Ruby Crenshaw

Missouri was hot as a bitch's fiddle, was what Father Crenshaw said, and without further ado they got Brotherville behind them. They went to California. They went by Greyhound bus, and most people thought that they were Mennonites, and Father Crenshaw made them sing at the pit stops and his old greasy wife bobbled at his side inanely gazing at her scuffed-up sneakers, and sometimes people threw dimes at their feet, but mostly people ignored them. Melton thought that they would probably stop in Hollywood, but Father Crenshaw made it known that he intended different. They'd go all the way to God's great blue sea, he roared as they wobbled into Ventura in the yellowing dawn, slumbering passengers slitting their eyes or dragging sweatshirts over their muttering faces, all the way to that sparkling blue sapphire of a sea that God created only for His chosen people to lay eyes upon and relish in and cleanse themselves inside, they would go to the shore as did Jesus, the Christ, when He was a fisher of men. And when Ruby woke up once more the bus had stopped and the family was singing again and Melton was pinching her shoulder, and they had come all the way to some town which she could see by a sign on the front of a donut shop was called Santa Monica.