A Phantom Herd

by Lorraine Ray

In a process similar to the slow percolation of water through desert soil, I learned things, experienced life, noted details that perhaps were useful for a writer, but, perhaps because of the time involved, became ultimately irrelevant. But somehow in the late stages of my enlightenment, I tucked those worldly tidbits into a dusty and disused corner of my brain along with trivialities: various interesting dirges involving ghostly fandangos at desert forts, the lists of enchanting names for the string of donkeys that I thought I joined clip-clopping through the Grand Canyon with me, and the rituals I hoped to initiate for clubs which I created-the Secret Eye Club was one-which no one ever joined. I can now round these up as strays or let them wander freely over a landscape of the dusty western past.

  I worked for the mines of Arizona, processing and collecting sand rubies in the band under the classroom windows where rain from the eaves of our school had left pure sand. With evaporative cooling falling on my sweaty back, striving in those collective scraping societies, I received a sense of the value of soil, and the value of colleagues. Enterprising children secretly smuggled their parents' used prescription bottles-vaporizing ointment, glass vials with stoppers, Duraglass green pharmaceutical bottles, and glass baby aspirin bottles with pink tops-to school and planned to fill them to the brim with rubies, which were easy to find and which I worked eagerly to uncover, gladly kneeling in the sand for all my lunch break to find the little insignificant gems, perhaps imagining that I sought the treasure Peg, the church lady, had been so sure existed in the desert, and never asking for my share of the bounty. And I didn't complain when sand rubies as a playground game fell out of favor. I accepted my fate and found something else to do with my time.

  And a time of being absolutely, frighteningly, alone arrived. At the urging of her librarian friends, most of whom had had nervous breakdowns, my mother determined that she would acquire a master's degree in library science at the university. One of her needed classes in the first semester met past the hour at which I left school two days a weeks, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Meredith and Jack stayed later. Jack for another hour and Meredith's junior high was two miles away, and it took her until four to reach our house.

  I was warned not to be hysterical about this development. Coming home alone, I was told in no uncertain terms, was certainly no big deal, and something I needn't cry about. I wouldn't be given a key to the house, either. I should let myself in the unlocked sliding glass door on the porch in the same way Shirley Sheldon had. Locking the door was taboo. Mother reasoned that if I were given a key to the house I would show off, show it to other kids who would realize I was a latch key kid, as they later called us. Mother, being one of the few mothers going back for an advanced degree therefore not staying at home all day every day, was ashamed of her position. I didn't know anything about her achievements; I only wanted to come home without terror on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But no one relented. The burden of fear was to be mine and mine alone. From this I learned that a writer must be prepared to accept all burdens of fear as they arrive, because fear delivers the writer to a place where they are forced to evaluate life and life's worth.

  This time of being a latch-key kid, arriving home to an empty and unlocked house, quickly evolved into a time of great religiosity in my life. Who knew what fiend could have secreted himself in our closets during the day? I needed religion to comfort me in this time of great fear. I prayed fervently for help in overcoming the terror of entering that empty place with the sliding glass door unlocked for the entire day and twice a week I entered that Valley of the Shadow of Death.

  The dreadful yellow chenille curtain that I had to sweep aside to get into my house terrified me. It, more than anything else, caused me to seek religion's solace. Mother insisted that this curtain at the sliding glass door be drawn shut when she left, even if it meant I had to come into a dark house. I often jammed my shoulder against the sliding glass handle to shift it, and as the door opened I would leap back, thinking that any mad man lurking behind the curtain would expect me to step in immediately and of course I would see the knife first as it plunged down. What I was going to do if ever I saw the knife was less certain. But I never saw one, and then the waiting game began. I had to wait out the murderer who was wondering what I was doing in the backyard on the other side of the curtain. I would watch the curtain and if I were lucky it might be a windy day and I could watch the fabric suck into the room and if I bent down I could see in and look for the madman with the knife. I roamed around the yard watching the curtain and saying The Lord's Prayer. I sat on the picnic table watching the curtain. Once I even waited for Jack to come home and pretended that I had already been inside when I hadn't. I had been outside watching the curtain.

  I entered when eventually the need to use the restroom outweighed the fear of being stabbed as I entered. At other times I was simply dying for a cookie or a stack of peanut butter and honey saltine crackers and had to sweep my arm in and bundle the curtain in order to get past and come into the shadowy den.

  As I enter every room I switched on the light, sometimes reaching around the door before I set foot in the room itself. (The Maniac would only be able to hack off my arm. I would deny him my torso.) It was hard for me to walk around the house with its many ticking clocks while I was making that walk alone, matching my single beating heart with the stronger metal hearts of the timepieces everywhere eating away at my life, relentlessly killing me. Each clock seemed like another animal's heartbeat. I did the walk around swiftly so that the maniac would not be able to catch me. I checked every closet. Especially my brother's. I turned on all the closet lights. I turned on the TV and all the radios. I got the record player out of the living room closet and played the old 45's that were blue and red and had songs about Mornin' Chores. I turned on the lights and opened the curtains to watch out the big front window for my brother to come across the gravel yard an hour later. It was the longest hour in my life. I was sure everyone who passed were ax murderers, looking for a lonely house to target. My heart might have stopped if the doorbell rang or the black rotary phone at the back of the piano had ever rang-thank goodness they didn't. As soon as I saw my brother I would start turning off the radios and the portable record player. I would run into the den, turn off that radio and sit in front of the TV. I didn't try to explain the lights that were on even in the closets.

  The one thing that comforted me greatly, besides the TV being on and the radio being on and all the lights on in the closets, was to paste S and H green stamps into the wrinkly saving books. Reverently, hopeful for the mental peace of mindless work, I would carefully fill a bowl of water and carry it to the chrome table, sit on the chrome and vinyl chair, so that my back wasn't to the creepy kitchen window, and there I would anoint the stamps with water, counting the spaces I needed to fill in the next line, ripping the perforated stamps, aligning them after they were wet, and smoothing them carefully.