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Answering the Creative Call
Where I Got the Crazy Idea for Answering the Creative Call and Other Tidbits
People are always asking me for writing advice. My advice was always, “Just do it.” But what I heard back was, “That’s easy for you to say.” And they were right. I’ve been writing stories since I was five years old. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I might have some valuable advice for people who are on the creative path or for those who want to wander that particular path. So I wrote this book.
Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book
The One Sentence Pitch
Writer Kim Antieau gives advice on how to be creative and live a creative life.
Cover Blurb
Most of us hear the call to create. We write, cook, paint, make music, garden, or pursue some other creative endeavor. But sometimes our will falters. We lose motivation or become overly critical of our efforts. We abandon our projects or never start them in the first place.
Kim Antieau understands the will to create. She writes books, curates art shows, takes photographs, sculpts clay, and produces public art. In these pages she distills the wisdom of her years spent in creative pursuits.
This inspiring book shows you how to set the stage for your creativity and get your mind right. Kim reveals the secrets of perseverance and cultivating a can-do attitude.
With practical advice on how to get started and how to keep going, this luminous book will enhance all aspects of your creative life. Includes a chapter by acclaimed poet Mario Milosevic. Cover art by Nancy Norman.
Introduction
All writing advice is memoir.
—Mario Milosevic
A few words first. . . .
We are born creative. You will hear me say this again and again. Within these pages you will find ideas on how to jump-start your natural creativity. But the best advice I’ve ever heard or given about writing is, “Just do it.” Just sit down and do it.
See. There you have it. You don’t need to buy the book after all.
Maybe you need a bit of inspiration before you just do it? Or maybe you want some exercises to get yourself into shape before you jump into the imaginal realms. You’ll find all of that here. At least that is my hope.
Don’t let this book or anything I say in it stop you from writing, painting, composing, or creating any other kind of art. My purpose is to get you started and to keep you going.
I am primarily a novel writer. That is what I do and know best, but I also take photos, work with clay, and draw a bit. For those of you who are visual or musical artists, please adapt my creativity tips to fit your medium. Or try them first as writing exercises and see what happens. Each of you is the artist, the creator, the storyteller. You get to decide what works for you.
As I said, the best writing advice, the best art advice, the best creative advice is this: Just do it. Don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t worry about being the best or the most original. And certainly don’t worry about being the most famous or the richest. Creativity is a natural part of your being that you’ve possessed since you were born. This book is about helping you get out of your way and letting those creations flow easily from you.
Mostly, my hope is that this book gives you permission to be creative in your own way.
Creativity Tip
This first tip is one of the most important.
All criticism is opinion, no matter how right the person thinks he/she is. Although we all need to learn our craft, whatever it is, after a while, we have to make our work our own. Novel writing isn’t done by committee. Quit asking for other people’s opinion because that’s all you’ll get: opinion. And that really doesn’t mean much.
Under the Tucson Moon: Nine Winters in the Sonoran Desert
Where I Got the Crazy Idea for Under the Tucson Moon & Other Tidbits
For nine winters, Mario and I travelled to Arizona for a writing retreat, and every year I wrote on my blog, first Furious Spinner and then later on my website. I wrote about how I was feeling. I wrote about the desert, migrants, border issues, the shootings in Tucson, my family, illness, healing, and my writing. I've taken the best of those pieces and gathered them into this book. If you generally like the essays on my blog or you enjoy my Facebook posts about my life, this book is for you!
Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book
The One Sentence Pitch
Enter the life of a deeply creative artist in these 39 essays about life in the Sonoran Desert, gathered in one place for the first time.
Cover Blurb
For nine winters, writer Kim Antieau and her husband, Mario Milosevic, travelled to the Sonoran Desert. Kim wrote many novels on these retreats, including the well-loved Church of the Old Mermaids, The Fish Wife, Whackadoodle Times, and The Monster’s Daughter.
While in the desert, Kim also wrote a series of essays about borderlands: not just political borderlands, but those in-between places where creativity thrives or dies, those places profane or sacred, joyful or despairing. In her novel, The Desert Siren, Kim describes one of her characters as “a siren. She sings to the wild things, she wrangles sea horses and dust storms. She directs coyote choruses and bargains with ravens. She does not hear the call of the wild. She is the call of the wild.” Kim is a desert siren, too, only she wrangles words, instead of horses.
Introduction
FIRST
In the fall of 2004, I put out a call to friends and family, asking them to help me find a beautiful, environmentally safe place where my husband, Mario Milosevic, and I could stay for part of the winter. We live in the Pacific Northwest in an area where the winters are long, cold, rainy, and icy. I longed for sun and warmth.
As it happened, like a wonderful fairy goddessmother stepping in to save the day, Terri Windling answered my email and told me about a retreat in the Arizona desert she had helped create called Endicott West. I hesitated at first because we had lived in Tucson eighteen years earlier, and we had not enjoyed the experience. But Endicott West sounded peaceful and beautiful. Best of all, it had been designed to be a safe haven for writers, artists, and those who needed an environmentally safe place to shelter.
We started out driving to Tucson from the Columbia River Gorge where we live, but we had a car accident the first day out. Then we spent a week going from doctor to doctor and test to test to make certain Mario was all right because we weren’t sure how the accident had occurred: Had Mario fallen asleep at the wheel or had he passed out? It was a harrowing week, and at the end of it, I got on a plane with Mario and we flew to Phoenix. I don’t normally fly, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience.
Eventually we made it to Tucson. The moment we opened the green metal door and stepped into the casita, I knew I had come home. Every nook and cranny, every wall, every door—all of it—was beautiful and meaningful. The place pulsed with mythos, magic, stories, and nature. It was as if it had been created just for me—for me and every creature, human or not, who sometimes needs a way station, a resting spot, a betwixt and between place to rest and recuperate before carrying on. Virginia Woolf wrote that every artist needs a place of her own. This was my place.
For the next nine winters, Mario and I came to Endicott West. We renamed it the Old Mermaids Sanctuary (after the Old Mermaids came out of the wash and gave me the stories for my novel Church of the Old Mermaids), and we eventually shorthanded it to the Sanctuary. It was always wonderful and difficult to be at the Sanctuary. We looked forward to it every year.
During these nine years, my best friend died, two of our close friends died unexpectedly, I had two surgeries, I started and finished school again, I struggled with illness, depression, and identity, a family member struggled with drug addiction, a brother-in-law had a stroke, my father had major heart surgery, and my mother died. I also sold several books during this time, but then the bottom fell out of traditional publishing, and Mario and I became indie writers.
Also during this time our country was fighting two wars, our economy tanked, and we eventually elected a new president (and then re-elected him). Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in Tucson, and the country experienced numerous mass shootings, including Aurora and Newtown. Around the world, parts of Indonesia were crushed by the 2004 earthquake and tsunami, and Japan endured an earthquake and tsunami that led to the Fukishima nuclear disaster, and oil poured into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The weather continued to go crazy. Wildfires burned up the West, Hurricane Katrina changed New Orleans and environs forever, Hurricane Sandy devastated the East, and monster tornadoes carved deadly swaths through the Midwest and Southern regions of the United States.
Sometimes it felt like the world was coming apart at the seams.
Through everything, I felt like I could survive and even thrive as long as I could eventually come to the Sanctuary with Mario.
I wrote hundreds of thousands of words during our writing retreats in Arizona and posted them on my blog. The first year I didn’t write a novel, so I wrote more essays than I did the subsequent years. I had too many words to put in this volume, so I tried to include essays that showed who I was during each year and how I felt about being at the Sanctuary. Although I edited these essays a bit for sense, I tried to leave them as they were when I first posted them. I wanted the reader to see the evolution of my thinking, writing, and identity. Plus, each piece is of a particular time and place, and I wanted to honor that.
I went to the Sanctuary for healing. I went to find beauty and hope. Essentially I went to find myself again. I found the desert. I found myth in the desert, beauty in the desert. And I found stories. Oh, the stories I discovered—the stories the place told to me! I wrote down as many of them as I could.
Did I find healing, beauty, hope, and myself?
The desert changed me. That is how it should be. The land—place—always shapes me. It shapes all of us. I often say that I am a stenographer to the imaginal. Perhaps I am also a stenographer to the land. Perhaps I am a mouthpiece for the land. If that’s true, I hope my words have done this place and my experience justice.
I’ll leave that for the reader to decide.
The Monster's Daughter
Where I Got the Crazy Idea for The Monster's Daughter & Other Tidbits
For nine winters, Mario and I travelled to Arizona for a writing retreat. As we were driving down I-5 near Mount Shasta, I started talking about what I might write that year. I really had no idea. I said, half-jokingly, "Books with somebody's daughter in the title seem to do well." So we started spouting off "daughter" titles. I said, "The Monster's Daughter." I got a little chill. I knew right away what it would be about: Dr. Frankenstein's monster has a daughter.
I couldn't wait to get to Arizona and get started, but I almost didn't write it. Once I got to Arizona, I had one health challenge after another. I didn't think I'd be able to concentrate to actually write. After I was there for a couple of weeks, I was finally able to sit down and start writing. Once that happened, wow! The story just unfolded.
Every year before we travel, I meditate and journey the route, asking permission of the land for our journey. I figure it's only polite to ask. And every year, we stop at the first overlook for Mount Shasta, and I leave a gift for the mountain. After the ninth winter of doing this, I got the idea for The Monster's Daughter. Perhaps this story was a gift from the mountain and the land. I've thanked the mountain, just in case.
Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book
The One Sentence Pitch
Dr. Frankenstein's monster has a daughter, and the monster lives—happily—with his daughter, Emily, in the Old West, where even the monstrous can make a life and a fortune—until one day a bad man kidnaps Emily, and everything changes.
Cover Blurb
Dr. Frankenstein's monster has a daughter. Her name is Emily. She talks to the Weather, stops Fire, and possesses healing hands. Emily and her father move out West where even freaks of science or nature can make a life and a fortune. The West was won by the odd, the strange, and the monstrous, and Emily and her father fit the bill. One afternoon a wicked man, intent on stealing her father's gold, kidnaps Emily. And everything changes.
Nice Things Readers Are Saying
Chapter One
Nice Things Readers Are Saying
This novel is wonderful. It is magical/mythical realism at its finest . . . . As usual, Ms. Antieau writes strong female characters and Emily is a powerful mixture of strength and vulnerability. —Marykatherine Meyer
Kim took an interesting premise - If the created monster, Frankenstein, had a daughter, what would be her story? - and turned it into a fascinating read. . . . I love a novel where the story line stays with you when you are not actively reading it and draws you back to completion. —Roberta Doster
A completely new take on an old favorite, with well developed characters and a rich landscape, The Monster's Daughter is a book I know I will come back to read again and again. Kim Antieau manages to take a work of horror (Shelley's Frankenstein) and weave it into a tale of brilliant, fantastical beauty. She's turned a monster into a hero and his daughter into a healer. I loved it! —Brandi Downs
Chapter One
My father was born. Not from woman alone but pieced together by some pretend god called a scientist. It was not my father’s disgrace, not a blemish on his record. He can be forgiven much because of his beginnings. Can’t he?
Who is the real monster?
Even before I knew of my father’s genesis, I believed he could do no wrong: at least to me. He could do wrong to others. I had seen the fear in my mother’s eyes long before she left us—or long before my father sent her away. Or whatever happened to her. Maybe she went on a sea voyage. Perhaps she ran off with Mr. Martin’s son, or the preacher man. The stories changed over the years, depending upon who was telling the tale. After she left, my father said, “Now it is just the two of us, as it should be.”
I have no true childhood recollections of my mother. I have memories of remembering her. She always seemed far from me, from my experience of life. It was my father who was ever-present. I remember getting lost in his lap when I was as tiny as can be, while he told stories or read to me. I was never afraid of him even though he was so big. He treated me with such tenderness and care.
When I think of my mother, I don’t see any light. It was almost as if she were some kind of shadow who came into my father’s life to give birth to me—and then she disappeared. Sometimes I missed the idea of her. Sometimes I missed the ordinary life I believed I would have had if she had remained with us.
But I was not created for ordinary life.
Neither was Mr. Em.
My father—Mr. Em—never said a bad or good word about my mother. I knew her name was Juliet Lee, and she had blond hair and blue eyes. I knew this because a small portrait of her hung on one of my bedroom walls.
Betsy Shaw was the one who told me the woman in the painting was my mother. Betsy Shaw was my father’s housekeeper. She had been with me for as long as I could remember—although she did not go with us when my father and I left Oregon in search of California gold.
She told him, “Mr. Em, you shouldn’t be taking that child on such a perilous journey. You done it once, and it was no good. And if I go with you this time, you’ll think it is the right thing to do.”
“Mrs. Shaw, we all survived the journey out here just fine,” Mr. Em told her. “Emily was too young to remember anything that happened then anyway. This time she can enjoy the scenery, come to know the land. This is a big country. She should know it before she decides where she will spend her life. Besides, it is more dangerous to leave her at home, even with you here. I do not trust the world to care for my child as well as I can.”
Betsy Shaw was not persuaded.
Neither was my father.
Wait. I get ahead of myself. You, dear reader, may want a more linear approach to my story. For instance, you might want to know when and where I was born. The when was 1837 give or take a year; the where was Missouri. But what does a date and a place tell you? And how do you know I’m telling you the truth? Or that I even know the truth? You cannot always rely on me to give you the facts. For one thing, I do want to protect the people who have protected us; just because our paths crossed doesn’t mean they want to become public characters in this narrative. Mostly, I want to protect the land. The land—the place—shaped me more than any human hand ever did—and I am obliged to protect it, to hide it from those who would destroy it by their attention.
Besides, I have learned that facts may connote the truth, but they are not entirely the truth. Anyone’s tale has an essential truth, like a pearl created from an irritated oyster—or like the priceless gem found at the heart, at the center, of a dragon’s treasure. But that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with facts.
Are you surprised at my mention of dragons? You don’t believe dragons exist? Perhaps no, perhaps yes. You probably don’t believe in monsters either. I will tell you one thing that is absolutely good and true: Monsters do exist. And I would know because I am the monster’s daughter. One can find monsters in the most unexpected places, and they are nearly always human in nature.
But I am here to convey to you the truth of my life and my father’s life in the best way that I can.
What do I know of my father’s life before I was born? I read the book, of course. He gave it to me when I was about 13. He said when I finished it, he would answer any questions I had. By that time in my life, I already knew his corporeal person had been pieced together from parts of deceased people. I learned this fact of my father’s existence when I was quite young—or rather, I should say I somehow always knew it. He didn’t hide it from me. He wasn’t ashamed of it. He said, “None of us is responsible for how we came into this world. We are only responsible for what we do while we are here.”
He didn’t hide the fact that he was the progeny of a scientist who should not have been tinkering in God’s business.
“People cannot be cooked,” my father said. “There is no recipe. Take this heart and that brain and that leg, stir, add sugar and then bake. Life isn’t like that. Although, in my case, it was nearly like that. I am one of a kind. He never did it again and no one else would dare do it.”
Sometimes when my father talked, he reminded me of the politicians we heard at the village center or in the town hall. Other times he sounded like the preacher who occasionally stopped by to lecture my father on the proper way to raise a child—or like one of the farmers who came to my father’s mill for sawdust or lumber.
My father was a self-taught man. Later, when Abraham Lincoln became president, Mr. Em said, “That man educated himself just as I did. Lincoln didn’t have much schooling, and his father treated him like a slave. Have you seen photographs of him? He is rather monstrous looking, too. An ugly man as president. Who would have guessed such a thing?” He seemed to think of himself and Lincoln as some kind of kin because of their upbringing—and their looks.
When Mr. Em’s creator—Dr. Ef—first saw him alive, he had run screaming from the room. I never understood that. If Dr. Ef had sewn my father together from body parts, didn’t he know what he looked like? Or did he believe the spark of creation—that spark of divine life—would transform Mr. Em into a handsome man? Creation equals beauty?
I must stop here in the narrative to make it clear that my father was not ugly. He was a large man, to be sure. With long straight black hair that he wore like an Indian. In fact, some people mistook him for an Indian, even though his skin was preternaturally white in spots and not so white in other places. I remember when I was a child someone at the mercantile asking my father why one of his arms was white and the other arm was almost brown.
Mr. Em held out his left white arm, pulled up his shirt sleeve, and then said in his booming voice, “This arm I picked up from a king when I was traveling in Persia. The royalty there have more than two arms, and they are very generous. Never say you like anything when you’re visiting Persia because whatever it is, they will give it to you. When I admired the king’s arms, he gave me one. They also have the best surgeons in the world so it was quite painless. Well, except for the lopping off of my old arm. That was downright agonizing. But you can’t refuse a sultan. Or king. And this arm—” He dropped his white arm to his side and then held out his right arm and pulled up the sleeve. “Now this I got from a grizzly bear I met during my travels with the Lewis and Clark expedition. It was soon after I arrived on the shores of this great country. I went West with them and was called upon to wrestle a grizzly bear to the ground. He did not go easy. In the process, he ripped off my arm. Naturally I was obliged to take his.” He nodded. “Fortunately, the Indian medicine men had run into this kind of thing before and they attached my new grizzly arm.” My father made a fist. “Now you know why I was such a good lumberman.”
Everyone in the store listened, dumbfounded. No one asked a single question. I giggled. I liked when my father told stories. He was not a particularly gregarious man when we were in public. In fact, being around many people seemed painful for him, and I believe he only did it because he wanted me to have the benefit of society and community. I seem to remember we were only in the mercantile that day because Betsy Shaw insisted my father purchase some material so she could make me a dress.
“She’s five years old and she looks like a boy,” Betsy Shaw said.
“She looks like herself,” Mr. Em said. “The clothes do not make the child.”
My mother had been gone a year or more by then. Betsy Shaw was still cutting my hair short, just as my mother had.
“Everyone thinks she is a boy,” Betsy Shaw said. “How will she ever make friends? She needs to go to school, grow out her hair, and wear a dress.”
My father wanted to teach me himself, as he had done since I was a baby, but Betsy Shaw was firm about me going to school. Because my father listened to her and acquiesced to her wishes so often I believed for some years that she was really my mother. Especially since I barely remembered Juliet Lee—and because the stories about where my mother was frequently changed. The latest one was that she now lived back East with her wealthy family.
Perhaps she did live with them. Or maybe she had killed herself. Or my father killed her. That’s what one of the children said when I finally started school. A boy whispered in my ear, “Your father is a monster who killed your mother. That makes you the monster’s daughter. Or maybe you’re a monster, too.”
I hit him in the mouth with the book I was holding at the time. The blow put his lip through his bottom teeth—or it put his bottom teeth through his lip. I’m not sure which.
I may have been little, but I was uncommonly strong. That was one of the advantages of having a father who had come from the dead. He had brought with him the qualities of Heaven and Hell, I supposed, and handed them down to me.
The boy screamed, and the teacher sent me home.
I remember running home that day. All by myself. I remember the feel of the dress on my legs as I ran, as I kicked up a breeze. Above me, the sky was blue. On all other sides of me was meadow. By then, my hair was down to my shoulders and bounced as I ran. On my father’s land, I was often alone, but once I left those confines, Mr. Em or Betsy Shaw was nearly always with me. Now I was alone. I laughed as I ran and held my hands up to the sky.
I felt so free.
I knew why the boy had called my father a monster, but I was surprised he called me one, too. My father had made a point of reassuring me that his sins were his alone. Maybe the boy thought I was a monster because of my hair: It was mostly white with streaks of red and brown. Someone once called me a skunk because of my hair. Betsy Shaw said my mother cut my hair down to the quick because she didn’t want anyone to see that it was multicolored. They might think me a witch. And then there were my eyes. One was brown and the other was green.
“Thank goodness they don’t hang witches any more,” Betsy Shaw told me as she put a bow in my hair one morning.
“I’m not a witch,” I said. Whatever that was.
“You do have one foot in this world,” Betsy Shaw said, “and another one in the other world.”
“No, Betsy Shaw, I have one eye in this world and one eye in the other worlds,” I told her.
I pulled out the bow.
I was quite precocious then. I was pleased that I was different from everyone else. I didn’t care what they thought about me.
Or I believed I didn’t care until I was out of sight of my father and some boy called him a monster and me the monster’s daughter.
My father was very angry with the teacher for sending me home alone. If she ever did it again, he said, he would have her fired. What about the poor boy? the teacher asked. Perhaps he had learnt his lesson, my father said, and it was all right if he was allowed to come to school again.
I did not think that was what the teacher meant.
Neither did my father.
My father sat in the back of the classroom for the next couple of days so that the children could see him and know how big he was. I was almost abnormally tiny at that point in my life. My father often joked that I could live in the palm of his hand. Now everyone knew that I had a giant for a protector.
I do not believe anyone ever teased me again.
But, wait.
I was telling you about my father’s life and I meandered this way. I’m not sure how that happened. Shall we go back to my father’s beginnings? Dr. Ef created Mr. Em and then deserted him. My father ended up on an ice floe somewhere north—he was always vague about exactly where. He thought for certain he would die, but he was rescued by the auspiciously-named freighter Sanctuary. After Mr. Em put out a raging fire that threatened to take down the whole ship and crew, he and the captain became good friends and the captain helped fund his way to America. Mr. Em lived in the eastern part of the United States for a short time, but he was too conspicuous there, he said. He needed to be with the hoi polloi. The common people didn’t care about his past or his looks, and the West always needed big men.
And my father was a big man in many ways.
My father lived alone, on the edges of the frontier, somewhere near or on the Missouri, lumbering and milling and making a small fortune, until he met Juliet Lee. They married. Or they didn’t. In any case, I was born.
When I finished reading the book about my father’s creation, I asked him if it was all true.
“No,” he said.
“Did you kill Dr. Ef’s brother?”
“I did,” he said. “It was an accident. I meant only to kidnap him and frighten Dr. Ef, but I did not understand my strength then.”
“Did you kill Dr. Ef’s friend?”
My father nodded. “I did. We fought. He lost.”
Was my father a murderer or someone who merely defended himself?
“And his wife, did you kill Dr. Ef’s wife?”
“I am responsible for her death,” he said. “I came to her on their wedding night, and I told her what I was. I told her what her husband had done: how he had created the abomination that was me.”
I stared at my father. For some reason I didn’t care about the death of Dr. Ef’s brother or friend—perhaps I was a monster, too—but I cared about this young wife.
My father stared back at me. Finally he said, “She killed herself. She couldn’t bear to be with a man who had touched me, who had created me.”
My father swallowed. He hesitated, cleared his throat, and then said, “I changed, my daughter. I am not the man I was, bent on revenge because of my creator’s misdeeds. I am a new man. Again. Something happened that day, when Dr. Ef’s wife killed herself. It was as if a fog started to clear from my brain. I was very new then. Maybe a soul came into my body that day. All of that time, I had been soulless. I had been in such pain. Perhaps Mrs. Ef’s soul came to inhabit this body. But from then on, I never caused violence to another person—unless it was in self-defense. I have done my best to be a new man, for you, Emily, my daughter. For you and for her, Dr. Ef’s poor unfortunate wife. I hope you can learn from my mistakes, my daughter, and remember these mistakes if you ever think about getting revenge for what happened to you. Vengeance is a monster. Avoid it if you can.”
We had this conversation after the events in the Meadow, after we had left Oregon and moved permanently to California.
“I don’t think about revenge,” I said. That was a lie.
We stared at each other then, my father and I. I had many thoughts running through my head, but suddenly I fixated on my name. I had always thought I was called Emily for my parents. “Em” for Mr. Em and “ly” for Juliet Lee. Now I wondered if Mrs. Ef’s name had been Emily. For some reason, I didn’t care that my father was not naturally born and I didn’t seem to care that he had killed at least two people. I did care if I was named after a dead woman.
“Was her name really Emily?” I finally asked my father.
“What?” He frowned. He had not expected that question. “No, her name was not Emily.”
“Have you lied to me about anything?”
“How do you define a lie?” he asked.
“Mr. Em, you know perfectly well what a lie is,” I said.
“I have not lied to you about anything of import,” he said. “I have not told you every detail about my life or yours. I have told you the truth, as I know it, and I’ve spared you some details.”
“Are you really my flesh and blood father?” I asked.
“I am,” he said. “Can you not tell that? Don’t you feel that we are linked through time and space and flesh?”
I did not have to think about this to answer. I felt my father deep in my bones. I knew we were kin. When I wasn’t near him, I knew how he felt. I could hear his heartbeat. I breathed with him. And for the first decade or more of my life, when we were together, I felt completely safe. I felt like myself with Mr. Em—my own true self—and I knew Mr. Em loved me more than anything on Earth or in Heaven.
This feeling gave me clarity—and comfort. I felt bound to my father and to the places where we lived together.
I remember the years of my childhood spent in Oregon and California, but I have few memories of when we lived in Missouri. After my mother left us, Mr. Em decided civilized country was not for him. My mother had not been charmed by what she called frontier life. My father had lived in Europe. He had been a sailor. He had been part of exploratory expeditions all over America. He did not think of life along the Missouri river as frontier life.
Mr. Em did not talk about his past much. I had heard the old men who sat in creaky wooden chairs outside the mercantile telling stories of their youth. They always sounded like they were exaggerating or lying. Mr. Em did not do that. I believed everything he said was true. When he said he wrestled a grizzly bear, I could imagine that happening. He was stronger than any man or woman I had ever known. And he could chop down a tree faster than a natural storm could bring one down—and certainly faster than any other man.
He was the best lumberman in Oregon, but after a few years, he quit doing that and took over the mill. I knew why he quit, though he never told anyone else. He said he couldn’t bear to bring down one more tree that had been rooted to the land for a thousand years. All of their wisdom disappeared each time one hit the ground, he believed. When he felled a tree, my father listened for their last whispers on the wind, but he couldn’t understand what he heard. This meant everything was lost each and every time a tree came down.
Mr. Em rarely spoke of his time before he came to the United States, and he didn’t like to talk about the years he lived back East either. Every once in a while, he would talk about the various expeditions he had been on. He had traveled with Lewis and Clark for a short time. He left the expedition because he could not abide bondage of any kind. Mr. Em said no good work could ever be achieved if it was done in servitude: servitude to a man, country, or god. Lewis and Clark took slaves on the expedition, and Mr. Em did not think this was right. He stayed until he could no longer continue. When he decided—or realized—he was essentially condoning slavery by his mere presence on the expedition, he left.
Mr. Em was not pleased with the way the men on the expedition treated the Indian women either. In some places, the Indian men offered the women as sexual slaves to the white men, and the white men were happy to oblige.
Mr. Em was telling me all of this one day soon before we were scheduled to leave for our first trip to California. I was 11, I believe. It was 1848. Betsy Shaw was putting logs into the wood stove before going into the kitchen to make us lunch.
When Betsy Shaw heard Mr. Em talking about the Indian women, she said, “What is the difference between that and women who are married to white men? Marriage, for a woman, is another form of slavery.”
Mr. Em looked over at her, blinked several times, and then said, “You are exactly correct, Mrs. Shaw. I had never thought of it in those terms.”
“Was Juliet Lee a slave then?” I asked. “Is that why she left? Did you set her free?”
My father looked at me and said, “I did set her free. Perhaps that is why she left.”
“And you, Betsy Shaw,” I said. “Are you a slave or are you free?” My father always called her Mrs. Shaw, so I assumed she had a husband somewhere.
“My husband is long dead,” Betsy Shaw said. On this day, rain was slapping the house, hard, as though someone somewhere were tossing bucket after bucket of water against the clapboard sides.
“Did you love your husband?” I asked.
Why was it that children always asked about love? As if love mattered. As if love determined everything.
“No, I did not love him,” Betsy Shaw said. Her lips curled. She squeezed her eyes together. She looked as though she had eaten something putrid. “I was 15 and he was 40 and drunk most of the time, and when he was drunk, he was mean. He pretty near beat me to death half a dozen times. The last time he tried to get at me, I ran behind a door and locked it. He was a small man—in every way possible. I figured he couldn’t break down the door. He shot at me, though, several times. The sound and the breaking wood knocked me to the floor—to the ground. It wasn’t more than a shack we lived in. I don’t even remember why or how there was a door. But he broke into the room and saw me on the ground. Figured I was dead, I guess, so he put a bullet in his head. Thank the Lord. I was saved that day. I found the bullet. It went in one of his ears and out the other. I don’t know how it killed him, seeing he didn’t have a brain, but it did. I saved the bullet.”
Just then, Betsy Shaw reached inside her dress and pulled out a string that was hanging around her neck. I had noticed the string before and figured she had a crucifix on it. She walked toward us and leaned down slightly so I could see the spent bullet hanging from the string.
In the next second, she tucked the bullet and string back inside her frock.
“Now, how about some lunch? I’ve got fresh cod. Don’t forget to wash up, Emily.”
She left the room. Mr. Em and I looked at one another, speechless. That was the first time Betsy Shaw had ever said anything about her before-us life—and I had been pestering her about her past since I was a baby.
“That goes to show us,” Mr. Em finally said, “that what we think is the worst day of our lives can turn out to be the best day.”
At lunch, Betsy Shaw and Mr. Em talked about the trip we had taken from Missouri to get to Oregon. I’m not sure why. Maybe because Betsy was worried about us leaving for California and she wanted to remind Mr. Em how treacherous that first trip had been. Maybe Mr. Em was nervous, too.
I was nearly four when we left Missouri, so I remembered little of the trip, if anything. We started out as part of a wagon train, but we did not stay with them. My father knew the country better than the master and he knew the Indians better than anyone. He didn’t say so, but Betsy Shaw did. And I knew it to be true.
Sometimes when I look up at the stars on a cool summer night, I think I remember something of that trip. A whisper, perhaps. An old woman leaning over me, blocking out the stars, wanting to take me somewhere or tell me something. Me calling out to Mr. Em.
I’m not sure if I actually remember this or if I remember them telling me about the old woman no one could see but me. Later when the Peakes were showing Mr. Em and I photographs of their relatives, I recognized one of them as the old woman who kept trying to tell me something. She was Mr. Peake’s mother, and she had died days before the wagon train started out.
We left the wagon train soon after that. Betsy Shaw said the others on the wagon train thought we were as good as committing suicide by leaving, but my father knew where he was going. And he was a great hunter. He didn’t like to kill game and he hated skinning and butchering them, but he did it. He never came back to us empty-handed.
I vaguely remember feeling somewhat relieved—or lightened—when we were on our own. I remember standing in the woods all by myself, dwarfed by these huge old trees, listening to the world sing to me. It was the most amazing song. It wasn’t like any music I had heard humans make with instruments. Maybe a bit like a human voice—or all the human voices combined with the voices of the plants and animals. Or maybe like the voice of a mother soothing her child to sleep. Only this was more of a “wake up” song. As though the trees and the ground beneath my feet and the breeze rustling through the leaves were encouraging me to wake up and take it all in.
It’s only a sliver of a memory.
I remember a night sky, too. Me on my back staring up at the stars, the wagon rocking me as we traveled. Seeing a shooting star, hearing it whisper my name. And me whispering its name back.
I can’t remember now what its name was.
Nevertheless, I still sometimes hear the whispers of stars.
I met Jamie and Annie Simmons and their son Henry on the wagon train. Jamie and Mr. Em had been friends for many years before and had decided to travel West together. I don’t actually recall when I first met Henry and his parents, but Betsy and Mr. Em enjoyed teasing me about Henry, who was a year or more older than I was. They said it was love at first sight. We walked right up to one another, kissed each other on the lips, and then I knocked Henry to the ground.
My father had tried to convince Jamie to come with us when we left the wagon train. Someone had gotten cholera the day before we left. That was the real reason my father wanted to leave—not so much because people kept coming up to me and asking if I’d seen any of their dead relatives.
Jamie’s wife did not want to come with us. She was more afraid of the wilderness than she was of the cholera. She was part Indian, but she didn’t remember the life. She wanted to stay in the city and had no desire to travel West. When I was older, I often wondered why she hadn’t left Jamie and stayed in Missouri.
She didn’t understand that my father had been over this ground before. He knew this world. He could have saved all of us. Jamie, Annie, and Henry stayed with the train. We learned later that Annie died of the cholera, and Jamie and Henry settled in California. Jamie and Mr. Em wrote to one another occasionally, and he was the one who told Mr. Em about the gold he had found on his land in northern California. He said my father should come before everyone else in the world found out about it. Said maybe it was already too late. But Jamie had secured permission from the Wintu people who lived in the area where he found the gold—even though legally it was his land—and one way or another, he was going to make his fortune.
Mr. Em was tired of running the mill, he told me, and he was not all that fond of the people in our town. Nothing specific. He never fought with anyone that I knew about. But he did not have many friends either, besides myself and Betsy Shaw. Maybe he missed my mother. I didn’t know. I don’t think I gave it much thought. The idea of traveling to California to look for gold sounded exciting to the 11-year-old me. If we found enough gold, Mr. Em told me, we could buy lots of land and do whatever we liked for the rest of our lives.
Betsy Shaw was unhappy about us leaving, especially without her. She was afraid I would start to see things (and people) who weren’t there. Or maybe she was more afraid that I would start to see things (and people) who weren’t there and then I’d tell others about it. Telling people wasn’t very wise.
I knew that. That was why I generally kept what I saw or heard to myself. I would tell Mr. Em, even though he was typically puzzled. He would ask me to describe what I was seeing, he would have me point, and then he would squint in that direction or he would lean down low so that he was at my height. But he never saw or heard what I saw or heard. Betsy Shaw told Mr. Em that many children had imaginary companions and that was probably what was happening with me.
I didn’t think that explained seeing dead Mrs. Peake or many of the other things I had seen over the years. As I grew older I heard and saw less of these “imaginary companions.” Perhaps it was because no one else shared my world view. Perhaps in the end it is impossible to continue to see what others don’t. Can we actually hold different views—different visions—from our contemporaries for long without going mad?
I didn’t particularly miss the visions once they faded, and every once in a while they would return and I would see a ghost of something not there. I did enjoy seeing the animals that sometimes accompanied people. A skunk followed Robbie Francis everywhere he went. Each time Leo Jones came near Robbie, the skunk’s tail quivered. Leo Jones didn’t see the skunk. For all I know, Robbie didn’t see the skunk either. But once the skunk raised her tail, Leo Jones turned and walked away. Which was a good thing since Leo Jones was not a good boy and I was sure he’d grow up to be a bad man. No animal or person followed Leo: I sometimes wondered if that was his problem.
After a while, the skunk either left Robbie Francis or else I could no longer see it. When I told Indian Mary about the animals I sometimes saw, she said they were probably spirit animals who protected and guided the people they followed. She had never heard of anyone seeing them with their eyes—only with their hearts—but she said I must be very special to have such an unusual ability.
Although I stopped seeing the spirit animals as much as I got older, I never stopped talking to the trees, animals, plants, the sky, the weather. I carried on a constant conversation with my world. Sometimes when we hadn’t had enough sun, I would stand out in the rain and talk to the Weather Spirits—which was what Indian Mary called them. I would ask very politely to see the Sun for a few days. If the Rain would go away for a while, I’d promise to sing to it, dance for it, or praise it. Indian Mary said all beings wanted some kind of acknowledgement and attention. “These are our neighbors,” she said. “They will not be good neighbors if we’re always cursing them or ignoring them.”
After I asked, the Rain would almost always subside for a few days, and we would enjoy the Sun while we could.
I cannot seem to keep on the main path of this narrative, can I? I wander off into the marshes again and again. Sometimes the memories come like a flood and I must tell you as I remember them. My father was always the more articulate one of the two of us, the one who could weave a story out of nearly nothing. I felt things, but I couldn’t always describe what was happening to me.
May I say that I was not frightened about our trip to California? I had been on numerous hunting and camping trips with my father since I was too little to remember. I could use a rifle and a bow and arrow—even though the rifle was nearly bigger than I was. Mr. Em had taught me to use a revolver, too, just in case. I knew how to skin almost any dead creature. How to dry or salt almost any kind of meat. And he had Betsy Shaw teach me manners. Mr. Em was the most refined person I ever knew, but he said he was ill-equipped to teach a girl child how to conduct herself in the world of human beings.
In other words, as young as I was then, my father had taught me well. I knew how to take care of myself, and I knew how to be polite around company. Besides, I was going to be with my father on this trip: No harm could come to me with him near. In fact, I couldn’t fathom any harm ever coming to me.
Before I fell asleep that night, the night before we left, Betsy Shaw came and sat in the chair next to my bed.
“I had a dream,” Betsy Shaw said. “In it, you were drowned.”
I watched her face in the golden lamp light. Her expression didn’t waver. She had been telling me her dreams for many years. None of them had ever come true.
“Well, then, that means I have no fear of drowning,” I said. “Not a single one of your dreams has ever come true. I don’t know why you are so worried. We will be fine. Maybe you’re afraid you’ll miss us too much.”
Betsy Shaw shook her head. “You think too much of your father. He is only a man. He cannot do everything. He is mortal, like everyone else.”
I sat up in bed. “He is not only a man. He is made up of the parts of many men. Maybe parts of women, too. We don’t really know, do we? And how do you know he is mortal? He is old now, isn’t he? Yet I don’t think he has changed since I was little.”
Betsy Shaw smiled then. “Yes, when you were little was such a long time ago. Let me tell you this: He does not always understand the world of men. You know that. You used to see into the other world. Where you go now—to this California place—you must try to see into the other world. When men smell gold, they go crazy.”
“Can you actually smell gold?” I asked. “That would be something.”
“I don’t know,” Betsy Shaw said. “Listen to what I am telling you. Some things have a power that is all their own. We don’t necessarily understand it. And gold is one of those things. Remember King Midas wanted it so badly he turned his only daughter into gold.”
“But that was a mistake,” I said. “He didn’t mean to hurt her.”
Betsy Shaw nodded. “Yes, so you do understand. Now go to sleep. Listen to your dreams.”
I got back down under the covers. I didn’t understand. My father would not turn me into gold, even by accident.
The Rift
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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for The Rift & Other Tidbits
I've always loved B-science fiction movies. I grew up watching sf movies on TV: Them, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Invaders from Mars, and more. And I grew up reading depressing end-of-the-world books. So perhaps this book started in my unconscious when I was a girl! I've always been interested in how people react when ordinary life changes. How would we react to the apocalypse—to the end of life as we know it?
I started this book the winter after my mother died. My father suddenly went into the hospital for emergency heart surgery while Mario and I were at our writing retreat in Tucson. (I wasn't able to finish the book that winter. I completed it about two years later.) My world had definitely changed after my mother died and while my father was ill. During that time, I saw in my mind's eye a rift in the earth. I often feel as though I am separated from most of the world: There is a rift between myself and my family and myself and the mainstream culture. Having a literal rift in the world felt perfect—for this novel.
I wanted the main characters to be people who weren't part of the mainstream culture. I wanted them to be like people I knew and loved: They worked in "jobs" that weren't usual—but they weren't strange or crazy. I wanted to portray their lives and beliefs respectfully. Often in books and movies, if someone is connected with the "invisibles" they are portrayed as kooky. I talk to plants, clouds, winds, and the land, and I am not kooky.
Writing this book was a different experience for me. I had to just let go and write. The Rift is definitely a different kind of book from any I've ever written. Of course, none of my books is like any of my other books—something which drove my publishers crazy. But that's just the way it is.
Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book
The One Sentence Pitch and Cover Blurb
Maggie lives on the edge of Tucson where she edits technical manuals and creates medicine from desert plants...until one morning when she hears her dead dog barking, a stranger shows up in her driveway, and an unexplainable rift appears in the land, separating Maggie and her neighbors from the rest of the world.
Chapter One
First
Sonora Desert, January,
Full moon, Blue moon, Lunar Eclipse
Maggie lived in the desert on the edge of the city limits of Tucson, Arizona, in a casita near a wash that filled with water once a year and threatened to overflow and flood Maggie’s house and her shop. Every year Maggie stood on the lip of the wash as the water roared through and asked very politely if the New River would please stay away from her house. She threw flower petals into the water to seal the deal.
In ten years, the wash had not breached its banks.
Maggie was generally a contented person. She enjoyed working with people and trying to find the right desert plant that would help them heal. She liked going out into the desert and talking with plants, wildcrafting for tinctures, or plucking blossoms (with permission) to make flower essences.
She lived outside the mainstream of American life. She didn’t watch television, wasn’t on any social networking site, got most of her clothes from Goodwill, and had no idea about the private lives of anyone famous.
Maggie didn’t make a living talking with plants or helping people heal. She didn’t make a living howling with the coyotes at sunset or following the path of a bobcat at dawn. She didn’t make a living whispering to the wind and discussing the weather with the crows. But she did create her life in this manner.
For a steady income, Maggie edited technical manuals from home. She didn’t particularly like this work—wasn’t overly fond of computers—but she was good at taking nonsense sentences and turning them into sensible sentences. Her boss said she was the best translator of geek in the business. Maggie didn’t tell him she was good at many languages: geek, crow, cactus, road runner.
She was not always good at translating human.
She wasn’t awkward with people. She had social graces. She could nod and say, “Uh-huh,” with the best of them. With people she knew, however, Maggie spoke her mind and her truth. Her friends valued that about her—even though she sometimes frightened them.
Especially men. At least men who wanted to have sex with her. Maggie had never batted her eyelashes or pretended she was more interested in a man’s opinion than she was in her own. In fact, she couldn’t believe women still did that. Her friends introduced her to their male friends sometimes at dinner parties or celebrations. At the end of the night, the man usually left with a younger woman.
“He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” whichever friend it was would say.
“Yes, I am amazing,” Maggie would agree.
Maggie did not spend a lot of time thinking about men or sex. She did wish she was sexually attracted to women. Once she mentioned this to Joanna, her partner in Desert Bloomers, and Joanna said, “Women are a pain in the ass, too. They always want to know what you’re thinking. You’re supposed to be sensitive to their needs, and I’m just not that sensitive.”
Sometimes Maggie did get lonely for her own kind, but she wasn’t quite sure who her own kind was. She had friends of all persuasions: flora and human and other fauna, elementals and Invisibles.
When Maggie woke up that Full Moon Blue Moon morning, she felt off-kilter. First thing she did was get out of bed and shiver as her feet hit the cold tile floor. Then she padded to the front door of her casita to let out her dog Irving. When her hand touched the door handle, she remembered Irving was long dead. Three months now.
Old habits died hard.
Yet she had heard him barking.
Must have been a dream.
She opened the door and stepped outside. The pink dirt was cold against her bare soles. She turned to the east where the sun was coming up over the Rincon Mountains. She raised her arms and whispered a prayer to the wind and to the east. Some mornings she offered cornmeal or a song. This morning she whispered,
“Thank you for inspiration.”
She turned to the south.
“Thank you for the fire of creativity.”
To the west.
“Thank you for the ocean that courses through my veins.”
To the north.
“Thank you for the earth, that place where I stand my ground, and the place of rebirth.”
She breathed deeply.
She still felt muddled.
A breeze wound its way through the mesquite and cholla and around the paloverde, and Maggie heard, “This is the day everything changes.”
Maggie knew she should thank the Wind for the warning. Or the prediction. She often told her clients that one must learn to go with the flow: Change was inevitable.
But this morning when she heard, “This is the day everything changes,” Maggie thought, “Oh crap.”
Too much had changed this year. For one thing, Irving had died. Her father had had major heart surgery. One of her sisters had become holy. Maggie’s landlord had upped her rent when she couldn’t come up with a down payment to buy the place. And Joanna told her last week that Alexandria had a job offer in Seattle, so they might be moving. Which would mean they’d no longer be partners in Desert Bloomers.
More change was coming?
Maggie started to go back into the casita when she noticed a coyote walking by in the wash. He stopped and looked at her. She loved coyotes the way people loved beautiful sunsets. Some coyotes were more spectacular than others. Some were just ho-hum. Not that Maggie really ever thought of coyotes as ho-hum. But every once in a while one crossed her path that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. And this coyote was one of those. She’d seen him before, many times. He had a scar on his right haunch. She called him Old Brandy. Seemed like he was always on the prowl. Maggie got the sense he was lookin’ for the ladies.
Now he stared at her, his tongue hanging out. Looked like he was grinning.
“I’m not your kind,” Maggie said. “So move along.”
The coyote continued to stare.
“Yeah, you’ve heard me howling, but I wasn’t calling to you.”
He closed his mouth. Now he looked a little dangerous. Maggie growled.
The coyote put his nose in the air for an instant, glanced at her, and then kept walking—bouncing down the wash as though he was walking on his tiptoes.
“I don’t know why you don’t like that coyote,” Joanna said as she came across the wash toward Maggie. “I think he has a crush on you.”
“That would be flattering,” Maggie said. “Kind of like having one of those old drunks at the East Side Bar and Grill have a crush on me.”
Joanna laughed. “I swear I’ve seen coyote tails on some of those men.”
“Old Brandy is probably one of them,” Maggie said. “And I don’t dislike him. I’m just wary. You’re up bright and early. What’s going on?”
“Just had a feeling it’s going to be a day,” Joanna said. “I’ve got two appointments but—”
Maggie nodded. “Yep. Something’s up.”
“John and Nina thought they saw lights coming over the Rincons last night,” Joanna said. “Swear it was a whole group of UFOs. But then they’re always seeing that kind of thing.”
Maggie shrugged. “Hey, I talk to plants. Most people think that’s weird.”
“But do you think the plants came here from outer space?”
“Maybe originally. I’ve never asked.”
Joanna grinned. “Go eat. I’ll catch you later. I may need your help when Alan Josephson comes in. He picks up little pockets of energy like he was flypaper. Might need help cleaning him off.”
Maggie nodded. She went back into the house, sat on her living room floor, and meditated. Her mind kept drifting. She wished she could remember her dream about Irving.
When she finished meditating, Maggie made oatmeal. She took the bowl with her to the back porch and looked out into the desert as she ate. A shiny green hummingbird flew around her for a moment. Maggie held out the bowl of oatmeal to the bird. “You’re welcome to it,” she said, “but it’s got nothing on nectar.” The hummingbird flew away west, in the direction of a tall saguaro with two limbs raised up in a kind of cacti yoga pose. The day smelled very slightly of creosote.
Maggie closed her eyes. “May it be good, may it be good, may it be good,” she whispered.
She heard someone banging on her front door. She got up, carried the bowl into the kitchen, put it on the counter, and then went to the door. She wasn’t sure she wanted to open it, but she did.
“Margarita! Rita! We need your help!”
It was her neighbor Ricardo. She had known him ten years and had not been able to convince him that her name was Maggie, not Margarita. Not Rita.
She glanced at Ricardo. He didn’t appear to be injured.
“What is it?” She came outside. Ricardo’s old white pickup stood in her driveway with his teenaged daughter Alicia kneeling in the back of it.
Maggie hurried over to the pickup.
Sprawled on the truck bed was a man. He reeked of alcohol so much that Maggie had to lean back away from the truck.
“Whoa!” she said. “Is he hurt?”
“Sí,” Ricardo said. “His heart is broken. And he can’t stop drinking. We’ve tried. All of his friends have tried.”
The man’s jeans were ripped and caked with mud. His T-shirt was dusty, and the shirt over the T-shirt was so dirty Maggie couldn’t tell what color it was. His dark brown hair was greasy and his face was covered in stubble.
“I think he tried to drown himself in the wash,” Alicia said.
“In the wash?” Maggie said. “There’s no water in the wash.”
“Exactamente,” Ricardo said. “He’s loco. He went out for a walk about an hour ago. I went looking for him with the truck and found him stumbling out of the wash and into the road.”
“Can you do anything?” Alicia asked. “Mom’s about had it with him. But he needs somebody’s help.”
Maggie looked at Alicia. She still believed in the natural goodness of everyone, believed everyone could be saved.
She’d grow out of that soon enough.
Ouch, Maggie thought. When had she gotten so cynical? Maybe she had picked up some negative energy herself.
“Are you sure he doesn’t need a doctor?” Maggie asked. “Could he have taken some pills?”
Ricardo shook his head. “No, he’s just your ordinary drunk.”
“Alicia, go into the shop and get Joanna,” Maggie said. “Then open the bunkhouse door. We’ll put him in there.”
Alicia hopped out of the truck and ran toward the barn.
Ricardo pulled down the tailgate. Maggie jumped up into the truck bed.
“What’s his name?” Maggie asked.
“Jack,” Ricardo said.
“Jack!” Maggie said loudly. “Jack, you need to wake up.”
The man moaned.
Maggie felt his pulses. They were strong.
“Jack, you need to get up.”
The man moaned again.
Maggie nodded to Ricardo. He got into the truck bed. Together they lifted Jack into a sitting position.
Jack mumbled something.
“We’re going to take you someplace where you’ll feel better,” Maggie said.
Joanna and Alicia walked over to the end of the truck bed and each grabbed one of Jack’s legs. They pulled while Ricardo and Maggie pushed until Jack was sitting on the edge of the tailgate.
“Should we carry him?” Joanna asked.
“I think you should move out of the way,” Maggie said.
Everyone moved away from Jack.
He promptly threw up.
“Better here than in the bunkhouse,” Joanna said.
“Yep,” Maggie said. “Get it all out of your system now.”
Maggie put Jack’s left arm around her shoulders and her right arm around his waist. Ricardo did the same on Jack’s right side. They half-dragged, half-walked Jack into the bunkhouse—the guest room that doubled as an extra treatment room—and laid him on the bed.
“Let’s get these clothes off,” Maggie said. “He stinks like a sewer. No telling what’s on these things.”
“I will do it,” Ricardo said.
“It’ll be easier if we all do it,” Maggie said.
Ricardo shook his head. He motioned to Alicia to leave. She rolled her eyes but left the bunkhouse.
“I don’t think there’s anything underneath,” Ricardo said.
Joanna smiled. “Ricardo, we’ve seen naked men before.”
He looked at her.
“Yes, even me,” Joanna said. “I used to dabble in men a bit, before I saw the light.”
“Me, I haven’t seen a man in a long time,” Maggie said. “I think I’ve forgotten what they look like. Let’s get his clothes off for a better look.”
Ricardo stared at them.
“I thought this was an emergency,” Maggie said.
“The sooner you go, the sooner I take off his clothes,” Ricardo said.
“Oh good grief,” Joanna said. “All right. There are gowns and pajamas and stuff in there.” She pointed to a dresser across the room.
The three women waited outside while Ricardo helped Jack get undressed. Maggie could hear Ricardo arguing with the incoherent Jack. “But I gotta piss, man.”
Maggie looked at Joanna. “Please let him make it to the toilet.”
A few minutes later, a pale Ricardo emerged carrying Jack’s clothes.
“I’ll take them home to wash and bring them back later,” he said. “Thank you for your help. He’s a good man, really.” He started to walk away with Alicia. Then he stopped and turned around. “I got his clothes off, but I didn’t get any clothes on.”
Joanna and Maggie went into the bunkhouse. Jack still lay on his back. Now he was snoring, his mouth open. Ricardo had pulled the sheet up over Jack’s naked body.
Joanna went to his feet, Maggie to his head. Maggie closed her eyes. She imagined roots growing out of the soles of her feet into the earth. Imagined the main root going down deep while smaller roots went horizontal into the earth until they found other roots to twine around. Then she imagined the energy of the earth coming up the roots and filling her body until the energy spilled out of the crown of her head. She put her hands on Jack’s head.
She felt or heard a kind of thump, as though the earth had shifted deep beneath them. She looked at Joanna; Joanna shrugged.
Maggie pressed her hands lightly on either side of Jack’s head. She imagined healing light flowing into the top of her head, down her shoulders and arms and out the palm of her hands. Her hands tingled. Jack stopped snoring.
Maggie felt slightly dizzy. That happened sometimes when she worked on someone. It passed. The room felt like it was filled with creatures, most of them desert creatures.
“He feels overshadowed,” Joanna said.
Maggie nodded. “But I’m not sure by what.”
“The alcohol? The plant spirits of the alcohol? Agave?”
No images came to Maggie. She felt slightly sea-sick, the way she did sometimes when she walked the wash when it hadn’t rained in a very long time.
Usually a plant spirit would offer to help during a healing. Or Maggie would get an image of what the client needed.
Not this time.
“My hands are warm,” Maggie said. “So he is drawing the healing energy into his body.”
“I’d like to stay and help,” Joanna said, “but I’ve got a client in about five minutes. I’ve got pulses in his feet. Plus, I see he’s got a little something going on beneath the sheets.”
Maggie looked down at Jack. She laughed softly.
“They can’t help it,” Joanna said. She slowly took her hands off of Jack’s feet. Then she left, closing the door behind her.
Maggie looked down at Jack again. Just then his eyes snapped open. His eyes were yellow. Maggie blinked. No, they were blue. Bright blue. Jack smiled sleepily.
“Hello, bruja,” he said. “Are you the one I’ve been looking for?”
“I doubt it,” Maggie said.
“I think you are,” he said. “What’s under the sheets doesn’t lie.”
“Charming,” Maggie said.
Jack closed his eyes. “Your friend started it. I was just trying to hold up my end of the conversation. So to speak.”
“Your job right now is to get this alcohol out of your system,” she said.
“After all the trouble I went through to get into my system? Seems like a waste of a good time.”
He began breathing deeply again. Maggie moved her hands from his head and down to his chest. His skin was cold. She felt grief. Intense grief. He put his left hand over her left hand. His fingers were clammy. She moved her right hand down to his belly. Warm. She could feel his stomach gurgling under her hand.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “It’s all right. This is the place and the time that heals all wounds.”
“Even yours?” he whispered.
Ah, so he was awake.
“Shhhh,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I have to know if you’re the one.”
Maggie shook her head. Of course she wasn’t the one, whatever that meant.
“You’ll know the answer to that when you wake up,” she said.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said. “I will. I’ll hold you real close.”
