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you’ve been cute. A cute kid. You like it. You like the feeling of everyone liking you. So you say it again. Where’s God, Mama? She says, He’s in another part of Heaven. But if you keep your eyes peeled maybe He’ll show up. So for a while that’s what you do, keep your nose to the glass, your eyes peeled. At some point, though, you fall asleep. Then wake to the sound of Carol Marie retching. The plane is bouncing and she is barfing into a barf bag. As soon as you smell it you feel ishy. Oh no, not you too, says your mother. She gives you a white paper bag and tells you to hold the opening tight to your mouth. Don’t let it spill! Later, a stewardess takes the bags away and gives each of you a cup of Ginger Ale. She says it will settle your stomachs. Which it does. The plane flies on. No god comes.

When the plane lands in Denver, someone picks the family up, takes them to Grandpa Mike’s farm in Frederick, a little farm, only five acres, with a small barn, goat and rabbit pens, a chicken coop, an outhouse two-seater. Next to it, an adobe hut where he keeps his tools and where he slaughters a goat on occasion. The main house is white with a green shingle roof. There are lots of trees shading the house. A huge elm spreads its arms at the back end of the barnyard, so huge it shades the barn and everything out there. Pappas claims it’s the tallest tree in town. Frederick is not a big town, two hundred people, maybe. It has one main street with a Red & White Grocery, a feed store, a barber shop, a general store, a movie house called the REO, a bar that plays Mexican music mostly, a city hall, a volunteer firefighter’s station, a great silver water tower with a row of fire hoses hanging from it. You can swing on those hoses until a firefighter comes out and yells at you. Most of the men in town work at the Colorado coalmines. Grandpa Mike is a coalminer. He raised two sons by himself in Frederick, Nick and George. George lives in Chicago. It’s in Chicago that George will get gunned down by the police. You never learn exactly why, only that he was Mafioso.

Grandpa Mike is a Greek from the island of Crete. He is shaped like a wine barrel and he barely speaks English, but he speaks Greek and Spanish easily. He lives alone because his wife left him. She ran off and now lives in Utah. Pappas hasn’t seen her since he was five or six years old. There are three chow chows chained to their doghouses and one running free, an old gray-muzzle named Husky. In the little field behind the barn are rows of sweet corn sprouting, tiny green tongues testing the air. Closer to the house along the fence is a garden with vegetables flourishing. Grandpa Mike has a green thumb. Your mother has a green thumb too. She thinks people who have green thumbs are blessed. They are special. God loves them.

You are sitting on the patio in front of the house. The shiny sun hurting your eyes. A million leaves hissing. Far to the west the Rocky Mountains are snowcapped gleaming. In the barnyard, chickens scratching the earth, the Holstein Irini lying on a hill of old manure chewing her cud in slicing sideways motions. Near her is a steer, her son Socrates. When he gets older Grandpa Mike will sell him for slaughter. According to Pappas, Irini was named after Irini Papas, the Greek film star, who is Pappas’s aunt. So he says. There are goats in the goat pen. There are rabbits in the hutches. On the patio in the shade beside you is a huge galvanized tub filled with clear water. Floating inside, looking helpless as infants, are dead rabbits, four of them, their fur coats off, their pink skin, pink eyes glistening.

Grandpa Mike sits you on his knee and starts talking in what is meant to be English. His accent is so thick you can’t understand much of the meaning. You wait for him to say, You savvy, kiddy, you savvy? And that’s your cue to nod and say uh-huh. Your parents are nodding and smiling, wanting the old man to like you. After Grandpa Mike puts you down, he wants Carol Marie to sit on his lap, but she is hanging back. Mom coaxing her, but Carol Marie keeps shaking her head and whining, I don’t want to, I don’t want to. Finally Mom gets exasperated and grabs Carol Marie’s arm. Leads her to Grandpa Mike. He plants her on his lap and jabbers God knows what.