1989_04 The Daily Collegian April 1989

              Page 2    Wednesday. April 19.1989
The DaUy CoUegian
Opinion
We AT EXXotf ARE
KEALLY SOW
A&OdT THE ALASKA
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IN FACT, W£ PROMISE To
CoHPLffrccV FffsroRe
THE DAHA«rCD R^Ac^S
AND ANIMAL  LIFE I
WO VE ACCEPT
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|TY   To  CLEAN  IT
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fVUD ViS D6NT CARE
HOW HIGH Wg   «AVf TO
TAcKUP GAS PRICES
To \>0 IT'
BLOOM COUNTY
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theDaily Collegian
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UraMansd sfisaTaasl are tbe majority opinion oT the papers editorial board.
Death or Death?
Shuffle the Deck
Eric Plattner
We each make our separate peace,
move on, acutely altered or less so. That
these peaces may or may not fit into the
social puzzle we have in from of us, that    •
no modicum of rationalization seems
sufficient in balancing sometimes bizarre
and draconic horrors (murder or child
abuse or suicide arc three thai come to
mind), is the mirror trick we all play.
When there is murder and child abuse and
suicide slipped into the: script—in one
ineluctable flash cut of the film—the
mirror begins 10 cloud, the puzzle itself
to lose form.
Did they lull the baby? Did they sell
the baby? Is there a babv to sell or kill"
These are 1 suppose the iirst quesuons
that occurred to me as relevant upon
reading last week oi the Kavs—of John
and Janmc and lour-mnnth-old Cuuh
Marilyn, lhc details, u they can be called
that, arc tew, and these slippery, elusive.
vaporous: Jonn Ray. we know, was thirtv
two. and now dead. Janine Rav is twent^
six. and iresh out ol her unin-inducctl
comma. Cindy Manlyn Ray is nowhere
to be found, but said by one or two or a
multitude of anonymous callers to "noi
appear well-nourished'; she either docs
"not appear well-nourished" or she is "all
right," depending on which anonymous
caller or callers you believe, if any.
In any case the mother does not know
where the baby is. In any case the only
parson who might know where the baby
is, the father, died next to his comatose
wife in a double-bolted Holiday Inn motel
room in Visalia after ingesting sufficient
amounts of barbituates. In any case there
is no baby, no body, notlSng there at ail.
Nothing there at ail. Faint glimmers of
hope. The dead body of John Ray. the
comatose body of Julian Ray, the
missing body of Cindy Marilyn. Another
question that occurred to me was the one I
had hoped to have permanently discarded
from the deck, but have not It still struck
me as relevant to know why" a mother
and a father would repor; their baby
missing two days after they noticed the
fact; "why" the mother might at the
outset lie to police—insisting initially on
April Fool's Day that the baby was
"abducted" on March 30, that she had
been the one watching the baby and left
her unattended for fifteen minutes on the
backyard swing—only to change her story
after failing a polygraph test: it was in
fact her husband, John Ray, who had been
watching the baby. John Ray in fact has a
prison record, a history of wife beating, a
proclivity toward suicide.
These are the mish-mash of facts and
anti-facts, the truths and the untruths,
reported by TTie Fresno Bee, in large
ineffable chunks, indigesubic and intermi¬
nably chewy. There is liule connective
tissue to this nanative, few metaphorical
signposts, too much ironical dissonance.
Answers materialize and vanish with the
next question. There are strange extenu¬
ating circumstances, these too seeming
misplaced—or perhaps perfectly casted—
as in a recurring waking nightmare.
I ask why, but veer inexorably to the
baby girl on the backyard swing.
What passes for a "bright" note in this
endless nightmare is, for example, this:
'There is no solid information that the
child is not alive." This nugget of
twisted optimism was brandished in the
April 12 issue of the Bee by Fresno
police Detective SgL Mike Guthrie, and
represents the nearest expression of a
"separate peace" so excinded from the
script from which he was reading—a
quirky improvisation, if you will, from
an actor who has failed to learn the appro¬
priate lines to this particular scene—that I
was able to find.
Cindy Marilyn's grandparents—on her
mother's side—have made no such peace
with themselves, not tbe least because
their granddaughter is still unfound and
thus prevents such an inductive leap, and
take solace in tormenting themselves
with possibilities: a bright spot for them
is noting that the Rays had money, so it
was unlikely that John would bother
selling Cindy Marilyn. "I think," said the
grandfather, flatly, "he found somebody
who wanted a baby and he just gave it to
them." They seem less inclined than
Detective Guthrie to buy into the "no-
solid-infonnation-that-ine-child-is-not-
alive" angle, but at no time mention
"death"—as though it need not be
mentioned—in the litany of honors. It
could be they know something Detective
Guthrie does not, or it could be they sec '
no sense in knowing anything at all.
John and Julian Ray's "apparent suicide
and attempted suicide raise many more
quesuons about the couple's possible
involvement in Cindy's disappearance,"
the Bee reported Detective Guthrie as
sayine. evidently content in-statinc the
obvious. "John was a Very difficult youm-
man to understand," die grandfather say.s
laconicalls.
Perhaps these statements are dim
signals of a language 1 have no ear for.
Perhaps these statements are their own
coded peace.
In the title-essay of Joan Didion's
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, she found
it remarkable, if not surprising, that, in
the microcosm of Haight-Ashbuiy and the
macrocosm of the United States, the
"center was not holding," that the fabric
of society was beginning to unravel, that
things fall apart. "Slouching Towards
Bethlehem" was written in the spring of
1967. In the spring of 1989 this revela¬
tion seems less remarkable. What passed
for misguided anarchic tendencies in the
spring-time before the Summer of Love
has been rendered—by insensate routine,
by rote, by numbing media bombard¬
ment, by the Manson family and the Hill¬
side Strangler and the man who strolls
into a'San Ysidro McDonald's and drills
bullets into a dozen fast-food patrons and
by a public-relations President—passe,
par for the course, a non- issue,
Koyaanisqatsi (Hopi for "life out of
balance") as a sanctioned way of life.
The ultimate accomodation, the
permanent peace. Qiaos as status-quo.
The less cynical among us resist the
more fatalistic view, but find it difficult
to reconcile the lack of "solid
information," the missing "why," the
distinct dread that there may not be one.
This, more than anything, I still find
remarkable, and alarming: this thirst for
reasons, this sifting through the ashes for
clues in otherwise senseless and arbitrary
events.
Relevancy is relative.
Appearing in the same issue as Detec¬
tive Guthrie's faint glimmers of hope
were these stories: "North Hangs Tough
Under Prosecution Fire" (the subhead,
"Doing Wrong was Right, Defendant
Insists"); "Miami Shrouded in Smoke"
(describing the effects of an Everglades in
flames): "Milwaukee Helicopter Crash"
(this bearing a photo showing the
helicopter, nosedown, its blades snared in
the branches of a tree, while a woman
walking her dog in the park mi the
of Lake Michigan looks on); "Grateful.
Dead Drummer Working for Smithsoni¬
an" (no comment needed); and "A Dozen
Bodies are Discovered'in Mass Grave."
George Bush was seen on the While
House lawn shooting free-throws wilh the
University of Michigan basketball team. I
This last story, the one about the dozen
See PEACE, page 8
 • • •