These swans no longer exist: neither the shimmering blue bird nor (as far as I know) the motel itself, though in the early 1960s both burned brightly in my family's future. In 1953, when I was four, my father was injured while working as an electrician for the Frisco Railroad in Oklahoma City. A conductor signaled an engineer the all-clear to start up a freight train just as my father was stepping off the caboose where he'd been finishing up some rewiring. The tug of the diesel engine made the caboose lurch, and Father lost his balance and tumbled off the steps. As he fell, a loop in his overalls caught on an assist handle, and the combined forces flung him beneath the train. The loop continued to hold as the train slowly picked up speed, dragging him over the track ties just in front of the train's last set of steel wheels, shattering bone and bone in a matter of seconds—until at last a gandydancer named Big Foot Pete Yuri saw what was happening and pulled him free.
        Father spent much of the following three years in and out of hospitals and clinics, healing bones and back. At one point it appeared he might be crippled for life, but in time he recovered well enough to get around, even to resume his career as an electrician. But not with the railroad, which he sued. In 1958 the Frisco settled with him for $20,000, a decent bit of money in those days. The lawyer who represented Father in the suit talked him into investing the money in a motel in Fort Smith, Arkansas. You put up the dollars; my wife and I will run the motel, the attorney said. You'll be the silent partner. We can't miss. Mother was skeptical from the beginning. What kind of a lawyer wants to run a motel? she asked Father again and again. Look, he got the money for us was Father's repeated answer. He stuck with me for three years to do it. And so, in an act of gratitude and faith, Father made the worst decision of his life.
        Now, as I stare at the plastic swan nestled in my yard and the blue neon swan gleaming in my mind's eye, something else happens. I don't know why, I'm sure I'll never know exactly why, but all at once both swans disappear and I find myself stretched out on the back seat of Father's old gray beetle-back 1950 Dodge, which he was still driving in 1961, the green plaid bench seat ragged and musty, but comfortable enough for a boy tired from a long drive. I'm old enough to remember things now, and I know where we are: heading east toward Fort Smith along Route 64, passing through towns with names like Gore, Vian, and Sallisaw. I don't know our precise location because it's night and the lights of the previous town have already blurred away. Mother and Father think I'm sleeping. I can tell from their conversation, which is about the motel and me.
        The Coefields are stealing us blind, Mother says. The tremor in her voice tells me she wants to cry, but Mother never cries. This is the last trip to Fort Smith. We're going to lose everything. Everything, even the house.
        You're right, Father admits. You were right all along. At least the boy had his Christmas.
        He needs more than Christmas. Mother is silent for a while. I listen to the hum of the tires over blacktop, feel the drumming echo of the road through the bench seat. Maybe he needs a brother or a sister, Mother says suddenly. Maybe we should adopt.
        I dig my fingernails into the ragged cloth of the seat. I don't want a brother or a sister. It's too late for that. But I close my eyes and say nothing.

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