin cans and blew them sky high.  It was also fun to put firecrackers in anthills and pretend you were blowing up communists.  I don't know if we ever killed any ants, but we sure wrecked their home.

Chapter VIII

            On Saturday morning, we packed the trailer with bedrolls, food, and water cans and drove to Red Cloud.  “What time is it?”  Davey asked as we left.

            “Good grief, son.  We're gonna have to buy you a watch just to keep from going crazy.”  Dad got his watch out, “Seven minutes past nine.”  The road was a graded county road that led to a fire ranger's tower 25 miles away near the top of the mountain.  We were about ten minutes from Corona, driving beside a pasture, when a horse beyond the barbwire fence started racing us.  The horse was black and was staying beside us easily.  Its head was held high and its mane rippled.  Its tail flared behind as it galloped skirting trees and cactuses.  Dad sped up and the horse sped up.

            “That's a beautiful horse,” Dad said, glancing to the side.

            “He can sure goddamn fucking run,” Davey said and, realizing what he had said, slapped his hand over his mouth.  His eyes opened wide.  The cussing in the cactuses had become too much of a habit.

            Mom turned around as Dad stopped the car abruptly and pulled to the side of the road.  Mom looked at Davey.  “What did you say?”

            “Nothing,” Davey mumbled through his hand.

            The horse ran twenty yards farther, stopped, turned, and watched us.  Dad turned and glared at Davey for a moment.  “You said a cuss word.  A very bad cuss word, son.  I heard you.”

            “He said more than one,” Mom added.  “Where did you learn words like that?”

            Dad turned off the ignition.  “You know better than that.  Come with me, Davey,” Dad commanded as he got out of the car and threw down his cigarette.  He put his foot on the cigarette and twisted it.

            “I'm sorry.”  Davey whimpered, “I won't do it again, I promise.”  Davey slowly climbed out of the car.  “Don't spank me, Dad.  I promise I won't ever say it again.”

            Standing in the middle of the deserted road, Dad grabbed Davey's left wrist and with his right hand swatted Davey's behind.  Davey tried to dance and jump out of the way of Dad's hand, but Dad kept swatting and connecting hard.  Davey was squalling.  I felt sorry for Davey, but was glad I wasn't getting the spanking.  After a half-dozen swats, Dad knelt, wiped away a tear from Davey's cheek with his thumb, and talked softly to Davey.  I couldn't hear what Dad was saying.  In a little bit, Davey stopped crying and nodded his head.  He wiped his eyes with his fist.  Dad stood and offered his hand to Davey.  Davey put his hand in Dad's, and they walked back to the car.  Davey was sobbing a little bit and curled up in the corner of the back seat.  I didn't say anything.  Dad silently drove on.

            After about five minutes, as the road started winding up the side of the mountain, Mom said, “I'm glad it’s a beautiful day.”

            “I bet those steaks will taste good tonight–cooked over an open fire,” Dad said.

            “And we brought some marshmallows.”  Mom and Dad were trying to break the tension.

            “Did you remember the horseshoes, Johnny?”  Dad asked.  The horseshoes were really mule shoes–smaller than regular horseshoes–because Davey and I, especially Davey, had trouble throwing regular sized horseshoes.  Dad had filed notches in them, to avoid arguments about which horseshoe belonged to whom when they were lying stacked on one another.  One set was the 1's and the other set were the 2's.  During the school year, when the weather was good, Davey and I would practice while we waited for Sam.  We were a lot better than we used to be.  We'd usually throw a couple of ringers in a game.

            “Yeah, I put them in the trunk.”  Davey was sitting up with his nose pressed against the side window.

            “Let's see who can see the first deer,” Dad said as we followed the curved single lane road.  The sun was lost in the treetops.  Some parts of the road were almost washed out by rain and Dad had to slow down and ease the trailer across.  Soon we were at the campground.  There were some outhouses and garbage barrels set up.  A half-dozen picnic tables and fire pits, filled with black ashes, were spread around.  No one else was there so we could choose our camp spot.  Dad drove to the fire pit the farthest from the road.  I breathed deeply through my nose to smell the coolness of pine.  The only sounds were birds chirping, the rustle of a gentle breeze through the tops of the tall pine trees, and the gurgling of a distant creek.  No dogs barking–no traffic–no people yelling.

            “This is really nice,” Dad said as he rolled a cigarette and got a Coors from the cooler.  “Let's walk to the creek.”  He took Mom's hand and they started along the worn path.  Davey, without meaning to, kicked an old pinecone in front of me.  I kicked it back.  He lunged for it barely stopping it and kicked it back.  We kicked cones back and forth all the way to the creek.  I think he had mostly forgotten the spanking.

            The creek didn't have much water.  You could step across it on stones without getting wet.  It was more like a connection of small pools than a creek.  The water was clear.  I knelt down and wet my hand.  The water was cold as ice.  Davey cupped his hand, filled it with water, and drank.

            “Taste good, son?”  Dad asked.

            “Really good, but it's cold.”

            “It's from melted snow.  Look here.  See the deer tracks?”

            “Yeah, is it a buck?”  Davey asked.

            “It's a big one.  What're those tracks?”

            I looked at the scratching in the mud.  “A badger?”  I guessed.

            “Hmmm–don't think so.  Probably a skunk.”  Dad said.  “Maybe we can find some wolves' tracks or some mountain lions'.”

            “Are there really wolves and mountain lions here?”  I asked.

            “Oh, not very many.  Just a couple of real big hungry ones.”

            “Don't scare the kids, Dad,” Mom cautioned as she dipped her fingers in the water.

            We walked back to camp, unloaded the bedrolls, and set up camp.  Davey and I put our bedroll in the open so we could see the sky.  Mom had made a lunch that she spread out on a table, as Dad hammered the horseshoe stakes in the ground.

            “I get the 1's,” said Davey as he stooped to pick them up.

            “I don't care.  You can have the 1's.”  Davey thought the 2's were heavier or something.  I couldn't tell the difference.

            “I'll go first,” Davey announced as he went to the stake.

            “You went first yesterday,” I said.

            “No, I didn't.”

            “Hey, boys.  Don't argue, damn it.  I'll flip a coin,” Dad said reaching into his trouser pocket.  “Davey, call it.”  Dad flipped it up in the air, caught it, and slapped it on the back of his left hand covering it with his right.

            “Heads.”

            Dad peeked at it.  “Heads it is.  Davey goes first.”

            “It's not fair.  Davey went first last time,” I protested.

            Dad raised an eyebrow at me.  “Johnny, do you wanna play or not?”

            “I guess so,” I muttered.

            We played a couple of games as Dad and Mom sat at the table drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and watching us.  I won the first game and Davey, with a lucky toss that didn't hit anywhere close to the stake, but bounced onto it, won the second.

            “Time to eat,” Mom yelled.

            “Lucky twerp,” I whispered as Davey gathered the shoes.

            “I let you win the first one,” Davey retorted.  There was a big thermos of iced orange Kool-Aid, a big jar of dill pickles, and a bag of potato chips.  There were sandwiches–baloney, pickle-pimento loaf, and sliced Vienna sausages.  All had mustard and lettuce.  I liked the pickle pimento loaf, Dad liked the Vienna sausages, and Davey would eat anything.  A box of chocolate chip cookies was dessert.

            As we ate, two does and a fawn walked out of the woods and into the campground about fifty feet away from us.  They were bent over grazing grass and slowly meandering along.  The fawn had spots on its back.

            “I saw them first,” Davey whispered.

            “Shush,” Dad commanded.  One doe turned, lifted her head high, pointed her big funnel ears toward us, and watched us.  Her tail twitched a couple of times showing flickers of white.  “Watch,” Dad quietly ordered.  He loudly clapped his hands.  The deer instantly jumped several feet high, turned in mid-air, and in a couple of large leaps, bounded away into the trees, with their large white tails flashing high.  We could hear thumps as they bounced into the distance, even though we could no longer see them.  The sounds of the leaping deer became fainter and disappeared.

            Darkness came.  For supper, Dad grilled steaks.  We roasted potatoes in the fire by wrapping them in aluminum foil and placing them in the coals.  Some skins got a bit burnt, but the inside was done just right.  We smothered them with butter and salt and pepper.  After the meal, we roasted marshmallows.  I found a branch that had a three-way fork at the end and was able to roast three at a time.  Davey and I were ready to go to bed when the fire burned down.

            The double-sized bedroll consisted of some blankets and a thin mattress rolled up in a tarp.  The mattress lay on the tarp, which was folded at the foot of the bed to cover the top.  The tarp was heavy, stiff, and waterproof.  Under the tarp, I took off my clothes and–to keep the dew off–placed my clothing at the foot of the bed in the fold of the tarp.  I usually stripped to my undershirt and my shorts.  In the morning, I could get dressed underneath the tarp without having to get out in the chilly morning air.

            Davey and I lay in the bedroll, with the smell of pine filling our noses, and looked at the sky splattered with stars.  I gazed at the sky and every few minutes a shooting star would streak across.  Some were tiny, but some would linger and cut across the Milky Way.  It was easy to see the Big Dipper and, using the two end stars, to find the North Star.  During the night, you could tell how late it was by how far the Big Dipper had rotated around the North Star.  It was a giant clock.  Orion's belt was easy to find, but I had a hard time finding the small dipper.  It never looked like a dipper to me.  As I looked at the North Star, I imagined that Cora was, at that instant, in Cuervo looking up and seeing the same star.  Maybe she had seen the same shooting star as I saw.  Maybe she was thinking of me at the same time I was thinking of her.  Cuervo was a long way away.

            I pulled the tarp over my head like a small tent.  I wondered what would become of me.  What would I be when I grew up?  Would I have kids?  Maybe Cora would be their mother.  What kind of a job would I have?  I wanted to do something in chemistry or science.  Maybe I could work in a drugstore making medicine for people.  I wish the future were now, so I'd know.

            I fell deeply asleep.  Sometime later, suddenly, I was awaken.  Some animal was walking on the tarp!  Davey was asleep.  The animal was on top of my legs and scratching at the tarp.  I was terrified and stayed motionless lying on my stomach.  Was it a wolf or a mountain lion?  Did the animal know I was there?  Every moment, I anticipated feeling sharp teeth sinking into my legs or the searing of claws down my back.  I tried to remain breathless.  My heart was beating like a drum.  The animal walked up to my shoulders.  I trembled and expected to hear a deep rumbling growl.  The animal turned and sauntered off the bedroll toward the forest causing the dried pine needles to rustle.

            I waited a moment.  I jumped up as far as I could and yelled as loudly as I could, “Help!  Help!”  I was sure the animal would immediately return, leap, and grab me by the throat.  I had thrown the tarp off Davey and he sat up, rapidly twisted his head, and looked around with wide eyes.  His mouth was open.

            “What's wrong, Johnny?”  Mom asked as she jumped up.  “Did you have a nightmare?”  Dad had a flashlight and was shining it on me.

            “There was a wolf or a mountain lion.”

            “Where?”  Dad asked.

            “On top of the bed.  He was gonna eat me.  He went that way.”  Dad pointed the flashlight toward the trees.  Fifty or so feet away a porcupine was ambling with its needles spread in a display like a peacock.

            “It's nothing but a porcupine, Johnny.  Damn, you scared the bee-jesuz outta us,” Dad said.  I was standing up, almost naked, and was shivering from fright and the cold.  I clasped my arms around myself.  My chin started to quiver.

            “A stupid old porcupine.  I wanted to see a mountain lion,” Davey complained as he squirmed back into bed and pulled up the tarp.

            “He won't come back.  Why don't you get back into bed, Johnny?”  Mom suggested.

            “I'm gonna sleep in the car.”  I reached for my clothes, and walked gingerly over the dark ground in my bare feet toward the car.

            “Why are you gonna sleep in the car?  He won't come back and it was just a porcupine,” Dad asked.

            “Every man for themselves,” I answered not wanting to discuss the issue.  I wanted to be alone.

            Mom sort of laughed, “There's a spare blanket behind the back seat.”  I put on my pants, shirt, and socks and curled up comfortably in the back seat.  I made sure the doors were locked.  I stopped shivering.  Only a couple of tears escaped.  The next morning the porcupine was gone.  We discovered a couple of quills stuck to the tarp.

            We went home early because Davey was getting a cold and felt terrible.  He had a sore throat and his nose was running.  Mom was afraid that any illness was the start of polio.

Chapter IX

            On Monday morning, Dad said, “I'll come home at lunch and we can go buy the fireworks for Wednesday.  OK, boys?”

            Mom was feeling Davey's forehead.  He hadn't dressed yet and had a blanket wrapped around him.  He was drinking a cup of hot cocoa and holding a handkerchief.  He looked miserable.  “I don't think Davey should go outside today.  He just needs to stay home in bed and rest,” Mom said.

            “How am I gonna get my fireworks?”  Davey asked hoarsely.  “Where's my money from Aunt Patty?”

            Dad tousled Davey’s hair.  “I'll get your fireworks for you.  Johnny has your money.  Just tell me what you want.”

            “Cherry bombs and Roman candles,” Davey wheezed.

            “You need to get well by Wednesday so you can set them off,” Dad said as he left for work.

            “Do your joints hurt?”  Mom asked.

            “No, just my throat.”

            “We have to do something about your breathing and your throat,” said Mom.  She took a washing pan full of boiling hot water from the stove, set it on the table, and stirred a couple of teaspoons of Vicks into it.  “Bend over this and breath deeply,” Mom ordered.  Davey got on his knees on the chair and, holding onto the blanket, put his head in the steam above the pan.  Mom covered his head with large bath towel to capture the vapors.  He noisily inhaled and coughed.  “That's good.  Break up the phlegm.”  Davey inhaled deeply a dozen more times before the water became too cool to steam.  Davey went back to bed and slept.

            At noon, Dad returned from work.  “Get your money, son.  Right after we eat, we'll go to McCoy's and get the fireworks.  Davey still asleep?”

            “He's tossing and turning.  His breathing is easier,” Mom answered.

***

            Dad parked the car against the curb at the east end of town.  The stores were next to each other on the slope of a hill.  The sidewalk was elevated from the street and we had to climb some steps to get to the stores.  The front of the grocery store had a pair of swinging doors between two large bay windows that came down to about the middle of my chest.  A bunch of stuff–soap bars, canned fish, boxes of corn flakes–was on display in the left window.  The right window was full of fireworks.  The white paint was flaking off the windowsills at spots.  Above the doors and windows, McCoy's General Store was written in big black letters.

            As we went in, a bell tied to a string on the doorknob tinkled.  An old lady rose from a stuffed chair behind the counter.  She must've been two hundred years old.  Crouched over, she reached out to the counter to steady herself.  Her hand had bulging purple blood vessels and brown freckles.  Her hair was gray and frizzy.  She squinted, looking at us.  Her mouth was slightly open.  She pushed up her glasses.  Her mouth opened further.

            “Why, if it ain't Davey Baker!  I swan!  Lands sake!”  God, she thought I was my brother.  How did she know him?  I started to explain that I wasn't Davey when Dad spoke.

            “Hello, Mrs. McCoy.”

            She was talking to Dad.  I had never heard anyone, beside Grandma Baker, call my dad, “Davey.”  Sounded weird.  I wonder if Davey will be called Dave when he grows up.  “Davey Baker.  What're you doin' here?  I ain't seen you for years!”

            The counter had a glass top and front and candy was on display.  There were Baby Ruths, Hersey bars, Mr. Goodbars, bags of red-hots, peanuts–a whole bunch of stuff.  I could usually talk Dad into buying candy.  He had a sweet tooth as big as an elephant tusk.

            “Working on the railroad.  Relieving Fred Barnes while he's on vacation.”

            “Well, I swan.  You ain't changed a bit.  I'd know you anywhere.  You were still in school last time I saw you.”

            “Yes, ma'am, it was some time ago.”

            “I see your folks every so often.  They come in sometimes with one of your brothers and do a little shoppin' every now and then.  How are they doin'?”

            “They're getting along.  Gonna go see them tomorrow and shoot off some fireworks.  This is my son, Johnny.”  I straightened up from looking at the candy.

            “Your son!  Lands sake.  Looks like you, too.  You married the Henderson girl from Duran, if I ‘member right.”  She smiled at me.  One of her front teeth was missing.

            “Yes–Mary Henderson.  We've got two kids.  Both boys.”

            “Two boys.  Well, ain't that nice?”  She paused a moment.  “But I heard your first‑born was a girl.  Josie told me that.  I'm sure of it.”

            My dad stiffened and paused for a bit.  “Yes, ma'am, that's true.  But she didn't live long.  Died after four days.”

            I jerked my head up and stared at Dad.  I was flabbergasted.  Absolutely flabbergasted.  What had Dad said?  I had expected him to explain how Josie–whoever that was–had been mistaken.  I blinked.  I couldn't believe my ears.

            “Oh, sorry to hear that.  But you've got two real nice boys.”

            “Yes, ma'am.  Well, I'd better get some fireworks for tomorrow and get going.”  The fireworks were on a long table against the side wall.

            “You do that.  Tell your folks hello for me.  Let me give the young'un somethin'.”  She reached in the counter and got a yellow jawbreaker and handed it to me.  I was staring and trying to understand what I’d heard.  An older sister.  I had an older sister.  I wasn't the oldest in the family after all.  How could it be true?  Why hadn't I been told?  What was her name?  Why hadn't Mom or Dad said something?  Anything?  I didn't understand.

            “You want it?”  I jerked my head and looked at Dad.  “You want the jawbreaker, son?”  I reached out and took it.  “Whatta you say?”

            “Thank you,” I murmured.

            “Oh, you're very welcome.  I reckon I knew your dad when he was your age.  He loved jawbreakers.”

            “Yes, ma'am.  Thank you.”  I followed Dad silently to the fireworks.  The questions continued to echo.  How could I have had an older sister and not know about it?  Why hadn't anyone told me?  How could I've not known?  What would it be like to have an older sister now?  A girl I could talk to.  We could've been great friends.  Davey was OK and all, but he was just my little brother.  An older sister.  The whole world would've been different.  Absolutely different.  Where was she buried?

            We returned to the car and drove home.  I sat in the front seat.  I had the bag of fireworks–cherry bombs, firecrackers, Roman candles, fountains–on the floor between my legs.

            “Dad, did I really have a sister?”

            “She died long before you were born.”

            “Why didn't anyone ever tell me?”

            “Just never got around to it.”

            “What was her name?”

            “Johnny,” Dad said, “I don't wanna talk about it any more.  It doesn't concern you.”  I sat back in silence.

            When we got to the outfit car Dad said, “I've gotta go back to work.  Why don't you carry the fireworks in?  Tell Mom I'll be late for supper.”

            I carried the bag up the steps and put them on the table.  I slumped in a chair and stared at my hands.  Mom was peeling potatoes.  “Did you get the fireworks?  Where's Dad?”

            “He had to go back to work.  He said he'll be late for supper.”  I sighed loudly.

            “You OK, Johnny?”

            “I guess,” I answered in a down‑tone that I knew would cause her to ask again.

            “Whatta you mean, 'I guess'?  You OK or not?”  She turned and faked a pout.

            “When we were in the store, the old lady asked Dad about my older sister.”

            Mom turned to the sink with her back to me and peeled potatoes again.  She finished a big one.  “What did he say?”

            “I couldn't hear.”  I don't know why I lied.  I just couldn't say what I knew.  The words were too big to come out.  Mom picked up another potato.

            “Did I have a big sister?”

            Mom hesitated before answering, “No.  I don't know what she was talking about.  Why don't you go and show Davey the fireworks.”

            Davey was sleeping so I left the bag beside the bed.  I went outside and walked to the big cottonwood tree.  Not only had I had a big sister, but also Mom lied about it.  What was going on?  Was Davey my real brother?  I kicked the heck out of an old tin can.  Were Dad and Mom my real mom and dad?  Maybe I was adopted.  I sat beneath the tree and leaned against it.  I heard some dogs barking.  Some sparrows made a racket above me.  An old pickup slowly drove up the street.  I picked up a pebble and threw it at a rock.  Barely missed.  Went a bit high.

                ***

            On Wednesday morning, most of the stores had flags in front.  Davey was feeling better.  He had the sniffles, but his fever was down according to Mom.  We loaded the fireworks into the car.  Mom took her crocheting and Dad took a six-pack of Coors.  Grandma Baker never let any alcohol stay in the house so if someone wanted a beer or something they had to bring it themselves.

            It was right before lunch when we pulled up in Granddad and Grandma’s front yard.  Uncle Jerry's car was already there.  He was Dad's younger brother and lived in Albuquerque by himself.  He must've driven down last night.  As we got out the car, Uncle Jerry came out of the house followed by Grandma and Granddad.

            Uncle Jerry asked with a big grin, “God, you didn't drive this far in that Plymouth, did you?  Don't you think it's dangerous to take women and children out in a contraption like that?”

            “For those of us who know how to drive there's no danger at all.  I guess if you're an amateur you have to have something like–what is that thing?”  Dad asked, looking at Uncle Jerry's car.  “Looks like baling wire and chewing gum.  Oh, it's a Ford.”  Grandma and Granddad laughed.  I loved to listen to Dad and his family when they got together.  They had fun together and joked and poked fun at each other.  Uncle Jerry picked up Davey.

            “He's got a cold, Jerry,” Mom warned.

            “Well, Johnny is too big to pick up, so I gotta stick to this one.”  Everyone greeted each other.  Mom and Grandma put their arms around each other.  Mom was very close to Grandma and considered her as her own mother.  Dad shook Granddad's hand and pretended to throw a punch at Uncle Jerry's stomach.  Uncle Jerry didn't flinch.

            “Still slow as molasses, huh?”  Dad said.

            “Why bother when you know there's no oomph–just all show?”

            Grandma interrupted, “I was just settin' the table.  Come on in and let's eat.”

            “Who else is coming?”  Dad asked.

            “Marcey and Clyde should be here shortly,” Grandma answered.  Marcey was Dad's sister.  Clyde was her husband and they recently had a baby.  They lived in Roswell.

            Screen doors covered the open doorway into the house.  A pot of beans and ham bubbled on the stove.  There were warm biscuits and homemade pickles.  Gooseberry preserves were dessert.

            Marcey, Clyde, and the baby arrived in the middle of the afternoon.  We all went into the front yard to welcome them.  The baby was tiny, wrapped up, and asleep.  Grandma Baker took the baby.  “I could squeeze it till it spits,” she said.

            Marcey and Dad gave each other a hug.  “Getting a bit of a paunch aren't you, big brother?”  Marcey asked Dad.

            “All muscle,” Dad answered.

            “Yeah, table muscle,” Uncle Jerry added.

            I was eager to ignite the fireworks, but the afternoon seemed to drag on forever.  We never set off the fireworks until after dark.  Davey and I blew up a few of the firecrackers, but most would be saved for later.  Davey and I counted and re‑counted all the fireworks that everyone bought.  Uncle Jerry had brought some great big rockets with conical heads and long fuses.  Aunt Marcey and Uncle Clyde didn't bring much–a few sparklers and small fountains.

            The four men played 42 with dominoes.  Granddad and Uncle Jerry were partners and Dad played with Uncle Clyde.  Dad brought his six-pack of Coors in and gave one to Granddad.  “Davey, if you need more beer, I can get some more from an old horse,” Grandma said.  That's the closest I ever heard her say anything nasty.  She thought beer was terrible stuff and always said something against it when someone drank it.  Granddad drank his beer and filled his pipe from a round pound can of Prince Albert.  He lit the pipe with a kitchen match and blue wisps of smoke rose to the ceiling and lay lazily.

            “You old enough to have a beer?”  Dad asked Uncle Jerry as he handed him one.  “You need a straw?”

            I watched the game for a time.  Dad and Uncle Clyde seemed to be losing more than they won.  “Even my great skill can't make up for some partners,” Dad teased Uncle Clyde.

            “If you could get some dominoes sometimes, it would help,” Uncle Clyde responded.

                ***

            Supper was over an hour before dark.  Davey started putting a picture puzzle together.  We had put it together dozens of times before.  The picture showed several war planes–some American and some German–fighting in the clouds.  A German plane had been shot and was falling nose first, trailing smoke.  A few of the pieces were shaped like objects– a plane, a Christmas tree, and so on.  Five or six pieces were missing.

            As Marcey and Mom washed the dishes, Grandma asked me, “Johnny, you wanna help me gather the eggs?”

            “Sure.”  Grandma handed me the egg basket and got a single shot 22 rifle as we left to go to the chicken house.  “What's the gun for?”  I asked.

            “Hawks.  They got five of the baby chicks this spring.”  When we walked towards the chicken house, beyond the back yard, she peered at the sky.  It was dusk and the clear sky was getting dark.  The evening star was barely visible.  Up high a hawk slowly circled.  Its motionless wings were spread wide.

            “There's one,” Grandma hissed as she put a shell in the gun and raised it.  The end of the gun wiggled as Grandma squinted along the barrel.  The gun shot with a small sharp crack.  The hawk flapped its wings gracefully a couple of times and flew out of sight.  “Get you next time, you stinker.”

            “Ever hit one, Grandma?”

            “No, but I sure scare 'em.  I'll get one sometime.”  I didn't think the hawk acted very scared.

            “Most of the eggs will be in the chicken house, but we have a couple of hens layin' in the old fender beside the barn.”

            “OK, I'll get them first,” I answered.

            When I returned, Grandma had stacked the fresh eggs by the door of the chicken house.  The chickens inside the house were clucking as they settled on their roost for the night.  A musty smell drifted out through the door.  I sat and put the eggs in the basket.  “Grandma, did I have an older sister who died?”

            Grandma put her hands inside her apron pockets and glared at me.  “Why do you ask?”

            “Mrs. McCoy, in the store, said something about it.”

            “That old gossip.  You can't believe anythin' she says.”

            “Was she right this time?”  I persisted.  Grandma turned away.

            “You gotta ask your Dad or your Mom,” Grandma said as she brusquely turned to walk back to the house.  I slowly followed her into the kitchen.  She took the eggs from the basket and put them in the icebox.

            Nobody was going to tell me anything.  I'd never know anything about my older sister.  I think I deserved to know something that important.

            “Time for the fireworks,” Dad yelled from the living room.

                ***

            We all had fun setting off the fireworks.  Davey and I got to ignite most of them.  Uncle Jerry made sure we had things pointed in the right direction.  The grown-ups had brought chairs out and were sitting around watching.  Granddad smoked his pipe.  Uncle Jerry's big rockets, mounted on long sticks, swooshed high, and exploded in a huge expanding ball of multicolored flickering bits of fire.  Even the baby's eyes were wide open.  Little clouds of sulfur-smelling smoke floated down.  Davey and I shot Roman candles down the road.  Each fireball left with a whomp and curved higher than the trees before falling and hitting the road.  We pretended the Roman candles were bazookas and we had to stop some communist tanks creeping up the road.  We lit a couple of sparklers and waved them wildly around drawing figure eights and circles.  If you went fast enough the circles looked continuous.  Davey put a cherry bomb inside an empty beer can, lit it, and scurried away.  The bomb erupted with a huge blast and the can arched high and flew into the woods.  The baby started crying.              “Well, most of the show is over,” Aunt Marcey said as she bundled the baby to go inside.

            “I reckon we had better get home,” Dad said.

Chapter X

            On Saturday afternoon, the outfit car was parked on the siding east of Duran.  The drive from Corona to Duran was only nineteen miles.  Duran had a population of about thirty families.  Mom had been born and grew up in Duran and it was almost a hometown for Mom and Dad.  She'd gone to school in the Duran grade school, in the very same room in which I had gone for the first half of the first grade.

            After they were married, Dad and Mom had tried to farm at the foot of Duran Mountain–a large notched plateau visible for miles–a few miles northwest of town.  They almost starved and that’s why Dad started working on the railroad.  Granddad Henderson sharecropped a farm nearby to the northeast.  Grandma Henderson was buried in the Duran cemetery.  Her family, named Gaines, had owned a cafe in Duran a long time ago when there was a railroad roundhouse.  Granddad Henderson had remarried to Grandma Lola about a year after Grandma Henderson died.  Grandma Lola was a crotchety old lady.

            A grocery store in Duran was owned by a Turk named Ahmet.  It was weird that someone from Turkey would come to Duran.  He had a tidy and well-stocked store–he even had BB’s–and usually gave me a piece of penny candy when Mom sent me to the store.

            There was a gasoline pump in the front of the Ahmet store.  On top of the pump there was a large cylindrical glass container marked in gallons.  You had to pull back and forth on a long lever to fill the container with dull red gas to the level you wanted.  Then you put the pump hose in the gas tank, squeezed the handle, and the gas flowed into the car.

            Ahmet let people he knew–like Mom and Dad–get groceries just by signing the bill and then pay at the end of the month.  It was cash and carry.  He gave you a copy of each bill so you could figure out at the end of the month how much you owed.  That made it easy for kids to get groceries for the family.

            Ahmet–because he had dark skin–was often mistaken for a Mexican and people passing through would try to speak Spanish to him.  He understood a few words, but not enough to talk and Mexicans were always surprised when they found out he couldn't understand them.

                ***

            We didn't have to set up the clotheslines because we were close enough to the signal maintainer's house to use his.  The outhouse and horseshoe stakes were set up quickly.  We filled the barrels with water from a water hose connected to a faucet in the signal maintainer's yard and pumped the tanks on the outfit car full.

            The next day, Sunday, was a beautiful day.  “You guys wanna collect pop bottles?”  Dad asked.

            “Sure,” I answered.  It's an easy way to earn a little extra money.  We had earned over four dollars last summer.  The garage owner would pay two cents for most empties.  People on the road, when finished drinking a pop, would often just throw the empty out the window.  Some broke, most didn’t.

            “Get your tow-sacks–let's go.”

            We drove a few miles east of town and Dad let Davey and me out of the car.  He then drove back about a quarter of a mile and waited on the shoulder of the road.  Dad and Mom lit a cigarette and talked and listened to the radio while they waited.  Davey took one side of the road and I took the other.  We walked toward the car and looked for any empty pop bottles and gathered them in our tow-sacks.  Some bottles were filled with dirt and you had to bang them to clean them.  When we got to the car, we emptied the tow-sacks into the trunk, and started again.  Some pop bottles weren't refundable, but we weren't sure which ones, so we collected them all.  We found lots of Coke, 7-Up, and Nehi.

            Besides pop bottles, we found other interesting items.  There were always hubcaps, old tires, broken fan belts, and junk like that.  We never paid much attention to those things.  We found a pair of boots once that were in good shape except that field mice had made a nest in one and had eaten a hole through the toe.  Mom wouldn't let us keep the boots.  Occasionally, we found pieces of old broken Indian pottery or arrowheads.

            I saw something shiny and walked toward it.  “Hey, Davey, look at this,” I yelled.  There was an old black leather bag almost covered up with dirt.  The leather was all cracked and dry.  I grabbed one of its handles and pulled.  The handle broke off.

            “What did you find?”  Davey asked as he crossed the road.

            “I think it's a doctor's bag.”  There was one of those heart‑listening things, but the rubber tubes were rotten.  There were some stainless steel pliers, clamps, knives, and several bottles of medicine half-buried in the dirt.  Inside a glass tube there were about a dozen sticks for holding down your tongue.  There was even a needle that the doctor uses to give shots.  We were poking around when Mom and Dad backed up to see what was holding us up.

            “What you got?”  Mom yelled from the car.

            “Doctor's things,” Davey answered.

            “Doctor's things?  What sort of doctor's things?  Don't fool around with doctor's things,” Mom commanded as she got out of the car and walked over.  “Where did those things come from?”

            “I don't know.  I just found them here.  There's some neat stuff here for my chemistry set.”

            “No.  Put it down.  You shouldn't even be touching that stuff.  You'll get polio.  Put it down!”  I dropped a bottle of pills.  “Let's keep going.”  Some of the equipment would be fun to play with, but I didn't want to get polio.  It was a big mystery to me how the bag got there.  I wondered if the doctor had been killed and his bones were lying nearby.  Finding the doctor's bag was like finding a real treasure, but we didn’t get much of a chance to really look at it.

            On the way home, Dad took a detour onto a little road that crossed over the railroad tracks.  “I've heard that there's a little dry creek up here below the Bell place that's got a touch of gold in it.  I'm gonna get some of the bottom sand.”

            “You want me to pan it for you, Dad?”  Davey volunteered.

            “Nope, we'll just fill the washtub and pan it later when we get home.”  After about five miles, over a road that looked like a cow trail, Dad pulled to the side of the road and stopped.  We hiked down the shoulder of the road to the creek bed.  “This is it,” Dad said as he put the tub down.  Mom handed him the shovel.  He scraped the top sand off and filled the tub half-full with sand off the bottom.  He and Mom carried the tub to the car and I carried the shovel.  Mom’s hands hurt so Mom and Dad had to set the tub down a couple of times to rest.  When we got home, Dad set the tub beside the front steps.

            Davey and I got two dollars and fifty-eight cents for the bottles we found–money that we got to keep.  There were fourteen bottles that we couldn't trade in.  A couple of strange ones from Texas had pictures of cattle horns on them.  If we went collecting again, we'd have to go farther since we'd cleaned the sides of the road close to town.

            At supper, Mom said, “I hope the peace talks are going well in Korea.”  She’s been listening to the radio.

            “Why are they holding peace talks?”  Davey asked.  “Did America win the war?”

            “We did what we went to do.  We stopped the communists,” Dad answered.

            “We should chase them home and completely destroy them,” Davey said pretending to shoot a machine gun.

            “Might be hard to do.  It's a long way from here and Asia is very big.  The Chinese and the Russians have lotta soldiers,” Dad said.

            “Besides you don't wanna kill a bunch of innocent people and babies,” Mom said.

            “They shouldn't've started the war,” I said.

            “Well, it's not over yet.  They’ll talk and talk.  Who knows what will happen,” Dad said, “What's for dessert?”

            “Pineapple-upside-down cake,” Mom answered.

                ***

            On Tuesday night it rained a summer gusher.  During heavy rains the signal maintainer–or his relief–has to patrol the district to warn the trains if the tracks get washed out or get covered with water.  There were arroyos that could get flooded by a cloud burst and wash away bridges.  The signal maintainer rode the motorcar to the bridge or culvert with the heaviest rain and would wait and watch.  Overtime work meant that Dad got paid time and a half.  If there were lots of rain Dad could get some big paychecks.  He got paid every two weeks and one time he got nearly two hundred dollars.

            After working through Tuesday night, Dad came home early Wednesday afternoon when the rain stopped and the sun started shining.  He was tired and went straight to bed.  Mom told Davey and me to go outside and play so that Dad could sleep.  There wasn't a heck of a lot to do because the ground was all muddy.  We couldn't toss horseshoes or play mumble peg.  The washtub holding the creek sand had a bunch of rainwater in it.  “Hey, we can pan for gold,” I suggested.

            “Do you think if there was gold there we could find it?  We didn't find any at Hermanas,” Davey asked.

            “Sure.  I could because I know how to do it right.”

            “Just a minute,” Davey said as he raced to the tool car.  He returned with a file and some copper wire.  “Watch.”  He filed the wire over the tub so that the filings fell into the tub.  The copper was soft and before long, by taking turns, we'd filed away several inches of the wire and the top of the sand glittered underneath the water.  I reached down and stirred the filings and the sand together.  “Hey, you can’t see the copper,” Davey said.  I put some sand and water in a pan and swirled it.  The water carried the sand away leaving shining bits of copper in the bottom.

            “Look, it works!”  I exclaimed.

                ***

            Dad woke after a couple of hours.  “Let's go rabbit hunting.  Get something for supper.”  We got in the car, drove out of town onto an isolated dirt road, and stuck our 22 rifles out the windows.  As Dad drove along at about 5 miles an hour, we all looked underneath the cedar and juniper trees and among the cactus searching for rabbits.  When another car passed us in either direction, we'd pull the guns into the car.  Dad said it was the polite thing to do.  Sometimes the people in the other car were also hunting.  When someone saw a rabbit, Dad would stop the car and whoever saw the rabbit would aim, using the window frame as a rest, and shoot from inside the car.  If we killed a jack rabbit, we let it lie.  We never ate a jack rabbit, but we killed them anyway.  “Ten jack rabbits eat as much as a cow,” Dad said.

            If it were a cottontail, we'd get it and throw in the trunk.  We'd stop hunting when we got about six.  When we returned home we'd hang them by their hind legs to skin and butcher them.  They had about as much meat as a chicken.  Mom cut them up, rolled them in flour, and fried them.  Every time we went hunting we got some.  There were lots of rabbits.  They tasted good.

            After supper we made some ice cream.  Mom sent me to Ahmet's to get some fresh cream.  Mom mixed the cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla together to put in the center of the ice cream maker while Dad, Davey, and I chopped up some ice.  We packed the ice around the cream holder, poured rock salt over the ice, and covered the ice cream maker with a large towel to keep in the cold.  Davey and I took turns.  One of us would sit on the top as the other turned the handle and then we'd switch around.  It took forever and the handle became harder to turn.

            Mom and Dad were sitting on the steps smoking a cigarette.  Dad got up and walked to the washtub.  “Let me see if I can get any gold,” Dad said as he scooped up some creek sand in a pan.  Davey turned and looked at me and stopped turning the crank for a moment.  We hadn't thought of this when we filed the copper into the tub.  Dad swirled the pan around letting the water slosh out.  He put his finger in the bottom of the pan and pushed the sand around.  “What the hell is this?”  Davey and I were afraid to say anything.  “Someone salted this sand.  Did you guys put something in this tub?”  Dad asked.  He glared at us.  Before we could answer, Mom started giggling with her hand covering her mouth.  Dad turned quickly and looked at her.

            “I saw them filing copper in it while you slept,” Mom said and then laughed.  Dad's face slowly turned from a frown to a grin.  He turned and looked at Davey and me.

            “Where did you guys get that idea?  You had me going for a second.”

            “We didn't do it for a joke.  We just wanted to see if we could find something if it was really there,” I explained as I sat on top of the ice cream maker.  My butt was getting cold.

            “It almost worked, but gold is a lot smaller– tiny little flakes–and a lot brighter.  But it's gonna be hard to see now.  Guess I'll have to get more sand.  And this time leave my gold alone,” Dad said, grinned, and tousled Davey's hair.

            Davey was barely able to turn the crank.  “I think the ice cream is done.”

            “Let me see,” said Dad as he took the crank and gave it a turn.  “Getting there.  Let me give it a few last turns.”  Mom went into the kitchen and returned with some spoons and bowls.

            “I think I'll go visit Aunt Patty tomorrow,” Mom said.

            “Oh, not again,” Davey moaned.

            “I wanna go,” I said.  “Is Aunt Patty better?”

            “I don't think so,” Mom answered.  “I got a letter from Uncle Fred and it didn't sound good.”

            “Can we stop in Cuervo this time, please?”  I pleaded.

            “What's in Cuervo?”  Dad asked.  “Couldn't be a pretty girl, could it?”  My face grew warm and I didn't know how to answer.  Dad grinned.

Chapter XI

            The next morning, on our way to Tucumcari, Mom stopped at Vaughn to check the mail and then continued straight on the rest of the way.  Mom promised me that we'd stop in Cuervo on the way back.  The day was terribly hot.  “Supposed to get to a hundred degrees today,” Mom said.  Davey had drunk most of the thermos of ice lemonade.

            Alice, the oldest of Aunt Patty's daughters, met us at the door and came out on the porch.  She had blue eyes like Aunt Patty's.  She and Mom had played together some as kids.  “Mary, thanks for coming.”

            “How's Aunt Patty?”  Mom asked.

            “Some days she's pretty good–other days, not so good.  Today is not one of her good days.  I just hate to see her this way.”

            “How's Uncle Fred doing?  Is he home?”

            “He's hiding his feelings.  He won't take any time off of work.  I think he can’t stand to see her like this either.  He's engineering today.  Won't be home until day after tomorrow.  Anyway, I just want to warn you, before you see her, she's not looking very well and she's on pain medication so she's very drowsy.”

            “How long have you been here?”  Mom asked.

            “Got here a couple of weeks ago.  I'll stay as long as needed.”

            “Your job has given you time off?”  Mom asked.  Alice worked as a secretary at an Air Force base in Albuquerque.  She wasn't married yet.

            “I took leave without pay.  They'll keep my job for me.”

            “That's nice of them.  Why don't you boys stay here on the porch a little while?  I'll be right back,” Mom said as she followed Alice into the house.

            “Hurry, Mom, I gotta go to the bathroom,” Davey said fidgeting.

            After a minute or two, Mom came back.  “OK, come on in, but stay quiet.”  Davey danced his way to the bathroom in the hallway as Mom and I went to Aunt Patty's bedroom.  The shades and the curtains were pulled.  A floor lamp in the corner was on.  A big bouquet of flowers was on the night table beside the bed.  There weren't any books or pencils around.  Alice was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed with a bag of knitting at her feet.  Aunt Patty was lying on her side facing the door.  She was covered by a sheet up to her waist and was wearing a white slip.  A fan was blowing by the window.  Her hair was frizzled and her glasses were missing.  Her mouth was hanging open.  As we came in, she slowly opened her eyes.  She looked almost dead to me.

            “Oh, Mary–and little Johnny.  How nice of you to come.  Can't get up, I'm afraid.  Come and give me a hug, Johnny.”  I went to the side of the bed.  She weakly raised an arm to touch my shoulder as I put my cheek to hers and put my arm around her.  She was nothing but skin and bones.  “I remember the day you were born.”  She paused and took a couple of breaths.  “Saved your life, I did.”  She blinked slowly and let her eyelids drop.

            “I'm sure glad you were there,” I said.  She nodded slightly and made a small grin.  I felt numb.  I wanted to do something to help her–make her get up and walk around.  I wanted her to wear a fancy dress and laugh.  I wanted her to bake some cookies and make Jello.  She had always been Aunt Patty to me and now I couldn't do anything to help her.  It was terrible seeing her now.  Tears were forming in my eyes.

            Mom whispered to me, “Get Davey and go wait on the porch or in the back yard.”  I wiped my eyes when I got into the hall.  Davey was just coming out of the bathroom zipping up his pants.

            “Come on, we're supposed to wait outside.”

            “Did she give you a quarter?”

            “No, twerp, she didn't give me a quarter.  She's too sick to give anybody anything.”

                ***

            We had brought the horseshoes and played in the back yard for a long time.  We had our straw hats to keep the sun off and drank ice water from the kitchen.  About mid-afternoon, Mom came and got us so we could leave.  Alice walked with us to the porch.  When we were seated in the car I said, “Aunt Patty doesn't look very good.”

            “No, she sure doesn't.  I don't think she'll last much longer unless the good Lord gives us a miracle.  But she's keeping her spirits up.”  Mom lit a cigarette.

            “Do you believe in miracles, Mom?”  Davey asked.

            “Sure–you're a miracle.”

            “No, I mean a real miracle.”

            Mom paused.  “I've never seen one myself, but I'm sure they happen.”  Mom stopped at a little cafe on the way out of town and bought us hamburgers for lunch.  Clouds were swelling as we left.  The tops of the clouds caught the sun and looked like huge marshmallows.  By the time we arrived at Cuervo a summer thunderstorm was in full fury.  The wind blew the rain around in sheets and loud claps of thunder followed lightning flashes.  Mom drove slowly with her lights on.

            “You sure you wanna stop in this weather, Johnny?  We could get some hail.”

            “Yes.  I won't take more than a minute.  I just wanna tell Ray and Cora when we're coming.”

            “You're gonna get all wet.”

            “Mom, you promised.  I'll be OK.”  Mom silently turned off the highway, crossed the tracks, and drove into the driveway of Cora's house.  Their car was gone and the house was dark.

            “I don't think they're home,” Mom said.

            “I'll go see,” I said, opened the car door, and ran to the front door before Mom could say anything to stop me.  I opened the screen door and knocked on the door to the kitchen.  As I stood there, I thought of bad possibilities.  Suppose they went on vacation while we were in Cuervo.  I wouldn't get to see Cora at all then.  Suppose they'd moved and don't even live in Cuervo anymore.  The cold rain was beating through the screen door against me and soaked the back of my clothing.  I knocked again.  I could hear the windshield wipers on the car flapping back and forth.  Mom honked the horn.  No one answered the door.  I ran halfway back to the car and turned to look back.  The door remained closed and the house, dark.  A lightning flash reflected off the kitchen window.  I ran through the headlight beams and climbed back into the car.  I was wet all over and squeezed my hands between my knees to try to stop shivering

            “No one home,” I announced.

            “Look at you.  You're gonna catch your death of a cold,” Mom said.  “Bundle up in the blanket.”  I wrapped the blanket around me, curled up in the corner, and looked out of the window at the rain falling and the wind whipping the tree branches around.  I used the blanket to wipe my hair dry.  My chin quivered, but I didn’t want Mom or Davey to see it.

            “You don't think they've moved, do you, Mom?”  I asked.

            “No, they haven't moved.  They are just in town shopping or something.  The same curtains are up.”  Mom leaned over the steering wheel to peer out the windshield.  “It's really raining.  I hope Dad doesn't have to put in a bunch of overtime again,” Mom said as she pulled back on the highway.

            “Why not?  Doesn't he getta lot more money?”  Davey asked.

            “Yeah, but he gets so tired.  It's not good for him.”

            The thunderstorm stopped before we got to Vaughn.  Mom looked out the rear view mirror.  “Look at the rainbow behind us.”  Davey and I turned around and looked.  It was double and almost complete.

            “Why are rainbows always so far away?”  I asked.

            “I'm not really sure.  It has something to do with the reflection of sunlight.”

            “Can we turn around and drive underneath it?”  Davey asked.

            “No.  As you go toward it, it moves away.”

            “We read a story in school about a boy who looked for a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow,” Davey said.

            “Did he find it?”  Mom asked.

            “No.  He just got into a lotta trouble.  He got a horse and food by promising to pay for them with part of the gold.  But he never got the gold.”

            “That's what generally happens when you try to get something without working for it.”

                ***

            I laid back and looked out the window at the fence posts as they whizzed by.  I had the blanket around me.  It hadn't been a very good day for me.  I hadn't been able to see Cora and seeing Aunt Patty made me sad.  Soon Aunt Patty would be dead just like my sister.  At least I knew Aunt Patty.  I knew what she looked like, what she sounded like, and what she was like.  I never knew my sister.  Of course, she was only a baby when she died, but there were things I'd like to know about her.  What was her name?  What color were her eyes?  Why did she die?  How would I ever know?

            I had an idea.  “Mom, when we get home, I wanna write Aunt Patty a letter,” I said.

            “About what, Johnny?  She's very sick.  She may not even be able to read it.”

            “I just wanna write her.  Alice said she had some good days.  Maybe she can read it.”

            “Maybe she'll send you another five dollars,” Davey said.

            “I'm not gonna ask for money.”

            “If you wanna write a letter–write a letter.  Try to keep it cheery,” Mom said as she parked the car in front of the outfit car.  When I was inside, I got some paper and a pencil.

***

                                                                       

            Dear Aunt Patty,

                        I enjoyed visiting you today and hope you get well soon.  I wish I could've visited with you more, but didn't want to make you tired.  Thank you for the five dollars you sent me.  I bought some fireworks with the money and had lots of fun setting them off at Granddad and Grandma Baker's.

                        I need to ask you something.  The other day Dad and I were in a store and a lady talked to Dad about having a baby girl older than me.  I never knew that I had an older sister and no one will talk to me about her.  Do you know her name?  Do you know why she died?  Why won't anyone talk to me about her?

                        I love you. 

                                                            Johnny

***

            After I sealed the letter in an envelope and addressed it, I sat down for supper.  Dad had just arrived home and Mom had fried rabbits, mashed potatoes, made gravy, and cooked green beans.  There was leftover corn bread.

            “I think I'll go out and see Pops tomorrow, before we move to Carrizozo,” Mom said.  “You guys wanna go see Granddad Henderson?  You haven't seen him for a while,” Mom asked Davey and me.

            “Sure.  Will he have baby calves again,” Davey asked.  “Or baby chickens?”

            “I don't know.  We'll have to wait till we get there to see.”

            “I hope so,” Davey said. 

            Mom set a pitcher of ice tea on the table and sat.  “I read that the new cars are gonna have power steering,” Mom said.  I took some green beans and some rabbit.

            “What's power steering?”  I asked as I spooned mashed potatoes onto my plate.

            “It's a way to use the power of the engine to help turn the steering wheel,” Dad answered.  I passed the gravy to Davey.

            “Johnny, I've had enough of this silliness,” Dad erupted.  He was mad and I didn't know why.  “Take some gravy and put it on your potatoes.  If you taste it you'll like it.”

            “I don't like it,” I pleaded.

            “You heard me.  I want you to eat some gravy.”  My chin started to quiver.  Davey passed the gravy back.  “Take some.  It's good stuff.  Tastes good.  Made from good food.  You just have a wrong idea in your head about it.”  I poured a couple of ladles of gravy on the potatoes.  “Now eat it.”  Tears slowly fell down my cheeks.  I filled my spoon with potatoes and gravy and put it in my mouth.  “Now, doesn't it taste good, Johnny?”  It was slimy and felt like paste.  There were lumps and bits of mashed potatoes in the sticky thick liquid.  It stuck to the roof of my mouth and I couldn't get my tongue away from it.  It started to ooze down my throat.  I tried to swallow but gagged instead.  I couldn't help myself.  I felt as if I were going to vomit.  I leaned over my plate.  Tears fell on the green beans.  The mashed potatoes and gravy came out of my mouth and fell on the plate.  I was crying and sobbing.

            “Oh, my God,” Dad said.  He raised his hand to cover his mouth.  “The kid can't eat ordinary good gravy, but wastes money on fancy things like pomegranates.”  Mom rose and removed my plate to the sink.

            Mom spoke up, “Dave, he's had a hard day.  Johnny, go to the bedroom and rest awhile.  If you get hungry in a little bit, you can come get something.”

            I stumbled to the back bedroom.  I lay on the bed and sobbed in the pillow.  I don't know why gravy was such a big deal with Dad.  Stupid old gravy.  I closed my eyes, floated among the puffy clouds, and flew through the rainbow like a bird.  If I accidentally hit the rainbow would the color stick to me?

            “Johnny–time for bed,” Mom said as she shook me awake.  “Are you hungry?”  Someone had put a quilt over me.

            “No, I'm OK.”  I rose and walked to the living room.  Dad passed me and tousled my hair.  I looked at him and he started to say something but didn't.  Davey was already in bed.

            The next morning I felt better.  Dad tried to make a joke, “I guess different people have different tastes–thank God.”  He laughed lightly.

                ***

            Granddad Henderson stood in the door as we drove up scattering the chickens in the front yard.  Mom parked next to an ancient black pickup.  “Hi, Pops.  How're you doing today?”  Mom yelled as she stepped from the car.

            “Doing as well as can be expected, Mary, sweet child.  Come on in.”  A five-gallon bucket was used as a step into the house.  Granddad and Mom hugged each other for a long moment.  He was tall and thin.  Long black hair completely covered his head.  His sun-tanned face was deeply wrinkled and a bent roll-your-own cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth.  He wore a denim shirt and khaki pants that looked as if they were about to fall off.  Dark brown eyes barely showed through his squint.

            “You guys are growing like bean sprouts,” He said to Davey and me.

            “I don't feel any bigger,” Davey answered.

            Granddad Henderson and Grandma Lola lived in a house that was a shack.  The floors were bare wood with no rugs or linoleum.  At some places you could see the ground through the cracks between the boards.  A couple of the windows were boarded up because the glass was broken.  Flies were buzzing everywhere.  A couple of magazine pictures of farm animals were nailed to the exposed slats of the walls.  The couch had some tow-sacks thrown on it to cover spots where the padding and springs were sticking through.

            Grandma Lola came out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dirty apron.  “Well, look who's here.”

            “Hi, Lola,” Mom said.

            “If'n you're plannin' on stayin' to eat, all we got is tomato soup and yesterday's biscuits,” Grandma Lola said.

            “Nah–we'll go back into town in a little bit.  Just wanted to come out and see how y’all are doing.”

            “If your dad would get off of his duff once in awhile we'd be doing a lot better.”

            “Back's been bothering me a bit, lately,” Granddad said.  “Little hard to get around.”

            Grandma Lola gave a little huff and returned to the kitchen.  “Why don't you guys go look at the stock pens and see if there are any little calves,” Mom said.

            “You should find a set of twins on the far side of the barn,” Granddad said.

            “Oh boy, really?  A set of twins?”  Davey asked.

            “Go look for yourself,” Granddad commanded.  We found the Hereford twins and petted them by reaching through the railings.  They licked and nuzzled our hands.  We gathered up loose pieces of hay and fed them.  The cows in the pens were bellowing to the cattle in the pasture.  The cows were flicking their tails, trying to keep the buzzing flies away.

            “Let's go, boys,” Mom yelled stepping out of the house.  I turned to go to the car and stepped into a wet cow pile.  I looked down and saw the wet brown ooze curl up over the edge of the sole of my shoe.

            “Oh, son, you have to watch where you're walking,” Mom said as she approached me.  “We have to wipe it off before you can get into the car.  Come over here in the barn.”  I was scraping my shoe on the ground and tried to twist my foot to get to the side of the shoe.  We walked into the barn filled with the smell of alfalfa and I sat on a bale of hay.  A cat across the barn awoke and lazily stretched before slowing walking to us.  Mom grabbed a handful of dry cornhusks and lifted my foot.  She wiped my shoe with the husks and got most of the stuff off.  Then she got some dry dirt and rubbed the shoe.  “When you get home, use some shoe polish and it'll be OK.”  The cat was purring and rubbing against Mom's leg.

            Granddad Henderson came into the barn, looked at my shoe, and said, “The older you get, Johnny, the bigger the piles become that you have to look out for.”  Mom chuckled.  “Mary, thanks again for the money.  It's much appreciated, sweetheart.”

            “It wasn't much, Pops.  Try to get some help for your back.”

Chapter XII

            The road between Duran and Carrizozo lies beside the railroad track, so on Sunday, as we drove to Carrizozo, we traveled beside the train that was taking our outfit car.  We could see the curtains in the windows sway with the motion of the train.  It was strange to drive along and see your home moving beside you.

            “Can I ride in the outfit car sometimes when it's being moved?”  Davey asked.  “That would be fun.”

            “No, the SP won’t let us.  It's against the rules.  If you don't work for the railroad–and especially little kids–the only kinda train you can ride is a passenger train,” Dad answered.

            “Shoot,” Davey said.

            Everyone became lost in thought and nobody said anything for a long time.  I wondered if Cora knew we'd be coming to Cuervo.  I imagined Cora asking her dad to find out when we'd arrive and counting the days.

            Mom, trying to pass the time, I suppose, brought up a suppertime topic; “I read that they're making a machine that does hundreds and hundreds of arithmetic problems in a second.  It's called a UNIVAC.”

            “Hey, we won't have to study arithmetic in school anymore.  Can we get one?”  Davey asked gleefully.

            “I don't think so.  It'd fill the whole outfit car.  It's really big,” Dad said.  “I read the same magazine,” Dad said, smiling at Mom.  “It's made from electronics by a company called Remington Rand.  Some people call it an electronic brain.”

            “What's electronics?”  Davey asked.

            “Things like radios and televisions.  Stuff that uses vacuum tubes and resistors and other things to work,” Dad answered.

            “Remington–the same company that makes your 270?”  I asked.

            “I don't know.  Could be a part of the same company.  It doesn't seem likely that the same company that makes guns would make electronics.”

            Carrizozo lies in a broad treeless plain with the Capitan Mountains to the east and The Malpais to the west.  The Capitan Mountains were steep and tall and the peaks were hidden in clouds most of the time.  Dad said that bear lived in some secluded valleys up high.  The tallest mountain had snow on it as late as May some years.

            The Malpais, on the other hand, weren't mountains at all.  It was an old black lava flow that was a couple of miles wide and I don't know how many miles long.  There was a paved road going between Socorro and Carrizozo that cut across The Malpais.  The lava was broken up, but you could see the ripple marks on top.  The lava bed had flowed from the north, but there wasn't any volcano that I could see.  When I looked at the lava I wondered if it caught any animals when it flowed a long ago.  Could you dig down and find a dinosaur?  Of course, it would be almost impossible to dig through the lava because it was so hard.

            Our outfit car was parked on an old unused spur.  We set up the outhouse and clotheslines and hauled some water.  After supper, Mom and Dad went outside to sit on the steps and smoke a cigarette.  Davey and I got our bicycles out of the tool car and found a good place to set up the horseshoes.  We hadn't been to Carrizozo last year so we had a lot of exploring to do.  As we were setting up the horseshoes, I found a copper looking crystal on the ground.  I showed it to Dad.

            “What's this, Dad?”  Dad took it and briefly glanced at it.

            “Fool's gold.  Iron pyrites.  Used to be a big iron mine up in the Capitan Mountains.  You'll probably find quite a bit of this around.  They used to park gondolas on this spur and load them up with the ore.”

            “Let's collect a bunch of it and make a treasure outta it, Davey.  If you find any, keep it,” I said as I put the nugget back in my pocket.

            Dad flicked the ashes from his cigarette.  “Tomorrow is the supply train,” Dad said.  “I hope I can find a copy of the requisition form in the tool shed.”  The supply train came every three months.  It brought all the material that the signal maintainer and the section gangs needed to keep the railroad fixed up and in good shape.  The supply train also picked up some things–like empty gasoline barrels and the used parts of storage batteries.  The watch inspector and, sometimes, Dad's boss came with it.  The supply train distributed new equipment and tools.  It was an exciting day when the supply train came.  Sort of like Christmas.

            About noon on the next day, the supply train pulled into town and stopped on the main track positioned so that the empty gasoline barrels were beside the boxcar that they were supposed to go into.  Everything was lined up at the right place.  The train had five boxcars and each boxcar was storage for a few items.  A crew in each boxcar unloaded the things from that boxcar that were ordered for that stop and then loaded in the same boxcar anything that was supposed to go back.  The crews worked quickly so that the train could move to the next stop or to get off on a siding so that the streamliners could get by.  The supply train had to cover the entire district in one day.

            There were a bunch of five-pound canisters of lye and boxes of battery parts used in rebuilding the storage batteries at the signals and switches.  There were several cases of small bottles of yellow heavy oil used to pour on top of a freshly built battery to prevent evaporation of water.  There were three small kegs of bonds–thick short copper braided wires with lead plugs on the ends–which were used to connect the rails electrically.  Two boxes of track insulators–made of hard fiber and cut to look like the cross section of a rail–used to make sure some rails didn't touch each other, were also left.  Barrels of gasoline, cans of oil, and bundles of rags were left, stacked up, and the empty barrels all loaded in.  Pads of paper and boxes of indelible pencils, without erasers, were left on the ground.  Sometimes even requisition forms were ordered on a requisition form and would be left.

            While the train was stopped, two men in suits got off and walked up to Dad and Charlie, the section foreman.  “Watch inspection time,” Dad said.

            “Hello Dave, Charlie,” the railroad watch inspector said, “I'd like you to meet Herb Mason.  He's from the Hamilton Watch Company.”  Dad and Charlie handed their pocket watches to the inspector and shook hands with the watch salesman.

            Charlie handed the inspector a second watch.  “Better check my spare, too.”

            “You got a watch to check, young man?” the inspector asked me.

            “Not yet,” I answered.

            “How are you guys and how are your watches?” the salesman asked.

            Charlie said, “Doing OK, I reckon.  The watch is still going after fifteen years.  Better than me, but I'm still ticking.”

            The watch inspector compared each watch with his, wrote something down in a book, filled out a card, and returned the watch with the card.  “Each within a minute by my watch.”

            “I'd like to leave each of you a copy of our catalog of certified railroad watches.  If you need a new watch or a spare one, there's an order form in the back.  Something that's new this time are railroad approved wrist watches.”  The supply train blew its whistle as a warning that it was ready to leave.  “Well, gotta go, but sir,” the salesman said to Dad, “If you decide to get a spare like Charlie has, I'm sure we can fix you up with something in there,” pointing to the catalog.

            The whole process of unloading the supplies, loading the returns, and getting the watches inspected took less than five minutes.  After the train left, Dad handed me the watch catalog.  “Better hold onto this and take it to the outfit car.  I need to get the supplies to the tool shed.”  Dad checked the requisition form to see what hadn't been delivered and was still needed.  Then everything had to be hauled to the tool shed and stored away.  Dad used his motorcar and made many short trips back and forth.

            I walked to the outfit car and sat on the sofa looking at the catalog.  Davey came and sat beside me.  “I want that one,” Davey said, pointing to one that was identical with Dad's.  “Sixty-eight dollars.  That's a lotta money.”

            “I'd rather have that one,” I said, pointing to a gold wristwatch.  It had black Roman numerals and a sweep second hand in a rectangular case.  The band looked like alligator skin.  “It's only fifty-five dollars.”

            “It's cheaper because it's littler,” Davey said.  I put the catalog on the library table next to the radio.

            “Maybe.  Let's go get our bikes and go riding.”

            “OK,” Davey said and we rode to the west of town.  There wasn't much that was interesting.  There were some old corrals we could see, but we couldn't ride our bikes to them.  There were just some rough old cow-trails leading to them.  We put our bikes behind some cactuses and walked.  The corrals were used to hold cattle before loading them onto cattle cars.  There were some chutes and piles of old ties.  It was a great place for lizards and we spent quite a bit of time hunting them.

            As we were hunting, a jack rabbit jumped from a pile of ties and ran.  Davey, once again, shot at the rabbit with the BB gun with no visible effect.  The rabbit ran inside a big pipe that was lying on the ground.  The pipe was about eight inches across and ten feet long.  It was probably a spare for the water line.

            I said, “Hey, we've got it trapped.  It can't get away.  Let’s get at each end and the rabbit can't get away.”

            “OK, but be quiet,” Davey said as he started sneaking up to his end.  When we were close to each end we rushed to close the opening with our hands.  We each looked down the pipe.  It was dark inside so all I could see was the silhouette.  I could see the rabbit about halfway.  Its ears were sticking up and were bent over by the top of the pipe, filling most of the pipe.

            “We've got it,” I said at about the time that Davey shot his BB gun.  The rabbit took a couple of steps toward me.

            “It can't get away this time,” Davey said as he cocked his gun.  “You shoot him and made him come back this way.”

            I stuck the barrel of my BB gun into the pipe and pulled the trigger.  The rabbit hopped back toward Davey.  Davey shot again as I cocked my gun.  Each of us started shooting as fast as we could cock another BB into the gun.  We didn't even look inside.  Just point the gun, pull the trigger, reload, and do it again.

            “Dad will never believe we killed a rabbit with just a BB gun,” Davey said.  I would have never believed it was possible to kill a rabbit with a BB gun either, but here we were doing it.  After about fifty shots, Davey asked, “You think it's still alive?”

            “Let's look.”  We each looked in the pipe.  I couldn't see any motion.  The ears weren't sticking up anymore.  “I think it's dead.”

            “How do we get it out?”  Davey asked.

            “Let's lift one end high enough so it will slide outta the other end.”

            “OK, but first I’ll lift it a little bit and jerk it to see if it moves.”

            “OK,” I said as I crouched down and looked up the pipe.  Davey lifted the end of the pipe a couple of feet and bounced it up and down.  A whole bunch of BB's rolled down and out of the pipe.  I could see the rabbit slide down a bit without moving.  “Keep bouncing.  It's about to come out.  I think it's dead.”  Each time Davey bounced the pipe the rabbit slid a couple of inches.  When it was close enough, I reached in, grabbed the rabbit, and pulled him out.  It was amazing–with just our BB guns we had killed a rabbit.  I'd seen rabbit shot with 22's that ran off.  I looked down at the rabbit.  It didn't move at all.

            Davey dropped the end of the pipe and ran to my end.  “Hooray, we got him!  We finally killed a rabbit with a BB gun.”

            The poor rabbit had been shot in the eyes–there were little holes through his ears–his nose was bleeding–all over his body there were tiny blood spots–even his teeth were chipped.  I felt sick at my stomach.  I imagined what it must have been like for that rabbit–trapped, no place to go, terrified, and continually getting shot at.

            I had been so excited at the beginning.  It seemed like fun at the start, but looking at the rabbit, made me want to cry.  “Let's take it home to show Dad,” Davey said.

            “Davey, we're gonna bury the rabbit right here,” I said, taking out my pocketknife.  I walked over next to a culvert where the dirt was soft and started digging a hole.  Davey gathered the BB's that had rolled out of the pipe.

            “Why should we bury it?  It's just a jack rabbit.”

            “That jack rabbit was very brave.  The bravest animal I've ever seen.  It didn't cry or anything.  It just slowly died.  I think we need to give him a hero's burial.  How would you like to be killed by a BB gun?”  Davey came over and helped me dig a hole.  We didn't dig too deep, maybe a foot.  Then we got the rabbit and laid him in the hole, covered him with dirt, and piled rocks on top.

            “Shouldn't we say something like in the movies?”  Davey asked.

            “Take off your hat,” I ordered.  Davey and I stood over the pile of rocks, straw hats in hand.  “God, I don't know if there is a heaven for rabbits, but if there is, please take this rabbit.  We killed him and he was very brave.  If he has a family please take care of them and I promise I won't kill any more rabbits with a BB gun.”

            “And God,” Davey added, “thanks for giving us our BB's back.”  We rode back to the outfit car without saying much.  I tried not to think of the rabbit trapped in the pipe.

***

            When we got home, Dad asked, “Well, have you picked out your watches?”

            “Can I really have a watch?”  I asked.

            “I need a spare and we all need something to keep Davey from asking what the time is, all of the time.”

            “Oh, boy.  I want one just like yours,” Davey answered.

            “Remember, you guys have to take care of it and if I need it to go to work with because mine is broken or something I'm gonna have to take yours, OK?”  Dad had the order form.

            “I want the wrist watch on page seven,” I said.

            Dad paused and looked up.  “You don't really want a wrist watch, do you?  It'll just get broken.”

            “I'll take care of it.”

            “Johnny, think about it.  It'll fly off of your arm.  Things will keep hitting it.  It'll get broke.”  Dad paused.  “Why do you want a wrist watch?”

            “It's easy to look at.  All I have to do is turn my arm and I can see what time it is.  It looks nice.”

            Dad turned silently to page seven and looked.  “Which one?”

            “This one,” I said, pointing to the one I had picked out.

            “A watch in a pocket is protected,” Dad said.

            “That's a nice looking watch,” Mom said.  Dad filled out the order form shaking his head without saying another word.

Chapter XIII

            “I've gotta go to the store.  You boys wanna come?”  Mom yelled from the open door the next morning as Davey and I were gathering fool's gold.

            “Which store?”  I asked.

            “Gotta go to the five-and-ten and to the grocery store.”  Both stores were on route 54…the main street of Carrizozo.

            “Sure.  Let me get my money,” I answered running into the outfit car.  I had two dollars and forty-five cents in my dresser drawer.  Davey followed me.

            “It's too bad the fool's gold isn't real gold,” Davey said.  We had almost a coffee can full.  “We could buy the whole store.”

            While Davey and I went into the outfit car, Mom waited for us in the car, smoking a cigarette.  The sun caught wisps of smoke hanging in the air making them look like tiny, thin, blue-gray clouds.              “Mom, is it fun to smoke?”  I asked as I returned and settled in the rear seat.

            “Not really.  It becomes a habit–an expensive habit,” Mom said as she drove away.  “A cigarette with a cup of coffee in the morning is about the only time it tastes good.”

            “Can I smoke a cigarette sometime?  Just to try it?”  I asked.

            “Me, too,” Davey added.

            “You're too young.  Wait until you grow up and then if you wanna smoke, you can.  But I warn you.  When you start, it's hard to stop.  It's better if you don't start.  I wish I hadn't.  But you're not gonna smoke while you're still at home if I have anything to do with it.”

            We arrived at the five-and-ten.  Mom went to the section where they had crochet thread and doily patterns.  Davey and I went to the toy area.  Since I had a couple of dollars there were lots of things to choose from.  There were Roy Roger yo‑yos that came with a pamphlet to teach tricks.  There was a dart pistol with four darts and a target.  You were supposed to lick the rubber end of the dart so that it would stick when it hit the target.  Davey bought a packet of tattoos.  By wetting your skin slightly and then rubbing the back of the paper you could transfer the picture to your skin.  It would remain until washed away.  I bought a model F‑80, a Shooting Star.  It was about two inches long and made of metal.  An F-80 was a jet fighter made by Lockheed that was being used in Korea.  It had won the first dogfight between jets.  It had a vertical tail and straight wings tipped with fuel pods.  The toy had a couple of small rubber wheels in front.  It cost a dollar, nineteen.  I also bought a magnifying glass.  It was three inches in diameter.  I'd seen one used to focus sunlight to start a fire in sawdust, but I'd never done it.

            Davey and I stayed in the car as Mom went to the grocery store.  I held the F-80 high inside the car and pretended it was flying around.  I looked at it with the magnifying glass.  It was painted just like a real one.  Davey wet his upper arm with a little spit and covered the spot with a tattoo of a heart with an arrow sticking through it.  “I'll look just like Sam,” he said as he rubbed on it.  The image was smeared on one edge and wasn't as dark as Sam's.  Davey flexed his muscle.

                ***

            After supper, Dad wanted to drive into the Capitan Mountains just to look at the country.  As we drove out of town I was in the seat right behind Dad.  I had the window rolled down and held the toy plane out the window.  If I tilted my hand up the wind would cause it to go higher and if I tilted it down the wind would make it go lower.  Davey had put tattoos on both arms, on the backs of both hands, and had one of a snake on his forehead.

            We hadn’t gone far when Dad said, “Hey, looky there,” and pointed to the side of the road.  I saw a covey of quail fly away.  But all of them didn't fly away.  One quail followed by about a dozen chicks darted into the center of a mesquite bush.  The chicks were balls of tuft scurrying in and out of hiding.  They bumped into each other and seemed to run every direction.

            “Dad, can we stop so I can catch some?  We could keep them as pets.”

            “What do you see?”  Davey asked as he leaned over me trying to look out the window on my side.

            “Baby quail–a bunch of them,” I answered.

            Dad stopped off the road.  “You think you can catch some?  I bet you can't,” Dad said.  “Go try.”

            “Sure I can catch them.  They can't even fly.  How many should I get?”

            “Oh, don't get more than three,” Dad said and grinned at Mom as Davey and I got out of the car.  We ran to where I had last seen the quail.  The mesquite bush was big and grew from a mound of drift sand.  Inside you could see the baby quail running around.  They softly peeped to each other.

            “Davey, go around to the other side and make a lotta noise.  When they come out I'll catch some.”  I saw one tiny quail at the edge of the bush.  The mother quail chirped and the chick ran back to the middle.

            “Ready?”  Davey whispered from the other side of the bush.

            “Ready.”  Davey yelled and beat the bush with a stick.  I was poised, knelt over, legs apart, arms spread out, and hands open.  Suddenly they were all around me.  The mother quail came out–half flying, half running–beating her wings and chirping loudly.  A little one ran between my legs.  The ground was covered with zigzagging, sand-colored balls of down.  One paused in front of me.  I dove and at the last moment it darted a few inches.  I had handfuls of dirt.  The mother quail led her brood to another bigger bush a few yards away.  I heard Mom and Dad laughing.

            “How many did you get?”  Davey asked as he came around the bush and saw me getting up off the ground.

            “None.  I almost got one.”

            “You didn't get even one?  Let me try this time,” he said.

            I walked to the far side of the new bush.  “Get ready,” I murmured, paused briefly, and kicked the bush.  Davey dove.  I ran to his side of the mesquite just in time to see the quail disappear into another bush a few yards away.  “Get any?”

            “I almost caught one.  I touched it, but he got away,” Davey said as he brushed dirt off himself.

            “Come boys, let's go,” Dad said.

            “One more try.  I'm sure we could catch one,” I pleaded.

            “OK.  One more try and then we gotta go.  It’s getting late.”

            We tried again but missed.  As we slowly walked back to the car, we heard the mother quail chirping to scold us.  We returned to the car and Dad drove away.

            “Good try,” Mom said.  I picked up my toy plane.        

            “Once when I was about your age,” Dad said, “I chased a bunch of quail chicks for a couple of miles.  Never caught one.  They're fast little devils.  Have to be, to keep away from the coyotes, I guess.”

            “I touched one,” Davey said and then after a moment asked,  “What time is it?”  I wished Dad would tell us more about his chase.  Did he actually touch one?  How did he scare them from the bush?

            “I'll be really glad when your watches come.  It's five forty-three,” Dad answered and returned his watch to his overalls.

            We climbed into the mountains and crossed a wooden bridge over a stream that ran through a glen.  Dad parked off the road.  “Let's see if there are bear tracks by the stream.”  Tall green grass covered the moist ground.  The breeze brought the faint smell of wet grass and the sweet scent of wild flowers.

            We came to a cedar tree that had fallen over the creek.  It had been rooted on the mossy bank, but the bank had given way in a recent storm.  The creek gurgled as it flowed over a bed of smooth stones.

            “Let's climb across the tree to the other side,” Davey suggested.

            “Be careful and don't fall in the water,” Mom said as she sat on a stump.  She lit a Pall Mall with her Zippo.

            “The water might clean some of the dust off of them that the quail left,” Dad said as he got a cigarette paper from a small pack.  He curled the thin paper lengthwise and held it around his left index finger with his thumb and his big finger.  He opened his Prince Albert can and tapped some tobacco into the tiny paper trough.  After putting the tobacco can back into his overalls he smoothed the tobacco out, lifted the paper to his lips, licked it, and twisted the ends.  He lit the cigarette as he walked to the edge of the water.

            Davey and I straddled the tree trunk and scooted across.  We had to climb around the limbs.  “Deer tracks.  All I see are deer tracks,” Dad said.

            “Hooray, we made it!”  Davey shouted as we jumped off the tree on the far side.  With their backs toward us, Mom and Dad were looking at the beginnings of the sunset over the valley below.  Davey got out his pocketknife and whittled some bark off the tree and put it in his pocket.  He put his finger to his lips shushing me.  He glanced at Mom and Dad to make sure they weren't watching him.

            “What are you doing?”  I whispered.

            “Shhh–I'll tell you later.”

            “My, what a pretty sunset,” Mom said.

            As it was getting dark, Davey and I skittered back across the tree.  Mom and Dad flicked cigarette butts into the creek and we walked back to the car and drove home.  I looked for the quail where we had seen them, but I didn't see anything.  We hadn't seen another car on the whole trip.

            When we got home Davey put the cedar bark in his dresser drawer.  “Cedar bark is just like tobacco.  We can smoke it tomorrow,” He explained.  “But we'll have to get some matches,” Davey said as he crawled into bed.

            “You wanna smoke cedar bark?”  I asked.

            “I saw some boys do it at school.  They said it tasted just like tobacco.  Where can we get some matches?”

            “Maybe we can use my magnifying glass to light it.”  I got into bed.

            “Let's try that tomorrow.”

                ***

            Mom kept books of matches in the kitchen in a canister.  While she was making the beds, after breakfast, I took a matchbook that said Vaughn First Bank on it.  “Mom, we're going outside,” I said from the living room as I got my magnifying glass.  Davey and I walked to the corrals.  “You got the bark?”

            “In my pocket.”

            “What're we gonna use for cigarette paper?  We have to have something to roll it up in,” I said as we sat on a railroad tie at the edge of the corrals.

            “Naw.  You light one end and smoke the other end.  You don't crumble it up like tobacco.”

            “Let's see if my magnifying glass will work.”  I put a strand of cedar bark on the ground and focused the sun on it.  It was hard to keep from shaking and to keep the focus point still, but after a half-minute or so a thread of smoke appeared.

            “It's too slow.  Let's use the matches.”  Davey picked the bark up and put it his mouth.  “Light it.”  I lit a match and held it to the end as Davey puffed.  The bark caught on fire and smoldered.  Davey sucked hard and coughed.

            “How does it taste?”  I asked.

            “Not very good,” Davey said as his eyes watered.  He spit on the ground.  “You try it.”  I took the smoking bark and sucked just a little bit.  The smoke was very bitter and stung the inside of my mouth.

            “This is horrible.  I don't know why people smoke,” I said as I threw the bark on the ground.  I stepped on it to put out the fire.

            “Maybe tobacco is better,” Davey answered.  “I know what we can do.  Let's sneak a Pall Mall from Mom's purse.”

            “I don't think it'll be any better.”  I was using my magnifying glass to try to ignite an old yucca blade.  An ant was crawling along the edge.  I moved the focus so that it hit the ant.  The ant was fried immediately.  “Hey, see what I did to that ant?”  I asked, pointing to the crisp remains.  Another ant was on the blade.  “Watch,” I said as I moved the spot to the ant.  It died instantaneously, shriveled up.

            “Let me try,” Davey said.

            “You get two and then it's my turn again.  There's the ant hill,” I said, pointing a few feet away at the bare mound.  “Let's go there.”  We stooped at the edge of the small clearing surrounding the hill.  “I wish we didn't have to share my magnifying glass.”

            When it was my turn I focused on one of the holes that the ants used to go in and out.  The ants tried to come out and would get burned before they could escape.  There were so many dead ones they were blocking the hole.  “Can you see any ants on me?”

            “A couple.  Let me brush them off,” Davey said.  We walked a few yards away.  I could see a pair of ants crawling on Davey's pants.  As he brushed me, I brushed him.

            In the distance I heard the putt-putt of Dad's motorcar approaching.  He was probably coming home for lunch.  “Let's go stand by the track and wave to him as he goes by,” Davey said.  We arrived at the track when Dad was about a hundred yards away.  We started waving and he stopped beside us.

            “What're you boys doing?”

            “Burning ants,” I answered holding up my magnifying glass.

            “Your watches came this morning.  Get on and I'll take you to the toolshed.  We can look at the brand new watches over lunch.”

            “Our watches came!”  Davey shouted with delight.

            “Yeah.  Get on.”

            “You mean we can ride the motorcar?”  I asked, not really believing him.

            “It's only a half-mile.”  Davey sat in Dad's lap and I sat on the other side.  “Hold on tight,” Dad said as he engaged the engine.  It was fun riding in the open.  There were no doors and no windows.  There was a canvas windscreen over which you had to look to see where you were going.  We'd barely got going when we stopped at the toolshed.

            There was a set-off, made of railroad ties, which led from the track to inside the toolshed.  Two long handles ran underneath the motorcar and could be pulled out from the front or back.  To take the motorcar off the railroad, Dad would pull the handles out the rear, lift the rear end of the motorcar off the track, and swing it around so that the motorcar was perpendicular to the railroad and on the set-off.  The handles could then be shoved to the front, the front of the motorcar lifted, and the motorcar pushed off the track.  To put the motorcar back on the rails the whole process was reversed.  It took a lot of strength.

            “Where're the watches?”  I asked.

            “In my pocket.  Let's go eat lunch and we can look at them.”

                ***

            When Dad sat at the lunch table he took two small paper bags from his overall pocket and placed them on the table.  “That one is Davey's and that is Johnny's.”  Davey and I grabbed and opened at the same time.  My hands trembled as they did when I first held the toy train.  Each paper bag contained a small box with the words, Hamilton - the Best in Railroad Watches, written on it and a cellophane window showing the watch inside.  My watch looked better than the catalog picture.  The glass crystal was clear and shiny.  The wristband had glossy black spots separated by brown edging.  The gold colored casing didn't have a scratch on it.  The second hand was circling in small jerks.  I opened the box and held the watch to my ear.  I could hear a faint tick-tick.

            “They sure are pretty,” Mom said.

            “Mine says twelve twenty-two,” Davey said.

            “Mine too,” I responded.

            “Well they should be the same,” Dad said.  “The watch inspector set them and wound them this morning in El Paso.  I have the watch inspection cards.  Remember to wind them once a day.  And be careful–they're delicate.”

            Dad watched me as I put my watch around my left wrist and tried to buckle the band together.  It was too big, even when I tried the first hole.  “I thought that might happen.  The band was made for a grown man,” Dad said.  “Let me cut you a new hole.”  Dad opened his pocketknife and drilled another hole.  It was a little loose but fit a lot better.  I dropped my arm and swung it a couple of times.  “And for yours, Davey, I got a leather watch fob.”  Dad had something that looked like a shoestring.  He tied one end to the watch and the other end around a belt loop on Davey's pants.  “There, you're all fixed up now.  I don't wanna hear you ask again what time it is.  You've got your own watch now.”  Davey pulled his watch out, looked at it, and slipped it back in.  I twisted my arm and looked at my watch.  Dad rolled a cigarette.  Mom cleared the dirty dishes from the table.

            “You guys want a job this Saturday?”  Dad asked.

            “What kinda job?”  I asked.

            “Helping brand calves.  Lee Clark is having a roundup on his ranch and could use a couple of hands to help with the calves.”

            Mom asked, “You think they're big enough to help in a roundup?  They might get hurt.”

            “Most of the calves are little.”  Dad answered.

            “Who's Lee Clark?”  Davey asked.

            “A guy I went to high school with.  I met him today at the Ancho crossing.  Lee is a great guy.  I've known him since we started first grade together.  He got the ranch when his dad died.  If Lee's your friend, he'd die for you.”

            “You gonna be there?  What are you gonna do?”

            “Lee says he has a horse for me, so I'll be there.  I'll help round up the cattle from the range.  You'll get four bucks each, if you put in a good day's work.”

            “Four dollars!”  Davey exclaimed.  “I'll be there.”

            “Me, too,” I said.

            “We'll have to start before the sun gets up.  Breakfast is at sunrise.  Can you get up that early?”

            “What time?”  Davey asked and looked at this watch.

            “Four o'clock.”

Chapter XIV

            Dad shook us awake.  “Get up, guys.  Time to go.”  Seems as if I'd just gone to sleep.  I had had a hard time falling asleep.  I kept thinking about the roundup.  I'd never seen real cowboys on a roundup except in the movies.  When I finally fell asleep, I had a dream about Cora.  We were at Red Hill and she ran behind a rock.  When I ran behind the rock she had run behind another.  I kept chasing, but she was always one rock beyond.

            “Put on old clothes.  Bring your straw hats.  Leave your watches here.”  Dad was dressed in his overalls and had a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

            Inside the car, Dad gave us each a new pair of gloves.  “You'll need these.”  They were stiff and rough.

            “Dad, what will we have to do?”  I asked.

            “Oh, there'll be plenty to do.  Help hold the calves down in the corral when they brand them.  They'll tell you.  Don't worry.”  What if I couldn't do what they tell me?  It didn't sound easy.

            “I saw a roundup in a movie, once,” Davey said.

            The drive was about forty minutes in the dark–the last twenty over a dirt road.  We topped a hill and could see, through scattered cedar trees, the ranch house, barns, and corrals below about a mile away.  As we approached, the horizon was just starting to glow from the sunrise.  A dozen or so horses were bridled and tied to the hitching post.  A big fire burned in the middle of the largest of the corrals and cast long shadows of the people milling around.  We parked among a half-dozen other cars and pickups.

            Breakfast had been prepared by the women and was spread on wooden picnic tables placed end-to-end and covered with red and white checkered tablecloths.  Huge piles of scrambled eggs, biscuits, bacon, sausage, and pitchers of milk and pots of coffee were placed on the tables.  The smell of the fried meat filled the air.

            A man wearing Levis and a red plaid shirt with pearl buttons walked up grinning, “So this is Roy Rogers and Gene Autry?” he asked, stretching his hand out to Davey and me.  He had a tan, oily, cowboy hat and was wearing rough black boots.  His belt buckle was a rectangle of silver that had a picture of an eagle engraved in it.  His belly bulged over the top of his leather belt.

            “Lee, these are my boys, Johnny and Davey.  This is Lee, boys.  He's your boss today.”

            “So, you guys are the ones getting the good grades, huh?”  How did Lee know anything about our grades?  Dad must've told him.  Dad hadn't said a thing about our grades to us.

            “I guess,” I answered as Davey shrugged.

            “You boys get something to eat and then I'll introduce you to Pete.  He's got some chores for you to do until we get the cows here.  Dave, I've got a horse all ready for you.”

            We placed our food on paper plates.  We were introduced to the people, but I couldn't remember their names except for Pete.  Pete was a skinny old man with a limp.  He was bald on top, but had long gray hair on the sides and had a full beard.  He was missing the thumb from his left hand.  He wore black suspenders over a red sweatshirt and had a dark blue bandanna tied around his neck.  Pete's cheek bulged with a big wad of chewing tobacco and thick brown juice dribbled from the corner of his mouth that he wiped away with the back of his sleeve from time to time.  “Pete keeps the records and is the corral boss.  If you guys don't know what to do, ask Pete.  He'll tell you,” Lee directed.  “Pete, they're young and strong.  Work the hell outta 'em,” Lee added as he walked away laughing and patting Dad on the back.  Dad looked back and winked at us.

            Davey and I sat on a bench and ate off our laps.  There was a crew of eight men and a couple of older boys.  After breakfast, everyone threw his paper plate in the fire.  Most mounted horses, and headed for the range to round up the cattle.  Dad looked a little bit silly.  He was wearing his overalls and a railroad cap.  Everyone else had Levis and a cowboy hat.  The sun was rising as they rode off to the north.

            Pete motioned to us to follow him.  “OK, boys, I'm no goddamn babysitter.  We need lotta goddamn firewood.  Gotta keep the goddamn fire going and mighty hot.  See that pile of wood outside there.  Chop it up and stack it on that goddamn pile by the fence.  I'll be back in a bit,” Pete said as he spit a wad of brown liquid on the ground and headed for the barn.

            Davey and I went to the woodpile and each of us took an ax that leaned against the fence.  The blocks of wood were ties that had been sawed into lengths of about a foot.  We'd chop five or six blocks into pieces and then gather the pieces and stack them inside the corral.  Pete returned in about an hour carrying some big books.  My arm was getting tired.  “Need more goddamn wood on the goddamn fire.  Keep it big.  How are you guys doing?  Pooped out yet?”

            “A little bit,” I answered.

            “Need to work more, then you wouldn't get tired so easily.  Take a break.  I left the goddamn branding irons up at the barn door.  You guys go get ‘em and bring ‘em here.  Put some wood on the goddamn fire first.”  Davey and I were working on jobs that needed to be done.

            We found the branding irons.  Two were shaped like an 'S', two like a 'C', and a couple were just straight lines.  Pete had cleaned them of cinders and rust.  When we returned, Pete had spread the books on the picnic tables.

            “What are those?”  I asked.

            “The goddamn registry books.  We have to write down the numbers that we give to each ornery calf.”

            At about ten o'clock I heard the herd mooing in the distance.  I saw about a hundred cattle slowly walking toward us, winding their way through the scattered cedar trees.  The cowboys were on both sides of and behind the herd.  I saw Dad on the left.  When they got close, the men herded the cattle against the corral.  One cowboy and Dad stayed with the big herd keeping them close.  A couple of the cowboys drove a dozen cows and their calves into a small holding corral.  From the holding corral, a cow and her calf were separated and driven into the branding corral.  Lee and three of the cowboys worked in the branding corral.

            “OK,” Pete said, “I'll tell you what has to be done on the first goddamn calf, but you have to do the rest without me telling you.  I'm no damn babysitter.”  Lee lassoed the calf around its head and backed his horse until the rope was taut.  One cowboy kept his horse between the calf and the cow.  Pete ran to the left side of the calf, reached over, grabbed the right flank, and threw the calf onto the ground on its left side.

            “Johnny, come here,” he yelled.  I ran over.  “You’re gonna be the flanker.  Sit on your goddamn ass behind him.  Grab the top leg and hold it and put your feet on the bottom leg.  Spread the hell outta him.”  The calf was bellowing and his mother was circling with her head lowered.  He was kicking and trying to get up.  I managed to get a grip and hold on.

            “That's the way,” Pete said.  “Davey, get over here.  You’re the legger.”  Davey was nearby eyeing the cow.  “I want you to bend the top front leg back and curl it around while you put your knee on his goddamn neck.  Press down hard.”  Davey got a good grip and Pete took the lasso off the calf's head.  Lee pulled the rope back and curled it around the saddle horn.

            Davey and I held the calf down by ourselves.  I worried that the cow would get around the horse and butt us to rescue her calf.  One cowboy got a branding iron from the fire, walked up, and put his boot on the hindquarter of the calf.  “'Lazy S', right Lee?”

            “Yeap.  All 'Lazy S' except the bull calves we keep and make those 'Bar C's,” Lee answered from on top of his horse.  The branding iron, in the shape of an 'S', was turned so that the 'S' was horizontal.

            “Hold on, boys.”  In a quick motion the cowboy put the hot iron on the calf's flank.  The calf bellowed in anguish and thrashed about trying to escape.  His tongue hung out of his mouth and his eyes rolled up.  The smell of burning hair caused my throat to tighten.

            Another cowboy walked to the head of the calf.  “One, thirty-eight, 'T',” he yelled to an older boy who was keeping the register book.  The cowboy tattooed the calf's ear with a device that looked like a pair of pliers.  Letters and numbers, formed by long brad-sized needles, were placed in the pliers.  Thick black ink was spread on the needles and by clamping the pliers, the ear of the calf was pierced by the needles and the ink was forced into the hide.

            While the tattooing was being done, another cowboy with a long knife and an open bucket of thick brown paste that smelled like turpentine walked to my end of the calf, reached between the calf's legs, and cut off the calf's balls.  The calf let out a short muffled cry.  The cowboy then smeared brown paste on the wound.  “I hope I don't slip and get yours by mistake,” he said to me and smiled.  He was missing two front teeth.

            “OK, let him go,” Pete yelled.  Davey and I jumped away and the calf rose to his feet and hobbled to his mother and both of them were driven into a pasture separated from the rest of the herd.  Lee, by this time, had roped another calf and Pete had thrown it to the ground.  I didn't wait to be told what to do.  I quickly grabbed the top hind leg, put my feet on the bottom leg, and pulled.  When the branding iron hit, the calf let out a stream of brown shit that covered my pants' leg.  I relaxed my grip for moment trying to move away from the shit and the calf kicked me in the groin.  “Forget the goddamn shit,” Pete yelled, “Watch out for your fucking balls.”  I was in agony and had trouble breathing.  “Hold on.”  This calf was a little heifer so the knife wasn't necessary.  By the time the ear was tattooed, I was able to rise slowly from the ground.

            After seven calves came a yearling heifer–almost as big as a grown cow.  Lee said that they must've missed it last year.  Pete told Davey and me to get a drink of water.  A couple of the cowboys did the flanking and legging, but even they had a hard time holding the yearling when the branding iron hit.

            One little bull calf was held by the rope and inspected by Lee, Pete, and several other cowboys.  “Markings are good.  Proportions are right.”  They held his head, looked at his eyes, and forced his mouth open to look at his teeth.  They felt his hip joints and his knees.  “Let's keep him–'Bar C',” Lee said as he mounted his horse.  Pete then flanked the calf and I grabbed the legs when the calf hit the dirt.  Two branding irons had to be used.  The 'C' was put on first and then a straight iron was used to burn a short line above the 'C'.  He kept his balls.

            In two hours, we did twenty-three calves–about a third of the herd–when lunch came.  I was dead tired.  I had cow shit all over me.  My groin hurt and the smell of burning hair was making me gag.  Lee walked up with Dad.  “Damn, you guys are good.  Dave tells me you have never done this before, but I don't believe him.  You're working your asses off.  I bet you worked last summer in Texas, right?”  Davey shook his head.  Dad put his hand on each of our shoulders and squeezed slightly.

            “No,” I said, “first time.”  Lee's attention and Dad's hand made me feel better.  “Well, I be damned.  Grub is here.  Better get something to eat before it's all gone.”  The women had carried out huge platters of fried chicken, pots of beans, big buckets of corn-on-the-cob, piles of biscuits, and quart jars of strawberry jam.  I filled a plate, got a paper cup full of lemonade, and sat on the ground cross-legged.  It felt good just to sit and not have to do anything.  I bit deeply into a chicken breast.  The sky was clear and the sun was adding to the heat from the fire.  Little sweat beads formed on my forehead as I sat, not even working.

            We branded about sixty more calves in the afternoon.  Two more little bull calves were found that were 'Bar C'.  It was blistering hot and Pete made Davey and me take a drink of cool water after every couple of calves.  I was so tired that after each calf, I felt I couldn't do another.  But Lee would yell, “Good job,” or something similar and I'd try one more.

              *** 

            “That's all the calves,” Lee said.

            Pete said to Davey and me, “You guy's goddamn job is done.  Go sit on your ass.”  I had never heard words more welcomed.  I wondered if I could hobble to the fence.  A lady brought me some lemonade after I sat.  The cowboys continued to work on the rest of the herd, treating the diseased and injured cows.  A few of the cows had huge larvae underneath their skin.  Two cows had horribly ugly cancerous eyes and had to be shot.  Open sores, infested by maggots, were doused with the turpentine-smelling brown paste and the cow released.  Some cattle had their horns cut off by a device that looked like a pair of giant curved scissors with long handles.  The horns have a large artery, that after being cut and before the tar is applied, would spurt blood a few feet.

            Finally, all the work on the cattle was done.  The sun was setting and the fire was dying.  The cattle drifted back to the range and mooed their movement.  The calves had trouble moving their hind right leg.  The horses were led away to be unbridled and fed.  Davey and I scraped the dried cow shit from our clothes.  I was exhausted from the physical work and emotionally drained.  Things happened today that I had never seen or done.  The movies don’t show most things that happen in the roundup.

            Lee and Dad walked to where Davey and I were sprawled against the fence.  Lee asked, “What do you think, Pete?  Did Roy Rogers and Gene Autry earn their wages?”  Pete walked over from the registry books.

            “They did pretty good for goddamn kids,” Pete answered.  Lee gave Davey and me each four one-dollar bills.  “Hey, boss,” Pete said, “they did better than that.  They didn't goddamn vomit or get themselves branded.”  Lee gave us each another dollar.

            “What about next weekend?  Wanna come and help again?”  Lee asked.

            “We'll be moving,” Davey said.

            “Going to Santa Rosa,” I added.  We said our good-byes and returned to the car to drive home.

            “I'm sore as hell,” Dad said.  “Haven't ridden a horse for that long for many years.”  Davey leaned against the door and slept.  I lifted my pants' legs to look at the bruises and cuts from the calves' hooves.

            “I'm glad I don't have to work that hard all the time.”  I said.

            “Get a good education or you'll have to get used to it.”

            “How many roundups have you worked, Dad?”

            “Lotta little ones–thirty head or less.  This is the biggest one.”

            “I don't think I ever wanna do another.”

                ***

            The kerosene lamps were flickering weakly through the lace curtains in the windows as we parked next to the outfit car.  Davey was sound asleep and Dad carried him in.  Mom had supper ready.  “My God, look at you guys.  You're filthy.”

            “And bone tired,” Dad said.  “I think Davey is too tired to eat.  I think he just needs to go to bed.  He had a big lunch.”  Dad carried Davey to the living room and laid him on the couch.

            I ate supper, took a long warm bath, and went to bed.  I dreamed of Cora again.  She was again running among the boulders.  She'd stop, giggle, and run again.  I chased her and tried to grab her, but she always barely escaped.  Then she disappeared.  I looked for her everywhere.  I called her name.  She wasn't there.  I went around a rock and there was a huge bear eating quail chicks.  He glared at me, arose, and came toward me with his forearms spread wide.  I woke up trembling.

Chapter XV

            On Saturday, we moved to Santa Rosa.  We left Carrizozo before the local picked up our outfit car.  The local was late and Dad didn't want to wait.  We drove back through Corona, Duran, and Vaughn.  In Corona I saw Mrs. McCoy stooped, in front of her store, her hair in a net, wearing an apron, and sweeping the sidewalk.  I wonder if she knew any more about my older sister.  I should've gone back to the store alone and tried to learn more.  As we passed through Duran, I saw the pile of dirt beside the siding where Dad had dumped the salted creek sand.  In Vaughn, we stopped at the post office so that Mom could get any mail being held for us.  “Did I getta letter from Aunt Patty?”  I asked.

            “No letter from Aunt Patty, Johnny.  Don't get your hopes up that she'll answer.  She's pretty sick.  I got a letter from Uncle Fred, though.”  Mom opened and read the letter as Dad turned left onto the highway.

            “It's ten past three,” Davey said.  I looked at my wristwatch.

            “You're right.”  Davey was a pain.

            “Uncle Fred says Aunt Patty is getting worse.  He says that she got your letter and she told him to tell you that she would try to answer you soon.  He also said I should come and visit her when I can.”

            The Pecos River runs through Santa Rosa and one can fish and stuff like that.  Most of the town is on the east side of the river and the railroad cuts east-west through the north side of town.  There are artesian springs of cold water, salt cedar flats, and river overflow bogs.  It doesn't seem like a desert at all.  At the center of town is a courthouse in a plaza.  Cuervo is only sixteen miles away.  I know that Cora's family comes into Santa Rosa to shop.  I would look for her anytime we went to town.  Maybe I'd see her before we moved to Cuervo.  I wasn’t really sure why I wanted to.

            The train with the outfit car was due to arrive in town very late.  We ate dinner at a restaurant.  We each had chicken-fried steak and went to a Dairy Queen for dessert.  Mom bought a fifteen-cent cone and the rest of us got giant two-bit cones.  We drove to the depot and waited for the local.  “You guys had better go to the bathroom here.  We may not get the outhouse set up tonight,” Dad said.  Davey and I fell asleep on the waiting-benches.

                ***

            The outfit car was parked on the west side of town between the depot and the bridge over the river.  The next afternoon, after Sunday lunch, Dad asked, “You guys wanna go explore a cave?  I hear there're some caves down by Puerto del Luna.”

            “Like Carlsbad?”  Davey asked.

            “Not that big.  But you never know how far back some might go.  Let's take the Savage and the single-shot 22.  Maybe we'll hunt some cottontails on the way home.  Mary, coming with us?”

            “I'll stay and straighten up some.”

            The gravel road to Puerto del Luna followed the river south through limestone hills.  The day was hot and the humidity from the river made us sweat heavily.  We had the windows rolled down and Dad had a country and western station on the radio.  I'm so loooonesome I could cryyyyy . . . I imagined Cora listening to the same song as she sat at the kitchen table drinking Kool-Aid and listening to her mom's radio.

            We'd gone about ten miles when Dad pulled off the road to the left and parked.  Empty beer cans and broken bottles lay scattered on the ground.  “Up there on the side of the hill is supposed to be a cave.  Bring the flashlight.”

            “Can I carry the single-shot?”  Davey asked as Dad picked up the Savage and filled the magazine.

            “You'll have to take turns.  Davey can carry it on the way there and then Johnny can carry it back.  Here, you can each have three shells.”  In the pockmarked sand there was a trace of a path that led up the hillside through the salt cedar.  No one had walked on the path since the last rain.  Mosquitoes and gnats swarmed around our arms and heads.  A blue jay squawked in the distance.  Dad took the lead in following the path.  As he walked around a turn, Dad brushed away a branch.  “See there,” he said and raised the Savage.  I looked ahead and saw a skunk at the edge of the path twenty yards away.  The black and white tail was raised in the air, but the skunk seemed not to hear or see us.  Davey opened the bolt of the single-shot and put a shell in the chamber.  Dad shot.  The skunk dropped its tail and ran out of sight up the path.  “Damn.  Missed.”  Dad worked the bolt ejecting the empty and refilling the chamber.

            We walked another fifty yards on the path and stepped out of the salt cedar facing the base of a small vertical white cliff.  Loose rocks had fallen from the cliff and made a slope leading to the opening of a cave.  As we paused, looking at the cave entrance, a small skunk scurried from the right and ran into the cave.  Dad and Davey instinctively started to raise their rifles, but the skunk disappeared too quickly to take a shot.  As they lowered their rifles another skunk followed the first.  “Damn.  There must be a whole family of them,” Dad said.  “Let's go get them.”  We climbed the steep rocky slope, sliding back a step for every two we took.  “Let me have the flashlight,” Dad said as we got to the top.  The rocks had fallen into the cave as well, making a slope into the cavern.  The air from the cave was cool and musky.  Dad shined the light into the cave and swept the floor back and forth between the walls.  When the light lit the far end, several pairs of glowing yellow eyes could be seen for a moment before they vanished and reappeared close‑by.  “Let's follow them,” said Dad as he cautiously climbed down the rocks into the cave.  Davey and I followed using the daylight coming through the entrance to see our way.  The farther we went the dimmer the light became and the more we had to rely on the flashlight.  A thin layer of mud covered the floor of the cave over a bed of flat stone.  The chamber had a high ceiling and was much longer than it was wide.  Huge rocks from the roof had fallen in spots.  The only sound in the cave was that of water dripping from the ceiling into puddles.  We walked farther on the high part of the floor where it wasn't so damp and slippery.  The cavern forked at the back of the chamber.  Both branches of the cave were almost blocked by fallen rocks and it wasn't clear how far the caves extended.  “The skunks went this way,” Dad said, pointing the flashlight to the left.  I glanced back at the cave entrance and it looked like a rising half-moon, flat on the bottom.  We gingerly ducked and climbed down the sloping tunnel by stepping from one fallen boulder to the next.  Dad would stop and pass the flashlight back when we came to particularly rough spots.

            After thirty yards or so the tunnel widened into a chamber.  This chamber was much smaller than the first, but, unlike the first, had stalactites and stalagmites.  The walls glistened with moisture.  I couldn't see any sunlight from the entrance.  Dad shined the flashlight at the far end of the chamber.  The light beam reflected from water drops, like crystalline jewels, suspended at the end of the foot-long stalactites.

            “Maybe they didn't come this way,” I suggested.

            “Maybe, but I think they would've tried to stay in front of us.  Let's keep going to the other end and see if they're there.”  We walked in a single file with Dad in the lead.  He bounced the flashlight beam from immediately in front of us to the far end of the chamber.  We had gone about halfway, when he exclaimed, “Oh, no!  Here they come.”  I looked to the spot lit by the flashlight and could see three skunks briskly walking toward us with their tails raised.  “Johnny, point the flashlight so that Davey and I can shoot,” Dad commanded as he held out the flashlight.  I grabbed it and shined it on the skunks.  Davey knelt down beside Dad and I was behind and between them.  “Damn, I can't see the sights,” Dad exclaimed.  I shined the light on his gun.  “Now I can't see the skunks.”

            “And I can't see anything,” Davey said.  I crouched behind Davey and shined the flashlight down the barrel at the skunks.  When the light hit the skunks, Dad shot.  He must've just been pointing the rifle.  The shot in the small chamber of the cave sounded as if it came from a cannon.  The skunks didn't stop, but the one in the middle ejected a spray of vapor.  The misty cloud of stink expanded and filled the chamber.  Davey shot and the skunk on the left sprawled on its side and kicked vigorously several times and emptied its load of stench.  Dad coughed and Davey gagged.  I held my hand over my mouth.  My eyes burned and watered.

            “Good shot.  Johnny, help me while Davey reloads.”  Dad rested on one knee and I shined the light along his gun as I had done for Davey.  Dad hesitated, shot, and the skunk in the front was killed.  It didn't kick.  Dad worked the bolt and reloaded.

            “I'm ready,” Davey said.  The remaining skunk continued coming at us.  I took a step back so that the flashlight would shine on both Dad and Davey.  The horrible smell was much worse when I stood.  Davey wiped his eyes with his right hand.  The skunk was about five yards away.  The flashlight showed its bared teeth and glaring eyes.  Dad and Davey both shot at the same time.  The skunk spun around and tried to escape, but, after a couple of staggering steps, fell down and didn't get up.

            “Let's get outta here,” Dad said and stood.  “Stay down as far as possible,” Dad commanded as he quickly stooped again.  I was in front and led the way lighting the path in front of me.

            “You're losing us, Johnny.  Not so fast.”  When we got to the connecting tunnel the smell became terribly sickening.  The smell was a concentrated mist that flowed through the narrow passageway.  We all coughed and wiped our eyes.  Dad started laughing.  “A fine pickle we got ourselves into, huh?”

            “I just wanna get outta here,” Davey said as we climbed into the dim light of the outer chamber.  The air was better and I took a deep breath.  “Whew,” Davey said.  The light from the entrance was in front of us, so climbing out of the cavern was quicker.  The sunlight outside seemed blindingly bright.

            “Let's take a break,” Dad said as he sat on a flat rock.  “I can't believe we got caught like that.  That's the first time I ever saw a skunk go after a man.  I'd thought they'd stay as far away as possible,” he said, shaking his head and laughing.  He leaned the gun against the rock and rolled a cigarette.

            “I shot two of them,” Davey said.

            “You think you got that last one, huh?”  Dad asked.

            “I had him right in my sights.”

            “Maybe we both shot him.  I'm just glad someone shot him or otherwise we'd had to get outta there a lot quicker,” Dad paused.  “God, Whatta stink.  I wonder if our clothes smell?”  I put my shirttail to my nose.

            “Seems OK.”

            “Your nose is probably so overloaded it can't smell anything.”

                ***

            “Good God, who got sprayed by a skunk?”  Mom asked when we opened the door of the outfit car.

            “None of us.  Is it strong?”  Dad asked.

            “It's terrible.  Whoever it is, go take off your clothes.  You're gonna stink up the whole house.”

            “It's probably all of us.  We got caught in a cave with some mad skunks and they pretty well stunk up the whole cave.”

            “Get outside, all of you.  I'll get you some clothes and you can go change in the tool car,” Mom commanded.  “Leave your dirty clothes there.”  We changed clothes–socks, shorts, everything and returned to the outfit car.

            “That's better, but you all need to take baths tonight.  You still stink a little bit,” Mom said.  Davey told her the whole story about the skunks and the cave–claiming he had shot two of the three.  “What were you doing?”  Mom asked me.

            “I was holding the flashlight so they could shoot.”

            “I think you were lucky, you didn't get bit by a rabid skunk,” Mom said, paused, and changed the subject.

            “I'm gonna go to Tucumcari tomorrow to see Aunt Patty.”

            “Can I come?”  I asked.  Maybe Aunt Patty had answered my letter but hadn't mailed it and I could get it.

            “I don't wanna go,” Davey said.

            “I think I'd rather leave you guys here, if you think you'll be OK.  She's very sick and a whole lotta visitors isn't gonna do her any good.”

            “Goody, goody, we getta stay home,” Davey chanted.  I was disappointed and was thinking how I could ask Mom to ask about the letter.  I couldn't think of any way without making a big deal out of it and being a bother.

            “Will you be OK?  Not get into any jackpots?”

            “Sure.  We'll be fine,” Davey declared.

            “I'll come home for lunch and check on them,” Dad said.

            “Can you stop at Cuervo and tell Ray and Cora we're coming?”  I asked.

            “I'll see.”

            Mom had made enchiladas for supper.  Dad had a stack of four topped with an egg.  Davey and I had stacks of three without eggs.

                ***

            “There's hot‑dog stuff in the icebox.  If you need help, go to the depot.  I'll be home this afternoon before Dad,” Mom said as she got into the car.

            “It's ten before nine.  Whatta you wanna do?”  Davey asked as he put his watch back in his pocket.  I hadn't put my wristwatch on yet.  It was on the dresser.

            “Let's make parachutes,” I suggested.

            “OK.  I'll get the bandannas and some string,” Davey answered.  Davey returned with two bandannas and a ball of twine.  We tied string to each corner of the bandannas, cut the string with our pocketknives to a foot long, and then tied all four ends to a small iron bolt.  We then rolled the string and the bandanna around the bolt forming a ball.

            “OK, let's go.  The red bandanna is mine.”  Davey said as he went out the door.  When he was outside he threw the rolled-up ball as high as he could.  As the ball came down, it unrolled, formed a little parachute, and floated down.  It was hard to throw it high enough and sometimes the ball would unroll on the way up or not unroll on the way down.

            I had an idea.  “Why don't we go drop them off of the bridge,” I suggested.

            Davey turned around grinning.  “We wouldn't even have to roll them up.  We could just drop them.  Let's go.”

            “They might land in a place we can't get to.”

            “We'll be careful.  Let's go!”  Davey urged.

            “Let me get my watch.  Remember Dad is coming back for lunch.”  I ran into the outfit car and to the living room where our dresser was.  I could imagine the parachutes gently floating down from the bridge and hanging in the air for a long time.  I had put my watch on the dresser for the night.  I was snapping the buckle on my wristwatch when I slipped.  I don't know exactly how it happened but the watch fell to the floor.  I quickly picked it up and looked at it.  The second hand wasn't moving.  I put it to my ear.  It was silent.  God, I had broken it, just like Dad had said I would.  I gently shook it and listened again.  No sound.  A chill surrounded me.  I sat on the sofa and looked at the watch.  What had I done to deserve this?  Why was God punishing me?  I wondered how much it would cost to get it fixed.  I had about three dollars.  There was no way to get it fixed without Dad knowing.

            “Johnny, let's go.  Hurry up,” Davey yelled through the kitchen screen door.  I buckled the watch and decided to wear it, to pretend it was working, and not say anything for awhile.  I needed time to think about what to do.  I grabbed my straw hat from the dresser.

            “I'm coming.”

                ***

            The river had cut a gorge deep in the prairie so the bridge was high above the water.  The railroad was visible for miles from the bridge so no train could sneak up on us.  My watch felt as if it weighed a ton.  I glanced at it hoping to see it running.  Stopped.  We ran to the center of the bridge and looked down.  The river was far below.  We could see the tops of trees and the carpet of salt cedars lining the river.  “Where're you gonna drop it so it doesn't get hung up?”  I asked.

            “On the river bank,” Davey said as he spread the parachute, leaned over the fence, and dropped it.  The bright red bandanna billowed out and the parachute gently dropped with the bolt hanging down swinging back and forth.  The riverbank was a narrow–maybe four feet wide–strip of bare sand.  The parachute hung in the air for a long time–much longer than anytime when we threw it up.  It drifted as it fell.

            “It's gonna go into the river,” I said as it dropped and seemed smaller.  The bolt hit with a small white splash.  The bandanna spread on the surface of the water, hesitated, and sank.

            “OK, now we know which direction the wind is blowing,” Davey said.  “We need to get closer to the end of the bridge.”

            “You think we can be accurate enough?  We'll just lose mine, too.”

            “If you don't wanna drop it, give it to me.  I can hit the sand.”  I held opposite corners, let the bolt hang loose, and dropped the blue handkerchief.  The parachute billowed and drifted toward the river.  Davey leaned over the guardrail to watch the parachute fall.  It might have hit the river’s edge if it hadn't snagged the top of a cottonwood first.  A startled sparrow flew away.  As Davey straightened, a guide wire hit the rim of his hat and knocked it off.  The hat sailed down and followed the parachute into the top of a tree.  Davey watched his hat without saying a word.

            “Maybe we can climb up the trees and get them,” Davey said.

            “Those trees are really tall.  I don't think we can climb them.”

            “Come on.  Let's see.”

            We ran to the end of the bridge and climbed down the side of the gorge.  A path was worn by fishermen.

            “Which trees?”  I asked, looking upward.  The trees were so full with branches and leaves that the tops were hidden.  Davey squinted, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked from tree to tree.

            “We couldn't climb any of these trees anyway.”

                ***

            Dad came home and made lunch from hot-dogs and pork and beans.  I wanted to tell him about the watch, but I couldn't find the right moment.  I knew he would be extremely upset.  I worried that I might get a spanking.  I tried to keep my wrist turned so that no one could see it.  If my older sister were here I'd ask her what to do.  She'd know.  She'd talk to Dad.  She'd make it OK.

            “Let's go fishing next Saturday,” Dad said as he sat.

            “Oh, boy!  At the reservoir like last year?”  Davey asked.

            “Sounds good,” Dad said.

Chapter XVI

            Davey and I played Authors and War until Mom returned home.  She had some more Life magazines.  I wore my watch and hadn't told anyone about breaking it–not even Davey.  “How's Aunt Patty?”  I asked.

            “Not so good.  She slept most of the time I was there.  She's taking a lotta medicine.  Looking very weak.”

            “Did she say anything about the letter I wrote?”

            “No.  She barely knew who I was.  What did you guys do all day?  Did Dad come home for lunch?”

            Davey answered, “Dad came home.  We played parachutes.  I'm sorry, but we lost a couple of bandannas.”

            “Did you stop at Cuervo?”  I asked.

            “No, sorry, Johnny.  I was running late and didn't wanna take the time.  We'll be there in less than two weeks and then you can talk to Cora all you want.”  Mom started peeling potatoes for supper.  “How did you lose the bandannas?”

            “They accidentally floated into the river,” Davey answered.  I waited for Davey to tell about the loss of his hat.

            “Well I hope you used the old ones.”

            “Dad said we're going fishing next Saturday,”

                ***

            On Saturday morning we rose early.  I fretted about my watch all week.  I hadn't told anyone and continued to put it on each morning.  No one had noticed that it wasn't running.  I'm sure that Dad will say, “I told you so,” when he finds out.  I hoped I wouldn't get a spanking.

            We had to go kill a couple of jack rabbits for bait.  We usually found rabbits on the way to the reservoir, but, if we didn't, Dad wanted to make sure we had enough time to go somewhere else.  The reservoir was on the north side of the tracks on the east side of town.  You had to go on a little dirt road for a couple of miles.  There wasn't an easy way to get there, but that meant there weren't many people there usually.  Davey and I rode in the back of the car and looked out the windows for a jack rabbit.  Mom and I looked to the right and Dad and Davey looked to the left.  We had each side covered twice.  The sun was in front of us and had been up for about a half-hour.  The shadows were long.

            “Can I shoot it Dad, if it's on my side?”  I asked.

            “I better do it this time.  We wanna get to fishing as quick as we can.  Can't afford any misses.”

            “I wouldn't miss,” I defended myself.

            “I think I'd better do it this time.  You'll get your chance when we go after cottontails again.”

            Dad had the Savage 22 in the front.  Dad saw a rabbit crouching underneath a cactus with its ears laid back.  Dad stopped, propped the gun against the car door, and shot it.  “Let me go get it,” Davey said as he jumped out.  As Davey ran to get the rabbit, Dad opened the trunk.

            “Put him in the trunk on the tow-sack,” Dad said when Davey returned straining to hold the rabbit up by the hind legs.  “Don’t get it tangled up with the fishing stuff.”  The rabbit's ears were dragging on the ground.  We drove on slowly, continuing to search.

            “There's a roadrunner,” Mom said, looking ahead.  The roadrunner was crossing the road twenty yards ahead.  It had a lizard in its beak.

            “Let's shoot it,” Davey said.

            “Can't.  It's against the law.  They're the state bird.  Besides they kill rattlesnakes.  And they never stop long enough to shoot at,” Dad explained as the roadrunner disappeared behind a mesquite.

            We killed a second rabbit close to the reservoir.  The rabbit was on the right side, so Dad had to put the gun across the front seat.  Mom leaned back to make room.  It took only one shot.

            When we arrived at the reservoir, Davey and I each dragged a rabbit and carried our fishing poles over our shoulders.  Dad took the rest of the fishing gear–a bucket, a tarp, the tackle box, and his fishing pole.  Mom brought the water bag and the picnic basket filled with a thermos, some orange juice, and donuts.  We trudged about a hundred yards down a gravel slope to the edge of the water.

            The sky was clear and it looked as if the day was going to be a scorcher.  “Where's your hat, Davey?”  Mom asked.

            “I can't find it.”

            “It must be at the house somewhere.”

            “I looked everywhere.”  Davey hadn't lied, but he hadn't told all he could either.

            Dad cut little chunks of flesh off the rabbits and baited the hooks for us.  Catfish ate off the bottom so we put a heavy weight with the baited hook and cast it as far as we could.  We reeled in the slack and sat on a log, waiting for something to pull the line.  Davey pulled out his watch.  “Started fishing at ten minutes past seven.”  We set our poles in the fork of a branch stuck in the ground.  Dad and Mom were sitting together on a tarp, smoking cigarettes, and drinking coffee from the thermos.  They were talking and laughing.  Their poles were also propped in a branch fork.

            Waiting got boring, so after awhile I walked along the water's edge looking for lost fishing sinkers and lures.  Birds ran before me stopping and pecking at unseen morsels.  Dad yelled, “Johnny, you got a bite.”  I looked at my pole.  The tip was bobbing and jerking.  I ran to it, yanked to set the hook, and started reeling in the fish.  Catfish don't fight much and feel like a dead weight.  Dad let me reel the fish in, but he took the catfish off the hook.  He was afraid that I'd get stuck by the catfish's whiskers and get blood poisoning.  He wore a glove on his left hand and held the fish right behind the head as he used a pair of pliers to remove the hook.  We put the fish in the bucket

            “Did I reel him in OK?”  I asked.

            “You got him in, didn't you?”

            I re-baited and cast my line again.  If the fish weren't biting, we had to reel in and refresh the bait every half-hour or so.  It could get boring.  We should’ve brought our BB guns.  Davey and I played mumble peg with our pocketknives.  We had fun until I flipped my knife and the blade partially stuck and the handle leaned against a dirt clod.  We got in a big argument whether it was stuck.  Davey walked away saying he wasn't going to play with a cheat.  I claimed that since he quit I had won.  We didn't finish the mumble peg game.

            We stayed until lunchtime.  The donuts had been eaten.  The only fish caught was the one I caught.  “Well, I guess we know who the fisherman is,” I teased.

            Dad looked at me and grinned a bit.  “Yeah, sure.  Wait until next time, smarty-pants.”

            Davey looked at his watch, “Stopped fishing at twenty past twelve.”

            That evening, Mom skinned my fish, rolled it in corn meal, and fried it for me.  I was the only one eating fish.  Catfish doesn’t have a have a strong fishy taste.  After supper I looked at my watch.  I had to say something.  “My watch isn't running,” I said.

            “What?  Let me see,” Dad said.  I took it off and handed it to him.  He looked at it, shook it, and put it to his ear.  “When did it stop?”

            “Sometime today, I guess,” I lied.

            “When was it last running?”

            “I remember looking at it this morning,” I said truthfully.

            “Did you drop it or did something hit it?”  Mom asked.

            “Not that I remember,” I continued lying.

            “I knew that that damned wrist watch was a mistake,” Dad said as he stubbed his cigarette out angrily.

            “Guess we gotta get it fixed,” Mom said.

            “Damn, probably cost an arm and a leg.  I'll send it to the watch inspector in El Paso.  See what he says,” Dad said.

            I went to bed relieved that at least I didn't have to hide the watch anymore.  I had lied, but I hadn't got a spanking.  Drifting into sleep I thought of Cora and Cuervo.  In a week we'd be there.  I kept thinking of her blue eyes.  Only sixteen miles away.

               ***

            Sunday morning was slow and lazy.  Mom had finished cleaning up after breakfast and was crocheting a white doily.  Dad worked on the car a little bit; changed the oil, gapped the spark plugs, that sort of thing.  Davey liked to try to help.  I don't think Davey was much help.  Mostly ran to get a tool or something.  I stayed inside and played with the F-80.  I practiced throwing it so it landed properly. 

            “Let's go to the park,” Dad announced as he walked in wiping his hands on a rag.  Davey followed him.

            “What time?”  Davey said as he got his watch out and looked at it.  What a twerp.  His thing with the watch was getting on my nerves.

            “Let's have a picnic lunch.”

            “I gotta go to the store,” Mom said as she put her crocheting aside.

            “Picnic!  Picnic!”  Davey yelled as he jumped up and down.

            “I looked for your hat, Davey, and I couldn't find it either.  When did you last have it?”

            “I think I had it in the cave.”  This wasn't really a lie, I guess.

            “You probably left it there with the skunks.”

            “Why don't you get the horseshoes, Davey, and put ‘em in the car.”  Dad commanded.

            “Can we take our BB guns?”  I asked.

            “Better not.  On a pretty Sunday afternoon, there'll probably be other people around with little kids and all.”

            We went to the city park south of town beside the Pecos River.  We carried the picnic basket to a table in a corner of the park formed by the river and an overflow pond.  The pond looked as if it was connected to the river only when the river was high.  When the river was lower, like now, a boggy strip of black mud fifty yards long, dotted with pockets of dirty water, connected it to the river.  The pond had a fishy stink.  Dragonflies darted in and out among the cattails and reeds.  Davey ran to the edge of the river.  “Maybe I can find the bandanna,” he said.  Dad set up the horseshoes.

            Mom spread lunch on the table.  “What're we gonna talk about today?”  Mom asked as we sat and grabbed for sandwiches.  Mom had poured glasses of grape Kool-Aid for Davey and me.  Davey drank his without stopping and motioned for a refill.  He had a purple mustache that he didn't quite lick off.

            “Do we have to talk about anything?”  Davey sniveled.

            “Does anybody know who Holden Caulfield is?”  She asked.

            “A senator or something?”  I guessed.

            “Nope.  Anybody else?”

            “He's the kid in that new book,” Dad answered.

            “Dad's right.  Johnny, do you know what book we're talking about?”  She sounded like a teacher.

            “No,” I answered.

            “It's written by J. D. somebody-or-the-other,” Dad volunteered.

            “Catcher in the Rye.  It's about a boy just a bit older than you are.  I think you'd enjoy it.”

            I reached for a handful of potato chips.  “What did he do?”

            “It's not so much about what he does, but about what he thinks.  Would you like to read it?”

            “What he thinks?  How can that be interesting?”

            “Read it and find out,” Mom challenged.

            “Does it have pictures of what he's thinking?”  Davey asked.

            “No, it doesn't have pictures.  It's a grown-up's book,” Mom sneered.

            “OK, I'll try, but if it's not interesting, I'm not gonna read much of it.”

            Dad rolled a cigarette from his Prince Albert can, grabbed a couple of cookies, and strolled toward the overflow pond.  “I'll getta copy from the library for you,” Mom declared.  I suspect she felt as if she had won a victory.  She means well.

            “Jesuz Christ, almighty, look out there,” Dad yelled from beside the pond, pointing to the middle.  Davey jumped up and ran toward Dad.  I followed him.

            “What is it, Dave?  What you see?”  Mom asked as she walked behind us.

            “A huge catfish.  Look at that thing,” Dad answered as he pointed to about ten yards out in the pond.  I saw the fish.  It was huge–four or five feet long.  It was too big to be covered by the bog water and part of its back fin stuck out.  It tried to swim, but there wasn't enough water and it just slithered and thrashed around.

            “It's a whale,” Davey exclaimed.

            “It's been stranded there,” Mom said as she shaded her eyes with her hand.  Davey picked up a rock and threw at the fish.  He missed by a mile.

            “I ain't never seen a fish that big,” Dad said as he inched closer.  “Mary, go home and get the washtub.  I'm gonna get that fish.”

            “Oh, Dave, you don't want that fish.  What are you gonna do with it?”

            “Maybe we'll eat it.  Do as I said.  Go get the washtub.”

            “You want me to drive all the way home, get the washtub, and bring it back here?”  I could tell Mom thought the idea was ridiculous.  I could also tell that Dad didn't notice what Mom thought.

            “Yes, and bring the rope, too.”  Mom walked toward the car shaking her head.

            “Davey, don't throw any more rocks,” Dad said.  Ten minutes later, Mom returned.  Davey took out his watch every thirty seconds or so.  Dad took the rope and made a lasso loop in one end and handed me the other end.  “Johnny, hold onto this,” Dad commanded as he sat to take off his shoes and socks.  He rolled up his pants' legs and stepped gingerly into the muck and mire of the pond.  He sank to above his ankles.  The farther he went the more he sank.  When he got to the fish, he was almost up to his knees.  He reached down and touched the fish.  The catfish tried to swim away, but couldn't go far.  Dad took another step and slowly put the loop around the tail and then suddenly jerked the rope.  The loop tightened and the fish struggled, trying to get away but only made the loop tighter.

            “You got it!  You got it!”  Davey yelled as Dad almost fell taking a quick step back to get out of the way of the fish.  I pulled the rope tight.

            “Oh, good grief,” Mom exclaimed as Dad retraced his steps.

            “Don't let it get away from you,” Dad ordered as he climbed out of the pool.  His rolled up pants' legs were wet at the bottom and his legs were coated with black gook.  “Let me have the rope.”  I gave it to him and stepped aside.  Dad grabbed the rope and gradually pulled the fighting fish closer to the edge of the pond where Davey was bouncing up and down.  The fish grew weaker and struggled less.

            “He's huge,” Davey said.

            “OK, we gotta get it outta the pond.  Everybody grab the rope and when I say 'three' pull hard,” Dad said.  “Come on Davey, Mary.  Need your help.”  We grabbed on.  “One–two–three.”  We all pulled and dragged the fish onto the grass.  “Gotta get it farther from the pond,” Dad directed, so we all kept pulling until the fish was ten yards or so up on the grassy bank away from the bog.

            “Damn, look at it.  Must be a hundred pounds,” Dad said as he gently pushed the fish with his bare foot.  The smooth, scaleless skin of the fish was blue-black on top and white on the bottom.  Around its mouth were about ten long whiskers.  Its head was broad and the size of a bucket.  Its gills were opening and closing weakly.

            Dad picked the washtub up and slid one edge underneath the fish's head as far as it would go.  “Johnny, as I lift its tail high, I want you to push the tub down flat.  Understand?  And we'll just slide him in.”  I grabbed the top edge of the tub.  Dad grabbed the rope right next to the fish and lifted the tail.  I pulled down on the top edge of the tub and Dad swung the tail toward me.  The fish plopped into the tub with only its tail sticking out.  “There.”

            Dad threw the rope in on top of the fish and looked at me.  “Who's the fisherman, now, mister smarty pants?”  I didn't say anything.  Catching this fish wasn't the same as catching a fish with a hook.

            “Dave, look at yourself.  You're a mess and you stink to high heaven.  That fish doesn't smell very good either,” Mom told Dad.  She was right.  The stink, from the muck and mire of the pond, on Dad and the smell of the fish pushed me back.

            “I'll go wash off in the river,” Dad said as he headed for the riverbank.

            When he came back he was clean and had his pants' legs pulled down.  As he put his shoes and socks on, Mom, Davey, and I gathered the picnic stuff and put everything in the car.  All four of us lifted the washtub with the fish and put it in the trunk and drove back to the outfit car.  The car smelt like fish.

            “Can I roll it in corn meal?”  Davey asked.  Mom and Dad laughed.

            “This is one fish story where the fish didn't get away.  I wanna take a picture of me and that fish,” Dad said as we set the washtub on the ground.  The catfish wasn't moving and the stink was sickening.  “I wanna hang the fish from the clothesline pole and I'll stand beside it holding the fishing rod.”  The fishing rod hadn’t had anything to do with the fish.

            “Then what're you gonna do with the fish?”  Mom asked.

            “Maybe give it away.  Get the camera.”  Dad dragged the tub underneath the clothesline pole and strung the rope over the crossarm and started tugging.  The tail of the fish was lifted.  “You guys help.”  Davey and I grabbed the rope and started heaving.  The tail reached the crossarm.  “Pull the tub away.”  I took the handle, tipped the tub, and pulled it so that the fish's head came out.  The fish had a lot of black muck smeared on it.  Flies swarmed.

            Dad tied the rope as Mom came out with the Kodak.  Dad stood beside the fish with one hand on the tail of the fish and held his fishing rod vertical.  He grinned widely and Mom snapped the camera.  “OK, let's get it down,” Dad commanded.  As we lowered the fish, pieces of sun-baked mud flaked off.

            “What're you gonna do with it, now?”  Mom asked with a hand on her hip.  Dad sighed, took a step back, rolled a cigarette, and looked at the fish.  About half of its tail curled above the washtub.  Flies were crawling on its eyes and into its gills.  “How am I gonna get the stink outta my washtub?”

            “Help me put it in the car.  I'll see if any of the section gang wants it.”  We unloaded the picnic stuff, put the washtub and fish in, and Dad drove away.  It was an hour before Dad returned.  The fish was gone and the tub was clean.

            “Are they gonna eat it?”  Davey asked.

            “I don't think so,” Dad responded.

            “Did you give it to them?”  Mom asked.

            “No, they didn't want it.”

            “What did you do with it?”  Davey asked.

            “I got rid of it.”

Chapter XVII

            Finally, we were driving to Cuervo.  It was Saturday morning and we'd be in Cuervo in ten minutes.  For the whole summer I'd wished we were in Cuervo and now it was almost true.  I hadn't slept well last night.  I tossed and turned and waited for dawn.  Two weeks in Cuervo and then back to Vaughn for the school year to start.  The summer was almost over, but the best part was about to start.  Two weeks with Cora.

            “It's ten-thirty,” Davey announced.

            “Oh, that reminds me.  I sent your wrist watch to El Paso yesterday,” Dad said.

            “When will it come back?”  I asked.

            “A week or so I'd guess.”

            “I hope it doesn't cost much,” Mom said.  I looked out the window.  The outfit car was supposed to arrive in the early afternoon.  Last year we were parked about a hundred yards from Cora's house.

            “I need to visit Aunt Patty again.  Probably go on Monday,” Mom said.  I still had no answer to my letter.

            “Can we stay home like last time?”  Davey asked.

            “I'd like to go if I can,” I said.

            “I thought you wanted to spend time with, uh–what's her name?  Oh, Cora,” Dad said.  He glanced back and grinned.

            “Maybe Cora and Ray can go with us,” I said.  “Then Davey wouldn’t get bored.”

            “The bunch of you would make too much noise.  It's probably better if you stay home.”  We topped the last ridge before Cuervo.  Red Hill stood alone two miles to the north.  You could see the big rocks on its side where they had fallen from the top of the sandstone mesa.  “Let's stop at Lopez's and I'll get some stuff to make lunch,” Mom said.

            When Dad stopped the car, I jumped out.  “I'll be right back.  I'm gonna see Ray and Cora and tell them we're here.”  I ran before anyone could say anything to stop me.  I followed the path between Lopez's and the liquor store, across the tracks, and down onto the side road.  As I ran, my feet kicked up wisps of powdery dust from the road.  Pancho, a cocker spaniel who belonged to the section foreman, barked at me from their yard.  I ran to the kitchen door of Cora's house and knocked.  I heard the radio inside.  The door opened.

            Mrs. Jones, Cora's mother, said, “Well, Johnny Baker.  What're you doing here?  Where's your family?”  She looked at the driveway and the road trying to find our car.

            “They're at Lopez's.  We're moving back for a couple of weeks.  Are Ray and Cora here?”

            “I heard your Dad was coming on relief.  Ray is out playing somewhere.  Cora is at her grandmother's in Clayton.”  The words hit me cold.  I paused and blinked.

            “When's she coming back?”  I couldn't believe it.  I had waited all summer to see Cora and when I get to Cuervo, she's gone.

            “Oh, she'll be back next weekend, so you'll get to see her.  She's changed a lot since last summer.  Grown up.  Become quite the young lady.”

            I stood speechless for a moment.  A whole week.  I'll have to wait a whole week.  But at least I'll see her.  Another week of waiting.  Mrs. Jones paused for a moment, probably waiting for me to say something, and said, “Well, tell your Mom and Dad hello for me.  Maybe they can come over sometime and we can play some more canasta.”

            I gathered my wits.  “OK, Mrs. Jones.  Thanks.  Tell Ray we'll see him in a little bit.”

            “OK, Johnny.  Good to see you again.  Ray will be happy that you're back.”  After spending all summer with Davey, it’ll be fun to spend some time with Ray.

            I turned and slowly retraced my steps.  Life can change quickly.  Just a couple of minutes ago I was excited and now I have another long week to wait.  If my older sister were here, I could talk to her and she'd explain it to me.  I could talk to Aunt Patty, too, and she'd make me laugh.  There wasn't anybody else that would understand and could make me feel better.  Dad would tease me.  Mom would try to help.  A tear fell and made a dark brown dimpled spot in the dust on the road.  I sighed, wiped my eyes, and ran back to the car.

            “I didn't think we'd see you again,” Dad said as I got in the car.

            “Here's a sandwich,” Mom offered.

            “Did you see Ray and Cora?”  Davey asked.

            I took a bite of the sandwich.  Pickle‑pimento loaf.  “Ray was there, but I didn’t see him.  Cora is with her grandmother.”

            “Is she coming back soon?”  Mom asked.

            “Yeah, next week.  Mrs. Jones said for y’all to come over and play canasta sometime.”

                ***

            It was dark when the knocking on the door awoke me.  Dad, wearing only his pants, had a flashlight as he came through the living room to see who was at the door.  Mom followed him, tying the cloth belt of her housecoat.

            Dad opened the door.  “Dave, the dispatcher asked me to bring this telegram to you.  He thought you'd wanna get it as soon as possible,” somebody said from outside.  Mom lit a kerosene lamp on the kitchen table.

            “OK.  Tell him I appreciate it.”  Dad shut the door, sat beside the lamp, and tore open the envelope.  I sat up in bed and watched Mom and Dad.  Davey was asleep.  Mom nervously lit a cigarette.

            “What is it, Dave?  Is it Aunt Patty?”  Mom asked.

            “Yeah, afraid so,” Dad said as he handed the telegram to Mom and took one of Mom's cigarettes.”  Mom read the telegram and laid it on the table.  “Stove is still hot.  I'll put some coffee on.”

            “What is it, Mom?  What's happened?”  I asked.  Mom rose, walked into the living room, and sat on the edge of my bed.  She put her hand on my arm.

            “Aunt Patty died yesterday,” she said softly.  Davey rolled over causing the bed to creak.  I shivered.  The words sounded empty.  I stared at Mom.  There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

            “How do you know?  Are you sure?”  I asked and then felt it was a silly thing to ask, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.  My throat was tight and I could only breath in short breathes.

            “Uncle Fred sent a telegram.”  I lay back in the bed.  I could smell brewing coffee and hear the perking.

            “What's wrong?”  Davey asked as he propped himself up on one elbow.

            “Aunt Patty died,” Mom answered.

            “Oh,” Davey said quietly.

            “You OK, son?”  Mom asked me.

            “Yeah.”

            Mom returned to the kitchen.  Davey lay down on his side.  I rolled over to look into the kitchen.  Cigarette smoke hung layered in the air.  “Guess we should go there today,” Mom said to Dad.  Dad poured two cups of coffee.  Davey was asleep again.  I couldn't imagine Aunt Patty dead.  I had never before seen a dead person.  She didn't seem very old to me.  She was younger than Grandma or Granddad Baker.  She was younger than Granddad Henderson.  Why did she, instead of one of them, have to die?  A year ago she was perfectly OK.  I knew I was going to miss the love she always gave me.  There was no one to take her place.  Not even an older sister.

            I heard bits of the conversation from the kitchen–”I knew this day was coming, but...,”  “I guess the funeral will be on Wednesday...,” “Where do you think Fred will bury her?”, “...will Fred live by himself or....”  I dozed and drifted in and out of a fog of being neither asleep nor awake.  I dreamed that Cora came back, but she was really Aunt Patty.  She tried to tousle my hair, but couldn't quite reach me.  She'd try to step toward me, but it was extremely difficult as if she was in thick mud, and the distance between us, for some reason, would grow.  Her arm was never long enough to touch me.  She was looking at me with a half-sad face that was half-grinning with understanding.

            Mom shook me.  “Johnny, get up and dressed.  We're going to Tucumcari to Uncle Fred's.  Davey wake up.  Breakfast is on the table.”

                ***

            There were several cars parked in front when we arrived.  Though it was daylight, lights were turned on inside.  The front door was open.  A couple of ladies I'd never seen were on the porch.  We stepped from the car.  Dad wore a white shirt and Mom wore her dark purple dress.  I had seen her wear that dress for her tenth wedding anniversary.  Alice opened the screen door and ran toward Mom.  They met and hugged each other on the sidewalk.

            “Oh, Mary, she's–finally gone.”  Alice spoke in snips.

            “Was she at peace?”

            “She'd had a restless day, but she–was asleep.  She skipped a breath, then she–skipped a couple, and then she just wasn't–breathing at all.”  Alice turned toward Dad.  “Hello, Dave.  Hello, boys.”  She smiled at us, but her eyes were tearing.

            Dad answered, “Alice.  Anyone else make it yet?”

            “Ellen is here.”  Ellen was Alice's younger sister.  “I don't think anyone else will come until–the funeral.”

            “How's Uncle Fred?”  Mom asked.

            “As well as can be expected.  He didn't sleep at all last night.”  Mom took Alice's hand and led her back into the house.  Dad, Davey, and I followed.  The women on the porch were introduced as church ladies.  Uncle Fred was sitting in a stuffed rocker in the living room.  Ellen was sitting on a stool beside him cupping his left hand in hers.  Uncle Fred was a tall stout man with straight black hair.  His skin was deeply tanned and wrinkled.  He wore blue denim coveralls.  Mom stepped quickly forward and knelt beside him.

            “Uncle Fred, how are you doing?”

            “We're doing fine, Mary, bless your heart.  You got my telegram.  Good of you to come.”

            “Oh, you knew we’d be here,” Mom answered.

            There were a couple more ladies inside and the table was covered with dishes of food.  Ellen's husband, Ned, holding a half-eaten donut, stood next to the sink.  Ned was the shortest grownup in the room.  He had dark brown hair and bushy eyebrows, which he raised and lowered as he talked.  He was thin and his black suit hung loosely.  Dad walked to him and held out his hand.  Ned wiped his hand on a kitchen towel and shook hands.

            “Ned.”

            “Dave.  Coffee is fresh.”

            Mom spoke to Uncle Fred and Ellen; “Do you know who else is coming?”

            Ellen answered, “We sent telegrams to Uncle Lou, Uncle Will, Aunt Mary, and Uncle Hugh.  We got an answer from Uncle Hugh.  He wants to speak at the service.  Haven't heard from anyone else, yet.”

             The door to Aunt Patty's bedroom was shut and I wondered if she was inside.  I felt in the way and ignored.  Aunt Patty was an adult who really paid attention to me.  Without her I probably wouldn't even be alive.  I felt alone.  I went to the backyard and sat on the steps.  I picked up a handful of gravel from the flowerbed and tossed the stones one at a time at bees.  Cora, older sister, Aunt Patty–gone.

            Davey came out eating a cinnamon roll.  “Wanna play mumble peg?”

            I threw the rest of the gravel back.  “Sure.”

                ***

            It was early afternoon when we drove back to Cuervo.  “Where was Aunt Patty?”  I asked Mom.

            “The funeral home came and got her yesterday.”

            “What are the plans for the funeral?”  Dad asked Mom.

            “The services will be on Wednesday at ten o'clock and the burial will be in Duran.”  After a minute Mom continued, “Ellen is pregnant.  She wishes Aunt Patty could've seen her first grandchild.”  I tried to picture Aunt Patty holding a baby.  I don't think Aunt Patty could like another kid as much as she liked me.

                ***

            On Monday we saw Ray again.  He had grown about four inches since last summer.  He had a new hobby.  For Christmas he had received a set of leather working tools.  He showed us his belt.  He had bought the belt blank and, with the tools, made a pattern of roses and stars, but the important detail was his name stenciled in the back.  He said that his next project was a pair of chaps for his dad, who rode horses a lot.

            Mom told him about Aunt Patty when he asked where we had been on Sunday.  He tried to ride my bicycle with Davey.  He was just learning and he’d fall down, get up, try again, and fall again.  Ray knew a lot about horses and ranching, but not much about other things.

                ***

            We drove from Uncle Fred's to the funeral home with five other cars.  Ned drove the first car with Ellen, Alice, and Uncle Fred.  Aunt Mary and a couple of her kids, whom I didn't know, were in the next car followed by a car with Uncle Hugh's family.  Uncle Lou and Uncle Will, wearing large Stetsons, rode in one car with their wives.  The parking lot was big and as I stepped out of the car I could feel the warmth of the asphalt heated by the sun.

            As he walked from the car, Uncle Hugh, wearing sunglasses, clasped a Bible with both hands in front of him.  Uncle Lou and Uncle Will wore black suits, cowboy boots, and bola ties.  They left their hats in the car.  The women all wore dark dresses.  Alice and Ellen were on either side of Uncle Fred and had their arms hooked in his.  Dad wore his suit.  He looked awkward and self-conscious.  Davey and I wore our good shoes, which Mom had made us polish.  Mom carried a handkerchief.

            Ned led the group silently into the funeral home.  Organ music was softly playing.  An usher handed us a white program.  Several strangers were already seated.  In front of the room was an open casket lined with white satin and surrounded by flower bouquets.  Uncle Fred, Alice, and Ellen walked to the casket.  Other people formed a line behind them.  Alice reached inside the casket, but I couldn't see what she did.  As they left, Ellen was sobbing and dabbing her eyes.  Alice was patting Uncle Fred's arm.

            “Do you boys wanna see Aunt Patty?”  Mom asked.

            I nodded my head.  Davey said, “Not unless I gotta.”

            “You don't gotta.  Stay here until we get back.”  Dad led Mom and me to the back of the line.  When we got next to the casket I could barely see over the top and stepped up on a stool.  Aunt Patty was dressed in a blue dress patterned with bouquets of tiny colored flowers.  It had long sleeves that covered her crossed arms.  Her pale hands held a single big red rose.  She wore her half-moon glasses.  Her eyes were closed and her face was thin.  Someone had put some lipstick on her.  Her gray hair was nicely curled and looked very natural.  She was still.  I wanted to shake her awake.  I wanted her to get up.  I wanted her to talk to me about Cora.  I wanted to hear her laugh.

            “Let's go, son,” Mom said.  We walked back and sat beside Davey.

            “Did she look dead?”  Davey whispered to me.

            “Shhh,” I whispered back and started crying.  I buried my face in Mom's arm.  She put her other hand on the back of my head.

                ***

            The cars, with their lights on, followed the hearse from Tucumcari into the cemetery at Duran.  Two Mexicans leaned on shovels on the far side.  They removed their hats when the hearse stopped.  A big hole had been dug beside the grave of Grandma Henderson.  Alice and Ellen led Uncle Fred to four chairs that had been placed next to the hole.  Aunt Mary also took a seat.  Ned stood behind Ellen with his hands on her shoulders.

            “I'm so glad they put her right next to Mother,” Mom whispered to Dad.

            The sun was bright and hot and some women used umbrellas as sunshades.  Six men from Aunt Patty's church removed a rope harness from the rear of the hearse and suspended it above the hole.  They, then, returned to the hearse and carried the casket from the hearse and laid it on the rope harness.  A couple of them wiped their brow with a handkerchief.  The casket lay above the hole.

            I wondered if my sister was buried here.  I looked at a headstone.  Abner Smith  1873 - 1942.  Above the dates was a motionless lizard.  As I watched the lizard, I heard words–”From dust to dust...”, “...we commend this soul...”, “...a loving wife, mother, and sister...” and then silence.  What about me?  What about “aunt”?

            A cloud covered the sun and the lizard ran to the other side of the headstone.  I blinked and a tear fell.  I looked down.  Dust had covered my good shoes and was sticking to the polish.

            The six men stepped forward and started turning some handles.  The casket slowly sank into the hole.  After the rope harness was removed, Uncle Fred stood, threw a handful of dirt on the casket, and walked away with Alice and Ellen.  Ned hurried ahead to open the car door.

              Did they put my sister in a tiny casket and put her in the ground?  I wonder if six men were needed to carry her.  Did Dad throw the first handful of dirt?  Where was she?  Was she more alone than I was?

Chapter XVIII

            Aunt Patty reached toward me and just as her hand was about to touch me, I awoke.  Mom was gently shaking me.  “Johnny, wake up.  Ray is here.”  It was late Thursday morning.  I had slept deeply through the night.  I rolled onto my back and stretched.

            “Where's Davey?”  I asked.

            “He's been up for an hour.  Dad's gone to work.  You're the lazy bones.”

            “Is Davey with Ray?”

            “They're in the kitchen talking.  They’re gonna go to Red Hill or something and wanna know if you wanna go with ‘em?”

            “OK.  Tell them to wait a minute.”

            “You gotta eat some breakfast.”

            When I went to the kitchen, Davey and Ray were outside.  I looked out and saw Ray trying to ride my bicycle.  I crumbled a shredded wheat biscuit into a bowl, added a spoonful of sugar, and poured some canned milk and some water–to dilute the milk–on it.  Mom was in the bedroom sorting clothes to wash.

            Davey stuck his head inside.  “Hurry up.  We're gonna set some traps for coyotes.”  When I went outside, Ray was sitting on the bike as it wobbled down the drive.  Davey ran along beside, trying to keep the bicycle balanced.  Ray twisted the handlebars back and forth, but the bike tilted too far, Davey released his hold, and Ray jumped off.  He hadn't gotten very far.

            “You gotta go faster,” Davey advised.

            “Yeah, and get killed when I fall,” Ray answered as he pushed the bike back.  “A horse keeps its own balance.  You don’t gotta worry about it.”  Ray was wearing Levis and a cowboy hat.  He wore sunglasses.  He was wearing a western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons.

            There were three steel traps attached to long chains on the ground at the bottom of the steps.  The traps had a V shaped spring on each side of the jaws.  “Whose traps?”  I asked.

            “My dad let me use ‘em,” Ray answered.

            “You know how to set ‘em?”

            “Of course.  Dad and I caught a couple of coyotes last year.”

            “Where're we gonna set ‘em?”

            “Red Hill.  We gotta carry a lotta stuff.  I'll carry the traps, but somebody’s gotta carry the jack rabbits and the shovel and the hammer and the stakes.”

            “Jack rabbits–where are the jack rabbits?  What're they for?”  I asked.

            “I'll carry the shovel and the hammer stuff,” Davey said.

            “They're in a tow-sack beside the garage.  We shot 'em yesterday.  They're bait for the traps.”

            Ray walked with the three traps slung over his shoulder, holding the chains in front of him.  The traps rattled against each other.  Davey carried a shovel in one hand and a tow sack holding the hammer and stakes in the other hand.  I carried the rabbits and a water canteen.  The sky was clear and the sun, hot.  No breeze blew.  I wore my straw hat, but Davey's head was bare.

            When we were a half-mile from Red Hill, Ray dropped the traps and said, “This is a good spot.  Boy, I'm glad we don't have to carry this stuff back.  I need a drink of water.”  I handed Ray the canteen.  Davey dropped his load.  Sweat dripped from Davey's nose.  He wiped the sweat from his eyes.  Davey reached for the canteen as Ray drank.

            “OK, we need to dig a hole and bury a rabbit in it.  Then we set the trap on top.  Three holes.  One for each of us.  I'll dig the first,” Ray said.  I took the canteen from Davey.  Ray found a big patch of prickly pear cactus and dug beside it.  The ground was hard and rocky.  Ray dug more rocks out than dirt.  “Let's see if it's deep enough.  Put a rabbit in.”  I opened up the tow sack and pulled out a rabbit.  It was stiff and blood coated its hide.  Its opened eyes were dimpled and dry.  I dropped it in the hole.  Ray lay a trap on top, stepped back, and looked at it.  “That'll be good,” he said.  “We need to cut some yucca leaves to lay on top to hide it.”  Ray covered the hind legs and the ears of the rabbit with rocks and dirt.  Davey and I went to a yucca bush and cut off some leaves with our pocketknives.

            “OK, I'm gonna stand on the springs and someone has to set the trigger.  But don't put your hand between the jaws until I say so or you might get caught.”  He lay the trap on level ground and stepped on one spring making it flat.  He, then, stepped with his other foot on the other spring.  When both were compressed, the jaws fell open.  “I've got it.  Set the trigger.”  I knelt and from underneath the jaws moved the pan up and put the lever over a jaw and into the lip of the pan.

            “It's in,” I said.  Ray raised one foot and then the other.  The trap stayed open and was set.  Ray lifted the trap by a spring and gently laid it on top of the rabbit and carefully straightened the chain.  He drove an iron stake through the last link and covered the chain with dirt.

            “Let me show you how to cover it up,” Ray said.  He cut the yucca leaves to a foot long and covered the trap, carefully keeping his fingers away from the jaws.  “OK, now we gotta cover it with dirt.”  He sprinkled a handful of dirt on the yucca leaves.  After a couple handfuls, the yucca leaves were hidden and you couldn't see that there was a trap there.

            “I'm gonna put mine by this mesquite,” Davey said and started digging.  I sat on a rock and waited for my turn.  The digging reminded me of Aunt Patty's funeral.  All the dirt piled up.  When we left the cemetery I glanced back and saw the two Mexicans put on their hats and, carrying their shovels, walk toward the dirt pile.  There was no headstone.  I imagined Aunt Patty with her eyes open and dry.  She was probably all stiff.  The most difficult thing to believe was that I would never-ever see her again.  The memories I had of her now were all I would ever have.  No new memories.

            “Where're you gonna put yours?”  Davey asked.  I looked at Davey's trap.  The dirt was smooth and the trap hidden.

            “By that yucca.”

                ***

            On Friday morning, we walked back and checked the traps.  We tried not to get too close.  They appeared just as we left them.  We continued to Red Hill and climbed to the top.  We passed the canteen around and emptied it.  It was the first time I had been on top of Red Hill since last summer.  You could see the railroad as a thin black line coming over the hills in the west, continuing through Cuervo, and becoming a line again as it disappeared toward Tucumcari.

            Vultures circled slowly over the desert.  Whirlwinds appeared, danced, and disappeared.  Cora would be back tomorrow.  Week after next, school would start again.  The summer was almost over and the best part hadn't even started.

            When we returned home, Dad was there for lunch.  Mom filled glasses with Kool-Aid from the icebox for Davey and me.  “Got your watch back today, “ Dad said as he handed me a small box. “  You know what was wrong with it?”

            I took a last gulp, set my empty glass down, and took the watch out of the box.  It was running and showed twelve-fifteen.  I thought the question was odd.  “Something inside broke?”

            “Nope.  It wasn't wound.”

            “Wasn't wound?”  I asked.  I was dumbfounded.  I tried to remember the morning when I dropped it.  When had I wound it last?

            “None of us thought to check it,” Mom said.

            “At least it got set to the official railroad time,” Dad said.  “Keep it wound.”

                ***

            Saturday morning, Davey and Ray asked me to join them as they left for Red Hill again to check the traps.  Cora wasn't supposed to return until early afternoon, but, in case she came early, I stayed home.

            “Johnny, Dad and I are gonna go to Duran and check on Aunt Patty's grave.  You wanna come or stay here?”  Mom asked.

            I hesitated a moment.  “I'll stay here.”  It seemed disloyal to Aunt Patty to stay, but I wanted to see Cora as soon as possible.  I think Aunt Patty would understand.

            “OK, but stay outta trouble.  There's lunch stuff in the icebox.  If you need something, ask Ray's mom.  We'll be back by supper time.”  I looked at my watch, ten-thirty.  I played solitaire at the kitchen table so I could see Cora's front yard.  One card up–six down.  One card up–five down.  Time crept.  Turn three cards–move up the ace.  Play the nine–turn three cards.  I made some cold hot-dogs for lunch.  I hadn't beat solitaire yet.

            I heard the car before I saw it.  I looked up to see a dark blue Pontiac with Union County license plates drive into Cora's driveway.  It sounded as if it needed a new muffler.  I stood at the window.  Mrs. Jones came to her kitchen door.  The driver's door opened and an old lady–must be Cora's grandmother–struggled out.  She had short curly gray hair.  She was wearing tight black pants, a wide leather belt with a big silver buckle, a red western blouse, and boots.  She stretched, walked to the rear of the car, and unlocked the trunk door.  Mrs. Jones came and hugged the old lady.

            Cora got out, but all I could see on the other side of the car was blond hair.  She didn't have a ponytail any more.  She gathered some bags from the back seat and walked to the rear of the car.  Boy, had she changed!  She sure didn't look like she did last summer.  She was about a half-foot taller and had filled out.  She had tits.  She was wearing a short skirt around hips that weren't there last year.  Her hair was shoulder length and was styled.  She looked ten years older than last year and was more beautiful.  I was surprised by the change.  I had intended to go immediately and say 'hi', but, now, I wasn't sure it was the right thing to do.  I wondered if she'd remember me.  I probably looked the same–some little kid.

            Cora lifted a suitcase out of the trunk and her Mom got a second one.  They talked, but I couldn't hear anything.  The three of them went into the house.  What do I do now?  I could see the heat rising from the car hood.  Pancho was barking.  She was home, but she wasn't the Cora I remembered.

            As I stood by the window, she came out of the house and walked to the car.  I opened the kitchen door and ran down the steps.  “Hi, Cora,” I yelled and walked toward her.  She had opened the rear door of the car and held a small blue case.

            “Hi, Johnny.  Mom told me you were here.”

            “Yeah.  Been here a week.”

            “I was at my grandmother's.”

            “Yeah.  Your mom told me.”  I didn't know what to say next.  My mouth was dry.  I swallowed.

            “Mom also told me about your aunt.  Sorry.”

            “Thanks.  ‘Preciate that.”  Cora glanced at her house.

            “Where's Davey?  With Ray?”

            “Yeah.  They're at Red Hill checking traps.”

            “Oh.”  Pancho started barking again.  I heard a train in the distance.  Cora put the strap of the case over her shoulder and played with the buckle.  I shifted my feet.

            “Did you have fun at your grandmother's?”

            “Not much to do.  I read a lot. She likes the company.”  She paused.  “Hey, I better get inside.  The trip was sort of long and I'm tired.  It was nice seeing you again.”

            “Yeah.  It was nice seeing you again,” I repeated.  “Maybe we can get together later and talk or walk to Red Hill?”

            “I'm pretty tired.  Maybe.”  She turned and walked to the door and went inside without a look back.  I turned and returned to the outfit car.  What should I do now?  I had looked forward to seeing Cora all summer and now that I have seen her it wasn't as I thought it would be.  I went back and played more solitaire.  I could see the dark blue car.  Three games–no win.  Deal. Lose.  The car cooled.

                ***

            It was four o'clock when a red pickup drove up.  It sat still for a minute or two before the driver inside honked.  Cora came out of the house wearing different clothes.  She had red shorts and a halter that left her stomach bare.  She climbed into the passenger's side.  The driver was a boy who must be in high school to be able to drive.  I couldn't see him very well.  They seemed to talk and then Cora slid to the middle of the seat.  He put his arm around her and they kissed.  It was a long kiss.  I ran to the bedroom and fell on the bed.  My eyes filled with tears and my chest heaved as I tried to breathe.  I sobbed.  I wadded the pillow and buried my face in it.  I turned and slammed my fist into the pillow.  I paused and hit the pillow again.  I cried and hit the pillow again and again.

            I heard Davey and Ray outside.  I rose and dried my eyes.  Davey and Ray came into the kitchen to get a drink. I joined them in the kitchen and looked out the window.  The pickup was gone.

            “Anything in the traps?”  I asked.

            “Nope.  I think we did something wrong,” Ray answered.  “We left our scent everywhere.  I think the coyotes smell us and don't come close to the traps.  When Dad and I set traps we spread bacon grease around.”

            “You had a visitor.  Someone in a red pickup,” I told Ray.

            “That's Brad.  Cora must be home.”

            “Who's Brad?”  I asked.

            “He's Cora's boyfriend.  He's from Santa Rosa,” Ray paused.  “I think we might as well pull the traps up.”  I clinched by jaws and tried to keep the tears in.  Mom and Dad drove up.

                ***

            I didn't do much the next week.  The red pickup came each day.  I tried not to watch.  Mom must’ve thought I was sick because I lay around so much.  Maybe she knew.  I wanted the week to end quickly so we could get away, go back to Vaughn, and start school.  Davey and Ray had a lot of fun.  Ray became steadier on my bike.

            On Wednesday, Mom went into Santa Rosa to shop.  Davey and Ray were at Red Hill.  I didn't feel like doing anything except mope around so I stayed home.  When Mom returned, she said, “I gotta book for you,” and handed me a brown bag.

            “Is it the Catcher book you were talking about?”

            “No, it's another book I think you're ready for.  Why don't you take it to the bedroom and look at it?”

            “Take it to the bedroom?”  I was puzzled and as I walked to the bedroom I pulled the book out of the bag.  It was a paperback, You and Your Body–A Manual for Growing Boys. 

            It told me all about sex and things.

Chapter XIX

            We passed the garbage lady and turned onto the depot road from the dump road.  The outfit car was parked at the same spot as last year.  The summer was over.  Everything looked as last year.  The old car ruts still led to the parking place.  “If we can get everything set up, let's go to a movie tonight,” Dad said as he parked the car.

            “Oh boy, a movie!”  Davey said.  “Can we buy some popcorn?”

            “What's showing?”  Mom asked.

            “Bedtime for Bonzo,” Dad answered.  “I noticed as we drove through town,” Dad paused and turned off the engine.  “Well, let's unload the trailer, fill the water tanks, and set up the outhouse and clothesline poles.  Let's hurry so we can go to the movies.”

            “Can we have popcorn?”  Davey repeated.

            “Maybe,” Dad answered.  Davey and I carried boxes and suitcases from the trailer and set them at the base of the outfit car.  Dad opened the tool car, got the kitchen steps, and set them up.  Mom opened the kitchen door and went inside.  Dad lifted the boxes up into the kitchen.  “You guys, getta shovel and the post hole digger to dig the holes for the clothesline poles.

            “I'll dig one hole and you can dig the other,” I said to Davey.  “Which one do you want?”

                ***

            The digging of the holes was easy.  The location was the same and the dirt hadn't had time to pack solid.  Dad and the section gang set up the outhouse a few yards away from the old spot, and then set up the clothesline poles.  Mom had unpacked the boxes.  We went to the depot and filled up the barrel to refill the water tanks.

                ***

            Dad bought four bags of popcorn for ten cents each as we entered the movie.  The marquee signs showed a monkey and an actor named Ronald Reagan.  I had never seen him before.  He didn't look as strong as Roy Rogers.  “If you find a coupon in your popcorn you get another bag free,” the guy behind the popcorn machine told Dad.

            Before the movie, there was a Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Bugs was tying a knot in the barrel of Porky's shotgun when Davey said,” Hey, I gotta coupon.”  The people in the row ahead turned and grinned.

            “Shhh, not so loud,” Mom said.

            Dad sat next to the aisle and leaned over me and whispered to Davey, “Give me the coupon and I'll go get your free bag for you.”  I finished my bag, but didn't find any coupon.  Dad returned, gave the bag to Davey, and said, “Share with Johnny.”

            The cartoon ended and a newsreel started.  It showed some American and Korean generals sitting around a big table.  It next showed some scenes from an Arabian country where a boy, not much older than me, had been named king.  I was thinking about what I would do if I were a king when Davey offered me some popcorn.  I reached in, grabbed a handful, and felt a coupon.

            “Another coupon,” I whispered to Dad.

            “It was in my bag!”  Davey said.

            “Shhh,” Mom cautioned.

            “You guys are sure lucky.  I'll go get another bag,” Dad said as he left.  He returned and gave the new bag to Davey.  I was eating from the previous bag.  “Remember, share.”

            The movie started.  It was about a college professor who, as an experiment, kept a monkey in his home and treated it as if it was a child.  Mom reached into Davey's bag.

            “Another coupon,” Mom whispered and looked at Dad.  Dad cupped his hand over his mouth. “We've had enough popcorn.  I'll keep this coupon for next time,” Mom said as she put the coupon into her purse.  I had had enough popcorn.

            Dad whispered over Davey and me, “Mary, what do you think?  Should we have raised monkeys instead of boys?  Probably been smarter.”

                ***

            The first day of school was Monday, September 10.  Dad had already left for Alamogordo and wouldn't return until next weekend.  Mom had bought new pencils and new tablets of writing paper for us.  The tablet had a red covering with a picture of an Indian chief. After breakfast, as we waited for Sam, Davey and I set up the horseshoes and played until he came.  I won the first game and we had started the second when we saw the dust cloud where the woody turned onto the depot road.  Davey and I picked up our school bags and lunch boxes.

            “I was ahead.  I win the game,” Davey said as he waved.  When Sam stopped, I saw Maria in the front seat and Sarah in the seat behind her. Another girl with red hair sat beside Sarah.  Davey and I climbed into the back seat.

            “Hello, boys,” Sam said.  He was holding a cigarette in his left hand with his elbow stuck out the window.

            “Hello everyone,” I answered.

            “Hello, hello,” Davey said as he bounced in his seat.  There was a mumbling of responses.

            “I told you, summer would be over 'fore you knew it,” Sam said as he turned the woody around.  “It didn't last very long, did it?” 

            Sarah turned around.  She had lost weight and wasn't heavy anymore.  “This is my cousin, Alice.  She'll be in the sixth grade with my little boyfriend, Johnny.”  Alice turned and smiled, but didn't say anything.  She had dimples and green eyes.

            “I'm not your boyfriend,” I responded to Sarah.

            “That's Davey, his brother.”

            “Have you been sick?”  I asked Sarah.

            “No, why?”

            “You look like you lost some weight.”

            “I went on a diet.  Do I look better?”  Sarah asked as she tilted her head and slowly turned it to profile as she twisted her shoulders back and forth.

            Sam answered, “You'll knock 'em dead.  Alice came from Texas and is gonna live with Sarah this year.  What subjects you like the best, Alice?”

            “I like English and spelling,” Alice said.

            “Johnny can show you where to go, can't you, Johnny?”

            “Sure.  I think our teacher will be Mrs. Clay.  She's OK.”  Alice was about as cute as Cora, but not as old.

***

            I sat behind her in the classroom and whispered the names of the other kids to her as they spoke.  Mrs. Clay asked her to stand and introduce herself to the class.  Alice and I ate lunch together on the gym steps and I learned that her mother had died.  Her father thought that some time away would be good for her.  I told her about Aunt Patty.  We each stopped talking for a few moments.  She clutched her lunch bag tightly.  I swallowed and blinked. I understood some of what she felt.  Losing your mom had to be worse than losing an aunt.  I covered her hand with mine just for a moment and squeezed. I don’t know why.  Seemed OK.

                ***

            The day finished quickly.  Alice and I sat next to each other in the woody on the ride back.  “Don't the trains wake you up at night?”  She asked.

            “You get used to them.”

            As Sam dropped us off, I was ready for the next day to start immediately.  “How was the first day of school?”  Mom asked from the living room.

            “OK.  I'm in Mrs. Clay's room.  Sarah's cousin is riding the woody,” I answered as I poured some Kool-Aid from the icebox.

            “I've already got a spelling list,” Davey said.

            “Something was in the mail for you, Johnny,” Mom said as she came into the kitchen and handed me a letter.  It was from Aunt Patty.  I looked questioning at Mom.  “She must've mailed it to Vaughn and they held it here for us.”

            “Who's it from?”  Davey asked.

            “Aunt Patty,” Mom answered as I held the envelope.  The postmark was dated August 13.

            “How can she write a letter?  She's dead,” Davey asked.

            “She wrote it before she died.  Come with me into the living room so that Johnny can read the letter in private.”

            “I want to read it, too.”

            “It's Johnny's letter.”

            She wrote in blue ink on ivory paper that had pictures of bluebirds in the upper left-hand corner.

                ***

                                                                                    August 9

            My dear Johnny,

                        I got your letter and hope I can finish this answer.  I'm feeling a little better today, but may not be able to write too much.

                        You asked about an older sister. Your mom and dad did have a little girl born five months after they were married.  She was very sickly from birth. They named her Patricia–after me.  Little Patty was born at home in Duran.  They drove to Albuquerque to a hospital, but she lived only for four days.  They buried her there, but I don't think they ever put up a stone.

                        Your parents were very sad and that's why they don't want to talk about it.  You'll understand better when you're grown up.

                        Your folks are giving you a life that's much better than the life they had and they love you very much.  There's a lot about life and raising kids that they don't know, but they try their best.  You're a smart kid and you'll have a good life.  When you get married and have your own kids and if you can improve their lives as much from yours as your folks improved yours from theirs, you will have done a very good thing.  Each generation learns from the last and should try to improve the next.

                        I'm sorry I won't be here to see your life.

                                                            Love, Aunt Patty

            (PS) You might want to keep this letter just between you and me.

                ***

            I read the letter again.  I had a hard time because of the tears and kept wiping my eyes.  I sat and held the letter.  The scene out of the kitchen window was exactly as it was last spring.  The yucca plants were making long shadows.  A train whistled in the distance. It was as if summer hadn't happened–except Aunt Patty isn't here.  Last spring I didn't know about my sister–I'll never know her–but now I know she existed, and that makes a difference.  She seems a part of me–a part forever gone.  Everything was the same–except some important things.

©2014 L. Clint Welch