The Setting
El Vado (said BAD-oh), Texas sits perched on the banks of the Valdez (said foul-DEES) River and derives its name from the ford crossed by ancient Spanish explorers. The river is usually so shallow along its entire length that folks were given to wonder how this place deserved such special commemoration. To the west of town lie the foothills of the variously-colored ranges that run up from the rugged Big Bend. It was at times a cattle town, an oil town, a western wear town, with a population a few eggs short of a quarter million. The fathers and mothers whose children were schooled at Ingle High worked in the service industries, many of which brought them in daily contact with the working class above whom they toiled so hard to lift themselves. My father worked as a security chief for several banks, occasionally having to come down on some hapless soul who thought he or she could just sip a little from the river of money that roared by without anyone hearing them. My father was very good at hearing them, to the exclusion of almost everything else. The few times I got to visit his workplace, mostly as a youngster when we lived in New Mexico, I was unimpressed. His office was typically stacked with reams of paper spewed from every computer on the premises, over which he daily pored for the slightest hint of something amiss. I knew very early that I did not want to follow in his footsteps, and it was probably what he aspired for anyway, as he endlessly reminded me how much he was saving up for my college education, just as his working class parents did for him.
I raided the refrigerator when I got home, and my mother complained from the living room that everything I ate went to my hair. When I had my fill I spread out on my bed and crashed, depleted by the heat and the adjustment to my new hours. Jimmy, my nine-year-old brother, roused me not long after by sneaking up and screaming “C’MON AND EAT!” point-blank into my ear, then rushed off and locked me out of the bathroom. Dinner was taken silently as usual, the evening news’ repertoire of disaster and shenanigans for background music. I cleaned my plate in five minutes and excused myself, to my mother’s chagrin. Returning to my bedroom, I meditated on the day, unimportant as they seemed at the time. My thoughts wandered to the exalted Christine, whom I considered fantasizing about later when everyone was asleep, and to Karen, and I wondered what I had done, asking out a girl I had known only ten minutes. I realized it was because she was not beautiful enough to scare me, and that I had a half decent chance of making it with her if played my cards right. I reminded myself that my cards could always use the trump of a driver’s license.
My meditation was interrupted by a knock on my door. Before I could deny him permission to enter Jimmy opened it and asked if I wanted to play video games on the computer.
“No, I’ve got homework to do.”
He looked at the trigonometry book sitting unopened on my dresser. “How much?” he demanded to know.
“I don’t want to play with you. Go away and close the door.” He left without doing so. I got up and nearly passed out from the rush. I fetched my guitar from behind the door, put it back down after playing it badly. I scanned the posters that adorned my walls, declarations of a prefabricated identity for millions of sixteen-year-olds: rock and roll and rebellion. One poster for a band called Uglyfugs subtly glorified smoking roz, and despite my father’s sidelong career in law enforcement he had yet to object to it. Buried deep under the sweaters in my dresser were several copies of skin magazines, my only guides to the eternal mysteries of the fairer sex.
I turned on my stereo and dreamed of the day I would have my own place. “Dream on,” I said out loud. There were another two years of high school to swim through first. I set my sights on a more realistic goal and felt no better. The end of the school year was in May, and it wasn’t even Labor Day.
So how could I imagine that in two years, instead of graduating, I would conquer a continent with a prism, a mirror, and a magnifying glass, with just a little help from a half-Moon?
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