A Phantom Herd

by Lorraine Ray

  You would have to go back to Arizona in the nineteen forties and fifties-and let me immediately discourage you from doing that-if you wanted to find squaw dresses hanging en masse from dress racks. Of course, they were always a Southwestern costume, or peculiarity, or politically incorrect horror, you might say, depending on your point of view. No one wore them on Park Avenue in New York, except in a strange photo in an old beauty magazine which I leafed through at a hair dressing parlor one morning in 1962 when I was getting my hair cut in that stylish seal cut that I wore to the church potluck which showed everyone how badly the prickly heat scabs had spread on the back of my neck. The two girls in that photo, the one in a lady's charro suit and the other in the squaw dress, looked mortified posing on New York's famous boulevard. No amount of white paint on their teeth or red lipstick on their lips could cheer up those frigid, angry smiles. They seem to be thinking, "If you ever pose us again in dresses that are decorated with rick-rack and sequins, we know people who can introduce you to the terrain at the bottom of the East River." Even out here on the frontier of fashion, squaw dresses sold rather slowly. The extent of their unpopularity became evident one late afternoon when I was about seven, a few years after I had seen that photo in the magazine.

  Mode D'esert was a wayside place, an adobe home converted into a dress shop by a woman named Dottie Park. Dottie had once been a librarian until she suffered a nervous breakdown, the details of which were never divulged to me. My mother was loyal to her librarian friends who had suffered nervous breakdowns, and there were an awful lot of them. Librarians in Arizona had nervous breakdowns the way you and I have colds, or maybe it was just Mother's librarian friends that had all the breakdowns. At any rate, they were people we had to visit, and oh, those long, painful visits with the ticking grandfather clocks in the hall and my brother and me staring at the pathetic pots of cacti on the former librarians' coffee tables. I remember especially the money-making schemes these desperate ladies devised involving strings of chinaberry beads and jewelry made of cracked marbles, and, in the case of Dottie Park, the little out-of-the-way failing dress shop Mother felt she had to patronize.

  Dottie's place sat way out on the edge of our desert town on a rutted dirt road. The fact that you had to drive on an unpaved road to reach Dottie's shop wasn't so unusual for those times, for even the center of town was dirt roads then. What was unusual was that she had a pet chuckwalla lizard in a wooden cage under a cottonwood tree. This tree shaded the bright pink Pueblo Revival home and a low outer wall around the entrance which formed a small courtyard outside the shop. I think Dottie had added the wall, because various Native American signs had been pressed crookedly into the mortar.

  After arriving that late Friday afternoon in March, Jack and I hung around the chuckwalla cage for a while. We hated Dottie's dress shop with a passion and the sight of a lethargic lizard resting its head atop some wilted lettuce was frankly a great deal more cheerful than Dottie's dusty suits and handbags. A fly had landed on the lizard. We watched it crawling down the spine of the reptile, but the sad thing didn't even budge.

  "Dottie oughta buy a little dress for the lizard," I said.

  "Yeah," said Jack, "or a sombrero."

  "If she does that, she could put a little 'Viva, Mexico!' sign on the cage," I suggested crudely.

  "Hmmm," said Jack, "I'm just so bored."

  "Me too. The only thing that would help that guy is dynamite," I said staring morosely at the lizard.

  "I don't think even that would help him," Jack replied.

  When we came into the shop, it was out of pure desperation, and the cow bell tied to the door clanked. I think a cow bell clanking is one of the world's saddest sounds, even if it's tied on a cow in a beautiful, grassy meadow, but especially when you hear it clank in an empty dress shop when you're a kid and you would rather be playing in a park. Mother looked over at us sharply but went back to talking with Dottie. Mother and Dottie discussed various modern fabrics, most of which she would have been shocked to realize were nothing but spun petroleum. Dacron, nylon, rayon and the benefits of these wonder weaves engrossed the two librarians. Mother was pretending to be a fashion fanatic, though it was rather obvious from her clunky heels and drab skirt that she was fantasizing.

  Jack and I walked to a part of the shop which was farthest away from Mother and began counting dead flies in the window sill and lifting the skirts of the mannequins in the window to see if they wore underwear. This was something my brother and I enjoyed.

  "Shoo. Go outside and play," Mother called to us.

  We ignored her.

  "Quit looking in here," she said angrily.

  We put a mannequin's dress down for a moment. When Mother stopped looking at us, we lifted it again.

  "Quit lifting up those dresses," said Mother in a more direct correction.

  The cow bell clanked again.

  "Oh, it's a customer," said Dottie in surprise.

  We all looked at the door in amazement.

  A woman wearing an expensive suit came in briskly.

  "Mrs. Yates," cried Dottie, sucking in her breath.

  "Mrs. Yates!" exclaimed Mother under her breath. "I didn't know you sold her dresses in your shop!"

  "Well, hardly any," said Dottie quietly.

  And it was Mrs. Yates that walked in after the cow bell. There she was as big, or I should say as little, as you please. The town's most prominent socialite, a style maven of the Southwest, was no more than five feet tall. She had her own dress factory that sewed fashionable togs, and she drove around town in a station wagon with the factory name emblazoned on the side. She was wealth, success and style incarnate.

  After nosing around the shop for a moment, Mrs. Yates walked to the counter where Dottie folded blouses. Our mother was duly impressed and attempted to act casual, which of course made her look extremely nervous. After our mother was introduced as a dear friend from Dottie's days as a librarian, and after Mother stuttered out some comments about the wonderfulness of Mrs. Yates style sense and her charitable work, and Dottie concurred, Mrs. Yates spoke.

  "I've got some dresses in the station wagon," she said sweetly. "I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

  Dottie plucked at her sleeve and squinted as though she were in pain. She folded another blouse slowly.

  "I don't know, Mrs. Yates," she said finally. "I know your factory is producing quality goods that rival some of the best of New York fashion, and the fabric is tip-top. They really sell, too, and your girls sew beautifully, but I can't say as I have much capital now. The position, as to my capital, is simply awful. I don't think the bank would let me buy any more dresses. Why don't you try me again? In the fall?"

  After staring at the fascinating, fashionable and powerful, Mrs. Yates, Mother took notice of the two of us again.

  "Get outside!" she ordered.

  We didn't hear how the conversation between Dottie and Mrs. Yates went after that because we didn't dream of disobeying our mother when she spoke to us in that tone.

  Outside, the light shone sideways across a sea of olive green creosote bushes, which were waving in the warm light of March. A mockingbird called from the cottonwood, playfully singing to the setting sun. A glorious desert sunset proceeded beyond a splotchy boulder, just the hint of florid pinks and fruity reds to come.

  Mrs. Yates had parked her station wagon near the box with the chuckwalla in it. We went back over to see the lizard and it hadn't done a darn thing. Suddenly, Dottie and Mrs. Yates came out the front door of the shop together.

  As they came nearer the station wagon we could hear them talking.

  "What have you got with you?" we heard a wary Dottie ask Mrs. Yates.

  Old Mrs. Yates kept her mouth shut. Just about when I figured she wasn't going to ever answer, and they had almost reached the tailgate of the station wagon, Mrs. Yates said the two ominous words: "Squaw dresses."

  "Oh dear," said Dottie, stopping to gasp. She fell back and clutched at her neck. She
seemed be strangling, groping for air for a moment. "I'll have to say no right here. I can't consider taking those. No, I can't take any more of those dresses."

  She said 'those' with emphasis as though she were talking about something hideous, perhaps a skin ailment.

  "I want you to sell them," said old Mrs. Yates insistently.

  "I tried," said Dottie, pleading. "Believe me, I tried and tried."

  "Not quite hard enough," said Mrs. Yates. Her voice was hard and cold. This was not at all like the nicey-nice voice she had cultivated in the shop.

  "No one seems to want a dress with that rick-rack on the bottom of their skirt. I can't do anything for you." Dottie swung around to go back to the shop.

  My brother and I watched as Mrs. Yates squinted at Dottie's back for a moment and then, quickly, she snapped open the clasp of her purse and put her hand in. She seemed to hesitate, scanning the distant lengths of the dirt road in both directions, but missing us. She looked at the shop door. I suppose she didn't think about my brother and me, if she had, she still would have pulled out the gun.

  "Miss Park," called old Mrs. Yates. When Dottie turned at the sound of her name, old Mrs. Yates trained the nose of the pistol at Dottie's flat chest.

  "Listen, sister, no more moaning, hear me? You're taking all these squaw dresses off my hands, see, or I'll drill you one!" hissed Mrs. Yates. Her eyes were luminous black bugs.

  Dottie gasped. Her arms shot up above her head and flopped about nervously. She was blubbering something indistinguishable.

  "Get over there to the back of the wagon," Mrs. Yates said, motioning with the nose of the gun toward the bed of her station wagon.

  "They're not selling," pleaded Dottie plaintively. "I have tried to sell them, but no one wants them. You don't understand."

  "Shut up. I understand plenty. Open the tailgate. It's not locked, lift up the latch."

  "I'm sorry you're in trouble, Mrs. Yates, but it's not right of you to put me in trouble, too."

  "Pull out the box," Mrs. Yates' mouth dropped to one side when she spoke.

  Dottie stood at the tailgate, utterly paralyzed. "This big box?" she asked lamely.

  "That's right, that big box full of simply lovely squaw dresses. Now pull it out, or I'll plug you one."

  "Oh, don't, you can't be serious!"

  "You'll see in a minute if you don't listen to me."

  "Don't shoot. Give me a chance. I'll have to crawl in," said Dottie.

  "Then do it, silly."

  "Please, don't shoot. Just don't shoot me."

  "I'm not gonna, silly, as long as you do what I say. Now, get in and get the box."

  Dottie crawled onto the tailgate. She seemed to have her eyes closed.

  "Carry the box into the shop. I'm going to put the gun away, but don't forget I've got it."

  Jack and I knew if Dottie and Mrs. Yates walked into the shop before us, Mrs. Yates would remember that our mother had sent us outside, and she might be suspicious that we had seen her threatening Dottie. My brother and I dashed to the door through some weeds. We threw ourselves over the wall and headed to the shop to warn mother that Mrs. Yates had a gun. We opened the door to the dark shop cautiously, so the cow bell didn't ring, and then we squirmed behind the tooled leather purses and saddle blanket car coats, and approached a display of squaw dresses undetected. This would be the best way to experience them when they are found in any large groups. If they know you're coming, squaw dresses have been known to grab small children unexpectedly.

  "Mom, mom!" we cried when we found her feet moving behind a changing room curtain, "Something awful is happening!"

  "Stay out of the dressing room!" she ordered.

  "Mother, we need to tell you something!" said Jack urgently from outside the curtain.

  "Go back outside," said Mother.

  "Mom! Listen, please, listen," I said.

  "I told you to play outside. I'm about to pick a dress."

  "But something awful is happening!" said Jack.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Mrs. Yates is scaring Dottie!" I cried.

  Just then the cowbell rang.

  "Whatever are you talking about?" said Mother in a fed-up tone.

  "Mrs. Yates! She has a gun! She's threatening your friend," Jack whispered.

  "A gun? Nonsense. You stop talking that nonsense right away. I hope Mrs. Yates didn't hear you." Mother peeked out the curtain and assured herself that Mrs. Yates and Dottie had disappeared into the backroom.

  "Yeah, we hope she didn't hear us too because she might shoot us!" my brother said.

  "Why, you are the worst liar I have ever known. Anyone could see that you are lying. By cracky, I've never heard of such nonsense. To think that children of mine would make up silly stories about a prominent woman like Mrs. Yates. She is a saint for all the charity work she does. Whatever has possessed you to think up this story?" She came out of the dressing room in her drab clothes. She had a dark salmon-colored squaw dress folded over her arm.

  Jack and I took a giant step backwards.

  The squaw dress Mother picked had metallic silver and turquoise rick-rack sewn around the sleeves and hem.

  The dress resembled electrified vomit.

  "I found this stylish party dress," Mother said.

  "Squaw dresses are coming back this fall," said Mrs. Yates. She swooped around a rack of puce capes and fell upon us unexpectedly. I felt her evil, raisin-like eyes upon me. Jack and I edged toward the shop door.

  "I've never been partial to them, but this one seemed special," said Mother.

  "You could go anywhere in that," said Mrs. Yates.

  Yeah, I thought, you could go anywhere, but would you come back in the same shape mentally?

  Mother paid poor Dottie with a check while she exchanged cheerful banter with Mrs. Yates. Mother didn't notice how shaky Dottie was.

  And we left the shop with the squaw dress in a big pink box. I was the one who had to sit next to it on the backseat of our 1949 Chevy on the way home.

  Poor, poor, Dottie. Her shop failed later that year and she lived on in the pink house alone, penniless, until our town gradually grew to envelope the old place. Mother once said Dottie had been reduced to eating mesquite beans that she collected from trees growing in the arroyos.

  We visited her home a few more times that I can remember. I made it a point never to go near the roomful of Yates exclusive squaw dresses, and I never could read of the doings of fashionable Mrs. Yates in the society pages of our local newspaper without a spark of panic.