Grit and hot air would blow across your face-the engine felt dangerously close. Riding in that smaller car down two-lane roads at speed was like hanging outside the cockpit of a crop duster. Carl drove a long white Cadillac with cow horns on the hood and a tiny green MG convertible, which backfired and leaked oil. He and his brother operated a slaughterhouse, and occasionally there’d be up to a hundred head of cattle, fattening up. I learned all this on a ranch 20 miles east of Sacramento, where my uncle Carl lived. So for a long time the culture encouraged itself not to speak of them but rather to perform them and allow them to enact themselves upon us. For to subject our myths to actual debate would shatter the projected nostalgia upon which they depend. Were they written down, no one would believe them. In this way, the myths of the West-when you live there-can feel as inevitable as the size of a sky or the heat of summer, the scarcity of water. That to live in the West is to spend your time unconsciously assembling a story in your head-like a melody that has been presented to you in parts. You might think one could dodge this heritage, until you realize that it’s all around you. In the pose of advertising pitchmen or the way a person stands when wearing a gun. In gestures and overheard sounds, in the half-remembered plots of bad movies. Growing up in the American West, one inherits a set of myths so grave and insubstantial they can only be passed on in the dark.
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