IX | CatalystAS JUNE ROLLS INTO JULY, Sheldon rides with the family less and less, preferring to play ball with his Little League or sleep at his friends’ houses. The Kid, too, becomes bored with just “riding.” By now it is the same old scenery blowing past, the same old night-world. He lies in the vibrating bed of the Camino and gazes up at the high-tension towers along Upriver Drive—imagining Godzilla stalking through the darkness, keeping pace. When they pass the fuel farms by Hillyard—which remind him of industrial Tokyo from the Toho monster films—there’s Godzilla again: wading through the buildings, destroying silos with his blue-white-hot radioactive breath (which sets his tree-like dorsal fins aglow). The Kid finds he can make anything in Spokane interesting by imagination alone. G
