I wanted to get away from the junkyard and there was only one way to

do that, which was the way Audrey had done it: by getting a job so I
wouldn’t be at the house when Dad rounded up his crew. The trouble
was, I was eleven.

I biked a mile into the dusty center of our little village. There wasn’t
much there, just a church, a post office and a gas station called Papa
Jay’s. I went into the post office. Behind the counter was an older lady
whose name I knew was Myrna Moyle, because Myrna and her
husband Jay (Papa Jay) owned the gas station. Dad said they’d been
behind the city ordinance limiting dog ownership to two dogs per
family. They’d proposed other ordinances, too, and now every Sunday
Dad came home from church shouting about Myrna and Jay Moyle,
and how they were from Monterey or Seattle or wherever and thought
they could impose West Coast socialism on the good people of Idaho.

I asked Myrna if I could put a card up on the board. She asked what
the card was for. I said I hoped I could find jobs babysitting.

“What times are you available?” she said.
“Anytime, all the time.”
“You mean after school?”
“I mean all the time.”
Myrna looked at me and tilted her head. “My daughter Mary needs
someone to tend her youngest. I’ll ask her.”

Mary taught nursing at the school, which Dad said was just about as
brainwashed as a person could get, to be working for the Medical
Establishment and the Government both. I thought maybe he wouldn’t
let me work for her, but he did, and pretty soon I was babysitting