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Show Oh Say Can You See? 28 The cloud had bumps, swollen and bulging. I've seen many shapes of clouds in my life-lambs, potatoes, even alligators, but I only saw one like that lumpy mushroom. Its cap reminded me of the North Wind, the puffy-cheeked one who bets with the sun and blows fiercely to get coats off people's backs. Instead of sky and trees, i t blew into the earth and got everything back in i t s face-sand, splintered tumbleweeds, thousands of years of rocks battering their own kind, crashing, colliding against each other, the dry desert s i l t , jaggedly rising from ribboned gullies and rain patterns on the sand, rising into a cloud that looked l i ke a mushroom capped by the swollen-cheeked North Wind. My father is proud of Hoover Dam. He helped build i t , drove trucks hauling f i l l . He also loves the desert. Mama never thought much of i t, probably never w i l l. "Horace, i t ' s so hot here, so dusty. No creeks, no greenery. It's not human to live here." My daddy always smiles when she starts i n . I like his smile when Mama seems unhappy. "Horace, can't we move before i t ' s too late?" Daddy never argues this subject. He just reminds Mama of his mother, the grandma who sang, and how she saved her family with a letter to her relative: " 'Can't find work. We've tried everything in the Great Basin farming in Idaho, mining in Nevada, selling shoes in Utah. Thought you might have a place for my husband and sons helping on that big new dam.' |
