You really want to hear this? You're sure?
Okay, here goes. It was hot as a whore's underwear that summer. Might have been 1946 or maybe '47, I'm not sure any more. I was maybe seventeen years old. My mother had just died of fever. Me and my latest "Daddy," a bad drunk named Bobby Lee Gifford, drove a cherry red 1940 Ford up from Reno to the high desert town of Dry Wells, Nevada. We went to look over a house Bobby Lee's brother-in-law, killed in that war in Europe, had up and left him. Bobby Lee was a big man, rough as a cob and mean as a snake. He did his service in the Marines, up against them Japanese.
He drank the whole way.
"You close to this fellow Tim?" I say. I'm just trying to make conversation.
"Hell no," Bobby Lee says. "Tim was a pervert. He knocked my sister up when she was underage, and I beat the crap out of him. I made him marry the bitch before he went off and got killed by the Krauts. We hated each other."
"But then why did he leave you the..."
"Beats me," Bobby Lee said. "Now shut up."
So I did. Bobby Lee was tall, and so weather-beaten he creaked like saddle leather. You had a brain you didn't screw with him. Excuse my French.
Nevada? You ain't never been up in those parts, the road just goes on forever. You got bits of brush here and there, and then some mountains and then more nothing. To get to Dry Wells you go through this pass, and suddenly everything opens up again. It's high desert, beautiful and strange. Way hot days and freezing cold nights. It's like a really bad woman, and it gets under your skin the same kind of way.
This house was a piece of junk with shingles. It stood maybe two, three hundred yards away from the tore-up railroad tracks on the outskirts of a town that hadn't been much to begin with. We pulled up in that red Ford near dusk, and the big ass-end spun around and raised a cloud of gravel and dust. Bobby Lee had already put away the better part of a six pack. He jumped out, spat in the sand and shook his head.
He said: "She's a sorry bitch," or words to that effect.
I didn't talk much back then. You might find that hard to believe now, but I didn't. You see, I had a Mom who took to booze and selling herself. Mom, she hooked up with a series of so-called Step Daddy's that all beat hell out of me. I learned to walk slow, look at the ground, mumble "yes, sir" and "no, sir" and to curl up when somebody started in whomping my ass. Bobby Lee said he was gonna pay me two dollars to help him out. I thought two bucks was a fortune, and I meant to run off with it, maybe to Dallas.
The key broke off in the front door, so Bobby Lee put a shoulder to it. The damned thing flew of the hinges and half way across the living room in a cloud of dust.
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