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the smell of orange blossoms, sweet. There was distance between each long house. Trees blocked the view from the neighbors and we could come and go and never be seen. 

Jesse probably liked the looks of things. When my mom opened the front door he could see the living room decorated in matching white. The carpet rolled into the white sofa, over the white chairs and stopped at the white walls. Glass windows took over at the edge where the carpet stopped, large, reflecting. The glass framed the swimming pool buried in the back yard. A long hall was the path from one room to another. The house was a rectangle stretched out like a strip mall. Arizona style. 

Jesse was the guy that looked like Harry Dean Staton in Paris Texas or Jon Voight in Coming Home. Later, as the story was retold, my brothers and sisters would ask, "Where was I"? We each had our own isolated fear, scrambling, up and down the hall not wanting to be seen by the cowboy.

He was an old cowboy and he needed a ranch to work. Jesse knew how to live in a trailer with a sink full of dirty dishes. Old cowboys always come slim so they can fit on a horse. Their skin beaten as if a tumbleweed was used for a loofa. Cowboys wear belts that don't fit on their waist. Pants are hung just a little lower and loose so they can get on their horses and ride out of town.  

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