A Year in the Valley: Chapter II of When the Dogwood Blooms

"Are you even sure that there's even a job down there for you, Ray?" Jack asked. Jack was one of the two assistant managers at the Ralph's Handyman Home Improvement Center, in North Dallas. "I mean who knows? Someone might just be trying to lure you down there to make you into a slave, or something even worse." So begins A Year in the Valley, just after Ray, a recent college graduate with a B.A, in English, told the store manager that Ray had decided to move to the Rio Grande Valley for a teaching job, though he had not yet done student teaching, as required for state teacher certification. The last time Ray had been to the Valley was on a white tail dove hunting trip with his pediatrician father and Ray's older brother 14 years before, when their dad told his two oldest sons to let him know if they saw any Mexicans on the south side of the river, because Mexicans were known to take pot shots at Texans to the north. After sleeping on the front seat of his powder blue Plymouth Duster until a meeting the next morning with the school district superintendent, the principal of the high school, and the principal of the junior high, always seemingly glutton for punishment, Ray chose to teach Biology and Physical Science at the high school rather than the also unfilled job for an English teacher at the junior high school.