River, founded back in the nineteenth century by some guy who figured
he could get rich turning the desert into farmland. He dug a bunch of
irrigation ditches that drained water out of the Colorado River to grow
lettuce and grapes and broccoli right there in the middle of all the cactus
and sagebrush. Dad got disgusted every time we drove past one of those
farm fields with their irrigation ditches wide as moats. "It's a goddamn
perversion of nature," he'd say. "If you want to live in the farmland, haul
your sorry hide off to Pennsylvania. If you want to live in the desert, eat
prickly pears, not iceberg pansy-assed lettuce."
"That's right," Mom would say. "Prickly pears have more vitamins
anyway."
Living in a big city like Blythe meant I had to wear shoes. It also meant I
had to go to school.
School wasn't so bad. I was in the first grade, and my teacher, Miss
Cook, always chose me to read aloud when the principal came into the
classroom. The other students didn't like me very much because I was so
tall and pale and skinny and always raised my hand too fast and waved it
frantically in the air whenever Miss Cook asked a question. A few days
after I started school, four Mexican girls followed me home and jumped
me in an alleyway near the LBJ Apartments. They beat me up pretty bad,
pulling my hair and tearing my clothes and calling me a teacher's pet and
a matchstick.
I came home that night with scraped knees and elbows and a busted lip.
"Looks to me like you got in a fight," Dad said. He was sitting at the
table, taking apart an old alarm clock with Brian.
"Just a little dustup," I said. That was the word Dad always used after
he'd been in a fight.
"How many were there?"