by David Crow
Why was he so mad? He never cared when I ran off before.
I sniveled the entire ride back.
Mom’s usual okra, roast beef, and iced tea dinner was waiting for us. Lonnie and Sam had already eaten, but they stayed at the table and watched Mom, Dad, and me, their eyes wide. “Thelma Lou!” Dad yelled. “What the hell is the matter with you, not paying attention to the kids—especially David? I swear, if breathing wasn’t automatic, you would have died a long time ago.”
“He’s impossible to watch!” She ran into their bedroom and slammed the door.
I found out later that the older kids had fessed up—they knew I had followed them into town, but they didn’t try to look for me. One boy’s father called Dad to let him know. A neighbor lady came by to tell Mom what happened, waking her from a nap.
After everyone went to bed, I crawled down the hall in the dark and curled up on the floor outside my parents’ room.
“I wasn’t worried the little bastard had been kidnapped,” Dad said. “Even if he had been, they would have given him back when they realized he was such a huge pain in the ass.” He chuckled. “But if he froze to death and you didn’t even know he left the compound, they would have locked you up in the funny farm, which is what I should have done a long time ago.”
Mom laughed, even though what he said was mean.
I LIKED MY FIRST-GRADE TEACHER, Miss Gardner. She was young and pretty and never made fun of me when I wrote my letters backward and couldn’t remember words. One day she pulled me aside and asked if I had trouble seeing the blackboard. How did she figure that out? I nodded, and the next morning, she moved my seat to the front of the class.
As nice as she was, though, it wasn’t long before the kids started calling me estúpido. Whenever Miss Gardner returned a paper with a lot of red marks, they’d laugh and try to rip it out of my hands. Every afternoon, I hopped off the bus and ran as fast as I could away from the house to forget all about it.
On the weekends, Dad would tell me to get into the car, and we’d drive to Belen to check on the cigarette machines he leased. As we refilled them and collected the money, he would say, “Ignorant Indians and Mexicans are paying me to wreck their health. You’d never catch a Cherokee doing it. When I was in the Q, I did autopsies on smokers who had black lungs. I always knew cigarettes were bad.”
Dad would blurt out things like this when were alone. By that point, I’d figured out pieces of his story from listening in. He never mentioned the Q in front of my siblings, but he talked to me about it as though I knew everything.
“Pay attention, David—I’ll teach you how to make money off other people’s idiocy. It’s the easiest money you’ll ever make.”
When we got back in the Rambler and headed home, he would go on about taking advantage of morons or rail against the person who had broken into one of his machines and stolen his money. As the miles passed, I’d think that maybe he wouldn’t bring up Mom. Not this time. But no matter what he was saying, he’d interrupt himself, and his voice would turn ugly. “You understand that we need to get rid of your mother, right?”
He had been saying the same thing for years now, but Mom was still at home.
I said yes and nodded, knowing I couldn’t answer any other way.
CHAPTER 6
NOT A WEEK WENT BY without a screaming match that led to Dad sleeping in the Rambler and Mom running into the house after he hit her. The next day they’d both act as if nothing had happened. Then it would be quiet for a few nights before the yelling and hitting started up again.
The neighbors weren’t happy. After more than two years of yard fights and Mom’s whiny complaints, they wanted nothing to do with her or Dad. When either one went out during the day, the neighbors quickly turned in the other direction. They didn’t allow their kids to come over to our house, and Sam and I weren’t invited over to theirs, so we all played together at the compound playground.
After second grade ended, I spent every day there with Sam. He liked to dig in the sandbox so much I started calling him “Diggie.” Once in a while, we wandered off the compound, but we never went far. When it was time for him to go in, I took off on my own, running into the desert. No one stopped me, and it meant not having to be around Mom and Dad.
ONE NIGHT, THE FIGHTING WENT on longer than usual. I found Lonnie on the porch sitting on the top step wrapped in a blanket.
She shook her head. “Mom woke him up three times in the car tonight. She’s nuts. It’s like she wants him to hit her.” Lonnie stood and opened the door. “Be back in a second.” She returned with two glasses of Kool-Aid and handed one to me. “It looks like we might be here a while for this one.”
Dad opened the side window a crack. “Thelma Lou, get in the house before I whip your ass,” he said through gritted teeth.
Mom didn’t budge. Dad drew up his knees and kicked open the door against her legs, knocking her onto the dirt. She struggled to get up and then ran around the car, crying for help. The lights came on at the Sanders’ house next door, and the husband and wife watched from the front porch in their robes. The wife shook her head, and they disappeared back inside. The house went dark.
Dad closed the car door and pulled the pillow over his head. Mom stormed into the house past Lonnie and me and came flying out with a frying pan. Raising it into the air, she walloped the roof next to the window closest to Dad’s head. He leapt out of the car and shoved Mom’s shoulder, knocking her down again.
“You don’t love me,” she cried, curled up on the ground. “I hate it here. I hate these compounds. I hate the mean neighbors. I’m taking the kids and leaving!”
Lonnie and I laughed. Mom needed help with everything. She couldn’t take care of herself, much less us.
Dad stepped over her and walked into the house. Mom hurried to her feet and followed him inside, both of them still acting like we weren’t there. By then, Sam had joined us. Sally cried from her crib, but we knew she’d go back to sleep once the yelling stopped, so we ignored her.
We went back to our rooms, thinking that Mom and Dad had settled down for the night, but minutes later, their bedroom door flung open and whacked the wall. Mom ran for the front door, Dad close behind. Standing in the middle of the yard in her nightgown and slippers, she screamed at the top of her lungs. I made it to the porch in time to see Dad slap the top of her head with his powerful left hand, knocking her to the ground a third time.
But Mom wouldn’t stop. She got up, ran next door, and disappeared inside the Sanders’ dark house. Dad tore in after her. Seconds later, she ran out the back door and reappeared in front. The lights in the house went on again, and the husband and wife came outside. Other neighbors came outside too. Dad grabbed Mom by the arm and dragged her into our house.
Her muffled crying continued, but there was no more yelling or hitting. At last, I could fall asleep.
The next morning, Dad sat Lonnie and me down at the kitchen table while Mom was still in their bedroom. “Your mother isn’t fit to live around normal people,” he said in a tired voice. “Everyone blames me for hitting her, but she brings it on herself. Nothing else works.”
When I listened at their bedroom door that night, I heard Dad say, “My boss told me to clean up my family mess or I’d be transferred to another station. If the problems continue, I’ll be asked to leave EPNG.”
How much longer would he let Mom stay?
SOON AFTER I STARTED THIRD GRADE, I was convinced my classmates were right—I was estúpido. Second grade had been hard enough as I stumbled through the Dick and Jane books and the blackboard got fuzzier, even though I sat at the front of the class.
But third grade was impossible. I had to read out loud, and sometimes I skipped words or lines, so none of it made sense. When I stopped and started over, the kids would laugh. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get the words to hold still—they shook across the page the way a pond ripples after you toss in a pebble. And I couldn’t print any of my letters correctly. My cu
rsive was even worse—one large, smudged mess.
My new teacher, Mrs. Jimenez, said I was a smart boy but just needed some help. I didn’t believe her. At home, Dad would test me, asking me to read from the newspaper. He’d call me stupid and shake me as I struggled to keep my place. When I tripped over the words, he would wave his hand back and forth in my face, saying, “Why bother?”
At the end of September, he and Mom woke us up in the middle of the night with yet another fight in their bedroom. More yelling and wailing, along with an occasional grunt and shout from Dad. Gradually their voices faded into silence. I didn’t hear Mom at all. It had become so quiet—too quiet. Had Dad finally suffocated her with a pillow?
The next morning, I was relieved to see Mom in the kitchen making coffee. When Dad appeared and poured himself a glass of orange juice, neither of them spoke. They didn’t talk to us either. Dad ate his breakfast, drank his juice and coffee, and hurried to the plant, covering a shift for someone on vacation.
For the next several days, they were unusually quiet and calm. Dad didn’t pay attention to anything I said or did. Being the oldest, Lonnie knew the most about our parents’ problems, but she couldn’t figure out their silence either. “Something’s up,” was all she said.
That weekend, Lonnie, Sam, and I were sitting around the table in our pajamas eating cereal, the television blaring cartoons in the living room, when Dad came in. “Time for a family meeting.”
He told us to move to the couch, and he and Mom sat in front of us. “We’re leaving EPNG for good,” he said. “Your mother needs to live in a real town, with different neighbors, and I want to make more money and go to college at night.”
Dad set down his coffee cup and smiled at Mom, and she smiled back. It was the first time in years that we’d seen them be nice to each other. I figured we weren’t getting rid of Mom yet.
“We’re moving to Albuquerque,” Dad said. “I’ll be selling life insurance for a big company based in Nebraska called Woodmen Accident and Life. I’m giving EPNG my notice today.”
But he’d always said you didn’t leave EPNG unless you died or retired. And I didn’t want to move. I liked Mrs. Jimenez and the older boys in the compound. I didn’t want to be the new kid somewhere else.
When Dad came home that night, nothing seemed different—we had the usual fried okra, roast beef, and iced tea for dinner—so maybe he hadn’t told EPNG we were leaving.
Later, I listened for a long time outside their bedroom door.
“What about the guy who threw a brick at you from the top of the turbines?” Mom asked. “Did you ever catch him?”
“No. Probably one of the dumb bastards I had to discipline. Hell, someone has to roll a few heads once in a while.”
“It’s a good thing we’re leaving.”
Another person wanted Dad dead? I worried about George finding us and kept a lookout for anyone who seemed to be sneaking up on Dad, like I was a detective. I daydreamed about San Quentin, even calling it the Q the way he did. I’d save him by jumping on George just before he shot Dad in the head.
And I pretended to talk Dad out of trying to kill Cleo. “You’ll get caught. Don’t do it. Tell George to forget it. The bastard isn’t worth it.”
ON THE DAY WE LEFT Belen Station, Mom gathered our dishes and helped Dad load the lamps, tables, couch, piano, and chairs into the green wooden trailer hitched to the back of the Green Bomber. Lonnie, Sam, and I each filled a box with our belongings and put them in the trunk.
The next-door neighbor worked in his front yard without looking at us. No one helped us load the trailer or said goodbye.
When everything was almost packed, I walked slowly through the empty rooms.
“Anything’s better than living here,” Lonnie said behind me. “I’m tired of everyone hating Mom. Dad isn’t happy either. There will be way more to do in a big city.”
Maybe she was right. Maybe the fighting would stop after we moved.
Two Mexican men who lived in Belen and worked for Dad drove up just before we left. I remembered them from Dad’s deer hunting trips. They got out of their truck and waited for him. The older man, his face creased with deep lines, started talking to Lonnie and me.
“Last fall, a huge momma bear charged our camp when her cubs wandered by. We couldn’t get to our guns.” Shaking his head, he removed his straw hat and wiped his brow. “I thought we were going to die, but your dad calmly picked up his rifle and fired two rounds into the bear’s chest, dropping it less than ten feet from us. We’d be dead without him.”
The younger man nodded. “We panicked, but not him.”
When Dad came back from that trip, the dead bear took up the back of a flatbed truck. He held me up to see it. The massive head and claws scared me so bad I wet my pants. I wondered why Dad had killed the bear. Now I knew. He’d done it to save them.
“And your dad taught me math and engineering in his off-hours,” added the younger man. “I named my son Thurston after him. I’m really going to miss him.”
Dad put the last of the boxes in the trailer and came over to greet the men. They shook hands warmly and said their goodbyes. Dad handed the younger man an engineering book and a slide rule. The man’s eyes filled with tears. The older man gave Dad a broad smile and said, “Adios, amigo.”
They got back into the EPNG truck and drove slowly toward the compressor station. When I grew up, I wanted to be just like Dad—smart and strong and brave.
CHAPTER 7
I LOOKED OUT THE BACK WINDOW at the dust whirling around behind us. The compound got smaller and smaller until the desert swallowed it up. The car was silent, except for Mom’s crying. She cried the way she breathed, which is to say all the time. We were doing what she wanted us to do, so why wasn’t she happy?
It took only an hour to get to our new house, but it felt like we’d entered another world. There were miles and miles of stores and neighborhoods—an entire EPNG housing compound could fit in one city block. Lots of kids jumped rope and played catch or stickball in the streets. And none of their parents knew Mom or Dad. Maybe no one would avoid Mom or ever see her fighting with Dad.
We settled into 720 Vassar Drive, NE, a gray, one-story stucco house with a small front porch, a one-car garage, and a concrete back patio shaded by a canvas awning. The rest of the backyard was gravel. It was the fanciest house I’d ever been in. Mom said we could have picnics at the wooden table on the patio. We were one block from Lomas Boulevard, a four-lane highway where more cars sped by in an hour than I’d seen in my whole life.
Dad traded in the Green Bomber for a shiny, hot-off-the-lot green Rambler Ambassador station wagon. He used it for work, driving to his office and to his customers’ houses to sign them up. He called them prospects. During his first weeks, he sold a policy to a University of New Mexico football star named Don Perkins, who’d signed to play with the brand-new Dallas Cowboys. Soon afterward, Dad sold a policy to Bobby Unser, the famous race car driver. I was positive Dad would become famous too.
DAD BOUGHT ME A BIGGER BIKE and let me share a paper route with a teenage boy in the neighborhood, a kid almost twice my age who supervised my deliveries. The canvas Albuquerque Journal bag hung like a poncho, nearly reaching my knees. When the adults on my route saw me, they smiled and waved—before long, they called out my name.
I wanted to know everything about my new city, so I read some of the articles in the paper, though I didn’t understand many of the words. The local section had lots of stories about the Southwest in the days of the Spanish conquistadors. On my paper route, I pretended to be one of Coronado’s men storming the countryside, slaughtering my enemies.
When I made my weekly rounds collecting payment, my customers tipped me nickels, dimes, and quarters, filling my pockets with change. I jabbered on, the way I had with Champ, and they would tell me about their day or their job or what they were cooking for dinner. I hung around at each house until the man or woman would have to go do something. “Have a go
od week, David,” they’d say.
Lonnie went to the fancy school down the street called Jefferson Junior High, home of the Jets. It looked like a huge hotel. School was easy for her, and she was always the smartest student in the class. Lonnie could do everything, just like Dad.
A few blocks away, I resumed the third grade and Sam the first grade at Monte Vista Elementary, a two-story building with a red tile roof that looked like a Spanish fortress. Our new school had a big playground with swing sets, a dirt running track, a high-jump pit, and a baseball field. I loved everything about it.
But I didn’t do any better in class than I had in Belen. Many times, I couldn’t make out what Mrs. Salazar said. Her voice was so soft, though everyone else seemed to hear her just fine. And the blackboard was still as difficult to read.
One day, Mrs. Salazar called on each of us to write our name and address on the board, along with a sentence about something we’d read or done that week. In Belen, Mrs. Jimenez didn’t make me write on the board if I didn’t want to—and I never wanted to. At Monte Vista, I didn’t have a choice.
“David,” Mrs. Salazar said from her desk, “you’re next.” I crept to the board, thinking frantically for an excuse that would spare me, but nothing came to mind, other than running out of the room.
After I wrote my name, the entire class laughed. My cheeks burned. When I looked at what I’d written, I could see that both Ds in my first name were backward. Before I could finish my address, Mrs. Salazar said, “You’ve done enough for now. Go back to your desk.” As I walked down the aisle, she asked me to stay after school, and the class snickered again.
I wasn’t just the new kid, but the new dumb kid.
“David,” Mrs. Salazar said later after everyone had gone, “we can run some tests to find out how to help you with reading and writing. Your eyes aren’t working the way they’re supposed to—but there are ways to fix that. I need to talk to your parents. What’s your number? I couldn’t find it in your file.”