The Glass Castle_ A Memoir - Jeannette Walls [24]
When Dad wasn’t there, we invented our own games. We didn’t have many toys, but you didn’t need toys in a place like Battle Mountain. We’d get a piece of cardboard and go tobogganing down the depot’s narrow staircase. We’d jump off the roof of the depot, using an army-surplus blanket as our parachute and letting our legs buckle under us when we hit the ground, like Dad had taught us real parachutists do. We’d put a piece of scrap metal—or a penny, if we were feeling extravagant—on the railroad tracks right before the train came. After the train had roared by, the massive wheels churning, we’d run to get our newly flattened, hot and shiny piece of metal.
The thing we liked to do most was go exploring in the desert. We’d get up at dawn, my favorite time, when the shadows were long and purple and you still had the whole day ahead of you. Sometimes Dad went with us, and we’d march through the sagebrush military-style, with Dad calling out orders in a singsong chant—hup, two, three, four—and then we’d stop and do push-ups or Dad would hold out his arm so we could do pull-ups on it. Mostly, Brian and I went exploring by ourselves. That desert was filled with all sorts of amazing treasures.
We had moved to Battle Mountain because of the gold in the area, but the desert also had tons of other mineral deposits. There was silver and copper and uranium and barite, which Dad said oil-drilling rigs used. Mom and Dad could tell what kind of minerals and ore were in the ground from the color of the rock and soil, and they taught us what to look for. Iron was in the red rocks, copper in the green. There was so much turquoise—nuggets and even big chunks of it lying on the desert floor—that Brian and I could fill our pockets with it until the weight practically pulled our pants down. You could also find arrowheads and fossils and old bottles that had turned deep purple from lying under the broiling sun for years. You could find the sun-parched skulls of coyotes and empty tortoise shells and the rattles and shed skins of rattlesnakes. And you could find great big bullfrogs that had stayed in the sun too long and were completely dried up and as light as a piece of paper.
On Sunday night, if Dad had money, we’d all go to the Owl Club for dinner. The Owl Club was. “World Famous,” according to the sign, where a hoot owl wearing a chef’s hat pointed the way to the entrance. Off to one side was a room with rows of slot machines that were constantly clinking and ticking and flashing lights. Mom said the slot players were hypnotized. Dad said they were damn fools. “Never play the slots,” Dad told us. “They’re for suckers who rely on luck.” Dad knew all about statistics, and he explained how the casinos stacked the odds against the slot players. When Dad gambled, he preferred poker and pool—games of skill, not chance. “Whoever coined the phrase ‘a man’s got to play the hand that was dealt him’ was most certainly one piss-poor bluffer,” Dad said.
The Owl Club had a bar where groups of men with sunburned necks huddled together over beers and cigarettes. They all knew Dad, and whenever he walked in, they insulted him in a loud funny way that was meant to be friendly. “This joint must be going to hell in a handbasket if they’re letting in sorry-ass characters like you!” they’d shout.
“Hell, my presence here has a positively elevating effect compared to you mangy coyotes,” Dad would yell back. They’d all throw their heads back and laugh and slap one another between the shoulder blades.
We always sat at one of the red booths. “Such good manners,” the waitress would exclaim, because Mom and Dad made us say. “sir” and. “ma’am” and. “yes, please” and. “thank you.”
“They’re damned smart, too!” Dad would declare. “Finest damn kids ever walked the planet.” And we’d smile and order hamburgers or chili dogs and milk shakes and big plates of onion rings that glistened with hot grease. The waitress brought the food to the table and poured the milk shakes from a sweating metal container into our glasses. There was always some left over, so she kept the