A Phantom Herd

by Lorraine Ray

That year most of the streets of town, even the big ones, were just empty stretches of creosote bushes on both sides of a dirt track; you would pass along in the bright light, jolted by the rocks and perhaps at times with your car angling away from another vehicle you passed because of the raised center of the road. You could travel for miles seeing few pedestrians and fewer stoplights, just signs. The cars you could discover coming your way because of the plume of dust their tires raised, unless it was the summer monsoon and the streets were thick with slippery mud. At times your car dropped into the bottom of an arroyo; few arroyo crossings had bridges. At the bottom the car would hit small boulders and have to plow through and skitter atop the pink sand. You could look up the arroyos on either side of the road and see the thick roots of mesquite trees woven in strands on the walls of the arroyo, bursting out of the banks of desert dirt, hanging in the open air. The witches' brooms at the top of the mesquite crawled over the sun.

  My mother and I drove on one of those dirt roads later that year, the same year when the snake hoop rolled by outside our front window. We were on an errand run for Thanksgiving and we had already purchased our turkey, which was in a box.

  "You gotta stay outta arroyos, kid. I'm telling you, by cracky, and you ought to listen. You're brother and sister got dragged down there once by some bad kids from up on the other side of the park. Those kids were rascals. Their mothers just opened the backdoor every morning and put em out like puppies. All they did was go around the desert making trouble and setting fires like Billy-be darned. Of course their mothers didn't care. A gang of toughs is who they were. After they dragged Meredith and Jack into the arroyo they told them to stay down there in the arroyo until the rains came. Ha! Imagine that! Those fools of mine thought they had to do what a bunch of tough kids said. Well, by cracky, I never found out who did it, but I had my suspicions. I had to go find the kids myself. I was so mad I could have spit. I knew to look for em in the arroyo because I had told them not to play anywhere near there, so, of course, where were they? In the gall darn arroyo, crying, huddled together, worrying about staying there by themselves all night without dinner. They said they had to stay down there until the rains came. That would have been about six danged months. Crazy? I tell you kid, those big kids of mine are awful-ly crazy."

  The arroyos curved away in an ominous manner that made you think someone deadly, the Hairy Man, Father suggested, lurked around the corner. This Hairy Man was a beastly maniac who liked to menace children who played near desert arroyos. Besides a head of matted hair, he had terrible fangs and long green fingernails. He did his menacing as a favor to parents, apparently, but nevertheless we dug our forts into the walls of the arroyos and used the roots to swing on and to form bars for prisons. Hairy Man prisons. If the Hairy Man tried to get us, we would tell him a little child was hiding themselves in the fort's corner; we always dug a deep one of those. This, we were sure, would trick him. His eyesight, we reasoned, wouldn't be very good with all that matted hair hanging in his eyes. We planned to quickly weave long sticks or loose roots across the vertical roots to trap him.

  The crumbling remains of an old tubercular sanitarium stood far back from the road that day like an awkward guest who'd stayed too long at a party. Those places were still dotted around town, but they were mostly rubble, and old men stumbled out of the entrances, more drunk than tubercular.

  "There's an old sanatorium, kid," Mother said suddenly, waving at the big ruin, "Tuberculosis was what those people in the sanatorium had at the time. It was a problem for the country with all those sick people. They came out here to Arizona thinking sunshine would cure them and it did, occasionally. Wonder who all died in that big old place. I feel real sad to think about it. Nothing left of it and it must have been something at the time. Ruined to bits. Is there one window that isn't broken? Can't see one that's intact. Doors hanging loose on their hinges. Gosh, that's a pity to see. That used to be a fine place. I suppose they'll tear it down in a year."

  The tiny separate homes on the same property, which had been built for tubercular patients with families, were rented by Beatniks at this time, as Mother explained, one of whom sat that day near his sunny doorway on a picnic bench and plunked a guitar, wistfully pondering the long winter shadow of his foot and his landlady's vast collection of potted cacti.

  "Look at the little houses at the side. Families stayed in those teeny places when someone had tuberculosis. Used to call it consumption, actually. Looks like they're full of those crazy kids, those Beatniks now. Playing guitars in the daytime. By cracky."

  Cars were few and far between when I stood on the high transmission hump of the '49 Chevy in the middle of the floorboards, in the backseat, wedging myself into a small gap between the front seatbacks. These seats wore olive green coats and the cloth near my face gave off a scent of dust and kapok. Our car was a two door model and the front seats folded forward. No mechanism held them back and sometimes a sudden stop would fold the empty seat forward slightly and when we came to a complete stop the seat would flop back in place, as though it bowed. If I hadn't braced myself, in those days before seatbelts, I sometimes was thrown forward too, and landed on the bowing seatback momentarily.

  In the front window I could see down the dirt road for several dusty miles through the flying dirt which was orange and yellow that day. I didn't see a single auto or person. I kept looking though, hoping a coyote might trot across or a roadrunner or a family of quail, running out energetically at our side.

  Mother steered off the dirt to a space in front of a store.

  "You stay put, kid. I'll be back in a minute," she got out and let the car door slam.

  How can I know what my mother's errand was or call her back from it now? How can I retroactively insist she stay in the car instead of leaving me with the paper bag full of groceries (especially with dinner rolls made at the Broadway Village Bakery by Mrs. Kaiser, a specialty at Christmas and Thanksgiving) and our Thanksgiving turkey in a box, and my brother's sailor coat? Mother had already retrieved the navy blue coat with its golden anchor buttons from the dry cleaners and it was hanging on one of the hooks in the ceiling of the backseat. When Mother parked the car and went in somewhere, a breeze through the open car window flapped the wrap, ripples of the paper twiddled the dark blue ocean of my brother's sailor coat.

  The kleptomaniac's attention might have been drawn by the flapping paper on the dry cleaning when my mother parked in front of the store. I suppose, from her hiding place around the brick wall, the noise or movement attracted her. But perhaps she had only been waiting for the first car she saw in that space, after hiding her own car behind a mesquite tree at the side of the building; or perhaps there was an alley at the back that led out to another street and her car was there; at any rate when we pulled in I'm sure my mother never saw her. But she saw us.

  As soon as Mother disappeared inside, the kleptomaniac snuck toward the humped fender of our olive green Chevy. On that crisp November morning, with the intention of stealing from the car, she came. How could she know I would later steal her and place her in this book for your inspection? I have her pinned down for you. I have rustled her, cut her out, branded her, and added her to my herd.

  How gently she laid her hand on the light olive colored curve of the right front fender; it was the calmest approach to corruption, a tentative caress by her palm. The surface of the fender must have been a little warm even on that November morning because the sun shone intensely on our town and there wasn't a mesquite or a palo verde in front of the store to filter the light. Then one long finger of the lady's hand stopped and hovered in the air above the fender as though she were contemplating whether or not to approach any closer.

  She dropped her hand on the car, and that creepy woman oozed about on the edge, sneaking nearer to the door handle. I suppose, because she went ahead with her plan, that she didn't see me at first standing in the far corner of the back seat of the car; I was only two years old, and it was never easy to see inside tho
se old sedans with their high seat backs. She laid her hand on the metal and she came closer. Hand over hand, she swam herself forward to the door of the car; still I couldn't see her face, only her torso showed in the window. A headless, legless torso. Blouse, pearls, twin set. She pedaled her arm out, squeezed the handle of the car door, opening it silently.

  She shoved the front seat forward, and dropped her head down to peer in. At me.

  "My goodness," she said, lifting her sunglasses to sweep the interior of the car and make sure I was alone. "All on your lonesome, sweetie pie?"

  Then arm over arm, she swam toward me in the stream of sunlit, mote-filled air, smooth strokes, flowing evenly and naturally, but sneaking, a trial of the hand on the hanger, lifting my brother's sailor coat off the hook, passing it in front of my face, and letting it relax over her arm, a waterfall of crinkled white paper. She swam her arm out again to our groceries, fingering the top of the paper bag, squeezing together the edges and lifting her hand deliberately. An excitement, an eager assessment of what I was going to do-to scream, perhaps? And she let out a little yelp of happiness when she saw our turkey snugly tucked in its very own cardboard box coffin.

  And she stole it, too.

  "Bye-bye, sweetie pie," was what she said to me as she did it.

  "Bye," I answered back.

  When my mother returned to the car, she didn't notice the theft immediately; we arrived home before she missed the turkey, the bag of groceries and my brother's sailor suit, stolen by an unknown kleptomaniac wearing a twin set and pearls.

  "Listen, kid, you've got to tell me what happened!"

  "Happed?" I echoed.

  "Who took the sacks? Who took our groceries!"

  I looked at her quizzically and began twisting hair around my finger to pull it out. This was something I liked to do.

  "Stop that," she ordered. "Who took the grocery sacks out of our car? Out of the car when Mommy left you?"

  "You?"

  "Well, for heaven's sake! Why didn't you call out or something? Oh, gosh, you don't even know what I'm saying."

  Mother reported the theft to the police, and in a week or so a detective contacted her regarding the loss. The kleptomaniac had actually been caught after emptying dozens of cars on the same street for weeks. Although there were receipts from the used clothing place where she'd sold my brother's coat, we lost the turkey and the groceries.

  "Well, by cracky, I never would have believed it if I had made the whole thing up," said mother philosophically, winding herself up for another epic monologue when she was done talking to the detective about the robbery, "to think in a million years. Such a thing happening to us. But if it had to be us she robbed, then that was the way it had to be. I won't participate in prosecuting her for stealing Mrs. Kaiser's rolls and all our Thanksgiving goodies. I am partial to Mrs. Kaiser's rolls, however, and there's no denying it. I won't pretend I'm not disappointed. But to send her to jail on my testimony, well, no, never. I won't do it. It's my opinion, as I explained to the officer who phoned me so kindly, that her crime was punishment enough, especially in light of the fact that her name appeared in the newspaper connected with the string of thefts. She was?imagine it if you will?from one of the best families living on the shoreline of Chicago. Oh, on that famous street with the mansions. I can't remember the name. A family of stupendous wealth, whose riches came from a shipping empire unimaginable in its extent, I can't imagine it myself, as a poor farm girl from Indiana, and she was the kind of woman who, oh, knew what was what, and who was who, and maybe where was where, and she was the kind of woman who knew on a first-name basis all the very best, highest quality people in the Southwest. Hmmm. Why, she lived in the most fabulous mansion in the foothills when she was here in town. An exclusive address and a home designed by the very best architect, and I looked it up; when I came to town, kid, I worked for him as a private secretary for an entire year. She, who robbed us, traveled to Santa Fe on a regular basis on the train, taking only the very best accommodations. Lived here in the winter only. Bought exquisite art (or, I suppose, stole it!) So well educated. The idea that she would steal, but I suppose she couldn't help herself. It's a form of madness, you know, kid. That such a woman has robbed us! A child's sailor coat of ours. Of course, she could see, easily, that it was the best quality. I foolishly insisted on buying a very good sailor coat for your brother last winter, which he is now about to outgrow, and you will wear that coat, kid. Now that I have it back. Nothing wrong with a girl utilizing a sailor coat of the very best quality. The fact that she was wealthy never makes it right. Not in my book. But it makes the thing glamorous, I suppose. Our little brush with fame! And I have learned to practice forgiveness. What's the use of Christianity if you don't employ it once in a blue moon?"

  The facts were simple-a wealthy insane woman had opened our car door and rustled our clothes and our food. But Mother seemed to imply that she was welcome to it. The kleptomaniac had bestowed something wonderful on us. Our possessions-and to Mother this part seemed miraculous-were good enough to be stolen by the very best people.

  A writer remains in cars when wealthy kleptomaniacs, who like teeny art from Santa Fe, arrive, because stealing is vital to a writer, an integral part of their makeup. They must observe it up close, especially when they are young, before they have any morals to muddy up issues. You've got to steal, distort, and mislead and not feel a bit of remorse.

  But besides stealing things, I find it rather strange that things can steal up upon an unsuspecting writer. Memories that are hidden or memories of any art that fails to develop.