On the Right Side of a Dream Read Online Free PDF

and taste the peppers. I wanted to go to a bullfight, catch a peek at some Mayan ruins, and listen to the music. You can tell a lot about folks through their food and their music. I’d been reading a book about Mexico. And I wanted to try out my Spanish. I had been practicing.
    “A kind of Spanish,” Peaches said, frowning after she listened to my attempts. Peaches was decent at conversational Spanish. She knew all the curse words. But she was having a hard time getting a handle on Spanish—Juanita-style.
    “Spanish with a spot of central O’hiya mixed in with . . . what
is
that accent?” Peaches scrunched up her face as she tried to figure it out. Then she grinned. “Oh, of course,” she said. “West Virginia.”
    “Yes, by God,” I’d told her proudly. My dad is from West Virginia and I still have a bit of that twang in my speech. It sticks to your vowels like caramel sticks to your teeth. Mix it up with Spanish, though, and you have quite a sound. It’s like putting beef gravy on salmon. It sounds interesting but it doesn’t work.
    “Better listen to the tapes again,” Peaches said, quickly pushing the button on my Walkman. “If you pronounce the words like that, you might get slapped. People will think you’re sayin’ something vulgar instead of ‘buenos dias.’ ”
    But there was a sudden change in plans. Paul, one of Peaches’s coworkers, had come down with pneumonia and was in the hospital. It happened right in the middle of a job, leaving a shipment in Gila Bend to be picked up. Peaches checked her maps and turned the Purple Passion east toward Arizona.
    “I’m sorry, Juanita, I know you wanted to see Mexico. Maybe we can go next month if you want. Bring Jess along, too.”
    “I’m not worried about it,” I told her, and I wasn’t. Instead of seeing Mexico, which I’d never seen before, I was going to see Arizona, which I’d never seen before either. I was still coming out ahead.
    “When I’m finished in Gila Bend, I’ll go north through Phoenix to Utah,” Peaches added. “You got the urge to see a salt lake?”
    Well, not really, but I did want to see what was so grand about the Grand Canyon and Peaches had said that there were red rocks in Arizona. Since I was used to the brown and gray rocks of Montana that sounded good to me. And that’s how I ended up juggling crystals and channeling positive energy in Arizona instead of sipping on a lime in Monterrey. Heroines have to be flexible.
    We drove west from San Diego and headed out on I-10, then picked up State Route 85 toward Gila Bend. After the truck was loaded, Peaches’s route took us north through Phoenix then into the desert. Along the way, a car the size of a soup can switched lanes without using a turn signal or making sure that there was enough room between it and the semi.
    Peaches shifted gears quickly, and then pushed the loud horn of the Kenworth. It sounded like the bellow of a herd of angry elephants. “Son of a bitch! I hope you’ve got big bumpers on that damn Civic because you’re about to get slammed!” she yelled at the tiny little Honda. The engine roared as the truck picked up speed.
    I held my breath because that little car had squeezed in with barely six feet between its trunk and the front end of Peaches’s rig. Then, the boy flipped her the bird and took off, jumping lanes again to zip past an ancient Ford truck that was struggling along.
    “Damn kids,” Peaches grumbled. “If you weren’t in the cab, I’d . . .”
    “No, you wouldn’t,” I cut her off. “You’re too conscientious a driver to go after that young fool. He’ll get his, don’t you worry.”
    “Always seems to take too damn long. Where are the Mounties when you need them?” Peaches muttered, pushing the Purple Passion to a few points higher than the legal cruising speed. “Enough of that. Look out the window. Peaches Bradshaw’s travelogue is about to begin.” She pointed to the right. “That, Miss Juanita, is a bona