I stand on the porch this Sunday evening and try to force Mexico to appear in front of me. I tried it all day from the living-room window, but it didn't work. By this time tonight I imagined cactus, fiestas, and salty breath. The howls of men in the back of whose lives lurked women called Maria. Instead there's a house like Mrs Porter's across the street, a willow like the Lechugas' and a pump-jack next door, dressed as a mantis; pump, pump, pump. Vernon Gridlock Little.

'Lord God in heaven please let me have a side-by-side, let me open my eyes and it be there …'

Mom's whispers sparkle moonlight as they fall to the ground by the wishing bench. Then Kurt barks from Mrs Porter's yard. Kurt is in trouble with Mrs Porter. He spent all day on the wrong side of the fence from the Hoovers' sausage sizzle, and eventually destroyed Mrs Porter's sofa out of frustration. Fucken Kurt, boy. His barks cover the creaking of planks as I step off the porch. It's a well-upholstered barking circuit tonight, on account of the Bar-B-Chew Barn hayride. A hayride, gimme a break. We don't even have fucken hay around here, they probably had to buy it on the web or something. But no, now it's the traditional Martirio Hayride.

'Oh Lord God, bring Lally back, bring Lally back, bring Lally back …'

It's been a long day. Cameras pinned me in the house since Lally left yesterday. Now they went to cover the hayride. Mom senses me approaching her willow; she sobs louder, and gets a hysterical edge to her voice, to make sure I don't miss the implication of things. A large flying bug scoots behind the mantis as I step close.

'Wishing bench is airborne this end,' I say, to break the ice. 'Like the dirt's caving in underneath.'

'Well Vernon just shutup! - you did this to me, all this - all this fucking shit.'

She cussed me, boy. Hell. I study her ole hunched body. Her hair is sucked back into a helmet again, and she wears her regular toweling slippers with the butterflies on top, their rubber wings torn off by the white cat she used to have, before the Lechugas ran it over. I'm compelled to reach out and touch her. I touch her where the flab from her back dams under her armpit, and feel the clammy weight of her ole miserable shell, all warm and spent. She cries so cleanly you'd think her body was a drum full of tears that just spill out through the holes.

I sit down beside her. 'Ma, I'm sorry.'

She gives an ironic kind of laugh, I guess it's ironic when you laugh while you sob. After that she just stays sobbing. I look around at the night; things are liquid-clear, warm and dewy, with a snow of moths and bugs around the porch lights, and distant music from the hayride.

'Papa always said I'd amount to nothing.'

'Don't say that, Ma.'

'Well it's true, look at me. It's always been true. "Just plain ungainly," Papa used to say, "Ornery and ungainly." Everyone was head of the cheerleading squad, and homecoming queen, and class president. Everyone was Betty, all sparkling and fresh …'

'Betty Pritchard? Gimme a break.'

'Well Vernon, you just know everything, don't you! Betty was class president in the fourth grade you know, and had all the bubbly parts in school plays - she never cussed or smoked or drank like the rest of us; bright as sunshine, she used to be. Until she started getting beaten black and blue by her father, whipped till she bled. So while you're all critical, and know everything about everyone, just remember the rest of us are only human. It's cause and effect, Vernon, you just don't realize - even Leona was relaxed and sweet, before her first husband went, you know - the other way.'

'The one that died?'

'No, not the one that died. The first one, and out of consideration you shouldn't even ask.'

'Sorry.'

She takes a breath, wiping her eyes with the palm of her hand. 'I lost a few pounds for the prom, though. I proved Papa wrong, just that once. Den Gurie asked me to be his date - Den Gurie, the linebacker! - I slept under the shawl of my prom dress all week.'

'There you go - see?'

'He picked me up in his brother's truck. I almost fainted from excitement, and from hunger, I guess, but he told me to relax, said it'd be like spending a night with my kin …' Mom starts to hiss from the back of her throat, like a cat. It's another way to weep, in case you didn't know. The early part of a strong weep.

'So what happened?'

'We drove out of town, sang songs nearly all the way to Lockhart. Then he asked me to check the tailgate on the truck. When I climbed out, he drove away and left me. That's when I saw the hog farm by the road.'

A bolt of anger takes me, about the fucken Guries, about the ways of this fucken town. The anger cuts through waves of sadness, cuts through pictures of young Jesus, the one who nailed himself to a fucken cross before anybody else could do it. That's why this town's angry. They didn't get a shot at him. But they don't have anger like I have anger brewing up. Anger cuts through a wide range of things. Cuts like a knife.

After a second, I feel the dampness of Mom's hand on mine. She squeezes it. 'You're all I have in the world. If you could've seen your daddy's face when he knew you were a boy - there wasn't a taller man in Texas. All the great things you were going to be when you grew up …' She narrows puffy eyes into the distance, through Mrs Porter's house, through the town, and the world, to where the cream pie lives. The future, or the past, or wherever it fucken lives. Then she shoots me this brave little smile, a genuine smile, too quick for her to pull any victimmy shit. As she does it, violins shimmer into the air across town, like in a movie. Even Kurt hangs silent as a guitar picks its way out of the orchestra, and a Texan voice from long ago herds our souls up into the night. Christopher Cross starts to sing 'Sailing'. Mom's favorite tune from before I was even born, before her days fell dark. Type of song you listen to when you think nobody likes you. She gives a broken sigh. I know right away the song will remind me of her forever.

It's not far down to paradise, at least it's not for me

And if the wind is right you can sail away

And find tranquility …

Fate tunes. This one breaks my fucken heart. We sit listening as long as we can bear it, but I know the song has sunk a well into Mom's emotional glade, and I guess mine too. Dirty blood will gush high just now. The piano brings it on.

'Well,' she says. 'George said she can only decoy the s............