In My Father's House

Page 149

in my father's house/ 131 where my father had been born, and where my family fled during my father's parole so he could resume practicing the Principle. A peculiar cosmic Tightness, our departure to LeBaron country, the land of the exiles' exile - where religious devotion became fanaticism, where fanaticism spawned isolation, breeding a self-righteous lust for power that became madness. I came to think of the LeBaron clan as a kind of negative portrait of my family, and of their life in the desert as the materiali­zation of our psychological milieu. There was no trouble at the national border, but still I felt anxious. "Will the LeBarons be there? Will there be black widow spiders and tarantulas as big as this?" My mother shook her head. "The LeBarons are in a different part of Mexico. We're going to a big house in the city of Mon­terrey, near the Gulf of Mexico." I swallowed and thought of the hole with no bottom. "How close to the Gulf of Mexico?" "Oh -- sixty miles or more." I sighed with relief. Once on this trip, I had to wait forty miles to use the bathroom. It had been worse than waiting for Christmas. Mexican highways, paved only occasionally, led past shacks dotting the countryside, surrounded by animals and people seek­ing shade from the noonday sun. "Why do the kids get to run around naked?" I asked.