1963

Long afterward, when he's in his fifties and for the first time almost prosperous, Tommy hears a so-called expert say on the radio that poverty is learned. Only when youngsters go to school and encounter people with manners and accents deemed more posh, says the expert, do kids see themselves as poor. Till then they've been carefree in their barrios, ghettos, walkups, trailer parks. They assume their life is normal, dignified, and desirable, because it's all they know.

What shit, Tommy thinks. I knew at five. Christ, I knew at three.

1913

Dorris, California, is ninety miles from nowhere. You can drill a well deep down to sulfurous water, but the lowland where the village squats is dry and the bordering scrublands drier. Sometimes there's rain, but it comes in brief torrents and disappears into soil that's always thirsty. Next day it's as if it's never rained. Summers are so dry your skin itches and it hurts to swallow, so parched you flush your outhouse not with water but with dirt. Dorris is sixty-one people farming sand.

On the horizon sits a big cone that's pure white. What is it? Tommy asks his father. His father doesn't respond. Tommy asks his mother and she tells him it's Mount Shasta. Why is it white? It's covered in snow. What's snow? Snow is rain that's frozen. What's frozen? Tommy's mother looks at him. Of course, she says, you've never seen snow or ice. He hasn't even seen ice cream.

Tommy's dad is a doctor and rarely around. It's not just the hours he spends driving his patched-up Democrat and spavined horse to distant births and fevers; even when he's there he isn't there. His eyes are big and dark and look through you without registering you. He never says I'm home or Fine dinner to his wife. He never says What did you do today? to Tommy or Tommy's brother. He eats in silence, reads in silence, and goes out after dinner while Tommy's mother cries in her room. He stays away till breakfast.

Tommy's dad has a nurse, Gladys, who visits the house. She's young and pretty and kind to the boys, and she smells sweet. Tommy's mother has a sour smell that goes with her red hands and lined face. One day, Tommy sees a picture of a smiling woman prettier than Nurse Gladys. She wears a floppy hat and a white dress with puffy shoulders, and she holds a frilly umbrella. Tommy asks his mother who the lady is. That's me, says his mother.

You?

Yes. Before I knew your father.

They're dirt poor. Dad's practice is big, he's always busy, but the people he treats are even poorer, drought poor, and rarely pay in cash. What money comes in goes to Nurse Gladys, who wears bright dresses. Tommy's mother's clothes are the color of dust.

One day Dad comes home, stands before Tommy's mother, and says something. Then something happens that Tommy has never seen. Mama goes alkali white, then slaps his father across the face. It sounds like a buggy whip. Her husband looks at her a long time, dark eyes unblinking, then turns and stalks out. Tommy's mother feels her way to a chair. She doesn't shiver as she usually does when she cries, but tears slide down the creases in her face.

Children, she says, we're moving.

AURORA, OREGON, up near the Washington border, is sweeter country. Tommy's grandparents farm two hundred acres that straddle the Pudding River. Most of the time the Pudding is hardly a creek, though in March its flow grows a hundredfold and Tommy's told to keep away. Last spring a boy drowned. The land is green for nine months, white for three; Tommy loves being able to speak and swallow without tasting grit. At last he sees ice, though not ice cream.

While the landscape is gentler, daily life is not. Tommy and his brother sleep year round in an unheated porch that's open to the weather. The farm has no electricity, no newspapers, no visitors. The kitchen has a woodstove, but his grandmother often forgets to heat a brick for the boys' beds on bitter nights.

Twenty years later, Tommy will realize he's made for the Navy. His childhood has inured him to life at sea.

Mornings, his grandparents are up at five to feed cows and shovel manure. Food is plentiful but dull. Grampa is a wiry man of medium height who sports a chin beard; he thinks it makes him look like Jefferson Davis. Tommy's great-grandfather came across the Oregon Trail in 1848, and Grampa was the first white child born in Oregon Territory. Sixty-eight years later, he reads only the Old Testament and is quick with a switch. To him, his daughter and grandsons are permanently fouled, tarred, stained by divorce.

Five-year-old Tommy works all day. He shucks corn, pods peas, fetches water, feeds and drives the stock. He hangs and gathers laundry, sets and clears the table, scrubs pots. There is no time to play. His only recreation comes with the odd trip south.

Klamath Falls is two hundred miles from the farm. It's on a lake and is more civilized than Aurora. Tommy's Aunt Ida and her husband Jack live there. Uncle Jack is a pharmacist and seems to be rolling in dough. Uncle Jack drives a shiny black Ford, not an unsprung buggy, and lives in a tall tree-shaded house with wraparound porches and a velvet lawn that slopes down to the water.

Tommy minds his manners when he visits. His aunt and uncle are nice to him, but Klamath Falls still stings like iodine. Tommy can't understand why he's ashamed and angry the minute Uncle Jack's Model T crosses the Willamette bridge. The big calm house makes Tommy realize his fingernails are dyed black and his socks have darning lumps. He knows he shouldn't be so sensitive. Grampa says, Pride goeth before a fall. But something in Tommy says, I will not be a burden forever. I will have a place of my own.

In September 1916, Tommy goes to a one-room school. He hates it. He loves to learn things, but school has only a harried woman who ignores questions and frowns at noise. Finally, in sixth grade, Tommy gets a teacher who understands him. Foresters have identified trees that struggle in shade, then encounter sunlight and grow explosively. These trees are called late release. Tommy is a late release student. After sixth grade he devours English, history, geography, and above all math. As a high school senior he leads the state in mathematics.

1928

Mom. Stop fussing.

You have your toothbrush?

Yes.

Toothpaste?

Yes.

Two pairs of shoes?

One packed. One I'm wearing.

Tommy's mother looks at him, tugs his collar straight. I'm proud of you, she says. You and your brother both. But especially you. Don't tell him that.

No, ma'am.

Off you go, then.

A klaxon sounds. Uncle Jack's becoming impatient. Tommy turns away.

Big day! Uncle Jack has a new car, one with a battery start. He's dressed up; the new car is enclosed and there's no need for coat, hat, and goggles.

Where you going to be living? Uncle Jack says.

I don't know, sir. Boarding house most likely. As close to campus as I can get.

Not too close. Walking clears the mind. That's professional advice, not just an old man talking.

Yes, sir.

My sister-in-law sure is sad to see you go.

Yes, sir.

You ever been this far from home?

Just your place, sir.

Corvallis is a nice little town, you'll like it. Lots of pretty girls.

Tommy blushes.

Not that you'll...