Darkness on the Edge of Town

I'm seated on a camping chair in the cement-and-gravel backyard of my seventh Las Vegas residence in six summers. It's so perfectly clear and pleasant outside I could almost weep. I hear a bird chirp and it reminds me of the dead one Pauly found next to the back wall only minutes after we arrived. I know that there's another bird carcass around the corner beyond the padlocked fence painted a shade on the lighter end of the cream-to-adobe spectrum that covers nearly every square inch of surface, man-made or not, in the Las Vegas Valley. Taking a look at our parched surroundings on the edge of town it's not difficult to figure out their cause of death. The din of Los Angeles had been eating at my patience over the last six weeks I spent there-- the leaf blowers, circular saws, and car alarms, the bickering couple upstairs and their boundlessly energetic kitten, the can fairies pillaging the dumpster outside our bedroom window, and the relentless crush of traffic, whate...