The winter of Frankie Machine

42

The town of Brawley is an oasis in the desert.

Back during the Depression, the WPA put thousands of guys to work digging a canal from the Colorado River west into the desert. The result is that the area around Brawley produces some of the best alfalfa in the world. It’s startling to fly over it-you’ve seen nothing but miles and miles of stark, bleached brown, and then suddenly there are these rectangles of emerald green.

Driving into it is less dramatic, but the town does come as a welcome relief to the desert. And it has everything a small agricultural town has to offer-a strip of fast-food places, a couple of banks, a big Agricorp grain elevator, and some motels.

Frank finds the place he’s looking for pretty quickly and settles in.

Lies down, stretches out, and closes his eyes.