notes: hi :) please note the following: this story will discuss issues relating to race, gender, class, drug use, death, dysfunctional relationships, & permutations of any related topics. character views do not reflect my own! this story incorporates an epistolary approach as well, with some obvious influence from the novel daisy jones & the six. reading "voir dire" first will also make this make more sense. thanks for reading!
BLUE THUNDER'S BLUE DAYS: A history of June Blue Thunder, one of folk's favorite stars
Once an Oklahoma transplant, Blue Thunder talks California dreaming, her precarious upbringing, and the love that convinced her to walk away from the spotlight 20 years ago.
M. O. Francis | July 1998
June Blue Thunder doesn't go by that name anymore.
"All the kids call me Mrs. Shepard," she tells me, a smile at the corner of her mouth like she's sharing an inside joke. Her home in Oklahoma City is humble. The Shepard boys shared a room until the oldest and only daughter left for college, and while there's a guesthouse at the back of the property, it usually sits empty until summer, when various in-laws come down for long weekends. "Tim and I, we like to lay low these days. Raising the kids is enough drama for us."
Children's dramatics must be a relief. The youngest son is nearly thirteen years old, she tells me, and takes after an uncle or two. Blue Thunder smiles more genuinely as she discusses all the ways her children have grown in the 20 years since her last release.
It's a stark difference to the story that Blue Thunder occasionally offered a glimpse at when she was still in the spotlight. Once a California transplant with an Okie twang that made her beloved from South Valley to North Bay, Blue Thunder was a household name for a handful of years, a career cut short too soon by life's responsibilities. While marriage and children have been enough to let her fade into every day obscurity, it hasn't erased the grip her mercurial career—from small-town housekeeper to aspiring singer to disappeared housewife—had on America. From 1974, and well beyond the end of her recording career in 1978, her deft blend of folk and rock ballads has had even the most staunch traditionalist willing to lend an ear.
Of course, her story doesn't start in Oklahoma City, or even Tulsa, where her mother raised her and where she and her husband first met. It starts a thousand miles away in East Los Angeles, where Blue Thunder's sister-in-law, Angela Shepard Curtis, offered a spare bedroom to a struggling wife and mother...
1973
"Lottie's screaming again."
"I know." June can't get the hair out of her face, being elbows deep in the tub and all, but she tries her best to show Angela she's not just sitting on her ass while her kid screams. "This drain ain't working."
"I called someone already," Angela says. She looks at her nails instead of at June. She has the tendency to come across as bored no matter what she's talking about with June. June sometimes thinks it means that Angela could care less about what happens to her and the baby; when she sees Angela cooing at Lottie, though, she knows it just means she's the expendable one.
"Alright," June says. She stands up, knees creaking. She didn't think twenty-three would feel so rough, but maybe she can blame that on Lottie, or on LA, or on something she did five or ten years ago. She's not picky these days.
"Did she eat?" Angela looks at her finally. It's always a little jarring to have those Shepard eyes fixed on her. Six months now since she saw those eyes in Tim's face, and who knows when she'll see them again. She has to pinch herself sometimes.
"She ate," June confirms. She peels the yellow rubber gloves off her arms, then turns to wash her hands. She hopes Angela takes the hint.
She doesn't. "What's your schedule next week?"
"Same as last." Monday through Friday she cleans houses for rich white women who only show interest in her if their husbands happen to be home. She catches the first bus to Central and catches it back in time for dinner.
Angela, divorced, is living off alimony. Before June got here, she spent her time fucking whatever cholo wanted to wine and dine her, or otherwise smoking grass on her patio and making friends with the grandmas who stayed home watching grandkids in her apartment complex. Since June arrived with Tim's daughter on her hip, she's been gracious enough to take over babysitting duties in exchange for June doing the cooking.
Angela's never been a good Mexican girl, but neither has June. If she were, she wouldn't have ended up married to the East Side's third-favorite hood.
Angela follows her out into the living room, where Lottie sits on the floor screaming. She's surrounded by toys, a bowl of cereal, a plate of sliced fruit, and a sippy cup. June's not too concerned, though her head is starting to ache.
"I meant to tell you earlier," Angela says, "but Curly'll be here by the weekend. He caught a bus out."
"A bus?" June says, because even she was smart enough to drive the twenty hours herself over the summer, and then, because she didn't realize the gravity of what Angela's just said, "Curly?"
"He's on the run," Angela says, and rolls her eyes. She sprawls over the couch carelessly, green paisley giving her a sickly yellow pallor. "Nothing big, not like Tim, but it's best he lie low out here for a bit."
"Well ain't that a blessing," June says, a little hollow. When Lottie reaches for her, she scoops her up. She knows Angela's pretending at nonchalance, considering how she yelled at Tim at the sentencing, not like how June found herself going small and silent, but the reminder stings anyway. "What's it, this time?"
Angela says something under her breath but June only catches the word indecency.
"He didn't knock up some senior, did he?"
"No," Angela says, a sour turn to her mouth, "that woulda been easier to fix. Buy a damn ring from the secondhand shop and call it a day." She sniffs pointedly, then crosses her arms and stares at the TV despite the thing not even being turned on. "You ask him when he gets here. He'll probably lie about it."
June doesn't like the sound of that. It's not the way they don't talk about Tim, locked up on new charges exacerbated by his already lengthy record. Curly was in and out of the reformatory as a wayward teen, but the truth is he wasn't much worse than what June or the long-dead Sonny used to get up to. Angela's not one for secrecy like this. She likes to hit where it hurts, and she and Curly have spent a lifetime fine tuning their needling ways with one another. June won't get any information out of her that she doesn't want to share, and she knows that.
June says, cupping her hand over the baby's soft curls, "He's staying here?"
"He'll be fine," Angela says. June lets her get away with whatever half-truth she's offering. She's sure it'll reveal itself soon enough.
June Blue Thunder married Tim Shepard on an unbearably hot September day in '71. Her wedding dress was bought second-hand, about ten years out of date, and the sweat pooled at the small of her back no matter how she tried to readjust it. When she looks at pictures of the two of them, sick with missing Tim and sick with the way loving him has made her suffer, June's not sure what she sees.
He had gotten out of the pen before Christmastime the year before; just nine months out of jail had given him the chance to start a family (accidental though it may be), but even in the pictures it seemed obvious he had been marked somehow from so much time inside. No matter how she tried to fatten him up, he was thin and wiry from a lifetime of half-starving, and she knew that it wouldn't be any better once they finally released him. Finally being relative, of course. June's husband isn't up for parole for another three years.
Thinking about it doesn't do anything but make June's tossing and turning worse. She pushes the covers down to her waist, turns her head to look at Lottie, sprawled over most of the bed while June curls into the sliver she's been allowed at the edge. She does the math, easy as it is. By then, Lottie will be five years old. No memory for her to hold onto when she misses her father. June knows, secretly, that there's nothing to really miss.
She turns onto her back, a soft foot digging into her ribs. Tries to trace all her bad decisions backwards. She hadn't been ready to be anyone's wife. Tim sure wasn't ready to be someone's husband, either. But they hadn't been careful, and between one moment and the next they realized they'd have a baby by the first day of spring. Darry had hollered 'til he was red in the face when he found out, and June for the first time in years felt like maybe she didn't know what was best for her. She just wouldn't admit it to anyone but herself.
They had a reception in the backyard of Angela's second husband's home, where her brother-in-law showed up to pretend they were all friends, and where Tim kissed her with tongue in front of her mother, her brothers, and his godawful family like the day hadn't already been the most stressful one of her life. Months later, she remembers, Tim told her it was the best day of his. She remembers it exactly: the yellow hospital light, Lottie wrinkled and pink in his arms, the way his blue eyes looked nearly black.
"Thank you," he told her. She was exhausted like she'd never been before, in labor the entire night but relieved, finally, for it to be over. When she told him she wasn't doing this again he laughed.
A year and half later and she's got nothing to show for it, not really. Just Lottie living off her only aunt's generosity while her mother works herself down to the bone. June curls her hands into fists and reminds herself: nothing good comes from Shepards, but at least she's not a real one. She's going to give her daughter everything she needs and more—she doesn't need a man for that. Not like her mother did. Not anymore.
TRANSCRIPT - DRAFT
INTERVIEW WITH JUNE BLUE THUNDER (JBT)
LEONARD O'DELL (LO)
JULY 1977
[...]
LO: You said you were in the Bay area, correct?
JBT: Whatever San Jose is called. I was in San Francisco for a while, but after the Occupation [of Alcatraz Island] started, I went south. Cheaper. Easier for me. I was on my own by then. And then I went back to Tulsa.
LO: When was this?
JBT: 1970. I had just turned 20.
LO: Did you miss home?
JBT: My brother was getting married. Ended up sticking around for a bit after that.
LO: What made you come down to LA after Tulsa?
JBT: Ain't that common knowledge by now? My sister-in-law is here. Seemed as good a place to start over as any other.
[...]