BRO: You ain’t so colossal.

TV: Would you like me to show you footage of your mother in Odessa, Texas, 1976? (Imitating sounds and voices:) SCREEEECH…She jumps from her Impala, bawling at her children: “I’ve had it! Had it! Had it!”

BRO AND CASS (watching): No, Mom! No! No! No! Mommy!

TV: “I’m gonna kill you…I’m gonna put you on the ground and run over you!…Every one of you, I’m gonna make your fucking head like a fucking tortilla!”

BRO AND CASS: Mommy! No! Stop it! Mommy!

TV: “Waaaaa!” Vrooom vrooom VRRROOOOM!!! “WWWAAAA—” skreek!

Silence. The brothers stare in horror. A pause as they gradually recover.

CASS: Okay.

BRO: Okay.

CASS: She said she was going to, but I don’t think she woulda done it.

BRO: Well, tell it to little Amy.

CASS: Little Amy. Little with the flat head. And no blood. To speak of. Just a tiny little bit around her eyes and some from just one ear.

BRO: Yeah, is that how you remember it? Me too.

CASS: Her brains didn’t come out or anything. Her skull didn’t pop, nothin’ like that. Her head just got real flat sideways, like a fish’s head.

BRO: Because she was a baby.

CASS: What?

BRO: Their bones are quite a bit softer than ours.

CASS: When was the last time you saw her?

BRO: Me? Right then. Right there—when the EMTs loaded her up.

CASS: I mean Mommy.

BRO: Oh. Her? I was around—I guess I was eleven or so. Years before we come out here. Grammaw would’ve taken us to visit her any time we wanted, just about, but…(Shrugs.) We quit visiting.

CASS: It’s funny. We talk about her like she’s Mommy, she’s real, but there she is in Gatesville, Texas, two days away by Greyhound—only you don’t wanna go visit her because it wouldn’t make any sense. It ain’t her. And it isn’t even us. It’s nobody. There’s just these real sick memories all over us like stink. These memories that belong to nonexistent people. It isn’t reasonable nor fair.

BRO: You know her name was actually Amiga.

CASS: Amy. Yeah. Course I knew that. Amiga.

BRO: When somebody puts a name like that to a child—that’s a textbook symptom right there. Any clinical psychologist could tell you, sure as shit: there’s going to be an incident.

CASS: Why are you so full—of nothin’…

BRO: Well? Look at the order of the names: John, Luke, Mark, Marigold, Amiga. Regular, regular, regular, kind of bizarre, then pee-sychotic.

Pause.

TV:

—towering speed my lipstick Cadillac,

my crazy, my red-as-hell convertible,

my blazing baboon’s-ass-red Eldorado

I drive past exit after exit like

A bullet shining. Desert take me. Desert

break my bones.

I am going through snow in my convertible with the top down. I am going through rain. I am going through a cloud of moths. I am going through a hall of mirrors, an infinite confusion of reflected red Eldorados. I am nobaddy’s facking mather!

BRO (slapping at TV): Man—man—