A Phantom Herd

by Lorraine Ray

But I steal memories. I find that I'm shocked when I discover that a cherished memory of a woman bouncing on a bucking horse, which I was certain was mine and that I remembered glimpsing intermittently through the lacy leaves of many overlapping creosote bushes, was in fact never a part of my memory at all, but belonged to Meredith. Somehow it leaked out, so that it was in my mind on a Thursday morning while standing in the front window of the old adobe house I never lived in on Allen Road.

  The saddle trim and blanket that I never saw had a precision and orderliness that stimulated me, but the fat body of the lady rider, straining the seams of a cowgirl costume, fascinated me. She bobbled atop the flanks of the black horse, and it, in turn, shimmered brilliantly in the morning sun. The lady rider yanked the reins so hard that the horse shied, bucked, and galloped away with the lady still on its back, throwing her arms around wildly.

  "Leave me out of your fantasies, your stories," she cries faintly. "I don't belong to you!"

  My sister's memory, which I abscond with now, the run-away horse, and the desperate lady.