Mountain when we all sat around in the depot with our books. In Welch,
people drifted off to different corners of the house. Once night came, we
kids all lay in our rope-and-cardboard beds, reading by flashlight or a
candle we'd set on our wooden boxes, each of us creating our own little
pool of dim light.
Lori was the most obsessive reader. Fantasy and science fiction dazzled
her, especially The Lord of the Rings. When she wasn't reading, she was
drawing orcs or hobbits. She tried to get everyone in the family to read
the books. "They transport you to a different world," she'd say.
I didn't want to be transported to another world. My favorite books all
involved people dealing with hardships. I loved The Grapes of Wrath,
Lord of the Flies, and especially A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I thought
Francie Nolan and I were practically identical, except that she had lived
fifty years earlier in Brooklyn and her mother always kept the house
clean. Francie Nolan's father sure reminded me of Dad. If Francie saw
the good in her father, even though most people considered him a
shiftless drunk, maybe I wasn't a complete fool for believing in mine. Or
trying to believe in him. It was getting harder. One night that summer,
when I was lying in bed and everyone else was asleep, I heard the front
door open and the sound of someone muttering and stumbling around in
the darkness. Dad had come home. I went into the living room, where he
was sitting at the drafting table. I could see by the moonlight coming
through the window that his face and hair were matted with blood. I
asked him what had happened.
"I got in a fight with a mountain," he said. "and the mountain won."
I looked at Mom asleep on the sofa bed, her head buried under a pillow.
She was a deep sleeper and hadn't stirred. When I lit the kerosene lamp, I
saw that Dad also had a big gash in his right forearm and a cut on his
head so deep that I could see the white of his skull. I got a toothpick and
tweezers and picked the rocky grit out of the gash. Dad didn't wince