by David Crow
Sam and I were in the backyard throwing a baseball on the gravel when Mom yelled, “I smell smoke!”
We found her standing on the front step. “Oh no!” She pointed down. “Wires are coming out of the porch. They’ll burn the house down!” She ran around in circles and then dashed inside, the screen door banging behind her.
My little brother and I laughed. When she came back out and looked at the ashes again, she’d have to realize her silly mistake. Wouldn’t she? Surely, Mom couldn’t be that dumb.
Sam and I went back to playing catch, and several minutes later, we heard sirens blaring louder and louder. We ran out front as two fire trucks roared to the curb, lights flashing. Sam and I grinned at each other. Had Mom actually called the fire department? We hid behind the bushes in front of the living room, laughing, as she ran to the trucks with her arms flailing like a windmill.
A fireman wearing a black helmet, black pants, and a yellow coat pulled a hose out of the truck while another fireman quickly connected it to a hydrant. A third fireman raced to the side of the house with a long ladder and scrambled to the roof. The driver of the hook-and-ladder truck hopped out, an ax in hand, and hurried over to Mom, his coat stretched tight around his enormous belly.
Sam and I should have told the firemen what we had done, but it was so much fun to watch them and Mom. They would laugh too when they saw the snakes, I was certain. Everyone would get a kick out of it.
“Is anyone inside the house?” the fat guy asked Mom.
Her hands flew to her mouth. “My daughters are in there!”
“You stay here. I’ll get them out.” He put on a mask and rushed through the front door.
Seconds later, little Sally sprinted into the front yard, followed by Lonnie, her lips curled in that weird way when she got annoyed. Soon after, the fireman came out carrying his mask.
“I can’t find any problem with the wires inside,” he told Mom. “Can you show us?”
Sam and I burst out laughing again. We couldn’t help it. Mom and the firemen glanced our way, but they didn’t think we had anything to do with the fire, so they ignored us.
Between sobs and gasps, Mom pointed at the ash snakes on the porch and said, “Those wires . . . the house . . . burn my house . . . down.”
The three firemen on the ground tilted their heads in confusion, knowing that what they saw wasn’t a problem.
The fireman on the roof called down, “There’s no fire up here.”
“None down here either,” the fat fireman said.
Just then Dad got home. Bad luck for Sam and me. He screeched the station wagon into the driveway, jumped out, and ran into the yard, where Sam and I had now joined our sisters. Dad looked at us kids and then at Mom.
“What the hell is the problem?” he asked.
Mom pointed again at the snakes. Shaking and sobbing, she grabbed Dad’s arm and pulled him toward the porch. He yanked his arm away, bent over, and squeezed the snake tubes into dust with his fingers. Muttering, he stood and ground the residue into the concrete with the heel of his shoe.
Dad turned and thrust out his chest. “Get your dumbasses off my lawn!” he yelled at the firemen. “Go put out some real fires. You’ve been tricked by two little bastards who are about to get first-class ass whippings.”
The fat fireman nodded at the other men, and they all walked toward the trucks. He said over his shoulder, “Your wife said the house was going to burn down.”
“And you believed the idiot?”
Mom ran toward the firemen, yelling, “Thurston’s going to hurt me. Please help me.”
Avoiding eye contact with her, they got busy wrapping up the hose and putting back the ladder.
“Thelma Lou, if brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow a pimple off your ass. David has been tricking you since he was three, and you fall for it every time.”
Across the street, a neighbor lady watched from her porch, frowning, her arms crossed.
I went over to one of the firemen standing by the first truck. “Can I try on your helmet?”
He shook his head and laughed. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one day, don’t you think, little man?”
The radio on the dashboard started squawking. “Truck number five, are you all clear? Over.”
The fireman climbed into the cab and reached for the microphone. “All clear,” he said. “False alarm. Two kids burning fireworks. Over.”
He scribbled something on a clipboard. I wanted to see what he had written. It had to be funny. I was about to step up into the cab when Dad seized my arm and jerked me into the yard. “David, I’m going to beat your ass for this stunt,” he said, taking off his belt with the other hand.
“But, Dad, we didn’t know the Black Snakes would scare Mom. How could they?”
“You’re a disaster.” Dad raised his arm, twirling the belt in the air like a lasso, the buckle dangling.
We were used to being spanked, but this was the first time he came after us with a belt. I danced around, trying to be a tough target, but it didn’t work. He hit me again and again and again. Pain blasted my legs and rear. I could barely breathe. The skin tore under my jeans.
Then it was Sam’s turn. I winced at the sound of the belt slicing through the air and the whacks against his butt. I was the one who bought the snake tabs. Sam just went along with me. Dad had to know we didn’t mean to scare Mom, but that didn’t keep him from beating Sam even harder than he did me.
The snakes wouldn’t have fooled Sally at age three. No other mom in the world would have been tricked. And only our Dad would have beaten us so hard. Mom couldn’t be as dumb as she made out. This had to be another way for her to get attention.
EVEN THOUGH DAD HAD BEATEN US, fooling Mom made me remember the fun I’d had with Shorty John, and I started coming up with all kinds of pranks to play on people.
When Sam and I told Dad about them, he laughed and rubbed my head. “Just don’t pull any of them on your crazy mother. We don’t need fire trucks at our house again, do we?”
We promised to stay away from the house and not get caught. I told him how we hid in the stairwells of office buildings and dropped water balloons on people’s heads at the bottom of the stairs. He laughed hard and looked at us with a big, proud smile. “You two are slicker than snot on a doorknob.”
I spent a lot of my time dreaming up even funnier things to do and asked Dad what he did as a kid. He used to tie a fishing line to the handle of his mother’s purse and toss it into the street. When a car stopped and someone got out to pick up the purse, his friend would pull the line so the purse moved out of reach, and Dad would try to rob them.
We did the same thing with one of Mom’s purses, putting it on the street corner a couple of blocks from our house. Sam pulled the line when a car stopped and a passenger tried to pick up the purse. But we didn’t want to rob anyone. Instead, I fired eggs and water balloons at them. A perfect throw hit the victim in the face. We’d run off before they realized what had happened.
We also threw eggs and water balloons at cars driving down Lomas Boulevard. It took some practice to throw far enough in front of them to hit the windshields, but we mastered it in no time.
Mom said she couldn’t figure out how our family ate so many eggs. She didn’t remember cooking that many.
CHAPTER 10
I ENTERED THE HOUSE AFTER FINISHING my paper route, and it felt oddly calm inside, even peaceful. The late-afternoon sun lit up the living room and all the nice things Dad had gotten after we first moved in—a red couch, two plush brown chairs, a wooden coffee table, and a new bench for our piano. We kept the new black-and-white Zenith TV in our playroom at the back of the house.
Dad hadn’t bought anything in months. No washer and dryer for Mom. He wasn’t selling as many policies, he said, but it was bound to turn around.
As I stood in the entryway, I heard a crinkling sound from across the room. Mom knelt on the floor, still in her nightgown, her side facing me. She’d just pulled up the corn
er of the carpet, including the thick brown padding, and was shoving papers underneath. I spotted the familiar blue Woodmen Accident and Life symbol.
I watched in silence. That’s why the carpet had bulges in each corner and under the couch. Why would she hide Dad’s papers? They needed to be properly delivered for him to make money. She had to know he’d eventually find out.
Suddenly the hair rose on the back of my neck.
Dad was right behind me.
Over my shoulder, he watched Mom as she spread out the papers and patted down the carpet to make it flat. My heart beat in my ears. Dad would hit her hard this time. I wanted to yell for her to run, but nothing came out of my mouth.
Dad carefully put his briefcase on the floor and then took off his sports coat and loosened his tie. He stared at Mom for the longest time, his eyes bulging like squeezed balloons. At last, she sensed his presence and stood up, her hair matted from sleeping all day. Her lips quivered.
“Goddamn it, Thelma Lou, you worthless bitch.” Dad’s voice thundered through the house. “What the hell have you done?” The house shook as he marched across the room and yanked up the carpet corners, exposing dozens of Woodmen insurance papers.
Dad didn’t have the money to hire a bookkeeper or secretary, so he had asked Mom to sort bills and mail policies when they arrived at our house. But why would he have trusted her? And why would she have betrayed him? Weren’t customers complaining that they hadn’t gotten their policies?
Hearing Dad yell, Lonnie, Sam, and Sally appeared in the hallway off the living room. I shook my head and waved them away. Lonnie stopped midstride, picked up Sally, and took her back to their room. Sam retreated to the playroom. I should have joined him, but my feet were rooted to the floor. Dad ripped open letters, memos, and policies, each with more force. He read some out loud, including the dates they were written.
“I have to make you lose your job or you’ll leave me,” Mom said, tears streaming down her face. “When Bob was here, he saw you go into a hotel room with a woman in a short skirt. You kissed her, and he heard you say, ‘I love you.’”
Dad stopped to look at her. “Your brother is dumber than you are, if that’s possible. He’s a moocher, lazy-ass, shiftless, alcoholic son of a bitch who stole money from me and some of my clothes. I’ll kill him if he comes back.”
I waited for Dad’s fist to fly into Mom’s face, but she didn’t give him the chance. Crying out, she hurried off to their bedroom and slammed the door. Dad continued reading the hidden mail as he paced and Mom sobbed loud enough for all of us to hear. I ran to my room and tried to read, but my hands shook too much. Finally, I heard Dad drive away.
Several hours later, after we had gone to bed, he stormed back into the house, ranting to himself. The four of us came out into the living room, but Dad stared into space, yelling as though we weren’t there. “The bitch is ruining my life. She’s completely nuts. I can’t live with her. I’ve got to get rid of her.”
“Come on,” Lonnie whispered, motioning with her hand to follow her. She took Sally’s hand, and we went to their room. Lonnie sat on the bed next to Sally. Sam and I sprawled out on the floor.
“Mom isn’t going to be around much longer,” Lonnie said. She sounded more like a grown-up than a twelve-year-old kid. “Dad says that I’ll be the new mom for a while. If all four of us agree to go with him, he’ll take us away and leave Mom behind. She’ll lose custody of us because she’s crazy. They’ll put her in the nuthouse.” She paused to look at me. “Dad thinks you won’t go along.”
But Mom couldn’t survive without our help. “Dad might really hurt her this time,” I said.
“No, he won’t.” She scrunched up her face as if it were the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “And if the nuthouse doesn’t take her, Dad said she could go live with her mother. You need to cooperate, David.”
Lonnie didn’t know what Dad was capable of. Without responding, I went back to my room and climbed to the top bunk. Soon after, Sam wandered in, and I pretended to be asleep. I waited a while and then peeked over the edge of my mattress to see him hidden under the covers below me.
Would we really leave Mom?
I couldn’t sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, I heard two sets of footsteps leave the house, followed by car doors closing. The Rambler’s engine turned over. Then came the snap and ping of the tires on the gravel as they backed out of the driveway. What would Dad do to her? When the front door creaked open a while later and Mom pitter-pattered down the hallway whining, I let out a deep breath.
I crept to their bedroom door to listen.
“You tried to push me out of the car tonight,” Mom said. “If I hadn’t locked the door, you would have killed me. I’ve stood by you through prison and everything.”
“Shut up and go to sleep, Thelma Lou,” Dad said in a tired voice.
I went back to bed, and the house was quiet for the rest of the night. Mom and Dad didn’t say much to each other over the next several days. They never yelled once.
But the constant ache in my gut told me it wouldn’t last.
DAD LEFT WOODMEN ACCIDENT AND LIFE. He wasn’t selling enough policies, and thanks to Mom, the policies he did sell never made it to his customers.
“We’re flat-ass broke,” Dad said.
Within days, he had found a job as a welder and started wearing workman’s clothes again. I knew from listening to him and Mom in their bedroom that he had learned how to weld in the prison workshop so he could earn a living right away on the outside. Though he was a good welder, he hated it. He was smart enough to do so much more, he told me.
Every night after cleaning up, Dad read the want ads. One night, he jumped up and yelled, “Hell, I found the perfect job!” He wrote a letter, put it in an envelope, and drove to the nearest post office.
We didn’t hear anything more until after school started almost a month later. I walked into the kitchen at breakfast time, and Mom and Dad were talking softly. She refilled his coffee cup and added two cubes of sugar, just the way he liked it. Sam and Sally sat next to each other, eating their Frosted Flakes and staring at the cereal box. Lonnie was in the living room playing the piano. I poured myself a bowl of cereal, watching everyone, the air heavy with something about to happen.
After Dad finished his coffee, he told us to sit on the couch. Mom sat with us. “We’re heading back to the reservation,” he said, his face relaxed. “But not to EPNG. I’ll be working as a safety officer for the BIA—the Bureau of Indian Affairs—in Fort Defiance, Arizona. They don’t have a vacancy yet in the government compound where non-Navajos live, so we’ll rent a house in Gallup, just off the reservation, and I’ll commute to Fort Defiance.”
The next day, Dad took me on a drive in the Rambler. Once we left the city limits, he pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. “Lonnie says you feel sorry for your mother and you want to stay with her.” He reached over and clamped his hand around the back of my neck. “But that isn’t going to happen. When the time is right, we are leaving her behind, and you’re going with the rest of us. Do you understand—or do I have to knock some sense into that thick head of yours?” He tightened his grip and shook me once before letting go.
I stared out the window as Dad threw the car into gear and squealed back onto the pavement. Neither of us spoke on the ride back.
Mom had run out of chances.
PART 2
* * *
GALLUP
1961
Pino’s Curios and Indian Trading Shop on Route 66 in Gallup, New Mexico. 1965.
CHAPTER 11
THE DAY WE MOVED, WE LOADED the station wagon in silence, except for Mom’s moaning and nonstop twitching. We didn’t have much to take with us. Dad had sold most of the furniture to pay bills—all we had left was the red couch. The piano was gone now too.
Sally held on to Lonnie’s leg with one hand and clutched a doll tight to her chest with the other. “Everything will be all right,” Lonnie kept whispering t
o her. “I’ll take care of you.” Sam waited in the driveway with his ball, bat, and mitt.
I took a long, last look at our street and Lomas Boulevard, watching the cars speeding past us. I’d miss Albuquerque and the people on my paper route. At school, my teachers had helped me get glasses and read and write better. They told me that even smart kids had dyslexia. Now I would have to start all over somewhere else—again.
Dad signaled for us to get into the car. The four of us jumped in before he could grab us and throw us in. Mom was already in the passenger seat holding onto a Kleenex, dabbing her eyes. None of the neighbors came out to say goodbye as we pulled away, the green rickety trailer shaking behind us.
We had lasted only a year there. By then, Lonnie was thirteen, I was nine, Sam was seven, and Sally was four.
We drove down Nine Mile Hill on Route 66, the two-lane highway that connected hundreds of no-name towns, each with a gas station and an Indian trading post. Gusts of wind pounded the car, whipping the trailer back and forth. I turned away from the Sandia Mountains behind us and focused on the roadside places selling Indian curios, or, as Dad joked, “fake tourist shit.” All the stores had funny signs, like “Savage Indians Inside: See Them While You Can.”
Mom sniffled the entire 140-mile trip. Just when she seemed to be quieting down, Dad yelled, “Thelma Lou, shut up, goddamn it.” That got her crying again.
Outside Gallup, we passed a gigantic yellow metal Indian kachina doll standing on a huge sign: “GALLUP, NEW MEXICO, THE INDIAN CAPITAL.” Minutes later, we turned off Route 66 onto South Second Street, and the station wagon slowed next to a gully full of weeds, rocks, and broken glass. On the other side of the road, men poured in and out of a liquor store, all of them carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag. Others were scattered around the dirt parking lot facedown as if they’d fallen asleep in the middle of a stride.
Dad shook his head in disgust. “Money flows through Gallup like shit through a goose.” He stopped in front of a dilapidated gray duplex and turned off the engine. “Get out and unload.”