Phantom Strays

  Synopsis

  One

  (1)Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night is shown in downtown Tucson, 1964. Hysterical tirade from Mother who searches for Meredith who is with her friend Margaret Kirkup after being left downtown to see the movie and not appearing at the pickup point. 1949 Chevy seatback flops on me, vague remembrance of Rosenfield’s Department store and sand painter, encounter with hobos downtown and remembers similar encounter as a younger child, the fuzz speaks to us, and all the fans running around are singing Beatle songs, Mother discusses Beatniks on beach in Venice, California, Beach Boys, and Rudolph Valentino, her library course and One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding. Meredith has become an unfriendly teenager shortly after been given her first girdle. Frightening encounter with teens. Meredith and Margaret finally found in a line trying to see the movie for the third time. After argument, Margaret and Meredith finally return to the car. Rat fink comment from Meredith in Pig Latin.

  Two

  (2)Asthma clinic therapy session for Jack. We see large painting of order and chaos drinking wine and Mother discusses it, the grandness of the clinic, Teddy Roosevelt’s asthma and the seriousness of Jack’s asthma condition, we arrive too early and enter an empty room, Mother warns us not to be silly again and to appreciate the opportunity to get well. Jack makes fun of Mother’s rambling speech, we are chastised for arriving early. The asthma clinic’s theory of binding and tickling discussed critically. A welcoming speech from the Saturday morning coach, namby-pamby kids with sunken chests, blowing into a paper bag, running with asthma kids and beating them, finding our vertebrae and massaging it. See Smitty sitting in the corner of the hall with his group of dangerous teenagers, Mother discusses her theory of Smitty and his attractiveness on the way home, discusses whether only scandalous writing sells and praises Little Women, tells the tale of Lugar and the button in the mashed potatoes tale as a good idea for a story (something lost). Meredith asks about asthma clinic and claims she never disliked people from the east.

  Three

  (3) Wolfman Jack who we tried to find on the radio dial, coming across the desert night sky, and the endless search for reception on the radio through static, and the practice of Speedy Gonzalez for Junior High Talent Show that Meredith and Charlaine are obsessed with, the night sky and red lights on the Skyline Country Club, children offer their theories of what the three red lights are from (4) Catholic Youth Organization dances where we pick up Meredith and Charlaine in the dusty dark and confusion of teenagers driving away wildly. Meredith and Charlaine discuss boys at the dance and line dance to the song “Hang on Sloopy” on the way home.

  Four

  (5)While reading daily black and white comic pages in the living room, remembering something I once saw twirling in the gravel out that same front window, Smitty murder discussed from newspaper accounts by Mother while she reads them aloud in snippets, her assertion that she always knew he was bad, F. Lee Bail coming to town to assist, remembering finding the dead saguaro and disinterring it, remembering the Itty Bitty Cocky Baby (6) Calling up to Meredith where she sits in a Rus Lancia tree. She is smoking, trying to get her to watch Laugh-In comedy show over and over with different pleadings, (7) Anna Henry discussed by Gumm, how she was brought home by the police after sitting at the school district lobby demanding her pay because she is now senile like her mother was years earlier and Gumm is taking her home from the district office when she arrives there every day, remembering first scene of nervous scarecrow Anna in the backyard and her story about Pancho Villa, quizzed about my memory, which I defend, though I really didn’t remember her until I needed her

  Five

  (8) Meredith at park up the street with hippies and mother is talking to Gumm about how bad it is, complaining about Cesar Chavez grape boycott which high school is participating in. Gumm complains about pinkie scene at sixteenth birthday party of prior year. Meredith comes in and tells me that she has taken LSD and thinks she visited with Jesus at the park. How to keep her from telling everyone in the house and make her trip be okay without everyone knowing she was on acid.

  Six

  (9)Paul and LSD incident involving J. Wayne, Paul at our house with his white rat in a fishbowl, we drive out to get LSD with him, we go hunting for J. Wayne at bars first at the Ox-Bow and then south to Speedway, writing in Volkswagen front seat (poem about seeing donut-shaped cloud over Dracula’s Castle in the backyard of Gumm’s bungalow), and pivotal strange attack by man in balaclava suddenly fended off before people come back to the car. Long night of bars after that. See Drive-In screen and remember the cattle stampede before the Boy Scout Jamboree Remembers Jamboree. Model shop we walked to seen again. (10) Paul and Meredith break up, but at midnight Paul rings our doorbell after seeing her with another man, and Dad’s breakdown in our room when he begs that she stop Paul before he murders us. (11) Meredith reminds me of Dad’s humorous, plotless saga “That’s the Way It Was Moving West.” She tells it before we sleep.

  Seven

  (11) Tennis lessons at a park in mid-summer with Jack and we listen to Mother tell us about her dreams of what learning tennis would mean for us, meeting the best people in Arizona at the cowboy prince homes, and Jack pokes fun at a sign, we discuss the memory of the people photographing the barrel cactus, and Rancho Supremo, which Jack thinks is only Mother’s story Cowboy Prince because he doesn’t remember his version of it with the chuckwagon, Jack does remember finally the photographer and the big lie about the chuckwagon, how to get back the memories that are lost, Ralph Campbell and his home is vaguely remembered, but not well, and Mother is very angry that I don’t remember it better, Meredith’s rodeo memory of a woman on a bucking horse and seeing our reflection on the window with the oven door open reminds me of rodeo time and the year when we were babysat by the floor cleaner at the Historical Society who told us to get our rock and roll records out and who told us the frightening clown/stagecoach story (12) Confirmation classes at the church, the old church annex, ministers laugh at the silent girls, ministers discuss lamb nights and how the students salivated with the description by the old minister of his lamb roast dinner with a friend, (13) last Sunday in which Shirley is taken care of. Someone asks “have you shaved your eyebrows off.” Last encounter with Molly Cameron. I wonder whether Shirley ever remembers me afterwards, but I never think of her again until I want to write her.

  Eight

  (14) Writing a letter against the war in Vietnam to Senator Goldwater, Meredith arrested at peace protest, she describes what happened, the draft card burning, the songs they sang, what the police did and it turns out that Officer Commie is the arresting officer, Mother reacts to the arrest. Current boyfriend, Lance, only wanted to feel her up during the protest so she drops him. (15) Father tells me the tales 1974, the one used is the banana ripening plant and the ethyl gas and tarantulas, the stenographic shorthand book from the library, the transcript I take of him getting a leisure suit and complaining about it and his work, the imagination, how I wrote it so dully and how the shorthand filled in the Big Chief tablet (16) tearing apart the cloud poem and ripping it apart on the metate at Gumm’s porch quickly when no one is observing, 1974 (17) Meredith at college and “Do you know about sin?” guy on the elevator, Meredith argues with me about writing anything about the Southwest, which she thinks is hokey, she leaves for the East Coast, how I remembered that she was a hater of the east coast.

  Nine

  (18) College 1978. Old coot who asks for smelting books, and books about Jericho, the rare book librarian Rex Almshouse is enticed and tries to butt into my searches. (19)The married Rex the latest in a series of university mashers confesses his interest and says he sent me a green scorpion. He threatens to produce a knife when his advances are repelled. Old white haired coot who asks for smelting books rescues me from Rex. When walking out of the library, he advises that writing about why Meredith didn’t like Easterners and thought they were the worst people in the world is a good idea to begin writing.


  Ten

  (20) Microfiche at U of A library, April 1979, and old Dr. Porter sits at the machine and scans old newspapers from the 1960s for information about what happened to his herd of phantom cattle and I see Beatles movie day in a photo and he tells of the horror of folklorists. He discovers that Ethyl Fusselman a folklorist was in town for the rodeo (21) Last rodeo parade attended with the governor dying and white oxen which breaks free from ox cart and crashes through window of Meyer’s White House Department Store.

  Eleven

  (22) Journey out to the Arizona countryside, July 1979, and Mother tells story of the Cowboy Prince for the last sad time. Father says “That’s the Way It Was Moving West.” Desert run to hunt for bottles in a ghost town. Rusty rat trap found and it is going to Los Angeles. See one phantom cow in reflection in a hoof print and begins thinking opening scene of A Phantom Herd.

  MEET THE AUTHOR

  Lorraine Ray is an avid reader and writer. She lives in an adobe home in the center of Tucson, Arizona with her husband and daughter.

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