We were on our way from the water to Death Valley, maybe near Fresno or Independence. This stop at some county’s County Fair had been planned months before. When we got through the dusty gates we went to watch a hypnotist. My brother was the first to be hypnotised in a crowd of around four hundred or less. I watched as his chubby features thinned, some strange sleep aging him faster than everyone else. He seemed foreign to me. Once he had been revived by the hypnotist with a gentle, cold-cloth baptism, we went to see the magician. This time, he got to voluntarily participate in the show. I saw him float above me. In this exalted position he became alien again. Eventually he returned at the magician’s command, his face as round as ever. We walked to the last stop of this pit stop in our trip. Our purpose all along had been to see Three Dog Night, but my brother could only stay awake for the first three songs or so. I stayed awake all night, wondering whether the hypnotist and the magician had been honest in their claims of bringing him back to Earth.
