I told her and Kathy about life in California. It quickly became clear they
had no interest in desert mining towns, so I told them about San
Francisco and then about Las Vegas, which wasn't exactly in California,
but they didn't seem to care. I made the days we had spent there seem
like years, and the showgirls I'd seen from a distance seem like close
friends and neighbors. I described the glittering casinos and the
glamorous high rollers, the palm trees and the swimming pools, the
hotels with ice-cold air-conditioning and the restaurants where hostesses
with long white gloves lit flaming desserts.
"It don't get no better than that!" Ginnie Sue said.
"No, ma'am, it sure don't," I told her.
Sweet Man came in crying, and Ginnie Sue picked him up and let him
suck some mayonnaise off her finger. "You did good on that bird,"
Ginnie Sue told me. "You strike me as the kind of girl who's one day
going to be eating roast chicken and those on-fire desserts just as much
as you want." She winked.
It was only on the way home that I realized I hadn't gotten answers to
any of my questions. While I was sitting there talking to Ginnie Sue, I'd
even forgotten she was a whore. One thing about whoring: It put a
chicken on the table.
WE FOUGHT A LOT in Welch. Not just to fend off our enemies but to
fit in. Maybe it was because there was so little to do in Welch; maybe it
was because life there was hard and it made people hard; maybe it was
because of all the bloody battles over unionizing the mines; maybe it
was because mining was dangerous and cramped and dirty work and it
put all the miners in bad moods and they came home and took it out on
their wives, who took it out on their kids, who took it out on other kids.