I grew up in the back end of New Mexico and I had it pretty hard for a while.  Maybe everyone feels that way, but I don't really think so.  It was worse for me.  The only one who cared for me at all was my mother, and even she wasn't much help most of the time.

            We lived in a house trailer on some land we rented out in the desert west of Las Cruces.  It was all just bare dirt and creosote, a storage shed and a Ranchero up on blocks, no one else around for a quarter mile.  My father installed air conditioners in town and drank in the bars.  My mother called herself a homemaker but all she did was talk on the phone with some of her friends from high school, bitching about the way their lives had turned out.

            My mother didn't love me, not the way you'd expect, but she didn't hate me the way everyone else did, either.  Sometimes she'd talk to me, just because she was bored and no one else was around.  Usually she'd leave me alone.  She'd sit in the kitchenette smoking cigarettes while she waited for my father to come home and yell at her for the way the place looked.

            I'd go to school and get pushed around by the bigger kids.  I was in the first grade for about three days when I gave up on trying to get along.  I was already underfed and black and blue from the beatings I got at home and none of the other kids wanted anything to do with me.  Most of the time I didn't want anything to do with them, either.  I spent the days in school pretending I was somewhere else, and when I got home I'd pretend I was in school.

            In the summers I played alone out in the desert behind the house.  It was about a hundred and ten out there, but it was better than hanging around the trailer waiting for my next beating.

            That was my life for the first ten years.

            I would have blown my brains out if I could have gotten the lock off the chest out in the shed where my father kept his guns.  He had a .38 in there and some pistols and a deer rifle.  He had a shotgun in case he ever wanted to go bird hunting.  If I'd told him what I wanted to do he probably would have left it unlocked, but I never did.

            I remember one day my father was out in the driveway working on the old Chevy station wagon he drove.  He might have been changing out the plugs, something like that.  I was maybe eight.  I was hanging around, hoping he'd show me what he was doing.  Hoping he'd notice that I was there and take some interest.  Hoping he'd try being a father for once.  He was under the car with his feet sticking out the side.  Finally he told me to get him a screwdriver from the toolbox.  I got one out and held it under the car until he took it.  A few seconds went by and he threw it back out.  It hit me just above the ankle.  He started working his way out from under the car.  He had grease all over his clothes, a nasty scrape on the back of one hand.  His face was red, the way it always got when he'd been drinking.

            "Can't you do anything right?"  He stood up, towered over me.  "I swear you are the worst excuse for a kid I ever saw.  What in hell did I do to deserve you?"

            I backed away.  I started to pick up the screwdriver where it lay in the brown grass.  I wanted to put it back in the toolbox.  Maybe I could find the one he wanted and hand that to him.  I couldn't even pick it up, my hands were shaking so bad.

            He laughed.  "Hey, that's great.  Very useful.  Why don't you go somewhere and cry your guts out.  That'll help."  He grabbed another screwdriver and took a couple steps toward me.  I ran.  He laughed at me some more across the red dirt and started to work his way back under the car.

            I don't know why I remember that happening.  It was like that all the time until I finally gave up on the both of them.

            I was ten when I stole the Chevy for the first time.  I didn't get far.  I got it stuck in the soft dirt along the side of the road a quarter mile from the house.  My father beat me when he caught up to me, but it wasn't any worse than I usually got just for being there.  He spent an hour digging the wagon out of the dirt and came home dirty and sore. 

            After that I didn't care what happened to me.  I didn't think I'd live much longer anyway, and I decided to just go along with whatever happened, not let any of it bother me.  My life was only a bad movie, something to watch.  I didn't care about it.  I started getting in trouble in school.  Nothing serious, just skipping out in the middle of the day, that kind of thing.  I'd always been a lousy student, but now I let them all know I just didn't care.  I'd have gotten in fights, but I was so skinny and helpless I'd have just gotten beat up, and I got enough of that at home.  Then I keyed a couple of the teachers' cars and made sure I got caught.  Just to see what happened.

            The school talked to my parents about me and my father beat me, like always.  It didn't bother me.  I was used to it.

            Then I stole the car again.  I had to sit on a phone book and use a broomstick to work the gas pedal and the brake.  This time I got as far as Santa Fe before I got caught.  I had to stop for gas, and I only had three dollars, which wouldn't have gotten me near far enough.  Besides, I was afraid someone would notice a ten-year-old going in to pay for gas.  So I pumped the tank full and jumped in and drove out onto the frontage road jamming the gas pedal to the floor with the broomstick.  I got about ten miles on the interstate before the state police caught me.  I made them chase me for a couple of miles before I gave it up and pulled over.  That was the most fun I'd ever had doing anything.

            The story of the ten-year-old making a run for it out on the highway made the TV news for a day or two.  When they interviewed my father he said, on camera, "The kid's always been a pain in the ass.  Anybody wants a kid, come out and take him.  I don't care."  Most of the stations cut that out of the story, but a few didn't.

            A week after that I figured out how to open the chest with my father's guns in it.  He kept a key in one of the kitchen drawers and I saw him take the key out and get something out of the chest.  The next day when I got home from school I got the key and opened the chest.  I took the .38 out back with a box of bullets and started shooting at the stunted creosote like it was an Indian raiding party in an old Western.  I went through the whole box of bullets.  I would have put the gun back in the chest but my mother knew I was out there shooting so I didn't even bother.  When my father got home he smacked me in the head so hard I blacked out.  There was a pool of blood on the rug next to my head when I came around. 

            A few days went by.  I had a headache all the time from where he'd hit me.  All I could think about was the chest with the guns in it.  I knew he'd hidden the key.  The first chance I had I checked the drawer where he'd kept it.  It was gone.  But I knew that wouldn't stop me.  Not for long.

            One afternoon I got a crowbar out of the toolbox and went to work on the chest.  I pried the hasp off and got the lid open.  There were the guns.  This time I took the .38 and one of the pistols.  A little one that fit my hand.  I took enough bullets to keep me going for the afternoon.  I wasn't sure what kind of bullets the pistol took, so I took a couple of boxes that looked promising.  I went a few hundred feet out into the desert and started taking shots at the creosote Indians.  It took a few tries, but I finally got the pistol loaded with the right bullets and tried firing with both hands at once.  I thought I was getting to be a pretty good shot.  It wasn't hard, just point and shoot.  The creosote Indians didn't move around.  They just stood there and waited to get shot.

            I took my time out there.  I wasn't in any hurry.  I didn't want to run out of bullets.  I had other plans.

            I saw my father drive up in the wagon and park outside the trailer.  It was probably seven.  He stopped after work most nights to drink with his friends.  I saw him get out of the wagon and I took a couple of shots into the scrub.  Just to let him know I was out there.  He went in the trailer for a minute, then came out the back door and looked in the shed.  Then he started walking back to where I was.  He was furious, kicking at the dirt and waving his fists at his sides.  I saw my mother come out of the trailer behind him and stand ten feet from the door, like she wanted to either come out after us or make her own run for it.  I took another couple shots into the desert.

            My father got twenty feet away.  He stopped and stared at me.  I had a gun in each hand, both of them pointed down at the dirt.  He thought about it, then he gave me a nasty grin.  He took a few steps.  Then a few more.

            "You worthless little fuck," he said.  His voice was quiet and hoarse.  "You're nothing but a pain in the ass.  What are you going to do now?  You don't have the balls to shoot something beside brush."  He kept coming toward me.  Not fast.  Slow.  Like he was daring me.  Enjoying it.  I raised the .38 a little.  I didn't put it on him, but I put it close enough. 

            I wasn't going to shoot him.  I wasn't even thinking about that.

            He kept coming.  I brought the gun up all the way but I didn't pull the trigger.  He didn't hesitate.  He came on and grabbed the gun in his left hand, smacked me across the side of the face with his right.  I went down and he stood over me with the .38 pointed at a spot between my eyes.  I stared up at it and waited for him to get it over.

            "I don't know what it is about you," he said.  "I'm just fed up.  Ever since I knocked up your mother my life's just been one big pile of shit.  I wish to God she'd had the damn abortion.  I tried, but I just don't want this life.  I don't want to fix air conditioners all day and come home to a whiny little creep like you.  You put a gun on me after all the shit you've dropped on me?  You won't do that twice."

            He reached down and grabbed the neck of my shirt, twisted it hard.  He pulled me up, spun me around and shoved me hard toward the trailer.  I went down again and rolled in the dirt.  He stood there and laughed at me.  I pulled myself up and stared at him.

            I was finished.  I was gone.  I didn't want to go another minute in this world.

            I raised the gun in my left had.  The little pistol.

            He stared at the gun.  He'd forgotten about that.  I'd been holding it behind me, keeping it down and out of sight, wanting to keep it in case I thought of a reason to use it.  He stared at the gun, then at my face.  He wasn't grinning now.

            "Go ahead, old man," I said to him.  He was twenty-eight.  He didn't like hearing that.  Not from me.  "Go ahead."

            He looked unsure for a moment.  Then he nodded.  He smiled again, that ugly smile he had.  He put the .38 on me.  I knew what was coming.  He was going to end it.  I almost smiled, but I didn't.  That was what I'd wanted him to do.  He could put me down, then explain to the world why he'd killed a ten-year-old boy.  I almost wished I could be around to see that.  Almost.  But I only wanted to be gone.

            I heard the shot.  Then I heard two more.  I realized I'd closed my eyes while I waited for him to do it.  I opened them and saw my father fall to the red dirt.  There was blood pouring out of his chest onto his blue work shirt, an expression on his face I'd never seen.  He looked puzzled, like he was trying to work something out but he couldn't quite get it.  He was lying on his side, looking down at the blood, figuring out that it was his.

            I looked to the side, a little behind me.  My mother was there, twenty or thirty feet away, holding another pistol.  She was pointing it at the space where my father had stood.  I thought I could see a line of smoke rising from the barrel, but I wasn't sure.  After a while she lowered the gun.

            "Let's go," she said to me.  "Let's go inside.  He can't hurt us now."

            My mother didn't love me.  But she didn't love him either.  And she saved us both.