He bought an electric saw and some lumber to patch the second-floor gallery, but every time he was halfway through a board a fuse would blow in the spider-haunted circuit box in the kitchen.
His mother worked as a retail clerk and a waitress, and his father, who had ridden the rails during the Dust Bowl days, was a saw filer in a lumber mill, a storyteller, a depressive, and a blackout drunk, who died at fifty-three.