Seen, circa 1992, West Sacramento

A public bus rolls haltingly through the low-slung hopelessness of West Sacramento, California. A family of four stands at a bus stop, two children with fudgesicles, their dark-haired father in a black tank top and bushy mustache, the lanky, harrowed-looking mother gazing toward nothing in the distance. Physically, she could be his sister. He may be out of work, they on the road with him. The summer afternoon in the wide open valley is hot. Sunlight off the white sidewalk hurts their eyes. Later, in the evening, the children are soothed with the noise of American television in motel rooms. McDonald's dinners. Dad with a six-pack on the little round table by the window. The blinds are down, the children on the edge of the bed, the mother lying face down in a stagnant, drying creek two blocks away, drunkenly taking in bits of what water remains. She is a high school graduate. He has been trained to drive big trucks. It is summer and the children have finished school, said goodbye to one or two other children, to a teacher who thought the boy was a poor student, who didn't know he'd had a sister in the lower grades. The father watches the television from the table, wonders where his wife could be.