head with a chuckle. That was the thing to remember about all monsters,
Dad said: They love to frighten people, but the minute you stare them
down, they turn tail and run. "All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is
show old Demon that you're not afraid."
Not much grew around Midland other than the Joshua tree, cacti, and the
scrubby little creosote bushes that Dad said were some of the oldest
plants on the planet. The great granddaddy creosote bushes were
thousands of years old. When it rained, they let off a disgusting musty
smell so animals wouldn't eat them. Only four inches of rain fell a year
around Midland—about the same as in the northern Sahara—and water
for humans came in on the train once a day in special containers. The
only animals that could survive around Midland were lipless, scaly
creatures such as Gila monsters and scorpions, and people like us.
A month after we moved to Midland, Juju got bitten by a rattlesnake and
died. We buried him near the Joshua tree. It was practically the only
time I ever saw Brian cry. But we had plenty of cats to keep us company.
Too many, in fact. We had rescued lots of cats since we tossed Quixote
out the window, and most of them had gone and had kittens, and it got to
the point where we had to get rid of some of them. We didn't have many
neighbors to give them to, so Dad put them in a burlap sack and drove to
a pond made by the mining company to cool equipment. I watched him
load the back of the car with bobbing, mewing bags.
"It doesn't seem right," I told Mom. "We rescued them. Now we're going
to kill them."
"We gave them a little extra time on the planet," Mom said. "They
should be grateful for that."
Dad finally got a job in the gypsum mine, digging out the white rocks
that were ground into the powder used in drywall and plaster of paris.
When he came home, he'd be covered with white gypsum powder, and