By Christopher Upham

That fall the war was still on television, but we had come home to
Flagstaff, Arizona and didn't watch it anymore. In the mornings we walked
down the highway past Ruff's Liquor Store where mud spattered hunters hung
deer and elk carcasses up by their horns to weigh so that the dead animals,
dusted with snow, swayed stiffly in the wind.

It felt good to walk in the cold with the wind whipping across
Route 66 crowded with trailer-trucks and hunters down from the Uncompaghres
and the Sangre de Cristos. There was thick dirty ice on the pavement
beneath the railroad underpass and freight trains roared past the bars and
curio shops, the windblown gas stations, cheap motels and deserted → Read more