It's my earliest memory. I was three years old, and we were living in a trailer park in a southern Arizona town whose name I never knew. I was standing1 on a chair in front of the stove, wearing a pink dress my grandmother had bought for me. Pink was my favorite color. The dress's skirt stuck out like a tutu, and I liked to spin around in front of the mirror, thinking I looked like a ballerina. But at that moment, I was wearing the dress to cook hot dogs, watching them swell2 and bob in the boiling water as the late-morning sunlight filtered in through the trailer's small kitchenette window.
I could hear Mom in the next room singing while she worked on one of her paintings. Juju, our black mutt, was watching me. I stabbed one of the hot dogs with a fork and bent3 over and offered it to him. The wiener was hot, so Juju licked at it tentatively, but when I stood up and started stirring the hot dogs again, I felt a blaze of heat on my right side. I turned to see where it was coming from and realized my dress was on fire. Frozen with fear, I watched the yellow-white flames make a ragged5 brown line up the pink fabric6 of my skirt and climb my stomach. Then the flames leaped up, reaching my face.
I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed7 my hair and eyelashes. Juju was barking. I screamed again.
Mom ran into the room.
"Mommy, help me!" I shrieked8. I was still standing on the chair, swatting at the fire with the fork I had been using to stir the hot dogs.
Mom ran out of the room and came back with one of the army-surplus blankets I hated because the wool was so scratchy. She threw the blanket around me to smother9 the flames. Dad had gone off in the car, so Mom grabbed me and my younger brother, Brian, and hurried over to the trailer next to ours. The woman who lived there was hanging her laundry on the clothesline. She had clothespins in her mouth. Mom, in an unnaturally10 calm voice, explained what had happened and asked if we could please have a ride to the hospital. The woman dropped her clothespins and laundry right there in the dirt and, without saying anything, ran for her car.
* * *When we got to the hospital, nurses put me on a stretcher. They talked in loud, worried whispers while they cut off what was left of my fancy pink dress with a pair of shiny scissors. Then they picked me up, laid me flat on a big metal bed piled with ice cubes, and spread some of the ice over my body. A doctor with silver hair and black-rimmed glasses led my mother out of the room. As they left, I heard him telling her that it was very serious. The nurses remained behind, hovering13 over me. I could tell I was causing a big fuss, and I stayed quiet. One of them squeezed my hand and told me I was going to be okay.
"I know," I said, "but if I'm not, that's okay, too."The nurse squeezed my hand again and bit her lower lip.
The room was small and white, with bright lights and metal cabinets. I stared for a while at the rows of tiny dots in the ceiling panels. Ice cubes covered my stomach and ribs14 and pressed up against my cheeks. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small, grimy hand reach up a few inches from my face and grab a handful of cubes. I heard a loud crunching15 sound and looked down. It was Brian, eating the ice.
* * *The doctors said I was lucky to be alive. They took patches of skin from my upper thigh16 and put them over the most badly burned parts of my stomach, ribs, and chest. They said it was called a skin graft17. When they were finished, they wrapped my entire right side in bandages.
"Look, I'm a half-mummy," I said to one of the nurses. She smiled and put my right arm in a sling18 and attached it to the headboard so I couldn't move it.
The nurses and doctors kept asking me questions: How did you get burned? Have your parents ever hurt you? Why do you have all these bruises19 and cuts? My parents never hurt me, I said. I got the cuts and bruises playing outside and the burns from cooking hot dogs. They asked what I was doing cooking hot dogs by myself at the age of three. It was easy, I said. You just put the hot dogs in the water and boil them. It wasn't like there was some complicated recipe that you had to be old enough to follow. The pan was too heavy for me to lift when it was full of water, so I'd put a chair next to the sink, climb up and fill a glass, then stand on a chair by the stove and pour the water into the pan. I did that over and over again until the pan held enough water. Then I'd turn on the stove, and when the water was boiling, I'd drop in the hot dogs. "Mom says I'm mature for my age," I told them. "and she lets me cook for myself a lot."Two nurses looked at each other, and one of them wrote something down on a clipboard. I asked what was wrong. Nothing, they said, nothing.
* * *Every couple of days, the nurses changed the bandages. They would put the used bandage off to the side, wadded and covered with smears21 of blood and yellow stuff and little pieces of burned skin. Then they'd apply another bandage, a big gauzy cloth, to the burns. At night I would run my left hand over the rough, scabby surface of the skin that wasn't covered by the bandage. Sometimes I'd peel off scabs. The nurses had told me not to, but I couldn't resist pulling on them real slow to see how big a scab I could get loose. Once I had a couple of them free, I'd pretend they were talking to each other in cheeping voices.
The hospital was clean and shiny. Everything was white梩he walls and sheets and nurses' uniforms梠r silver梩he beds and trays and medical instruments. Everyone spoke22 in polite, calm voices. It was so hushed you could hear the nurses' rubber-soled shoes squeaking23 all the way down the hall. I wasn't used to quiet and order, and I liked it.
I also liked it that I had my own room, since in the trailer I shared one with my brother and my sister. My hospital room even had its very own television set up on the wall. We didn't have a TV at home, so I watched it a lot. Red Buttons and Lucille Ball were my favorites.
The nurses and doctors always asked how I was feeling and if I was hungry or needed anything. The nurses brought me delicious meals three times a day, with fruit cocktail24 or Jell-O for dessert, and changed the sheets even if they still looked clean. Sometimes I read to them, and they told me I was very smart and could read as well as a six-year-old.
One day a nurse with wavy25 yellow hair and blue eye makeup26 was chewing on something. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was chewing gum. I had never heard of chewing gum, so she went out and got me a whole pack. I pulled out a stick, took off the white paper and the shiny silver foil under it, and studied the powdery, putty-colored gum. I put it in my mouth and was stunned27 by the sharp sweetness. "It's really good!" I said.
"Chew on it, but don't swallow it," the nurse said with a laugh. She smiled real big and brought in other nurses so they could watch me chew my first-ever piece of gum. When she brought me lunch, she told me I had to take out my chewing gum, but she said not to worry because I could have a new stick after eating. If I finished the pack, she would buy me another. That was the thing about the hospital. You never had to worry about running out of stuff like food or ice or even chewing gum. I would have been happy staying in that hospital forever.
* * *When my family came to visit, their arguing and laughing and singing and shouting echoed through the quiet halls. The nurses made shushing noises, and Mom and Dad and Lori and Brian lowered their voices for a few minutes, then they slowly grew loud again. Everyone always turned and stared at Dad. I couldn't figure out whether it was because he was so handsome or because he called people. "pardner" and. "goomba" and threw his head back when he laughed.
One day Dad leaned over my bed and asked if the nurses and doctors were treating me okay. If they were not, he said, he would kick some asses12. I told Dad how nice and friendly everyone was. "Well, of course they are," he said. "They know you're Rex Walls's daughter."When Mom wanted to know what it was the doctors and nurses were doing that was so nice, I told her about the chewing gum.
"Ugh," she said. She disapproved28 of chewing gum, she went on. It was a disgusting low-class habit, and the nurse should have consulted her before encouraging me in such vulgar behavior. She said she was going to give that woman a piece of her mind, by golly. "After all," Mom said. "I am your mother, and I should have a say in how you're raised."* * *"Do you guys miss me?" I asked my older sister, Lori, during one visit.
"Not really," she said. "Too much has been happening.""Like what?""Just the normal stuff.""Lori may not miss you, honey bunch, but I sure do," Dad said. "You shouldn't be in this antiseptic joint29."He sat down on my bed and started telling me the story about the time Lori got stung by a poisonous scorpion30. I'd heard it a dozen times, but I still liked the way Dad told it. Mom and Dad were out exploring in the desert when Lori, who was four, turned over a rock and the scorpion hiding under it stung her leg. She had gone into convulsions, and her body had become stiff and wet with sweat. But Dad didn't trust hospitals, so he took her to a Navajo witch doctor who cut open the wound and put a dark brown paste on it and said some chants and pretty soon Lori was as good as new. "Your mother should have taken you to that witch doctor the day you got burned," Dad said, "not to these heads-up-their-asses med-school quacks31."* * *The next time they visited, Brian's head was wrapped in a dirty white bandage with dried bloodstains. Mom said he had fallen off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor, but she and Dad had decided32 not to take him to the hospital.
"There was blood everywhere," Mom said. "but one kid in the hospital at a time is enough.""Besides," Dad said, "Brian's head is so hard, I think the floor took more damage than he did."Brian thought that was hilarious33 and just laughed and laughed.
Mom told me she had entered my name in a raffle34 at a fair, and I'd won a helicopter ride. I was thrilled. I had never been in a helicopter or a plane.
"When do I get to go on the ride?" I asked.
"Oh, we already did that," Mom said. "It was fun."Then Dad got into an argument with the doctor. It started because Dad thought I shouldn't be wearing bandages. "Burns need to breathe," he told the doctor.
The doctor said bandages were necessary to prevent infection. Dad stared at the doctor. "To hell with infection," he said. He told the doctor that I was going to be scarred for life because of him, but, by God, I wasn't the only one who was going to walk out of there scarred.
Dad pulled back his fist as if to hit the doctor, who raised his hands and backed away. Before anything could happen, a guard in a uniform appeared and told Mom and Dad and Lori and Brian that they would have to leave.
Afterward35, a nurse asked me if I was okay. "Of course," I said. I told her I didn't care if I had some silly old scar. That was good, she said, because from the look of it, I had other things to worry about.
* * *A few days later, when I had been at the hospital for about six weeks, Dad appeared alone in the doorway36 of my room. He told me we were going to check out, Rex Walls杝tyle.
"Are you sure this is okay?" I asked.
"You just trust your old man," Dad said.
He unhooked my right arm from the sling over my head. As he held me close, I breathed in his familiar smell of Vitalis, whiskey, and cigarette smoke. It reminded me of home.
Dad hurried down the hall with me in his arms. A nurse yelled for us to stop, but Dad broke into a run. He pushed open an emergency-exit door and sprinted37 down the stairs and out to the street. Our car, a beat-up Plymouth we called the Blue Goose, was parked around the corner, the engine idling. Mom was up front, Lori and Brian in the back with Juju. Dad slid me across the seat next to Mom and took the wheel.
"You don't have to worry anymore, baby," Dad said. "You're safe now."A FEW DAYS AFTER Mom and Dad brought me home, I cooked myself some hot dogs. I was hungry, Mom was at work on a painting, and no one else was there to fix them for me.
"Good for you," Mom said when she saw me cooking. "You've got to get right back in the saddle. You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire."I didn't. Instead, I became fascinated with it. Dad also thought I should face down my enemy, and he showed me how to pass my finger through a candle flame. I did it over and over, slowing my finger with each pass, watching the way it seemed to cut the flame in half, testing to see how much my finger could endure without actually getting burned. I was always on the lookout38 for bigger fires. Whenever neighbors burned trash, I ran over and watched the blaze trying to escape the garbage can. I'd inch closer and closer, feeling the heat against my face until I got so near that it became unbearable39, and then I'd back away just enough to be able to stand it.
The neighbor lady who had driven me to the hospital was surprised that I didn't run in the opposite direction from any fire I saw. "Why the hell would she?" Dad bellowed40 with a proud grin. "She already fought the fire once and won."I started stealing matches from Dad. I'd go behind the trailer and light them. I loved the scratching sound of the match against the sandpapery brown strip when I struck it, and the way the flame leaped out of the redcoated tip with a pop and a hiss41. I'd feel its heat near my fingertips, then wave it out triumphantly42. I lit pieces of paper and little piles of brush and held my breath until the moment when they seemed about to blaze up out of control. Then I'd stomp43 on the flames and call out the curse words Dad used, like. "Dumb-ass11 sonofabitch!" and. "Cocksucker!"One time I went out back with my favorite toy, a plastic Tinkerbell figurine. She was two inches tall, with yellow hair pulled up in a high ponytail and her hands on her hips44 in a confident, cocky way that I admired. I lit a match and held it close to Tinkerbell's face to show her how it felt. She looked even more beautiful in the flame's glow. When that match went out, I lit another one, and this time I held it really close to Tinkerbell's face. Suddenly, her eyes grew wide, as if with fear; I realized, to my horror, that her face was starting to melt. I put out the match, but it was too late. Tinkerbell's once perfect little nose had completely disappeared, and her saucy45 red lips had been replaced with an ugly, lopsided smear20. I tried to smooth her features back to the way they had been, but I made them even worse. Almost immediately, her face cooled and hardened again. I put bandages on it. I wished I could perform a skin graft on Tinkerbell, but that would have meant cutting her into pieces. Even though her face was melted, she was still my favorite toy.
DAD CAME HOME IN the middle of the night a few months later and roused all of us from bed.
"Time to pull up stakes and leave this shit-hole behind," he hollered.
We had fifteen minutes to gather whatever we needed and pile into the car.
"Is everything okay, Dad?" I asked. "Is someone after us?""Don't you worry," Dad said. "You leave that to me. Don't I always take care of you?""'Course you do," I said.
"That's my girl!" Dad said with a hug, then barked orders at us all to speed things up. He took the essentials梐 big black cast-iron skillet and the Dutch oven, some army-surplus tin plates, a few knives, his pistol, and Mom's archery set梐nd packed them in the trunk of the Blue Goose. He said we shouldn't take much else, just what we needed to survive. Mom hurried out to the yard and started digging holes by the light of the moon, looking for our jar of cash. She had forgotten where she'd buried it.
An hour passed before we finally tied Mom's paintings on the top of the car, shoved whatever would fit into the trunk, and piled the overflow46 on the backseat and the car floor. Dad steered47 the Blue Goose through the dark, driving slowly so as not to alert anyone in the trailer park that we were, as Dad liked to put it, doing the skedaddle. He was grumbling48 that he couldn't understand why the hell it took so long to grab what we needed and haul our asses into the car.
"Dad!" I said. "I forgot Tinkerbell!""Tinkerbell can make it on her own," Dad said. "She's like my brave little girl. You are brave and ready for adventure, right?""I guess," I said. I hoped whoever found Tinkerbell would love her despite her melted face. For comfort, I tried to cradle Quixote, our gray and white cat who was missing an ear, but he growled49 and scratched at my face. "Quiet, Quixote!" I said.
"Cats don't like to travel," Mom explained.
Anyone who didn't like to travel wasn't invited on our adventure, Dad said. He stopped the car, grabbed Quixote by the scruff of the neck, and tossed him out the window. Quixote landed with a screeching50 meow and a thud, Dad accelerated up the road, and I burst into tears.
"Don't be so sentimental," Mom said. She told me we could always get another cat, and now Quixote was going to be a wild cat, which was much more fun than being a house cat. Brian, afraid that Dad might toss Juju out the window as well, held the dog tight.
To distract us kids, Mom got us singing songs like. "Don't Fence Me In" and. "This Land Is Your Land," and Dad led us in rousing renditions of. "Old Man River" and his favorite. "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." After a while, I forgot about Quixote and Tinkerbell and the friends I'd left behind in the trailer park. Dad started telling us about all the exciting things we were going to do and how we were going to get rich once we reached the new place where we were going to live.
"Where are we going, Dad?" I asked.
"Wherever we end up," he said.
* * *Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we slept under the stars. We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good posture51. The Indians didn't use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight they stood. We did have our scratchy army-surplus blankets, so we spread them out and lay there, looking up at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians.
"We could live like this forever," I said.
"I think we're going to," she said.
WE WERE ALWAYS DOING the skedaddle, usually in the middle of the night. I sometimes heard Mom and Dad discussing the people who were after us. Dad called them henchmen, bloodsuckers, and the gestapo. Sometimes he would make mysterious references to executives from Standard Oil who were trying to steal the Texas land that Mom's family owned, and FBI agents who were after Dad for some dark episode that he never told us about because he didn't want to put us in danger, too.
Dad was so sure a posse of federal investigators52 was on our trail that he smoked his unfiltered cigarettes from the wrong end. That way, he explained, he burned up the brand name, and if the people who were tracking us looked in his ashtray53, they'd find unidentifiable butts54 instead of Pall55 Malls that could be traced to him. Mom, however, told us that the FBI wasn't really after Dad; he just liked to say they were because it was more fun having the FBI on your tail than bill collectors.
We moved around like nomads56. We lived in dusty little mining towns in Nevada, Arizona, and California. They were usually nothing but a tiny cluster of sad, sunken shacks57, a gas station, a dry-goods store, and a bar or two. They had names like Needles and Bouse, Pie, Goffs, and Why, and they were near places like the Superstition58 Mountains, the dried-up Soda59 Lake, and the Old Woman Mountain. The more desolate60 and isolated61 a place was, the better Mom and Dad liked it.
Dad would get a job as an electrician or engineer in a gypsum or copper62 mine. Mom liked to say that Dad could talk a blue streak63, spinning tales of jobs he'd never had and college degrees he'd never earned. He could get about any job he wanted, he just didn't like keeping it for long. Sometimes he made money gambling64 or doing odd jobs. When he got bored or was fired or the unpaid65 bills piled up too high or the lineman from the electrical company found out he had hot-wired our trailer to the utility poles梠r the FBI was closing in梬e packed up in the middle of the night and took off, driving until Mom and Dad found another small town that caught their eye. Then we'd circle around, looking for houses with for-rent signs stuck in the front yard.
Every now and then, we'd go stay with Grandma Smith, Mom's mom, who lived in a big white house in Phoenix66. Grandma Smith was a West Texas flapper who loved dancing and cussing and horses. She was known for being able to break the wildest broncs and had helped Grandpa run the ranch67 up near Fish Creek68 Canyon69, Arizona, which was west of Bullhead City, not too far from the Grand Canyon. I thought Grandma Smith was great. But after a few weeks, she and Dad would always get into some nasty hollering match. It might start with Mom mentioning how short we were on cash. Then Grandma would make a snide comment about Dad being shiftless. Dad would say something about selfish old crones with more money than they knew what to do with, and soon enough they'd be face-to-face in what amounted to a full-fledged cussing contest.
"You flea-bitten drunk!" Grandma would scream.
"You goddamned flint-faced hag!" Dad would shout back.
"You no-good two-bit pud-sucking bastard70!""You scaly71 castrating banshee bitch!"Dad had the more inventive vocabulary, but Grandma Smith could outshout him; plus, she had the home-court advantage. A time would come when Dad had had enough and he'd tell us kids to get in the car. Grandma would yell at Mom not to let that worthless horse's ass take her grandchildren. Mom would shrug72 and say there was nothing she could do about it, he was her husband. Off we'd go, heading out into the desert in search of another house for rent in another little mining town.
Some of the people who lived in those towns had been there for years. Others were rootless, like us梛ust passing through. They were gamblers or ex-cons or war veterans or what Mom called loose women. There were old prospectors73, their faces wrinkled and brown from the sun, like dried-up apples. The kids were lean and hard, with calluses on their hands and feet. We'd make friends with them, but not close friends, because we knew we'd be moving on sooner or later.
We might enroll75 in school, but not always. Mom and Dad did most of our teaching. Mom had us all reading books without pictures by the time we were five, and Dad taught us math. He also taught us the things that were really important and useful, like how to tap out Morse code and how we should never eat the liver of a polar bear because all the vitamin A in it could kill us. He showed us how to aim and fire his pistol, how to shoot Mom's bow and arrows, and how to throw a knife by the blade so that it landed in the middle of a target with a satisfying thwock. By the time I was four, I was pretty good with Dad's pistol, a big black six-shot revolver, and could hit five out of six beer bottles at thirty paces. I'd hold the gun with both hands, sight down the barrel, and squeeze the trigger slowly and smoothly76 until, with a loud clap, the gun kicked and the bottle exploded. It was fun. Dad said my sharpshooting would come in handy if the feds ever surrounded us.
Mom had grown up in the desert. She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed. Most people had trouble surviving in the desert, but Mom thrived there. She knew how to get by on next to nothing. She showed us which plants were edible77 and which were toxic78. She was able to find water when no one else could, and she knew how little of it you really needed. She taught us that you could wash yourself up pretty clean with just a cup of water. She said it was good for you to drink unpurified water, even ditch water, as long as animals were drinking from it. Chlorinated city water was for namby-pambies, she said. Water from the wild helped build up your antibodies. She also thought toothpaste was for namby-pambies. At bedtime we'd shake a little baking soda into the palm of one hand, mix in a dash of hydrogen peroxide, then use our fingers to clean our teeth with the fizzing paste.
I loved the desert, too. When the sun was in the sky, the sand would be so hot that it would burn your feet if you were the kind of kid who wore shoes, but since we always went barefoot, our soles were as tough and thick as cowhide. We'd catch scorpions79 and snakes and horny toads80. We'd search for gold, and when we couldn't find it, we'd collect other valuable rocks, like turquoise81 and garnets. There'd be a cool spell come sundown, when the mosquitoes would fly in so thick that the air would grow dark with them, then at nightfall, it turned so cold that we usually needed blankets.
There were fierce sandstorms. Sometimes they hit without warning, and other times you knew one was coming when you saw batches82 of dust devils swirling83 and dancing their way across the desert. Once the wind started whipping up the sand, you could only see a foot in front of your face. If you couldn't find a house or a car or a shed to hide in when the sandstorm started, you had to squat84 down and close your eyes and mouth real tight and cover your ears and bury your face in your lap until it passed, or else your body cavities would fill with sand. A big tumbleweed might hit you, but they were light and bouncy and didn't hurt. If the sandstorm was really strong, it knocked you over, and you rolled around like you were a tumbleweed.
When the rains finally came, the skies darkened and the air became heavy. Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting85 out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low-hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped86 over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos87, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through. The next day the saguaros and prickly pears were fat from drinking as much as they could, because they knew it might be a long, long time until the next rain.
We were sort of like the cactus88. We ate irregularly, and when we did, we'd gorge89 ourselves. Once when we were living in Nevada, a train full of cantaloupes heading east jumped the track. I had never eaten a cantaloupe before, but Dad brought home crates90 and crates of them. We had fresh cantaloupe, stewed91 cantaloupe, even fried cantaloupe. One time in California, the grape pickers went on strike. The vineyard owners let people come pick their own grapes for a nickel a pound. We drove about a hundred miles to the vineyards, where the grapes were so ripe they were about to burst on the vine in bunches bigger than my head. We filled our entire car full of green grapes梩he trunk, even the glove compartment92, and Dad piled stacks in our laps so high we could barely see over the top. For weeks afterward, we ate green grapes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
* * *All this running around and moving was temporary, Dad explained. He had a plan. He was going to find gold.
Everybody said Dad was a genius. He could build or fix anything. One time when a neighbor's TV set broke, Dad opened the back and used a macaroni noodle to insulate some crossed wires. The neighbor couldn't get over it. He went around telling everyone in town that Dad sure knew how to use his noodle. Dad was an expert in math and physics and electricity. He read books on calculus93 and logarithmic algebra94 and loved what he called the poetry and symmetry of math. He told us about the magic qualities every number has and how numbers unlock the secrets of the universe. But Dad's main interest was energy: thermal95 energy, nuclear energy, solar energy, electrical energy, and energy from the wind. He said there were so many untapped sources of energy in the world that it was ridiculous to be burning all that fossil fuel.
Dad was always inventing things, too. One of his most important inventions was a complicated contraption he called the Prospector74. It was going to help us find gold. The Prospector had a big flat surface about four feet high and six feet wide, and it rose up in the air at an angle. The surface was covered with horizontal strips of wood separated by gaps. The Prospector would scoop96 up dirt and rocks and sift97 them through the maze98 of wooden strips. It could figure out whether a rock was gold by the weight. It would throw out the worthless stuff and deposit the gold nuggets in a pile, so whenever we needed groceries, we could go out back and grab ourselves a nugget. At least that was what it would be able to do once Dad finished building it.
Dad let Brian and me help him work on the Prospector. We'd go out behind the house, and I'd hold the nails while Dad hit them. Sometimes he let me start the nails, and then he'd drive them in with one hard blow from the hammer. The air would be filled with sawdust and the smell of freshly cut wood, and the sound of hammering and whistling, because Dad always whistled while he worked.
In my mind, Dad was perfect, although he did have what Mom called a little bit of a drinking situation. There was what Mom called Dad's. "beer phase." We could all handle that. Dad drove fast and sang really loud, and locks of his hair fell into his face and life was a little bit scary but still a lot of fun. But when Dad pulled out a bottle of what Mom called. "the hard stuff," she got kind of frantic99, because after working on the bottle for a while, Dad turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way. When he'd had his fill of cussing and hollering and smashing things up, he'd collapse100. But Dad drank hard liquor only when we had money, which wasn't often, so life was mostly good in those days.
Every night when Lori, Brian, and I were about to go to sleep, Dad told us bedtime stories. They were always about him. We'd be tucked in our beds or lying under blankets in the desert, the world dark except for the orange glow from his cigarette. When he took a long draw, it lit up just enough for us to see his face.
"Tell us a story about yourself, Dad!" we'd beg him.
"Awww. You don't want to hear another story about me," he'd say.
"Yes, we do! We do!" we'd insist.
"Well, okay," he'd say. He'd pause and chuckle101 at some memory. "There's many a damned foolhardy thing that your old man has done, but this one was harebrained even for a crazy sonofabitch like Rex Walls."And then he'd tell us about how, when he was in the air force and his plane's engine conked out, he made an emergency landing in a cattle pasture and saved himself and his crew. Or about the time he wrestled102 a pack of wild dogs that had surrounded a lame4 mustang. Then there was the time he fixed103 a broken sluice104 gate on the Hoover Dam and saved the lives of thousands of people who would have drowned if the dam had burst. There was also the time he went AWOL in the air force to get some beer, and while he was at the bar, he caught a lunatic who was planning to blow up the air base, which went to show that occasionally, it paid to break the rules.
Dad was a dramatic storyteller. He always started out slow, with lots of pauses. "Go on! What happened next?" we'd ask, even if we'd already heard that story before. Mom giggled105 or rolled her eyes when Dad told his stories, and he glared at her. If someone interrupted his storytelling, he got mad, and we had to beg him to continue and promise that no one would interrupt again.
Dad always fought harder, flew faster, and gambled smarter than everyone else in his stories. Along the way, he rescued women and children and even men who weren't as strong and clever. Dad taught us the secrets of his heroics梙e showed us how to straddle a wild dog and break his neck, and where to hit a man in the throat so you could kill him with one powerful jab. But he assured us that as long as he was around, we wouldn't have to defend ourselves, because, by God, anyone who so much as laid a finger on any of Rex Walls's children was going to get their butts kicked so hard that you could read Dad's shoe size on their ass cheeks.
When Dad wasn't telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous106 things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad's engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun's rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have its own water-purification system. Dad had worked out the architecture and the floor plans and most of the mathematical calculations. He carried around the blueprints107 for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he'd pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms.
All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge108 of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he'd start work on our Glass Castle.
AS MUCH AS DAD liked to tell stories about himself, it was almost impossible to get him to talk about his parents or where he was born. We knew he came from a town called Welch, in West Virginia, where a lot of coal was mined, and that his father had worked as a clerk for the railroad, sitting every day in a little station house, writing messages on pieces of paper that he held up on a stick for the passing train engineers. Dad had no interest in a life like that, so he left Welch when he was seventeen to join the air force and become a pilot.
One of his favorite stories, which he must have told us a hundred times, was about how he met and fell in love with Mom. Dad was in the air force, and Mom was in the USO, but when they met, she was on leave visiting her parents at their cattle ranch near Fish Creek Canyon.
Dad and some of his air force buddies109 were on a cliff of the canyon, trying to work up the nerve to dive into the lake forty feet below, when Mom and a friend drove up. Mom was wearing a white bathing suit that showed off her figure and her skin, which was dark from the Arizona sun. She had light brown hair that turned blond in the summer, and she never wore any makeup except deep red lipstick110. She looked just like a movie star, Dad always said, but hell, he'd met lots of beautiful women before, and none of them had ever made him weak in the knees. Mom was different. He saw right away that she had true spirit. He fell in love with her the split second he laid eyes on her.
Mom walked up to the air force men and told them that diving off the cliff was no big deal, she'd been doing it since she was little. The men didn't believe her, so Mom went right to the edge of the cliff and did a perfect swan dive into the water below.
Dad jumped in after her. No way in hell, he'd say, was he letting a fine broad like that get away from him.
"What kind of dive did you do, Dad?" I asked whenever he told the story.
"A parachute dive. Without a parachute," he always answered.
Dad swam after Mom, and right there in the water, he told her he was going to marry her. Twenty-three men had already proposed to her, Mom told Dad, and she had turned them all down. "What makes you think I'd accept your proposal?" she asked.
"I didn't propose to you," Dad said. "I told you I was going to marry you."Six months later, they got married. I always thought it was the most romantic story I'd ever heard, but Mom didn't like it. She didn't think it was romantic at all.
"I had to say yes," Mom said. "Your father wouldn't take no for an answer." Besides, she explained, she had to get away from her mother, who wouldn't let her make even the smallest decision on her own. "I had no idea your father would be even worse."Dad left the air force after he got married because he wanted to make a fortune for his family, and you couldn't do that in the military. In a few months, Mom was pregnant. When Lori came out, she was mute and bald as an egg for the first three years of her life. Then suddenly, she sprouted111 curly hair the color of a new penny and started speaking nonstop. But it sounded like gibberish, and everyone thought she was addled112 except for Mom, who understood her perfectly113 and said she had an excellent vocabulary.
A year after Lori was born, Mom and Dad had a second daughter, Mary Charlene, who had coal-black hair and chocolate-brown eyes, just like Dad. But Mary Charlene died one night when she was nine months old. Crib death, Mom always said. Two years later, I was born. "You were to replace Mary Charlene," Mom said. She told me that she had ordered up a second redheaded girl so Lori wouldn't feel like she was weird114. "You were such a skinny baby," Mom used to tell me. "The longest, boniest thing the nurses had ever seen."Brian arrived when I was one. He was a blue baby, Mom said. When he was born, he couldn't breathe and came into this world having a seizure115. Whenever Mom told the story, she would hold her arms rigid116 and clench117 her teeth and go bug-eyed to show how Brian looked. Mom said when she saw him like that, she thought, Uh-oh, looks like this one's a goner, too. But Brian lived. For the first year of his life, he kept having those seizures118, then one day they just stopped. He turned into a tough little guy who never whined119 or cried, even the time I accidentally pushed him off the top bunk120 and he broke his nose.
Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encourages them, she told us. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.
Mom never seemed upset about Mary Charlene's death. "God knows what He's doing," she said. "He gave me some perfect children, but He also gave me one that wasn't so perfect, so He said, 'Oops, I better take this one back.'" Dad, however, wouldn't talk about Mary Charlene. If her name came up, his face grew stony121 and he'd leave the room. He was the one who found her body in the crib, and Mom couldn't believe how much it shook him up. "When he found her, he stood there like he was in shock or something, cradling her stiff little body in his arms, and then he screamed like a wounded animal," she told us. "I never heard such a horrible sound."Mom said Dad was never the same after Mary Charlene died. He started having dark moods, staying out late and coming home drunk, and losing jobs. One day soon after Brian was born, we were short on cash, so Dad pawned122 Mom's big diamond wedding ring, which her mother had paid for, and that upset Mom. After that, whenever Mom and Dad got in a fight, Mom brought up the ring, and Dad told her to quit her damn bellyaching. He'd say he was going to get her a ring even fancier than the one he pawned. That was why we had to find gold. To get Mom a new wedding ring. That and so we could build the Glass Castle.
"DO YOU LIKE ALWAYS moving around?" Lori asked me.
"Of course I do!" I said. "Don't you?""Sure," she said.
It was late afternoon, and we were parked outside of a bar in the Nevada desert. It was called the Bar None Bar. I was four and Lori was seven. We were on our way to Las Vegas. Dad had decided it would be easier, as he put it, to accumulate the capital necessary to finance the Prospector if he hit the casinos for a while. We'd been driving for hours when he saw the Bar None Bar, pulled over the Green Caboose梩he Blue Goose had died, and we now had another car, a station wagon123 Dad had named the Green Caboose梐nd announced that he was going inside for a quick nip. Mom put on some red lipstick and joined him, even though she didn't drink anything stronger than tea. They had been inside for hours. The sun hung high in the sky, and there was not the slightest hint of a breeze. Nothing moved except some buzzards on the side of the road, pecking over an unrecognizable carcass. Brian was reading a dog-eared comic book.
"How many places have we lived?" I asked Lori.
"That depends on what you mean by 'lived,'" she said. "If you spend one night in some town, did you live there? What about two nights? Or a whole week?"I thought. "If you unpack124 all your things," I said.
We counted eleven places we had lived, then we lost track. We couldn't remember the names of some of the towns or what the houses we had lived in looked like. Mostly, I remembered the inside of cars.
"What do you think would happen if we weren't always moving around?" I asked.
"We'd get caught," Lori said.
* * *When Mom and Dad came out of the Bar None Bar, they brought us each a long piece of beef jerky and a candy bar. I ate the jerky first, and by the time I unwrapped my Mounds125 bar, it had melted into a brown, gooey mess, so I decided to save it until night, when the desert cold would harden it up again.
By then we had passed through the small town beyond the Bar None Bar. Dad was driving and smoking with one hand and holding a brown bottle of beer with the other. Lori was in the front seat between him and Mom, and Brian, who was in back with me, was trying to trade me half of his 3 Musketeers for half of my Mounds. Just then we took a sharp turn over some railroad tracks, the door flew open, and I tumbled out of the car.
I rolled several yards along the embankment, and when I came to a stop, I was too shocked to cry, with my breath knocked out and grit126 and pebbles127 in my eyes and mouth. I lifted my head in time to watch the Green Caboose get smaller and smaller and then disappear around a bend.
Blood was running down my forehead and flowing out of my nose. My knees and elbows were scraped raw and covered with sand. I was still holding the Mounds bar, but I had smashed it during the fall, tearing the wrapper and squeezing out the white coconut128 filling, which was also covered with grit.
Once I got my breath back, I crawled along the railroad embankment to the road and sat down to wait for Mom and Dad to come back. My whole body felt sore. The sun was small and white and broiling-hot. A wind had come up, and it was roiling129 the dust along the roadside. I waited for what seemed like a long time before I decided it was possible Mom and Dad might not come back for me. They might not notice I was missing. They might decide that it wasn't worth the drive back to retrieve130 me; that, like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden they could do without.
The little town behind me was quiet, and there were no other cars on the road. I started crying, but that only made me feel more sore. I got up and began to walk back toward the houses, and then I decided that if Mom and Dad did come for me, they wouldn't be able to find me, so I returned to the railroad tracks and sat down again.
I was scraping the dried blood off my legs when I looked up and saw the Green Caboose come back around the bend. It hurtled up the road toward me, getting bigger and bigger, until it screeched131 to a halt right in front of me. Dad got out of the car, knelt down, and tried to give me a hug.
I pulled away from him. "I thought you were going to leave me behind," I said.
"Aww, I'd never do that," he said. "Your brother was trying to tell us that you'd fallen out, but he was blubbering so damned hard we couldn't understand a word he was saying."Dad started pulling the pebbles out of my face. Some were buried deep in my skin, so he reached into the glove compartment for a pair of needle-nosed pliers. When he'd plucked all the pebbles from my cheeks and forehead, he took out his handkerchief and tried to stop my nose from bleeding. It was dripping like a broken faucet132. "Damn, honey," he said. "You busted133 your snot locker134 pretty good."I started laughing really hard. "Snot locker" was the funniest name I'd ever heard for a nose. After Dad cleaned me up and I got back in the car, I told Brian and Lori and Mom about the word, and they all started laughing as hard as me. Snot locker. It was hilarious.
WE LIVED IN LAS VEGAS for about a month, in a motel room with dark red walls and two narrow beds. We three kids slept in one, Mom and Dad in the other. During the day, we went to the casinos, where Dad said he had a sure-fire system for beating the house. Brian and I played hide-and-seek among the clicking slot machines, checking the trays for overlooked quarters, while Dad was winning money at the blackjack table. I'd stare at the long-legged showgirls when they sashayed across the casino floor, with huge feathers on their heads and behinds, sequins sparkling on their bodies, and glitter around their eyes. When I tried to imitate their walk, Brian said I looked like an ostrich135.
At the end of the day, Dad came to get us, his pockets full of money. He bought us cowboy hats and fringed vests, and we ate chicken-fried steaks in restaurants with ice-cold air-conditioning and a miniature jukebox at each table. One night when Dad had made an especially big score, he said it was time to start living like the high rollers we had become. He took us to a restaurant with swinging doors like a saloon. Inside, the walls were decorated with real prospecting136 tools. A man with garters on his arms played a piano, and a woman with gloves that came up past her elbows kept hurrying over to light Dad's cigarettes.
Dad told us we were having something special for dessert梐 flaming ice-cream cake. The waiter wheeled out a tray with the cake on it, and the woman with the gloves lit it with a taper137. Everyone stopped eating to watch. The flames had a slow, watery138 movement, rolling up into the air like ribbons. Everyone started clapping, and Dad jumped up and raised the waiter's hand above his head as if he'd won first prize.
A few days later, Mom and Dad went off to the blackjack table and then almost immediately came looking for us. Dad said one of the dealers139 had figured out that he had a system and had put the word out on him. He told us it was time to do the skedaddle.
* * *We had to get far away from Las Vegas, Dad said, because the Mafia, which owned the casinos, was after him. We headed west, through desert and then mountains. Mom said we should all live near the Pacific Ocean at least once in our lives, so we kept going all the way to San Francisco.
Mom didn't want us staying in one of those tourist-trap hotels near Fisherman's Wharf140, which she said were inauthentic and cut off from the real life of the city, so we found one that had a lot more character, in a place called the Tenderloin District. Sailors and women with lots of makeup stayed there, too. Dad called it a flophouse, but Mom said it was an SRO, and when I asked what that stood for, she told me the hotel was for special residents only.
While Mom and Dad went out looking for investment money for the Prospector, we kids played in the hotel. One day I found a half-full box of matches. I was thrilled, because I much preferred the wooden matches that came in boxes over the flimsy ones in the cardboard books. I took them upstairs and locked myself in the bathroom. I pulled off some toilet paper, lit it, and when it started burning, I threw it down the toilet. I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out. Then I got a better idea. I made a pile of toilet paper in the toilet, lit it, and when it started burning, the flame shooting silently up out of the bowl, I flushed it down the toilet.
One night a few days later, I suddenly woke up. The air was hot and stifling141. I smelled smoke and then saw flames leaping at the open window. At first I couldn't tell if the fire was inside or outside, but then I saw that one of the curtains, only a few feet from the bed, was ablaze142.
Mom and Dad were not in the room, and Lori and Brian were still asleep. I tried to scream to warn them, but nothing came out of my throat. I wanted to reach over and shake them awake, but I couldn't move. The fire was growing bigger, stronger, and angrier.
Just then the door burst open. Someone was calling our names. It was Dad. Lori and Brian woke up and ran to him, coughing from the smoke. I still couldn't move. I watched the fire, expecting that at any moment my blanket would burst into flames. Dad wrapped the blanket around me and picked me up, then ran down the stairs, leading Lori and Brian with one arm and holding me in the other.
Dad took us kids across the street to a bar, then went back to help fight the fire. A waitress with red fingernails and blue-black hair asked if we wanted a Coca-Cola or, heck, even a beer, because we'd been through a lot that night. Brian and Lori said yes, please, to Cokes. I asked if I might please have a Shirley Temple, which was what Dad bought me whenever he took me to a bar. For some reason, the waitress laughed.
The people at the bar kept making jokes about women running naked out of the burning hotel. All I had on was my underwear, so I kept the blanket wrapped tightly around me. After I drank my Shirley Temple, I tried to go back across the street to watch the fire, but the waitress kept me at the bar, so I climbed up on a stool to watch through the window. The fire trucks had arrived. There were flashing lights and men in black rubber coats holding canvas hoses with big jets of water coming out of them.
I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
* * *After the hotel burned down, we lived for a few days on the beach. When we put down the backseat of the Green Caboose, there was room for everyone to sleep, though sometimes someone's feet would be sticking in my face. One night a policeman tapped on our window and said we had to leave; it was illegal to sleep on the beach. He was nice and kept calling us. "folks" and even drew us a map to a place where we could sleep without getting arrested.
But after he left, Dad called him the goddamn gestapo and said that people like that got their jollies pushing people like us around. Dad was fed up with civilization. He and Mom decided we should move back to the desert and resume our hunt for gold without our starter money. "These cities will kill you," he said.
AFTER WE PULLED UP stakes in San Francisco, we headed for the Mojave Desert. Near the Eagle Mountains, Mom made Dad stop the car. She'd seen a tree on the side of the road that had caught her fancy.
It wasn't just any tree. It was an ancient Joshua tree. It stood in a crease143 of land where the desert ended and the mountain began, forming a wind tunnel. From the time the Joshua tree was a tiny sapling, it had been so beaten down by the whipping wind that, rather than trying to grow skyward, it had grown in the direction that the wind pushed it. It existed now in a permanent state of windblownness, leaning over so far that it seemed ready to topple, although, in fact, its roots held it firmly in place.
I thought the Joshua tree was ugly. It looked scraggly and freakish, permanently144 stuck in its twisted, tortured position, and it made me think of how some adults tell you not to make weird faces because your features could freeze. Mom, however, thought it was one of the most beautiful trees she had ever seen. She told us she had to paint it. While she was setting out her easel, Dad drove up the road to see what was ahead. He found a scattering145 of parched146 little houses, trailers settling into the sand, and shacks with rusty147 tin roofs. It was called Midland. One of the little houses had a for-rent sign. "What the hell," Dad said, "this place is as good as any other."* * *The house we rented had been built by a mining company. It was white, with two rooms and a swaybacked roof. There were no trees, and the desert sand ran right up to the back door. At night you could hear coyotes howling.
When we first got to Midland, those coyotes kept me awake, and as I lay in bed, I'd hear other sounds桮ila monsters rustling148 in the underbrush, moths149 knocking against the screens, and the creosote crackling in the wind. One night when the lights were out and I could see a sliver150 of moon through the window, I heard a slithering noise on the floor.
"I think there's something under our bed," I said to Lori.
"It's merely a figment of your overly active imagination," Lori said. She talked like a grown-up when she was annoyed.
I tried to be brave, but I had heard something. In the moonlight, I thought I saw it move.
"Something's there," I whispered.
"Go to sleep," Lori said.
Holding my pillow over my head for protection, I ran into the living room, where Dad was reading. "What's up, Mountain Goat?" he asked. He called me that because I never fell down when we were climbing mountains梥ure-footed as a mountain goat, he'd always say.
"Nothing, probably," I said. "I just think maybe I saw something in the bedroom." Dad raised his eyebrows151. "But it was probably just a figment of my overly active imagination.""Did you get a good look at it?" he asked.
"Not really.""You must have seen it. Was it a big old hairy sonofabitch with the damnedest-looking teeth and claws?""That's it!""And did it have pointed152 ears and evil eyes with fire in 'em, and did it stare at you all wicked-like?" he asked.
"Yes! Yes! You've seen it, too?""Better believe I have. It's that old ornery bastard Demon153."Dad said he had been chasing Demon for years. By now, Dad said, that old Demon had figured out that it had better not mess with Rex Walls. But if that sneaky son of a gun thought it was going to terrorize Rex Walls's little girl, it had by God got another think coming. "Go fetch my hunting knife," Dad said.
I got Dad his knife with the carved bone handle and the blade of blue German steel, and he gave me a pipe wrench154, and we went looking for Demon. We looked under my bed, where I had seen it, but it was gone. We looked all around the house梪nder the table, in the dark corners of the closets, in the toolbox, even outside in the trash cans.
"C'mere, you sorry-ass old Demon!" Dad called out in the desert night. "Come out and show your butt-ugly face, you yellow-bellied monster!""Yeah, c'mon, you old mean Demon!" I said, waving the pipe wrench in the air. "We're not scared of you!"There was only the sound of the coyotes in the distance. "This is just like that chickenshit Demon," Dad said. He sat down on the front step and lit up a cigarette, then told me a story about the time Demon was terrorizing an entire town, and Dad fought it off in hand-to-hand combat, biting its ears and sticking his fingers in its eyes. Old Demon was terrified because that was the first time it had met anyone who wasn't afraid of it. "Damned old Demon didn't know what to think," Dad said, shaking his head with a chuckle. That was the thing to remember about all monsters, Dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them down, they turn tail and run. "All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you're not afraid."* * *Not much grew around Midland other than the Joshua tree, cacti155, and the scrubby little creosote bushes that Dad said were some of the oldest plants on the planet. The great granddaddy creosote bushes were thousands of years old. When it rained, they let off a disgusting musty smell so animals wouldn't eat them. Only four inches of rain fell a year around Midland梐bout the same as in the northern Sahara梐nd water for humans came in on the train once a day in special containers. The only animals that could survive around Midland were lipless, scaly creatures such as Gila monsters and scorpions, and people like us.
A month after we moved to Midland, Juju got bitten by a rattlesnake and died. We buried him near the Joshua tree. It was practically the only time I ever saw Brian cry. But we had plenty of cats to keep us company. Too many, in fact. We had rescued lots of cats since we tossed Quixote out the window, and most of them had gone and had kittens, and it got to the point where we had to get rid of some of them. We didn't have many neighbors to give them to, so Dad put them in a burlap sack and drove to a pond made by the mining company to cool equipment. I watched him load the back of the car with bobbing, mewing bags.
"It doesn't seem right," I told Mom. "We rescued them. Now we're going to kill them.""We gave them a little extra time on the planet," Mom said. "They should be grateful for that."* * *Dad finally got a job in the gypsum mine, digging out the white rocks that were ground into the powder used in drywall and plaster of paris. When he came home, he'd be covered with white gypsum powder, and sometimes we'd play ghost and he'd chase us. He also brought back sacks of gypsum, and Mom mixed it with water to make Venus de Milo sculptures from a rubber cast she ordered through the mail. It grieved Mom that the mine was destroying so much white rock梥he said it was real marble and deserved a better fate and that, by making her sculptures, she was at least immortalizing some of it.
Mom was pregnant. Everyone hoped it would be a boy so Brian would have someone to play with other than me. When it got time for Mom to give birth, Dad's plan was for us to move to Blythe, twenty miles south, which was such a big town it had two movie theaters and two state prisons.
In the meantime, Mom devoted156 herself to her art. She spent all day working on oil paintings, watercolors, charcoal157 drawings, pen-and-ink sketches158, clay and wire sculptures, silk screens, and wood blocks. She didn't have any particular style; some of her paintings were what she called primitive159, some were impressionistic and abstract, some were realistic. "I don't want to be pigeonholed," she liked to say. Mom was also a writer and was always typing away on novels, short stories, plays, poetry, fables160, and children's books, which she illustrated161 herself. Mom's writing was very creative. So was her spelling. She needed a proofreader, and when Lori was just seven years old, she would go over Mom's manuscripts, checking for errors.
While we were in Midland, Mom painted dozens of variations and studies of the Joshua tree. We'd go with her and she'd give us art lessons. One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight.
Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."I NEVER BELIEVED IN Santa Claus.
None of us kids did. Mom and Dad refused to let us. They couldn't afford expensive presents, and they didn't want us to think we weren't as good as other kids who, on Christmas morning, found all sorts of fancy toys under the tree that were supposedly left by Santa Claus. So they told us all about how other kids were deceived by their parents, how the toys the grown-ups claimed were made by little elves wearing bell caps in their workshop at the North Pole actually had labels on them saying MADE IN JAPAN.
"Try not to look down on those other children," Mom said. "It's not their fault that they've been brainwashed into believing silly myths."We celebrated162 Christmas, but usually about a week after December 25, when you could find perfectly good bows and wrapping paper that people had thrown away and Christmas trees discarded on the roadside that still had most of their needles and even some silver tinsel hanging on them. Mom and Dad would give us a bag of marbles or a doll or a slingshot that had been marked way down in an after-Christmas sale.
Dad lost his job at the gypsum mine after getting in an argument with the foreman, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each of us kids out into the desert night one by one. I had a blanket wrapped around me, and when it was my turn, I offered to share it with Dad, but he said no thanks. The cold never bothered him. I was five that year and I sat next to Dad and we looked up at the sky. Dad loved to talk about the stars. He explained to us how they rotated through the night sky as the earth turned. He taught us to identify the constellations163 and how to navigate164 by the North Star. Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness165. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.
"Pick out your favorite star," Dad said that night. He told me I could have it for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present.
"You can't give me a star!" I said. "No one owns the stars.""That's right," Dad said. "No one else own
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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singed
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| v.浅表烧焦( singe的过去式和过去分词 )；（毛发）燎，烧焦尖端[边儿] | |
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shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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smother
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| vt./vi.使窒息；抑制；闷死；n.浓烟；窒息 | |
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unnaturally
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| adv.违反习俗地；不自然地；勉强地；不近人情地 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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asses
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| n. 驴，愚蠢的人，臀部 adv. (常用作后置)用于贬损或骂人 | |
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13
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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14
ribs
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| n.肋骨( rib的名词复数 )；（船或屋顶等的）肋拱；肋骨状的东西；（织物的）凸条花纹 | |
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15
crunching
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| v.嘎吱嘎吱地咬嚼( crunch的现在分词 )；嘎吱作响；（快速大量地）处理信息；数字捣弄 | |
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16
thigh
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| n.大腿；股骨 | |
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17
graft
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| n.移植，嫁接，艰苦工作，贪污；v.移植，嫁接 | |
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18
sling
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| vt.扔；悬挂；n.挂带；吊索，吊兜；弹弓 | |
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19
bruises
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| n.瘀伤，伤痕，擦伤( bruise的名词复数 ) | |
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20
smear
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| v.涂抹；诽谤，玷污；n.污点；诽谤，污蔑 | |
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21
smears
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| 污迹( smear的名词复数 )； 污斑； （显微镜的）涂片； 诽谤 | |
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22
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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23
squeaking
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| v.短促地尖叫( squeak的现在分词 )；吱吱叫；告密；充当告密者 | |
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24
cocktail
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| n.鸡尾酒；餐前开胃小吃；混合物 | |
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25
wavy
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| adj.有波浪的，多浪的，波浪状的，波动的，不稳定的 | |
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26
makeup
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| n.组织；性格；化装品 | |
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27
stunned
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| adj. 震惊的，惊讶的 动词stun的过去式和过去分词 | |
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28
disapproved
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| v.不赞成( disapprove的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
joint
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| adj.联合的，共同的；n.关节，接合处；v.连接，贴合 | |
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30
scorpion
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| n.蝎子，心黑的人，蝎子鞭 | |
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31
quacks
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| abbr.quacksalvers 庸医，骗子(16世纪习惯用水银或汞治疗梅毒的人)n.江湖医生( quack的名词复数 )；江湖郎中；（鸭子的）呱呱声v.（鸭子）发出嘎嘎声( quack的第三人称单数 ) | |
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32
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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33
hilarious
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| adj.充满笑声的，欢闹的；[反]depressed | |
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34
raffle
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| n.废物，垃圾，抽奖售卖；v.以抽彩出售 | |
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35
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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36
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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37
sprinted
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| v.短距离疾跑( sprint的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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38
lookout
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| n.注意，前途，瞭望台 | |
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39
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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40
bellowed
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| v.发出吼叫声，咆哮（尤指因痛苦）( bellow的过去式和过去分词 )；（愤怒地）说出（某事），大叫 | |
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41
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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42
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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43
stomp
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| v.跺（脚），重踩，重踏 | |
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44
hips
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| abbr.high impact polystyrene 高冲击强度聚苯乙烯，耐冲性聚苯乙烯n.臀部( hip的名词复数 )；[建筑学]屋脊；臀围（尺寸）；臀部…的 | |
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45
saucy
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| adj.无礼的；俊俏的；活泼的 | |
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46
overflow
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| v.(使)外溢，(使)溢出；溢出，流出，漫出 | |
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47
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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48
grumbling
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| adj. 喃喃鸣不平的, 出怨言的 | |
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49
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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50
screeching
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的现在分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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51
posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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52
investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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53
ashtray
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| n.烟灰缸 | |
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54
butts
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| 笑柄( butt的名词复数 )； （武器或工具的）粗大的一端； 屁股； 烟蒂 | |
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55
pall
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| v.覆盖，使平淡无味；n.柩衣，棺罩；棺材；帷幕 | |
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56
nomads
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| n.游牧部落的一员( nomad的名词复数 )；流浪者；游牧生活；流浪生活 | |
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57
shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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58
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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59
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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60
desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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61
isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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62
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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63
streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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64
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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65
unpaid
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| adj.未付款的，无报酬的 | |
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66
phoenix
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| n.凤凰，长生(不死)鸟；引申为重生 | |
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67
ranch
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| n.大牧场，大农场 | |
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68
creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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69
canyon
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| n.峡谷，溪谷 | |
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70
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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71
scaly
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| adj.鱼鳞状的；干燥粗糙的 | |
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72
shrug
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| v.耸肩(表示怀疑、冷漠、不知等) | |
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73
prospectors
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| n.勘探者，探矿者( prospector的名词复数 ) | |
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74
prospector
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| n.探矿者 | |
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75
enroll
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| v.招收；登记；入学；参军；成为会员（英)enrol | |
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76
smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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77
edible
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| n.食品，食物；adj.可食用的 | |
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78
toxic
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| adj.有毒的，因中毒引起的 | |
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79
scorpions
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| n.蝎子( scorpion的名词复数 ) | |
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80
toads
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| n.蟾蜍，癞蛤蟆( toad的名词复数 ) | |
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81
turquoise
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| n.绿宝石；adj.蓝绿色的 | |
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82
batches
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| 一批( batch的名词复数 )； 一炉； （食物、药物等的）一批生产的量； 成批作业 | |
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83
swirling
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| v.旋转，打旋( swirl的现在分词 ) | |
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84
squat
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| v.蹲坐，蹲下；n.蹲下；adj.矮胖的，粗矮的 | |
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85
pelting
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| 微不足道的，无价值的，盛怒的 | |
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86
gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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87
arroyos
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| n.（美洲沙漠中的）旱谷，干涸沟壑( arroyo的名词复数 )；干谷 | |
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88
cactus
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| n.仙人掌 | |
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89
gorge
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| n.咽喉，胃，暴食，山峡；v.塞饱，狼吞虎咽地吃 | |
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90
crates
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| n. 板条箱, 篓子, 旧汽车 vt. 装进纸条箱 | |
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91
stewed
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| adj.焦虑不安的，烂醉的v.炖( stew的过去式和过去分词 )；煨；思考；担忧 | |
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92
compartment
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| n.卧车包房，隔间；分隔的空间 | |
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93
calculus
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| n.微积分；结石 | |
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94
algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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95
thermal
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| adj.热的，由热造成的；保暖的 | |
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96
scoop
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| n.铲子，舀取，独家新闻；v.汲取，舀取，抢先登出 | |
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97
sift
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| v.筛撒，纷落，详察 | |
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98
maze
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| n.迷宫，八阵图，混乱，迷惑 | |
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99
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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100
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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101
chuckle
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| vi.／n.轻声笑，咯咯笑 | |
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102
wrestled
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| v.（与某人）搏斗( wrestle的过去式和过去分词 )；扭成一团；扭打；（与…）摔跤 | |
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103
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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104
sluice
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| n.水闸 | |
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105
giggled
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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106
wondrous
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| adj.令人惊奇的，奇妙的；adv.惊人地；异乎寻常地；令人惊叹地 | |
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107
blueprints
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| n.蓝图，设计图( blueprint的名词复数 ) | |
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108
verge
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| n.边，边缘；v.接近，濒临 | |
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109
buddies
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| n.密友( buddy的名词复数 )；同伴；弟兄；（用于称呼男子，常带怒气）家伙v.（如密友、战友、伙伴、弟兄般）交往( buddy的第三人称单数 )；做朋友；亲近（…）；伴护艾滋病人 | |
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110
lipstick
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| n.口红，唇膏 | |
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111
sprouted
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| v.发芽( sprout的过去式和过去分词 )；抽芽；出现；（使）涌现出 | |
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112
addled
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| adj.（头脑）糊涂的，愚蠢的；（指蛋类）变坏v.使糊涂( addle的过去式和过去分词 )；使混乱；使腐臭；使变质 | |
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113
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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114
weird
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| adj.古怪的，离奇的；怪诞的，神秘而可怕的 | |
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115
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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116
rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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117
clench
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| vt.捏紧（拳头等），咬紧（牙齿等），紧紧握住 | |
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118
seizures
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| n.起获( seizure的名词复数 )；没收；充公；起获的赃物 | |
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119
whined
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| v.哀号( whine的过去式和过去分词 )；哀诉，诉怨 | |
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120
bunk
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| n.(车、船等倚壁而设的)铺位；废话 | |
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121
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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122
pawned
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| v.典当，抵押( pawn的过去式和过去分词 )；以（某事物）担保 | |
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123
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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124
unpack
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| vt.打开包裹（或行李），卸货 | |
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125
mounds
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| 土堆，土丘( mound的名词复数 )； 一大堆 | |
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126
grit
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| n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关 | |
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127
pebbles
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| [复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 ) | |
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128
coconut
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| n.椰子 | |
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129
roiling
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| v.搅混（液体）( roil的现在分词 )；使烦恼；使不安；使生气 | |
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130
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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screeched
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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132
faucet
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| n.水龙头 | |
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133
busted
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| adj. 破产了的，失败了的，被降级的，被逮捕的，被抓到的 动词bust的过去式和过去分词 | |
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134
locker
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| n.更衣箱，储物柜，冷藏室，上锁的人 | |
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135
ostrich
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| n.鸵鸟 | |
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136
prospecting
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| n.探矿 | |
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137
taper
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| n.小蜡烛，尖细，渐弱；adj.尖细的；v.逐渐变小 | |
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138
watery
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| adj.有水的，水汪汪的；湿的，湿润的 | |
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139
dealers
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| n.商人( dealer的名词复数 )；贩毒者；毒品贩子；发牌者 | |
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140
wharf
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| n.码头，停泊处 | |
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141
stifling
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| a.令人窒息的 | |
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142
ablaze
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| adj.着火的，燃烧的；闪耀的，灯火辉煌的 | |
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143
crease
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| n.折缝，褶痕，皱褶；v.(使)起皱 | |
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144
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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145
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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146
parched
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| adj.焦干的；极渴的；v.（使）焦干 | |
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rusty
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| adj.生锈的；锈色的；荒废了的 | |
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148
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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149
moths
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| n.蛾( moth的名词复数 ) | |
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150
sliver
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| n.裂片，细片，梳毛；v.纵切，切成长片，剖开 | |
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151
eyebrows
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| 眉毛( eyebrow的名词复数 ) | |
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152
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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153
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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154
wrench
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| v.猛拧；挣脱；使扭伤；n.扳手；痛苦，难受 | |
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155
cacti
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| n.（复）仙人掌 | |
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156
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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157
charcoal
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| n.炭，木炭，生物炭 | |
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158
sketches
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| n.草图( sketch的名词复数 )；素描；速写；梗概 | |
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159
primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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160
fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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161
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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162
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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163
constellations
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| n.星座( constellation的名词复数 )；一群杰出人物；一系列（相关的想法、事物）；一群（相关的人） | |
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164
navigate
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| v.航行，飞行；导航，领航 | |
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165
wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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