When I wake up for a trip to the bathroom it is only six. When I wake again it's a little after seven. My cousin and her husband are gone to make their commute to work. My other cousin is dressed and making up the bed in the other bedroom. I tell her to go back to my aunt's place and I'll be there in a minute after I shower. I get all cleaned up, put on fresh clothes, make the bed. Feel pretty good. Outside is the desolate little town where these relatives of mine take refuge. I go have the leftovers of the breakfast and some coffee.

My cousin is saying that she likes something about my aunt's place. It's a manufactured home, like I said. My aunt says that her late husband tried to convince her to get a conventional mobile home when they moved here. They only had one daughter at home then. "He said, 'You're not going to be happy except with the double-wide, are you?'" she recounts.

Rabbits hope by in the back. My aunt tries to keep a lawn but it's the dessert, really. There is a prevading petroleum stentch and it's getting hot. We take refuge in the air conditioning. My other aunt is a little distraught. Her husband is declining into Alzheimer's. He got up and wandered in the night, she says. She wants to take him home where things are more familiar and she rushes off. Which leaves Dad and my aunt Dorothy and I. It seems we are alone in the town. Other people must have all commuted off to work. We go to check her P.O. box but we don't see anyone in there either. There is a key in her box to get a package out of a bigger box.

I retrieve some of my old papers and read them and work puzzles. My aunt watches 'Dr. Phil' and 'Crossing Over.' I've only surfed past these before. I help her with a computer problem (her power settings are stopping the hard drives and going to sleep and have to refresh when she returns and she doesn't like it). She also says that a mouse chewed a wire. She's not online, she says. But the computer was wired to be and a mouse chewed the phone wire that connects the line to the computer. I ask her if her phone works. "No, I think the battery may be bad on this one." I connect the phone directly to the line and it works. This is the first time I've been asked to diagnose a problem caused by a real mouse as opposed to a problem with a mouse. I guess I'm the family's itinerant IT person now.

We play a game called Skip-Bo. I've forgotten the rules if I ever knew them. My aunt slowly informs us of them. At some point a casual comment about someone looking like a gypsy or something leads to a discussion of actual gypsies and a guy who used to come around my granddad's farm. This guy had a wagon and horse and they called him 'Texas Red.' Finally, he came by and when he left he'd stolen a mule harness. "If he'd stolen a chicken or some hay, we would have let it go. But not a mule harness," my dad said.

Dinner time arrives and another cousin arrives from Odessa with her kids and a visiting cousin of theirs. We talk. Spaghetti and meat sauce, salad and bread is prepared along with macaroni and cheese (for the kids, I guess). My other cousin and her husband arrive from work later. We talk and eat and say goodbye. Life is stark in West Texas. The kids say they aren't doing much with their summer off.

Then we are alone. I sleep at my aunt's, reading Peter the Great and falling asleep. Dad says we are going to have an early start. My aunt wants to wake up and see us off.