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guardrail two feet high made out of rocks cemented together. If you walked up the hill during the day you could sit and look over the valley into the river. The car was at an angle and we all fell back against the prickly upholstery. This is the way our car told us to wake up, to sit up and know we were no longer in Phoenix. The car had become our flying carpet. We all knew we could fly and move as we slept. We had proof. Our carpet had landed in front of our granny's house.
I was never sure if our granny knew we were coming. Did my mother phone her before she left Phoenix? Before her rage pushed us all into the car? Or did my grandmother expect us because she knew my mother would need to drive tonight? Drive so she could give life to her anger, give it movement. My granny meet us as if a travel agent had made all the arrangments. Our beds were made on the floor, a pallet; a quilt made out of scraps, pieced together by my grandmother covered us. A place ready to sleep, she was waiting for us.
My grandmother's house was on the top of Shannon Hill. Today the name Shannon Hill could mean a beautiful gated community overlooking a city but back then Clifton was a mining town owned by the Phelps-Dodge Mining Company and it is where you rented a house while you worked for the company. It is one of the oldest settlements in Arizona and a hotbed of labor activism. Clifton was where the Apache Indian Geronimo was born. As kids we played cowboys and Indians and when we were ready to attack each other with Arizona mud clods you always got the warning call

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