The next day after school we came back to the laboratory with a box of Dad's matches. We unscrewed the lids of some of the jars, and I dropped in matches, but still nothing happened. So we mixed up a batch of what Brian called nuclear fuel, pouring different liquids into a can. When I tossed in the match, a cone of flame shot up with a whoosh like a jet afterburner.
Brian and I were knocked to our feet. When we stood up, one of the walls was on fire. I yelled to Brian that we had to get out of there, but he was throwing sand at the fire, saying that we had to put it out or we'd get in trouble. The flames were spreading toward the door, eating up that dry old wood in no time. I kicked out a board in the back wall and squeezed through. When Brian didn't follow, I ran up the street calling for help. I saw Dad walking home from work. We ran back to the shack. Dad kicked in more of the wall and pulled Brian out coughing.
I thought Dad would be furious, but he wasn't. He was sort of quiet. We stood on the street watching the flames devour the shack. Dad had an arm around each of us. He said it was an incredible coincidence that he happened to be walking by. Then he pointed to the top of the fire, where the snapping yellow flames dissolved into an invisible shimmery heat that made the desert beyond seem to waver, like a mirage. Dad told us that zone was known in physics as the boundary between turbulence and order. "It's a place where no rules apply, or at least they haven't figured 'em out yet," he said. "You-all got a little too close to it today."
NONE OF US KIDS got allowances. When we wanted money, we walked along the roadside picking up beer cans and bottles that we redeemed for two cents each. Brian and I also collected scrap metal that we sold to the junk dealer for a penny a poundthree cents a pound for copper. After we redeemed the bottles or sold the scrap metal, we walked into town, to the drugstore next door to the Owl Club. There were so many rows and rows of delicious candies to choose from that we'd spend an hour trying to decide how to spend the ten cents we'd each made. We'd pick a piece of candy and then, as we got ready to pay for it, change our minds and pick another piece, until the man who owned the store got mad and told us to stop fingering all his candy and make a purchase and get out.
Brian's favorite was the giant SweeTart candies, which he licked until his tongue was so raw it bled. I loved chocolate, but it was gone too quickly, so I usually got a Sugar Daddy, which lasted practically half the day and always had a funny poem printed in pink letters on the stick, like: To keep your feet From falling asleep Wear loud socks / They can't be beat.
On our way back from the candy store, Brian and I liked to spy on the Green Lanterna big dark green house with a sagging porch right near the highway. Mom said it was a cathouse, but I never saw any cats there, only women wearing bathing suits or short dresses who sat or lay out on the porch, waving at the cars that drove by. There were Christmas lights over the door all year round, and Mom said that was how you could tell it was a cathouse. Cars would stop in front, and men would get out and duck inside. I couldn't figure out what went on at the Green Lantern, and Mom refused to discuss it. She would say only that bad things happened there, which made the Green Lantern a place of irresistible mystery to us.
Brian and I would hide behind the sagebrush across the highway, trying to peer inside the front door when someone went in or out, but we could never see what was going on. A couple of times we sneaked up close and tried to look in the windows, but they were painted black. Once a woman on the porch saw us in the brush and waved to us, and we ran away shrieking.
One day when Brian and I were hiding in the sagebrush, spying, I double-dared him to go talk to the woman lying out on the porch. Brian was almost six by then, a year younger than me, and wasn't afraid of anything. He hitched up his pants, handed me his half-eaten SweeTart for safekeeping, walked across the street, and went right up to the woman. She had long black hair, her eyes were outlined with black mascara thick as tar, and she wore a short blue dress printed with black flowers. She had been lying on her side on the porch floor, her head propped up on one arm, but when Brian walked up to her, she rolled over on her stomach and rested her chin on her hand.
From my hiding place, I could see that Brian was talking with her, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. Then she reached out a hand to Brian. I held my breath to see what this woman who did bad things inside the Green Lantern was going to do to him. She put her hand on his head and ruffled his hair. Grown-up women always did that to Brian, because his hair was red and he had freckles. It annoyed him; he usually swatted their hands away. But not this time. Instead, he stayed and talked with the woman for a while. When he came back across the highway, he didn't look scared at all.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Nothing much," Brian said.
"What did you talk about?"
"I asked her what goes on inside the Green Lantern," he said.
"Really?" I was impressed. "What did she say?"
"Nothing much," he said. "She told me that men came in and the women there were nice to them."
"Oh," I said. "Anything else?"
"Naw," Brian said. He started kicking at the dirt like he didn't want to talk about it anymore. "She was kinda nice," he said.
After that, Brian waved to the women on the porch of the Green Lantern, and they smiled real big and waved back, but I was still a little afraid of them.
OUR HOUSE IN BATTLE MOUNTAIN was filled with animals. They came and went, stray dogs and cats, their puppies and kittens, nonpoisonous snakes, and lizards and tortoises we caught in the desert. A coyote that seemed pretty tame lived with us for a while, and once Dad brought home a wounded buzzard that we named Buster. He was the ugliest pet we ever owned. Whenever we fed Buster scraps of meat, he turned his head sideways and stared at us out of one angry-looking yellow eye. Then he'd scream and frantically flap his good wing. I was secretly glad when his hurt wing healed and he flew away. Every time we saw buzzards circling overhead, Dad would say that he recognized Buster among them and that he was coming back to thank us. But I knew Buster would never even consider returning. That buzzard didn't have an ounce of gratitude in him.
We couldn't afford pet food, so the animals had to eat our leftovers, and there usually wasn't much. "If they don't like it, they can leave," said Mom. "Just because they live here doesn't mean I'm going to wait on them hand and foot." Mom told us that we were actually doing the animals a favor by not allowing them to become dependent on us. That way, if we ever had to leave, they'd be able to get by on their own. Mom liked to encourage self-sufficiency in all living creatures.
Mom also believed in letting nature take its course. She refused to kill the flies that always filled the house; she said they were nature's food for the birds and lizards. And the birds and lizards were food for the cats. "Kill the flies and you starve the cats," she said. Letting the flies live, in her view, was the same as buying cat food, only cheaper.