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Show Oh Say Can You See? 29 " I t seemed like we were heading for Mecca, i t did," he used to say. "All those mirages on the highway and our tires never getting wet. Sunshine, wide open-armed skies and promises." "Promises? Of what?" Mama asked. "How can you cultivate rocks in Black Canyon, Hoover Dam cement, the sand, the sage, the yucca?" " I have a job, a wife, three children and an address," he said. "God bless the government." The one time that Mama did leave the desert and the dam, the time when my father put on his Navy uniform with the brass buttons to go s a i l ing in the Pacific, she didn't get treated like she should. Daddy always reminded her. Mother thought her relatives would help out with me and my sister Alice when she moved to Rupert, Idaho, but all extra hands were needed for milking, haying, harvesting potatoes. "I'm sorry but..." they all said. Mama taught school-six grades in one room. She was tired at night when she picked me up from the scratch-and-bite nursery school for war orphans. She didn't talk much then, so I looked for Daddy under the covers, under the bed and in the bathtub. "Why did Daddy go away? Is he coming back?" Mama read letters to us, words like China, Okinawa, kamikaze, Battleship Missouri, destroyers, phrases like "I miss you," "When the war is over," and "When we get back home to Boulder City, I ' l l roll down Administration Hill with Irene and Alice." Rolling. Me r o l l i n g , repeating my face to the green grass. The cloud r o l l i n g , repeating i t s e l f to the open sky. And deep inside the busy cloud |