Dallas acted like he was going to punt baby Eric like a football across the backyard. Instead, he dropped him to the ground. Lindsey screamed, “God, dad, you didn’t have to DO that.”

      “Shut up.”

      “I don’t have to shut up, you shut up.”

      Eric was two. “Shudup, shudup!” he screamed. Eric’s pants were wet to the toes, and up his shirt, a rising full moon on his stomach.

      “Get your butt inside,” Dallas commanded. He never yelled. He didn’t have to. The only time his voice ever changed was when it went a notch higher when he was joking. Like when he said things like, “Shut up or I’ll kill you,” or “Shut up or I’ll knock you out.”

      “I hate you,” Lindsey yelled.

      “I don’t,” said Annie. “I don’t hate him at all. Eric deserved it anyway.”

      “I HATE YOU TOO!” Lindsey yelled again. Her face had reddish blotches.

      “Get your butts inside,” repeated Dallas, “or I’m going to have to kill you.” He didn’t SOUND like he was joking.

      “I’m going, I’m going,” whined Lindsey.

      “I’m going,” repeated Annie. She watched her sister out of the corner of her eye to see if she was serious. Lindsey was. She elaborately stepped around scattered toys, making her way carefully and slowly up the steps. Annie followed.

      “What about Gene?” Lindsey yelled again. “Hunh, dad? What about GENE?”

      “Shut up.”

      “You’re stupid, you know that, you’re stupid,” Lindsey screamed, slamming the screen door behind her.

      “No he’s not,” Annie said, following Lindsey. “You shouldn’t say that, no he’s not.”

      Jane walked through the door and dropped her big purse on the couch.

      “Watch this,” said Dallas. He held a piece of paper on one side of Lindsey’s head. He blew in her opposite ear. The paper wiggled, as if in a breeze.

      “Goes right through her,” he said.

      “Way to go Lindsey,” Jane said.

      “Shut up,” said Lindsey, pulling away from Dallas. He grabbed her knee and she slapped at his hand. “Dooooon’t Dad,” she giggled.

      “Dad kicked Eric today,” she squealed, jumping up from the couch. “He kicked him across the yard.”

“So?” said Jane. “He probably should have kicked you too.”

      “See, I told you, so?” repeated Annie, mimicking her mother perfectly.

      “Well, I thought somebody would care around here,” Lindsey whined.

      “That’s what you get for thinking,” Jane replied. “So I suppose that instead of cooking dinner you’ve been thinking?”

      “Forget it,” said Lindsey.

      “I cooked,” Annie smiled.

      “Like anybody would eat it,” replied Dallas.

      Dallas cooked. Mornings. At the prison he warmed up the prepared foods that came in long trays. His boss was a woman. Dallas hated her. She told him what to do all the time even though he already knew and didn’t need her telling him. Dallas tells Janie he’s going to quit, and once he does he will never work for another woman again. Jane agrees. “Women bosses are the worst,” she says.

      The cable bill is twenty six plus the phone is seventy. Jane pays them in cash at the offices with her tip money. The electricity is one hundred and thirty four. She’s out of money for that. Since it’s winter Jane goes to the welfare for energy assistance. They want to see her bills. The paid ones for the phone and T.V. means she’s ineligible for assistance. Jane comes home and tells Dallas. “Well, fuck ‘em, then,” he replies. “I don’t give a shit.” The power is turned off five days later. The chicks and baby rabbits that Janie is raising in the barn, freeze.

      They were to be her salvation, the chicks and rabbits. People give good money for home-raised meat. Jane keeps two fingers crossed in her pocket as often as she can remember. She tries to do this, all together, at least an hour a day. She believes this diligence will bring her luck. Jane has had a dream, to sell the chicks and rabbits and buy a pig. Her big dream is to someday buy a calf.

      Dallas wants to move. “This town is bullshit,” he says. He wants to go home, where his mother lives, on the Colorado-New Mexico border. “Out in the desert,” he tells the kids, “no phone, no T.V., no stores, no nothing.”

      “Nada!” he says.

      “And none of them goddamn boys,” he tells Lindsey.

“What do you do,” he asks Lindsey a couple of days later. “Do you give off some kind of scent?” After school when they come by and line up in the empty lot across the street, Dallas goes to his pickup and takes his rifle off the rack. Sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open, he brings it to his shoulder. The boys scram

      “Jeez, dad, you’re so mean.” Lindsey yells, and slams the front door.

      “I didn’t shoot at them did I?” says Dallas. “You should be thanking me that I didn’t shoot at them.”

      Jane cleans rooms at The Bronco. She’s the manager. So is Tillie but Tillie doesn’t do nothing. “Goddamn power company,” Jane says. She wants a draw on her earnings. Tillie doesn’t offer. Jane doesn’t ask. “I’m going to fire that new girl,” Jane says.

      Jerry owns the hotel and adjoining restaurant. Jane has one crooked eye. Over the past few years it’s started to run a lot and she has to use eyedrops. She got new teeth from the welfare but the dentist didn’t like her and gave her cheap ones and they turned brown right away. These two things are why she’s not waitressing anymore, where the big money is. Jane doesn’t know this. She thinks Jerry’s an asshole for no reason. He fired Dallas as cook. He fired Jane. He and his wife Eileen had moved from the valley when they’d bought the hotel. Eileen rarely made comments about Jerry’s business but she’d suggested that Jane’s personal hygiene would deter customers. Jerry wasn’t happy with Dallas’ cooking anyway, so he let them both go.

      Dallas doesn’t drink anymore. When he makes it a year he’s going home. Dallas hasn’t been home in nine years. He misses the place. His other children are there. Two there plus four here. He realizes his other two are teenagers now. Maybe they have kids of their own. Dallas thinks about how he might be a grandpa. This makes him realize he doesn’t want to wait any longer to go home.

      Jane agrees to sell the house. Welfare got them in it. Jane loves the house, but mostly she loves the garden. The garden is on the empty lot next door which isn’t really theirs but they have done all the  work to it, cleared off  the junk and garbage and made the soil real good. She could live off this land. She puts up a hundred quarts of food each year. And freezes meat.

Lindsey serves three hours of detention in one week. It pisses Jane off. “Quit picking on my kid,” she screams to the principal.

      “We don’t single kids out, Mrs. Dinten,” the principal explains. “Lindsey continues to disregard our rules. It’s only fair to everyone.”

      “I’ll jerk her out of here so fast your head will spin,” threatens Jane. “I’ll put your ass in jail.”

      Annie sits waiting on the steps of her piano teacher’s house for her dad to pick her up. It’s her last lesson. She’s only had four. Annie gets the lessons because the teacher had noticed her talent at school. But now they were moving to their grandma’s. Annie didn’t care. When the piano teacher asked her Annie said, “I don’t care.”

      Annie takes all the stickers the piano teacher gave her and sticks them on Eric. He likes it when she does this. He keeps taking her hand and putting it on his face. Then Annie adds felt pen around the stickers. Eric looks really cool.

      Jane screams. “Like I don’t have enough fucking work to do around here already. Pack your goddamn bedroom up or I’m leaving your crap behind.”

      The U-Haul is packed. Dallas got the pickup on the trailer behind it. Jane is cleaning up. They are going to stay at The Bronco and then leave very early in the morning. They would leave tonight but they have to go to Annie’s school for an open house. Jane felt so sorry for her she told Dallas they had to do it. “Whatever,” said Dallas, “I don’t care.”

      Dallas just wants to get on the road. The last thing to do is to load the chickens, the prize ones, the fighters. He’s going to make good bank in Colorado. Somewhere around there it’s legal. Either that, or no one cares. Not like in Oregon. Not like in Oregon where there’s always somebody breathing down your neck. Telling you how to raise your goddamn kids. Like he should just let them run wild instead.

      Four prize roosters, each in their own cage. Dallas loads them into the pickup. He and Jane had brought them in from the barn and kept them in the kitchen by the gas oven to keep from freezing. They will be his salvation when he gets back home.