Finally, Dad shut the hood.
"You can fix it, can't you?" I asked.
"Of course," he said. "If I had the proper tools."
We'd have to temporarily postpone our expedition to the Grand Canyon,
he told us. Our first priority now was to head back to Phoenix so he
could get his hands on the right tools.
"How?" Lori asked.
Hitchhiking was one option, Dad said. But it might be hard finding a car
with enough room to accommodate four kids and two adults. Since we
were all so athletic, and since none of us were whiners, walking home
would be no problem.
"It's almost eighty miles," Lori said.
"That's right," Dad said. If we covered three miles an hour for eight
hours a day, we could make it in three days. We had to leave everything
behind except Maureen's lavender blanket and the canteens. That
included Mom's fruitwood archery set. Since Mom was attached to that
archery set, which her father had given her, Dad had Brian and me hide it
in an irrigation ditch. We could come back and retrieve it later.
Dad carried Maureen. To keep our spirits up, he called out hup, two,
three, four, but Mom and Lori refused to march along in step.
Eventually, Dad gave up, and it was quiet except for the sound of our
feet crunching on the sand and rocks and the wind whipping off the
desert. After walking for what seemed like a couple of hours, we reached
a motel billboard that we had passed only a minute or so before the car
broke down. The occasional car whizzed by, and Dad stuck out his
thumb, but none of them stopped. Around midday, a big blue Buick with