GROWING UP IN THE AMERICAN WEST, one inherits a set of myths so grave and insubstantial they can only be passed on in the dark. In gestures and overheard sounds, in the half-remembered plots of bad movies. In the pose of advertising pitchmen or the way a person stands when wearing a gun. You might think one could dodge this heritage, until you realize that it’s all around you. That to live in the West is to spend your time unconsciously assembling a story in your head—like a melody that has been presented to you in parts. In this way, the myths of the West—when you live there—can feel as inevitable as the size of a sky or the heat of summer, the scarcity of water. Were they written down, no one would believe them. For to subject our myths to actual debate would shatter the projected nostalgia upon which they depend. So for a long time the culture encouraged itself not to speak of them but rather to perform them and allow them to enact themselves upon us.
I learned all this on a ranch 20 miles east of Sacramento, where my uncle Carl lived. He and his brother operated a slaughterhouse, and occasionally there’d be up to a hundred head of cattle, fattening up. Carl drove a long white Cadillac with cow horns on the hood and a tiny green MG convertible, which backfired and leaked oil. Riding in that smaller car down two-lane roads at speed was like hanging outside the cockpit of a crop duster. Grit and hot air would blow across your face—the engine felt dangerously close. One of the shocks of arriving back at Carl’s ranch after one of those buzzing jaunts was to walk through a gate to his inner sanctum, where a perfectly blue pool gazed at the sky unblinkingly. Carl was as tanned as a leather sofa, smoked cigars, and spent a lot of time in his swim trunks. He was kind to my brothers and me, and often dispatched us inside the house to get him another beer. One of the most intense memories of my childhood is running from the bright white light near Carl’s pool into the cool dark of his house, passing his guns and the wood-paneled TV set, usually playing a western on silent, and pulling a hand-chilling can of beer from a refrigerator stuffed with meat.
So much of
