The Hooverman

The crisp clean scent of creosote was drifting through the open picture windows of my bedroom. It always reminded me of the smell of rain in the dessert. Which is an odd sort of thought, since it just didn’t rain in that particular dessert very often. El Paso was a dessert city. It butted up against the very end of the Rocky Mountains and stretched out wide, rather than reaching higher into the open sky with skyscrapers. Everything was the color of old terracotta and I constantly had grit in my teeth from the wind blowing around the sand. But it was home and I was happy.