A Phantom Herd

by Lorraine Ray

Driving into the setting desert sun with the red taillights of cars backing up for blocks in front of us, on a night which was scoured by a cold wind and short wispy gray clouds, aligned like iron filings.

  "I don't think," began Mother apprehensively, "that this big backup in the traffic down here is at all for the Boy Scout Pow Wow. That doesn't seem to be logical. Well, by cracky, Boy Scouts are popular, but this certainly has about it something very different than a gathering of Scouts. Of course, some of them could be going to the hamburger stands down here, well yes, those are pretty popular with the teenagers or they could be bowling; I think one of the alleys is...in this vicinity. Golly, there is no lying about it, some wild looking kids are jumping around in those hot rods and flashy cars. These aren't Boy Scouts, in my book. Say, I think this crowd is heading for the Apache. A Drive-In. A Friday night show! I don't approve of Hollywood any more than I do the recording industry, but, goodness now? this is special. Look what's showing, kids! Just look! By cracky, it's a Robert Mitchum western. I'll have to check the paper for the times of it, if I haven't wrapped the coffee grounds in the movie section already. A Robert Mitchum western! Well! I didn't know he had made anything recently at all. A western, too."

  We slowed in the line of flashy hot rods and trucks and station wagons waiting to get into the drive-in. My father gripped the wheel in aggravation. "Let me know if there's an opening to get out of the goddamn lane, will you? We'll be stuck here for ten minutes if I don't get out of this lane."

  "I want to see them throw the ashes into the bonfire at the Pow Wow," said Jack. "I don't wanna be late to that. My cub leader said we had to be on time and rally around our meeting place at seven."

  "Sit back and relax. We won't miss a thing," Dad promised. "We've got half an hour still."

  In front of us a bunch of kids performed a Fire Drill, running around the car and changing seats.

  Dad glanced in his side view mirror. "I hope nobody comes along and clips the door off that car. Crazy goddamned kids!"

  Mother didn't seem the least bit worried about watching some of the Robert Mitchum movie while we were stuck in the backed up lane, missing the Boy Scout Pow Wow.

  I was stunned to look up and see a shot of a stampede of cows in the sky. The mass of cattle stabbed their horns and hooves up and down in the water, mooing and kicking as they plunged down a muddy embankment. A close-up of several bored, then frightened, cowboys filled the screen.

  Those in the cars were trying to watch the opening scene of the stampede before they'd paid and they stared wide-eyed and with slack jaws at the huge screen boiling over with wild cattle and large cowboys smoking and slumping in their saddles. I watched in the waning light, in the headlight glare, a Mother in the back of a sedan who was changing her baby's diaper and never once looked at the child who similarly had wrenched his head around to look through the gap in the seats at the tall drive-in theater screen and its massive flaying cows tossing their horns. The writhing mass of stampeding cattle mesmerized everyone.

  "I think those cows are gettin' rustled," said Meredith. "That's what the whole thing is about. I got it figured out."

  "Yah, those are the bad guys," Jack explained. "They're stealing the herd from the good guys."

  "Probably the whole movie is about the attempt to find the rustlers and get the herd back. That is a mystery and it would have a lot of adventure and suspense, too," Mother explained. "That's an old plot line. I suppose it's kinda worn out."

  "There's the chuckwagon! Look at it go."

  "The horses have gone wild."

  "The horses are crashing the chuckwagon into the river!"

  "I suppose we'll really have to see about this show next weekend. Yes, might be good. I'll research the hours. Well, I suppose sometime you can learn some lore and legends of the old west that way, stampedes and branding, square dances and railroads. Westerns are a waste of time in a way, but I think Robert Mitchum is about the best of the actors in those inferior roles."

  "Ah, you just think he's pretty," said our father deprecatingly.

  "What a thing to say!"

  "We've broken free," he exclaimed, as we finally got to the front and could pass the drive-in.

  "Awww," said Meredith, "we're missing the rustler movie!"

  "Is this the goddamn turn?" Father asked everyone.

  "Yes, it does seem to be the spot," said Mother, sadly abandoning the twelve foot high image of Robert Mitchum.

  We had barely gotten out at the fairground's dirt parking lot when several gangs of Scouts dashed by screaming bloody murder. There were screaming boys in almost every direction you looked, snaking between cars, lolling out of windows, punching each other in the beds of trucks.

  "Goodness, these boys are terribly wild out here. I don't know if it's a good idea to get them all together in one place like this. Are the boys you meet with in your cub den as wild as this, Jack? Ten times worse! I think I'll have to reconsider having them into the house for that electrical badge. I don't think Baden-Powell had this in mind when he started his organization. He imagined a lot of calm little boys having fun with puzzles, reading, organizing stamp collections, doing chores happily and singing songs around a campfire. For fun they might perhaps row happily on a lake, but not the hysterical nutty bunch that you have here. Where do they think they're going with all this running and dashing? I don't think this is safe."

  "It's not very safe," Father concurred as two boys slammed into him, spun around and ran off without a word.

  "It's very dark out here, even with all these bonfires scattered about. Why they are asking for broken necks. That's a very scary situation. Why doesn't someone point out that the boys are in danger of stabbing their eyes out with those sticks? By cracky, that isn't a safe activity. Not one iota of safety."

  Boys ran everywhere, every which way, in the dark March night at the Rodeo Grounds. There the Boy Scouts held their Pow Wow, or wasn't it a State Jamboree?, under the desert night sky, all pinpricks of silver light in a velvety hush.

  A great gated entrance loomed over our heads with signs of Southwestern Indians and cowboy lore. This gate ushered us into the crowded, dark and horrible dusty fairgrounds. Dark blue uniforms of the small cub scouts, olive green uniforms of older boys.

  After Jack rallied at the flagpole and trooped off with his own cub den we walked on together. The dust rising in thick walloping whips from our feet in front, settling on the bottom of our jeans. It inundated my moccasins.

  Boys screaming instructions to their mothers, fathers, and uncles, boys enduring their mother's fussiness, hair combing in the rear view mirror of the family truck, the mothers tightening the Wolf ring which slipped up on the bright yellow tie and held it on the neck. Dark blue uniforms running everywhere and shouting. In the crisp night the excited sticky smell of cotton candy and roasted peanuts floated in the air with the carnival barkers shouts. Hay bales here and there. A barking dogs. Dust. Laughing grandfathers. Poles, fires, and ambulances veering around enormous iron Quonset huts.

  We saw in the sky a great log, brought down from the White Mountains and to this were lashed boards, thick handmade ropes, ladders, and rings. The huge log was being grappled and ridden by hundreds of boys with mud and tar as playthings, ropes swinging, ladders leaning over water, and in my mind the obstacles of the boys wove in a pattern of great dark import. A picture more complex than describable of small boys crawling, grasping robes, swinging, wiggling through the barrels and hoops, the obstacles of life in a never ending plain of struggling, battling Scouts. Some fell into the net below, some scurried across the log, or swung from the rings.

  A huge tug-a-war between troops.

  "Enter the Indian village," shouted a Troop Leader who was imitating one of the carnival barkers, "see how the Apache lived in our world! See a live demo of Boy Scout activities, and enter our authentic Indian village teepee! See the boys completing detailed leather working on teeny saddles!"

  Knocking people aside, clambering over rails
and obstacles to recite the Boy Scout Pledge together in the night sky, lit by the booming bonfires, ash floating everywhere, landing on my face, my neck, my hair. Boys knocking people aside and running into walls with grit and determination.

  A spunky campfire sing-a-long woke the nearly dead grandfathers. A mascot of a mountain lion punched the night air-he alone was warm.

  "We carry our friendship with us in these ashes from campfires shared with Scouting comrades in other lands," said the Troop Leader gravely into the blurring microphone. The bonfire crackled fiercely. Several boys stepped forward nervously and dumped the contents of their boxes into the fire. "May the joining of the remains of those now dead fires with these leaping flames bring to mind once more the unbroken chain of fellowship that binds Scouts and Guides around the world. These ashes contain the essence of Scout campfires. Rekindle the essence. Ashes are sprinkled into the flames of the next campfire. Take this into your heart and only those present take these ashes."

  Some wild boys began throwing popcorn bags into the bonfires, "Take these! Make em damn ashes!"

  "Oh dear, dear, boys, boys!" said an adult guide, admonishing them as they dashed away.

  There! There ran the same zany boys chasing the fire engine! Crazy ambulance arriving, and running through the crowd and ready to set up a silly scene in the great hall.

  We sat on tan metal folding chairs. Exactly like those in my church.

  "Whater we in here for?" I asked.

  "Oh, they're going to put on a show of some sorts. I don't know what. Maybe singing again or something. Should be good," said Mother reassuringly.

  "I didn't like the singing outside."

  A terrible team of Scouts dressed as doctors arrived and began consulting over the case of an unseen patient.

  "Bring in the patient, will yah," one doctor said suddenly.

  A gurney burst onto the stage.

  The doctors pulled sausages from the patient's abdomen, banged him repeatedly on the head with a fake hammer, used great saws and drills and adzes on his ingrown toenail.

  A teeny Scout with long mussed-up hair and wild eyes snuck out from under the gurney, so that only the screaming audience saw him. He started taking tools under the gurney and stealing the sausages.

  Finally the startled doctors noticed him and chased him about the stage with the hammer.