afternoon we heard the sound of gunshots. Mr. Freeman, who lived next
door, had seen the rat hanging upside down. Rufus was so big, Mr.
Freeman thought he was a possum, went and got his hunting rifle, and
blew him clean away. There was nothing left of Rufus but a mangled
piece of tail. After the Rufus incident, I slept with a baseball bat in my
bed. Brian slept with a machete in his. Maureen could barely sleep at all.
She kept dreaming that she was being eaten by rats, and she used every
excuse she could to spend the night at friends' houses. Mom and Dad
shrugged off the Rufus incident. They told us that we had done battle
with fiercer adversaries in the past, and we would again someday.
"What are we going to do about the garbage pit?" I asked. "It's almost
filled up."
"Enlarge it," Mom said.
"We can't keep dumping garbage out there," I said. "What are people
going to think?"
"Life's too short to worry about what other people think," Mom said.
"Anyway, they should accept us for who we are."
I was convinced that people might be more accepting of us if we made
an effort to improve the way 93 Little Hobart Street looked. There were
plenty of things we could do, I felt, that would cost almost nothing.
Some people around Welch cut tires into two semicircles, painted them
white, and used them as edging for their gardens. Maybe we couldn't
afford to build the Glass Castle quite yet, but certainly we could put
painted tires around our front yard to spruce it up. "It would make us fit
in a little bit," I pleaded with Mom.
"It sure would," Mom said. But when it came to Welch, she had no
interest in fitting in. "I'd rather have a yard filled with genuine garbage
than with trashy lawn ornaments."