Tiger Eyes Read Online Free Page A

“Uncle Walter,” I say, “is that a gun in the back?”
    “Yes,” he answers.
    “Is it loaded?” I ask.
    “You bet … so don’t go messing with it.”
    “Is there a lot of crime here?” I feel myself breathing harder, faster.
    “No,” Bitsy says. “And on The Hill …”
    “The Hill?” I ask, interrupting.
    “Yes,” Bitsy says, “we call Los Alamos, The Hill … and up there we have virtually no crime at all.”
    “Then why do you carry a loaded gun?” I ask, telling myself to relax. Relax and try to breathe slowly, normally.
    “You never can tell,” Walter says, “especially down here. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
    I don’t understand but decide not to pursue it because the whole subject is making me jumpy and every time I ask Walter a question, he turns and speaks to me over his shoulder, taking his eyes off the road.
    I see my mother grab the back of her seat with one hand and hang onto the handle of her door, with the other.
    “Walter!” Bitsy shrieks, as he swerves and just misses colliding with a passing car.
    Jason crashes into me, laughing. “Daddy had a gun in the store. Right, Mom?”
    “Right,” Mom says, easing her grip on the back of the seat.
    “But he didn’t keep it loaded because he was afraid I’d want to play with it. Right, Mom?”
    “Right, Jase. Now why don’t you look out the window at the beautiful scenery.”
    “I am looking,” he says. “I can talk and look at the same time.”
    The scenery is beautiful. We whisk by flat open spaces with mountains in the distance, rising out of nowhere, stark and black, looking as ifthey’re made of papier-mâché. The land is brown, then yellow, then almost red.
    After an hour on the road, Jason says, “I have to pee.”
    There are no gas stations, no restaurants, nothing, as far as you can see, except the land and the sky.
    Walter pulls off the road and takes Jason for a short walk. When they come back, and we are on our way again, Jason falls asleep, with his head on my lap. He wakes up suddenly, not knowing where he is and I can read the fear in his eyes.
    “It’s all right,” I tell him, smoothing his hair away from his sweaty cheek, where it has stuck.
    I close my eyes, too, and when I awaken, I can feel the pull of the Blazer as we climb higher and higher. I have to yawn to clear my ears. “How much longer?” I ask Walter.
    “Another fifteen minutes or so,” Walter says, turning around to face me. I must remember not to talk to him while he is driving.
    Minka jumps from one side of the Blazer to the other, chasing a little moth that has flown in the back window. I look at my watch: five-thirty. But I remember that that is New Jersey time. Here it is just three-thirty. I reset my watch.
    We go around a series of S-curves, with a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to our right. Jason grabs my arm and squeezes so hard he leaves finger marks. Around and around, and Iunderstand why Bitsy calls Los Alamos, The Hill.
    Halfway up, Walter pulls off at a scenic lookout and we get out of the Blazer to stretch our legs and take in the view. All there is, for miles and miles, is a sea of rocky cliffs, dropping away into deep canyons. I don’t know how I will ever describe this view to Lenaya and Hugh.
    “You can understand why Oppenheimer chose Los Alamos as the site for Project Y,” Bitsy tells Mom.
    “What’s Project Y?” Jason asks.
    “The code name for building the atom bomb,” Bitsy says. “And Los Alamos is the secret place where the scientists lived while they were developing it.”
    “Is it still a secret place?” Jason asks.
    Bitsy laughs. “Not anymore.”
    Jason is disappointed.
    We get back into the Blazer and drive a few more miles, until we come to the town itself. After the two hour drive, after the spectacular scenery, after hearing about the town as a secret place, I am disappointed, too. Los Alamos looks ordinary. Flat and ordinary. I once went to visit a friend’s brother at Fort