"Well, they're too damn small for your mother and me," he said.
Lori and Brian had climbed on their bikes and were riding up and down
the sidewalk. I stared at mine. It was shiny purple and had a white
banana seat, wire baskets on the side, chrome handlebars that swept out
like steer horns, and white plastic handles with purple-and-silver tassels.
Dad knelt beside me. "Like it?" he asked.
I nodded.
"You know, Mountain Goat, I still feel bad about making you leave your
rock collection back in Battle Mountain," he said. "But we had to travel
light."
"I know," I said. "It was more than one thing, anyway."
"I'm not so sure," Dad said. "Every damn thing in the universe can be
broken down into smaller things, even atoms, even protons, so
theoretically speaking, I guess you had a winning case. A collection of
things should be considered one thing. Unfortunately, theory don't
always carry the day."
We rode our bicycles everywhere. Sometimes we attached playing cards
to the forks with clothespins, and they flapped against the spokes when
the wheels turned. Now that Lori could see, she was the navigator. She
got a city map from a gas station and plotted out our routes in advance.
We pedaled past the Westward Ho Hotel, down Central Avenue where
square-faced Indian women sold beaded necklaces and moccasins on
rainbow-colored serapes they'd spread on the sidewalk. We pedaled to
Woolworth's, which was bigger than all the stores in Battle Mountain put
together, and played tag in the aisles until the manager chased us out.
We got Grandma Smith's old wooden tennis rackets and pedaled off to
Phoenix University, where we tried to play tennis with the dead balls
other people had left behind. We pedaled to the Civic Center, which had