Long after E.V. left and I heard the sound of his Chevy die away into the toolie-fog seeping up through the valley floor, I just stayed high up in that tree. I stayed and watched the night fall and the owls move into the tall eucalyptus and station themselves for the slightest hint of any skittering through the yard. I reached down and grabbed the open loop of the inner tube that E.V.’d left behind. I grabbed the black rubber with both hands and slid off the smooth muscle of the branch, bobbing in space, arms strung out tight above my head, spinning slowly in the cool night air. The whole ranch turned below me. I arched my head back and my mouth went open to the black sky. The giant splash of the Milky Way must have caused the high shrill squealing to burst out of me, just like someone had pulled a cord straight down my spine. My skin was laughing. I heard my dad come out on the screen porch and yell my name but I didn’t answer. I just hung there spinning in silence. I knew right then where I’d come from and how far I’d be going away.

Coalinga 1⁄2 Way

COALINGA 1⁄2 WAY

He pulls over at the edge of the Coalinga feedlots and kills the engine. He has a view of the entire yawning San Joaquin but he’s in no state to take it in. He feels no awe or sense of history about it, only contempt. The scalding air stinks of cattle. His pulse pounds through the base of his dry tongue and his whole head is on fire. His entire head. There’s the silent pay phone, marooned on a chrome pipe with a pale blue plastic globe guarding it from the blasting sun. Its modernism disgusts him; makes him feel worse off, more removed. Beyond the phone, pathetic groups of steers stand on tall black mounds of their own shit, waiting for slaughter. Heat vapors rise from the mounds, cooking under the intense sun as though about ready to explode and send dismembered cow parts flying into the highway. Beyond the cattle there’s nothing. Absolutely nothing moves, clear to the smoky gray horizon.