CHAPTER ONE

"They're out there" (9) are the first words we see, all on a page themselves. If that's all you knew of this book was that first line you'd still know a lot. The speaker is scared. There is a threat, feeling ominous, dangerous, foreign. The fact that he doesn't specify who the "they" is adds to the mood. More paranoia, suspicion, fear in this voice as we go on -- it's striking.

"So she really lets herself go and her painted smile twists, stretches to an open snarl, and she blows up bigger and bigger, big as a tractor, so big I can smell the machinery inside the way you smell a motor pulling too big a load" (11). Holy cow. The Chief is not like us. He doesn't see the world in our way at all. I wonder how much we can trust of what he says. More than anything, this is a "voice" I want to hear talk more. Compelling.

"It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen" (13).
That line speaks loudly to me. Clearly even the little introduction so far has a lot in it that can't have happened. But is it the truth? Can it be both things? I'm thinking about a literary tradition called magical realism that comes mostly out of Mexico and Central/South America. Very often what seems to be a rock-hard, realistic world is twisted in some way in these books. Their world is just like ours, but with something very otherworldly in it too. Maybe it takes reaching outside reality sometimes to say something about reality.

In many instances in history and in literature, too, insane people have been seen as prophets or truth-seers. Is the Chief one of these?