My family moved to Arizona the year Marquette won the NCAA championship.
We watched the game on a little black and white television, in a trailer at the end of a dirt road between New River and Cave Creek.
After the game my dad went to the Tree House to celebrate.
My parents gave my brother and sister and I a canteen, a compass and a snakebite kit for Christmas, as if we would cross arroyos, and hike up foothills into caves to explore and identify different species of snakes and flowers and lizards.
After school and on weekends we gathered rocks for desert masonry walls, dug trenches and holes, stacked two by fours and bags of cement, and swept saw dust and nails off the floor.
We moved into our new house in July.
On weekends my father had tasks for my brother and I, usually they involved moving and re-stacking his pile of shit in the back yard.
When my brother had weed, it wasn't so bad.
After my father went somewhere (no one knew where), my mother cooked us breakfast while we sat in our room and listened to records.
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