tracks were too close to the front door to get the pickup in position. So
the piano stayed where it was. On the days Mom felt inspired, she took
her sheet music and one of our spool chairs outside and pounded away at
her music back there. "Most pianists never get the chance to play in the
great out-of-doors," she said. "And now the whole neighborhood can
enjoy the music, too."
DAD GOT A JOB AS an electrician in a barite mine. He left early and
came home early, and in the afternoons we all played games. Dad taught
us cards. He tried to show us how to be steely-eyed poker players, but I
wasn't very good. Dad said you could read my face like a traffic light.
Even though I wasn't much of a bluffer, I'd sometimes win a hand
because I was always getting excited by even mediocre cards, like a pair
of fives, which made Brian and Lori think I'd been dealt aces. Dad also
invented games for us to play, like the Ergo Game, in which he'd make
two statements of fact and we had to answer a question based on those
statements, or else say. "Insufficient information to draw a conclusion"
and explain why.
When Dad wasn't there, we invented our own games. We didn't have
many toys, but you didn't need toys in a place like Battle Mountain.
We'd get a piece of cardboard and go tobogganing down the depot's
narrow staircase. We'd jump off the roof of the depot, using an army-
surplus blanket as our parachute and letting our legs buckle under us
when we hit the ground, like Dad had taught us real parachutists do.
We'd put a piece of scrap metal—or a penny, if we were feeling
extravagant—on the railroad tracks right before the train came. After the
train had roared by, the massive wheels churning, we'd run to get our
newly flattened, hot and shiny piece of metal.
The thing we liked to do most was go exploring in the desert. We'd get
up at dawn, my favorite time, when the shadows were long and purple