The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: a Year and a Day Journal

We love The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights so much that we decided to make a companion for it: a BIG sumptuous luxurious "a year and a day" journal. This 8.5 x 11 book has the same cover as The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Daily Guide to the Magic and Inspiration of the Old Sea, the New Desert, and Beyond, but we've removed the dates so you can put in your own and we've made one journal lined and one unlined; you can use both for journals or use one for a journal and one for sketching or mix and match. A Year and A Day is a traditional period of time set aside for study or initiation: and you can begin any time. We hope you will find these journals inspiring and beautiful. Everyone who has seen it just oohs and ahs over it. This is a perfect place to tell your own story and find your siren song.  unlined • lined

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The Old Mermaids Book of Days & Nights: A Daily Guide to the Magic and Inspiration of the Old Sea, the New Desert, and Beyond

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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights and Other Tidbits

Something happened when I wrote the novel Church of the Old Mermaids that had never happened with any other book or any other characters I’d written. The Old Mermaids became like guardians for me, like totems or spirit animals. When I was having difficulty coping, I would think, “What would the Old Mermaids do?” And I loved just thinking about the Old Mermaids Sanctuaries. I loved imagining the Old Mermaids and Old Mermaids Sanctuaries all over the world. 

I loved (and still love) many things about the Old Mermaids. For one, they have no malice. Not a single one of them. I don’t mean they don’t get cranky or have a bad day or fall in and out of love. They do. But none of them is simmering with rage. They’re all pretty mellow, even when they’re not.

They’re also great storytellers. They know how to build community. They understand the importance of weaving together a day and a life, a meal and a story, a dream and a good night’s sleep. 

Initially I decided to create The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights because I wanted something inspiring from the Old Mermaids with me every day. I wanted something I loved looking at and reading. Beauty all around. What better way to accomplish that than by having a quote a day for a year from the Old Mermaids and friends? 

Most of the quotes are from the various Old Mermaids novels, but I have also included quotes from many of my other novels. I picked out quotes that I thought were inspiring and/or mysterious. I put all the quotes into piles, without looking at them, and pulled one at random for each date.

As you go through The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights, you’ll see recurring themes. In the Old Sea, the young have a “gifted” ceremony. Each Old Mermaid gifts a child with something: joy, ability to dance, ability to feel at home, etc. (It reminds me of when Briar Rose’s fairy godmothers came and “gifted” her.) Since we don’t have that kind of tradition in our culture, many of us walk around believing we don’t have any gifts or that we’re all on our own. So all the “gifts” mentioned in this book are intended as gifts for my readers, too.

You’ll also notice quotes about quilts and sewing, too. (And food, of course.) Many of our ancestors considered sewing and weaving to be sacred, mystical, and magical occupations. I think it’s important to remember that these “mundane” tasks are actually rich with stories of magic and healing. Each piece of cloth we sew or meal we cook or song we sing can be an act of healing, of magic, of creation. We are creating the world with every breath we take, with every word we utter, with every thread we sew. That is powerful magic.

In this book (and many of my other writings) you will frequently see the phrase: “be full of yourself.” This phrase has a long history with me and the Old Mermaids. I first used it when I recommended a book to a friend—a book written by someone else. This friend told me she didn’t like the book because she thought the author was “too full of herself.” I laughed and said, “Who would you like her to be full of?” Should we be full of what advertisers tell us? Our parents? Our teachers? Or should we be full of our own true selves?

Mario and I really enjoyed putting this book together. We sat together reading the quotes out loud to one another. We were proofing them, but we also wanted to make certain they worked for the book: Were they mysterious or profound or mystical or fun or joyful or divining or all of the above? We both really love this book. We hope you like it, too.

Wholly Inadequate Description of This Book

Cover Blurb:

Kim Antieau guides you through a year of wisdom, humor, beauty, inspiration, and love in these daily quotes from her own writings featuring the Old Mermaids and some of the other wise and mystical characters from her books and stories. See what gifts Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid, Sister Laughs A Lot Mermaid, Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid, Sister Sheila Na Giggle Mermaid, and others have to share with you all year long.

Cover art by Nancy Norman.

Excerpts: 

Origins

I can’t be sure, but I believe this book might be the one the Old Mermaids put together when they lived in the Old Mermaids Sanctuary after the Old Sea dried up and they made their home in the New Desert. Sometimes they needed reminders of how to live, how to be, how to laugh and dance. So they went out into the desert at dawn, at dusk, in the middle of the night, and they gathered together the wisdom you’ll find in this book.

They pulled this word out of the dry desert air and that word from the flooded wash during the monsoons. They coaxed this sentence from a chorus of coyotes howling love songs at the moon, and they found that sentence shimmering in the dew on a spider web near where the Old Woman and Old Man of the Mountains lived. They enticed this story from the bark of the Old Sycamore, and the Old Saguaros whispered that story to them the night their flowers bloomed and the bats came out to drench themselves in nectar.

Every word, every sentence, every story here is meant for you, for each of you, to heal, to amuse, and to mystify, to remind you that you are loved and you are swimming in your own divinely perfect self. You are magic and so are the Old Mermaids. 

The Old Mermaids remind us to swim, dance, walk, play, love, and create in beauty. It is the Old Mermaid Way.

—Kim Antieau

novice, Church of the Old Mermaids

January 1

“She who laughs a lot laughs a lot.”

—Sister Laughs A Lot Mermaid

January 2

Sometimes I feel the Wild pulsing in my own soul and I know it is Nature speaking to me, through me. I feel as though my creative force and my passion for the world is Nature working her art through me: I am her art piece.

—Under the Tucson Moon

January 3

“Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid adjusted to life in the New Desert after the Old Sea dried up more quickly than the other Old Mermaids. Of course she missed the Old Sea and all that was within. But she knew the Old Sea was in the clouds, her blood, and in every cell of the Old Salmon who made their way up and down various creeks and rivers. So it wasn’t that she didn’t love the Old Sea as much as the other Old Mermaids; it was that she loved the New Desert, too.

—The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

January 4

“Someone once told me that when we lose our dreams, the land dreams for us.” 

—The Desert Siren

January 5

“Actually, it wasn’t quite a house yet. The Old Mermaids were still building it, with the help of some neighbors. They used mud and straw and stone—all materials from the old dried up sea. As they built the house, they let the mud and straw and stone tell them stories. They listened to what the cacti and coyotes and crows had to say, too. The neighbors had more stories. The stories made the work easier, and the house seemed to like the stories. It shaped itself beautifully around them and this land. It was a piece of art.”

—Church of the Old Mermaids

January 6

Sara’s breathing quickened. She felt strangely happy. She remembered other times when her mother had gone down to the beach without Sara and her sisters, times before a storm. Even then, Sara had felt as though she should be with her—her place was with her mother singing to the sea.

—The Fish Wife

January 7

“Perhaps a journey up the mountains will do,” Sister Bea Wilder Mermaid said. 

—The Second Book of Old Mermaids Tales

January 8

“She kissed me,” Murphy said. “Then she bent over and picked up the most beautiful shell I’ve ever seen—tiny and shaped in a spiral—and she said, ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ I shook my head. She pressed the seashell into my hand. ‘Whenever you find a seashell it means a mermaid has found her tail and is free again.’ And then she dove back to the sea and swam away. I never saw her again.”

—The Fish Wife

January 9

“Today I was remembering my old Scottish grandmother. Whenever she saw us or whenever we left her presence, she gave us a blessing. ‘May the strength of the oak trees be thine,’ she would say. Or ‘excellence of travel be on you.’ So today I would like to say to you: Joy of night and day be yours. Joy of sun and moon be yours. Joy of all the wildflowers be yours. And may the love and affection of the entire world be yours as all of my love and affection is already yours.” 

 —Jewelweed Station

January 10

Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid was excited by the prospect of creating thirteen comforters for the Old Mermaids. It is said—although I can’t be sure it’s true—that she began by asking the Invisibles of the place if she could please find and pick up pieces of the desert to use to create the quilts. And so she gathered up leaves from the mountains and forests. She found branches there, too, and the bones of many creatures. She gathered up feathers and the whispers of dreams on her way down. On the floor of the desert, she found prickly pear pads and the skeletons of cacti. She gathered up the clucking of the quail and the hooting of the owl. She found flat rocks, more feathers, and the songs of coyotes. One day she found seashells in the wash. She kept looking until she had thirteen. Finally she sat under the night sky and caught the dust of falling stars. She scooped up moonlight at the same time. 

—The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

January 11

Moon Day. A butterfly the color of my name did tell me that a Big Spin was coming our way. I was standing by Mr. Grant’s wisteria, which hung over his fence and down into our yard, when Ruby Butterfly, this jeweled metamorphosis of a cattypillar, landed on a bright green wisteria leaf like some kind of winged oracle and looked straight at me; we exchanged glances, you know the way liked-minded and soul-bodied creatures can. We understood each other down deep to our transfigured and transforming cellular parts. 

—Ruby’s Imagine

January 12

“The whisper is meant only for you. You must follow it to its source.” 

—The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

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The Desert Siren

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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for The Desert Siren & Other Tidbits

Several years ago, I got a picture in my head of a woman and her daughter traveling to the Southwest to stay with her father on his ranch after the woman splits from her husband. The young daughter wants them to look for the mythical faery horses who are supposed to live on her grandfather's ranch. But the story didn't evolve beyond that.

Separately, I also kept getting a picture of a woman living in the desert. She decides to put a water pump on her land so that the migrant workers crossing her land won't die from thirst. In my mind's eye she was alone and her neighbors were not friendly to the idea.

Over the years, I have done a great deal of research about the borderlands, specially the Arizona borderlands, about the environment, the ranchers, the migrants, the politics, social justice workers, and more. I had intended to write a nonfiction book about it—and I may still. The story for The Desert Siren eventually came to me as a combination, of sorts, of the other two ideas, and the entire story was informed by all of the research I had done over the years.

Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book

The One Sentence Pitch

After Consuelo Johnson's husband leaves her, she comes awake to her true soul-full life by searching for a herd of mythical "sea" horses on her land in the Arizona borderlands.

Cover blurb

Connie yearned for a soul-filled life but settled for life on the family’s ranch in the Arizona borderlands. She doesn’t think about the life she could have had until her husband deserts her and leaves her broke and the ranch nearly bankrupt. In desperation, Connie searches for a band of mystical and magical wild “sea” horses her aunt Delilah believed roamed the borderlands, brought to this country by Connie’s ancestors. Aunt Delilah believed only those who had the gift, those she called sea horse sirens, could find them. Time is running out, and finding the Irish horses could be Connie’s last chance to save the land and her own life.


Chapter One

Chapter One

Connie Johnson heard Jimmy barking in her dream. And a truck speeding away. She opened her eyes—her heart racing—and the dog still barked. For an instant, she smelled ocean. She threw off the covers and ran to the window. Jimmy chased Chuck’s yellow pickup as it headed toward the open ranch gates. Dust billowed up behind the vehicle, like an instant smoke screen, enveloping the truck so that it nearly disappeared from view as it drove away.

Chuck turned the wrong way. He was supposed to go out today and round up strays with her brother, Philip. Instead he had turned west, toward town.

Jimmy was howling.

“Damn dog,” Connie said. She sat on the bed, reached for her jeans, and pulled them on.

Was her alarm clock broken or had Chuck turned it off?

She pulled off her camisole, threw it into the closet, then grabbed another camisole from the clean clothes piled in the basket that was usually in the closet to collect dirty clothes.

She hadn’t had time to fold clothes yesterday, or the day before. She was spending more and more time taking care of other people’s horses. She preferred that to doing anything with cattle. That was Chuck’s thing.

Thirty years ago he was the one who had wanted to come live on the ranch her aunt Delilah had left to Connie and her brother. Chuck and Phil had decided that raising cattle was the way to make their fortune. They had divided the land between the two families—Connie and Chuck taking Delilah’s old house and Phil and Marilyn building a new house—but they managed the cattle part of the ranch together.

Connie didn’t like cattle or cattle ranching. She had cried when they took down Aunt Delilah’s sign “Sky Blue Horse Ranch” and put up “C&C Ranch.”

She should have realized the new name of the ranch foretold her future: one with no imagination.

She glanced at the pile of clean clothes. She hadn’t folded them and put them away and neither had Chuck. Not that he ever would. In the beginning of their marriage, they had argued about such things. She’d say, “Just because I’ve got ovaries that doesn’t make me any more capable of doing laundry or cooking or cleaning than you!” He’d agree, but if she wasn’t out on the range working the cattle, she had to do something to contribute to the household.

Yep, that was what he had said.

“You can’t spend your life looking for a mythical herd of Irish horses like your aunt did,” he said. “She had a dead rich husband. She didn’t need income. You don’t have that.” He had grinned when he said that last little bit. She still remembered the conversation even though it had happened thirty plus years earlier. Maybe because they had similar conversations over the years since then—until they didn’t.

Sometimes during these conversations, she’d say, “They aren’t Irish horses. They don’t have a nationality. They’re sea horses.”

Only that hadn’t done much for her argument.

Irish or not, according to Aunt Delilah, no one could see these mythical horses unless they had “the gift.” Most people could see one or two hoof prints belonging to the sea horses. But if someone had “the gift” they could see more—they could actually track and find the horses. On some hot desert mornings, a person could smell them, Aunt Delilah said, and they smelled like the ocean.

No one actually believed Aunt Delilah. At least no one in Connie’s family—not even Connie, even though she and Manuel had looked for the horses when she was a girl and her parents sent her and Phil to the ranch for the summers.

At least, she didn’t think she believed in them.

Why was she thinking about the sea horses now?

Maybe if she threw the clean clothes on the floor, Chuck would pick them up and put them away.

No. She had tried that when they were younger, before Amy and then Matt were born.

She shook her head. She didn’t have time for reminiscing. She was already late. She had to check on Alice’s horse. It had eaten something it shouldn’t have—probably some trash the migrants or drug runners had left behind as they tramped through the Ellis ranch. Yesterday Charlie Dunnett had called about a colt of his who had gotten spooked and clawed by a mountain lion. She needed to look at his horse today.

Jimmy was still barking.

What was wrong with that dog?

She needed to call Chuck and find out what was going on.

Connie hurried out of the bedroom and went down the stairs. A second story on a house in the Sonora Desert was a stupid idea. She should have never let Chuck build it on the end of Delilah’s house—the house that had been in her family for a hundred and fifty years. But Chuck didn’t think a house was a home without a staircase. Even in the summer when the upstairs was too stifling or in the winter when it was too cold.

Connie went down the hall and through the living room to the front door. She flung it open and went out and stood on the porch. The cool air smelled slightly of mesquite. Desert scrub-land rolled away from the house in all directions, flat as a pancake, until it started dipping here and there, creating bigger than mole-hill hills until finally the land became mountainous in the distance. Today an early morning fog or haze turned the mountains almost blue so that if Connie hadn’t lived in this place for most of her adult life, she wouldn’t have known the mountains were there.

“You act like he’s never coming back, you old sheep dog,” Connie called to Jimmy. “I think you’ve gone crazy spending too much time with the cattle. I can relate.” The black and white Australian sheep dog ran into the house past her.

Connie followed him into the kitchen.

She saw a note on the table. The paper looked too white against the yellow tablecloth, almost like a flat bleached bone, with black markings on it where a coyote had gnawed on it.

Connie realized her heart was still beating in her ears, as though her heart knew something she did not.

Her left hand shook as she reached for the paper.

She heard Jimmy’s nails on the stone floor. She needed to trim them soon: The sound was becoming maddening.

She recognized her husband’s elegant handwriting immediately. Her left-hand scrawl was barely legible, while Chuck’s looked like calligraphy. Or something. Something beautiful.

She wanted to keep thinking about how it looked so she wouldn’t have to see what it said.

What Chuck had written.

Chuck rarely wrote her a note. He rarely wrote anything, except maybe a list for the hardware or feed store.

She read the first sentence.

“I can’t do this anymore.”

She blinked and kept reading. “I want to find someplace with water. I took a little money to get started. The combination to the lock is Amy’s birthday left, Matt’s birthday right, your birthday left.”

Connie pulled out a kitchen chair and sat in it.

“What lock?” She didn’t remember any lock.

Her hands began to shake.

“He took money?” What money? They hardly had any money.

She felt like she was going to throw up.

Chuck had left her?

He left her?

After thirty years.

After thirty years, he left her.

Without having the guts to face her?

What about the kids? Had he called them? Sent them letters?

Had he written, “I can’t be your father anymore. I want to find someplace with water.”

What didn’t he want to do anymore? Her? The ranch? What?

She tried to remember what had happened yesterday. What had been the last straw? He had said that in the letter, right? Yesterday was the last straw.

She picked up the letter again.

No, nothing about a straw.

Had he been planning this for days, weeks, years?

She got up from the table and began to pace. Jimmy watched her and whimpered.

“Yesterday, yesterday.” He had been out with Phil all day, buying cattle or looking for strays.

She and Chuck had gotten home about the same time.

The sun had been going down and everything was golden. Golden tinged with red. They had stood on the porch together, looking around.

He had said, “It looks like Midas himself was here, touching each piece of our world with gold.”

She had smiled and reached for his hand.

Connie laughed and shook her head as she walked back and forth in her living room. Chuck had said no such thing.

He had actually said, “It’s gonna be a cold one tonight.”

And then they had gone into the house together. Connie had heated up leftover spaghetti, and they had eaten in silence.

He hadn’t talked about cows, and she hadn’t talked about horses. Or the children, who were now both grown.

Connie had thought their silence was companionable.

They had been together for so long that they didn’t need to talk.

He went to bed before she did. Had to get up early, he said. Manuel had told him about some winter strays up in Black Canyon.

Had they kissed each other good night? Said “I love you?”

Maybe he had bussed her on the cheek.

She hadn’t looked up from her crossword puzzle.

Had she?

She must have said, “Love you.” Or “good night, sweetie.”

Something.

She wanted to call Phil now and see if something had happened yesterday between Chuck and Phil. Or Manuel.

Manuel would know what was going on. He would help. He was always there for her, always had been since they were kids.

Or maybe she should call her children.

No. She wanted to talk to Chuck. Find out what the hell he was thinking.

She went to the kitchen, picked up the phone, and called Chuck’s cell phone.

She heard the phone ring in the house. She followed the sound to the coffee table in the living room. There on top of Sunday’s newspaper were Chuck’s keys, cell phone, and a closed combination lock, like the one she’d had in high school for her gym locker.

She hung up her phone and picked up the lock. On the back of it was a tiny red sticker of a heart.

“Aw, the key to your heart, eh?” she said.

Only it wasn’t locking or unlocking anything except itself.

Chuck had left her a lock that didn’t lock anything?

She twirled the dial on the lock, then turned it to the left to ten. Amy’s Birthday was September 10th. Then she turned it right to twenty-four. Matt’s birthday was May 24th. She turned it left to twenty-one. Her birthday was June 21st.

She pulled on the metal bar, but it did not click and it did not come out of the lock.

She twirled the dial again and started all over. Left, right, left. Same numbers. Same result. She tried three or four times, but nothing happened. She looked over at Jimmy.

“I wonder if it’s too late to chase him down,” Connie said. “Before he gets too far away.” She laughed grimly. Jimmy stared at her.

She wondered why Chuck had used her birthday anyway. He never remembered it.

When they first got together, he said, “As far as I’m concerned, you were born when I was born. We were just separated at birth.”

“That’s creepy,” Connie had told him. “That would make you my brother.”

“I thought I was the literal one,” he said. “I meant I can’t imagine we were ever separate, so of course we’d have to be born on the same day. Like soul mates.”

Not actually soul mates but like soul mates.

She had laughed and laughed. It was probably the only sentimental thing he’d ever said to her, but it had done the trick: She fell in love with him in that moment.

Connie turned the lock to the left and stopped at ten. Then to the right to twenty-four. Then to the left to five. Chuck’s birthday was November 5th.

The lock clicked. Connie pulled on the bar and the lock opened.

“I was not born on the day you were born,” Connie said. “And we obviously were not even like soul mates.”

She closed the lock and wrapped her fingers around it. She was going to throw it long and hard. She aimed it at the kitchen window, the one over the sink. She was in the living room, but she could throw it that far. She had a straight shot.

She reached back—her idea of a windup.

Then she stopped.

Glass would go everywhere.

She’d be cleaning it up forever. Jimmy would probably get some in his paws. Or he’d eat a shard or two on mistake.

She walked into the kitchen, opened the junk drawer, and dropped the lock inside. Then she kicked the drawer shut.

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Whackadoodle Times

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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for Whackadoodle Times & Other Tidbits

The idea for Whackadoodle Times had its genesis in my utter frustration over the state of the world. I felt like everyone was fiddling while Rome was burning. In particular, I felt like the rich were trying to hang on to their wealth and position regardless of the impact of the policies they supported had on our environment and economies. I imagined a group of rich people living in California caring only about their little rich group as the land fell into the ocean and the forest burned all around them. But of course, ideas aren't what drive my stories; characters do, and I'm not interested in cardboard characters. So the story quickly began evolving.

I imagined a bag lady coming to the house of one of these rich people and promising to do one great thing a day if she could stay in their garden house. With this as a catalyst, I wrote the first chapter. I really liked it. I laughed.

And then I froze. This happened with Butch, too. I liked the first chapters too much, and I was afraid I couldn't carry on. For Whackadoodle Times, I wasn't sure I could come up with one great thing a day. Of course, this meant I had lost confidence in myself and in the great wonderful flow of storytelling. When it's going well, I don't have to come up with anything: The story writes itself.

Several years went by. I wanted to get back to Whackadoodle Times, but time was what I needed. And I needed a paradigm shift. In traditional publishing, they want the books to be a certain length, usually over 70,000 words. I tend to write short novels. I like short novels. To get a book to be over 70,000 words, I often felt like I had to pad them, and I didn't like that. By the time I went back to Whackadoodle Times, indie publishing had now opened up. I could publish my books; I didn't have to wait for a traditional publisher. I didn't have to adhere to an unnatural story length: I could let the story determine how long it should be.

With that stressor gone, the story of Whackadoodle Times unfolded. It was still about a rich person but it was her own life she let get out of control (while the world burned around her). The "one great thing a day" was natural and organic to the story, which meant the whole novel didn't revolve around that.

I wrote the bulk of this novel while I was in Tucson at our yearly writing retreat. I had more fun writing this book than any book I've ever written. The narratives is in first person, and Brooke will say almost anything and do almost anything. There was something so liberating about "being" a person like that. She has some huge problems, but she's incredibly honest. I loved writing from that perspective.

It's also sexually explicit in areas. I enjoyed writing that, too, since most of sex scenes were just funny. (At least to me--I was laughing out loud!)I was at my dad's townhouse one day for dinner, and I was talking about how funny the book was. I started to tell him the scene I thought was the funniest. I was in the middle of it when I suddenly stopped. I realized I was about to tell my father about the explicit sex scene. I must have turned fifty shades of red. I said, "Wait. I can't tell you this scene!" I looked at Mario and said, "Why didn't you stop me?" He grinned and said, "I just wanted to see how far you'd go." Hah! I think everyone at the dinner table got a kick out of my embarrassment. (Plus they probably were tired of me talking about my books. It's one of my favorite topics. Some people talk about their kids, their animals, or their jobs. I talk about my stories.)

By the way, I plan on writing two more books in the Whackadoodle Times universe. I think the second one will be called Whackadoodle Times Two. We'll see though. Enjoy this one!

Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book

The One Sentence Pitch

For screenwriter Brooke McMurphy, it's either the End Times or just another week in Hollywood.

Cover blurb

Brooke McMurphy is having one helluva week.

Brooke’s well-constructed dysfunctional life in Hollywood begins to unravel when a homeless woman comes to live with her and her family and the studio asks her to sex up her husband’s script for Zombie Town--the movie he believes will save the world. Then there’s the raging wildfires, earthquakes, and zombies, oh my! It may be just another week in Hollywood, but for Brooke, it could be the most important week of her life.

Chapter One

I know exactly when things changed. Most people can’t point to the time and place when life went whackadoodle. I can. I suppose if I were introspective I might be able to look back in time and say that life as we knew it started to dissolve when Henry Ford made the car. Or when God made man. Or Goddess made woman. Or when the first two haploid gametes fused to become a zygote.

Or when I got married. Had children. Became filled with ennui. Lived the dissipated life.

Only I wasn’t filled with ennui—grief, maybe, but not ennui—and my life wasn’t any more or less dissipated than anyone else’s. At least anyone else on my block.

Which could have been part of the problem. I didn’t exactly live on a block. More like an enclave. Or a bunch of big houses in an area that could be called a canyon, mountain, or hill. All of it slip-sliding into the ocean that was getting closer every day. But I digress. I babble. Thus my father’s nickname for me: Brook. I added the “e” for fun when I was in college. I thought that would stop my classmates from asking me if my brother’s name was “Up a Creek” or “Down the River.”

It wasn’t a very good college.

Anyway, it began once upon a time, I suppose, the day Hayword and I were sitting out by the pool. It was a beautiful bluish kind of day. (We were close to la-la land at the time, so how blue could it be? It’s what the locals call fog and the scientists call the Earth going to Hell in a hand basket—or in a designer handbag, given we were in Californ-eye-aye.)

Hayword was working on a script. Yes, I was married to a Hollywood writer—had been one myself for a while. And he was such a cliché, really. One day he was in great demand; the next day no one would return his calls. This made him slightly neurotic and a bit moody. Some might say he was manic-depressive, but he was not. (Can’t a person drink to blackout some days and cry uncontrollably other days without being labeled?)

Not that Hayword ever drank to a blackout or cried uncontrollably.

Someone in our house did that, but I don’t think it was Hayword.

On this particular day, Hayword was working on the rewrite of Powerbreakers, a script that had already sold. He had gotten the money, so he was on his way to the stage when he started to feel guilty over the massive amount of filthy lucre he received for writing down lies. That was how he characterized it. When he was talking to a stud head, he waxed on about story and drama and point of view. When he groused to me, Hayword said he was merely taking out a book from his library of lies—i.e., his brain—and transcribing it.

Hayword had more guilt about the good life than anyone I had ever met. He was like that when we were kids, too. I’d known him since we were in elementary school. He was a little kid—until he hit about thirteen. Then he sprouted up like a big old sunflower. (I’m spinning some corn now because I did grow up in the Midwest.)

Even when he was little he was always standing up for some cause or some kid, going toe to toe with the bullies that were twice his size. And then there was me, his best friend, motioning the head bully over to me to convince him it would be much more lucrative to let Hayword go. In return, I gave them the answers to some test or paid them a couple of bucks for a week. I’d try to convince Hayword to shut up, but he never would. At least back then. Felt it was his obligation.

Meanwhile, I was paying off his debts.

I was glad when he got tall.

Anyway, we were sitting by the pool together and the doorbell rang. We both got up to answer it. Hayword may have wanted a break from the manuscript—or maybe he was trying to get away from me. I had been talking about our daughter Fern who was working on her master’s degree in psychology up in Santa Barbara. (I named her Fern because I wanted to carry on the woodland fiction that began with my name. Was Fern grounded, rooted or feathery and wild like her name? No. She was mean. Hadn’t liked me since I birthed her, as far as I could tell.)

Hayword and I, along with our twelve-year-old son David, lived in an exclusive neighborhood where we knew all our neighbors, and unfortunately, they knew us. We attended each other’s birthday parties, our children’s weddings, and any backyard barbecues, and we occasionally slept with each other’s spouses. And by “we,” I mean “they.” Personally, I’d seen too many of them naked and heard their views on too many subjects to be interested in having sex with any of them.

What I’m saying is that we knew the people in our ’hood. Still, Hayword should not have opened our front door without even looking through the peephole. We did have a gate; Hayword must have left it open. He wanted to pretend he was still that boy from the Midwest who knew and liked everyone. A boy from the Midwest who believed in the goodness of everyone. Every time he started dancing down this particular nostalgic yellow-brick road, I reminded him that he grew up fifty miles from Detroit, which was the murder capital of the world when we were kids. “Not murder capital of the world,” he’d say. “Just murder capital of the United States.”

Hayword opened the front door. A startling-looking woman stood on our threshold. She wasn’t dressed like a bag lady, but she was not dressed like anyone I had ever seen in la-la land or environs. She was Caucasian. (I hate that word. Sounds like something out of a police bulletin. That was how I looked at her just then. I wanted to memorize her features in case I had to describe her to a police sketch artist.) So she was white. Probably Irish. English. One of those pale tribes. Yet her skin was slightly brown, as though she’d been climbing a mountain or windsurfing. You know what I mean. She had that burnished look of someone who was outdoors a great deal. Her brown hair was pulled away from her head into those nasty Rasta braids. And she wore some kind of dress—truly nondescript—with pants on beneath it. She had a huge bag slung over her shoulder.

She did look like a bag lady. Or what I imagined a bag lady looked like. It had been a long while since I had been anywhere bag ladies roamed.

This woman looked at us with clear blue eyes and said, “You got a pool house?”

Conventional wisdom holds that women are sentimental suckers. Let me tell ya: It ain’t so. It’s men. They are such soft touches. Especially when it comes to women. Hayword was no exception. I don’t mean he was leering at this woman. She was probably only a few years younger than I was. Men don’t lust after women my age much, at least not in this town. She looked smart, like she had all her marbles. Hayword probably assumed she was down on her luck. I figured she was selling something.

Whatever it was, I wasn’t buying.

Hayword was.

“Sure, we got a pool house,” he said. “Why?”

I groaned. Whenever he was fully onto the path of the guilty rich guy, he wanted to do good deeds to assuage his conscience.

“It’s not a pool house,” I said. Hayword looked at me. “It’s more of a garden house.”

“Garden?” Hayword asked.

“I’m going to put in a garden,” I said. Some freaking day I was going to put in a freaking garden.

“So you have a garden house?” the woman asked.

The wind shifted then, and let’s just say that this woman standing on our threshold was a little earthy-smelling. Musky. Sweaty. Not sweat that has turned. But that rich sweaty smell you like on your lover but not on a stranger.

“Look, Eartha,” I said, “whatever you’re selling—”

“I’m not selling,” she said. “And how did you know my name? My father nicknamed me Earth because I smelled like dirt. I added the ‘a’ so it wouldn’t be so strange. But then people nicknamed me Eartha Kitten. I didn’t really like that. Eartha Cat I can dig. Eartha Jaguar. Eartha Cougar.” She was looking at me, but I could tell she was paying attention to my husband, too. “I would like to stay in your garden house for a while,” she said. “I’m a traveller, and I need a rest.”

“Just like that?” I asked.

“In exchange,” she said, “I will do one great thing a day for you.”

I looked at my husband. He was smiling. A sly smile. He loved these kinds of distractions.

“Oh yeah?” he said. “What one great thing would you do today?”

“Let me see the garden house, and then I’ll decide.”

“Okay,” Hayword said.

“Hayword,” I said. “Are you crazy?”

“Excuse us,” he said. “My wife and I need to discuss this.”

He shut the door gently, with Eartha on one side and us on the other. I stood looking at him with my hands on my hips, like some stereotypical woman in some bad movie who was always ruining the fun of her infantile husband.

“Brooke,” he said. “This is gold, gold! We’re locked up in this huge house where we never experience real life. Here’s someone offering to do one great thing for us. Even if it’s only for today, don’t you want to see what it is? Just for fun?” He grinned. “Come on. In the old days, you’d walk a mile for a good time.”

“And I’d walk ten miles away from a bad one,” I said.

“Let’s see where it goes,” he said. “Might make a good movie.”

“She could be a psychopath,” I said. “A serial killer.”

“I’ll make sure she’s not,” he said.

He opened the door again. Eartha Kitten was still standing there.

“We’ll let you do one great thing,” he said, “and then we’ll see. First, though, we need to know that you’re not a psychopath, a serial killer, or on the FBI’s most wanted list.”

“Oh, good lord,” I said. “Just stamp sucker on our foreheads.”

Eartha held her bag out to Hayword. “You can check for weapons,” she said.

Hayword didn’t take the bag. Neither did I. If this were a movie, millions of people in the audience would be screaming, “Don’t, don’t, don’t let her in, you idiot!”

Well, maybe not millions of people.

She slung the bag over her shoulder again.

“My name is Eartha Jefferson.”

I squinted. Her real name could not be Eartha. She was playing me.

She seemed to be waiting to hear who we were. I didn’t say a word. Hayword moved out of the way so she could come inside.

“First, the one great thing,” he said.

Eartha stepped into our house. I shook my head. Hayword was going to learn to lock that goddamn gate if I had to shoot him to get him to remember.

My daft husband led the way through the house and out the back to the pool. Eartha didn’t look to her left or to her right. She wasn’t obviously casing the joint. We walked along the pool and a bit away from the house to the garden house. Hayword opened the door and let Eartha go in first.

I stayed outside.

“Go sit by the pool,” this strange woman said. “I’ll be right out with the one great thing.” She handed Hayword her bag. He took it this time. He looked at me and grinned. If I hadn’t been so annoyed with him, I would have laughed.

We went back to the pool and sat in the lounge chairs. Hayword started looking at manuscript pages again. I lay back and wondered if I could really put a garden somewhere back near the pool house. I kept looking over my shoulder to see what Eartha was doing. Probably sticking our valuables under her baggy dress.

And then she came out of the pool house—garden house—carrying two filled martini glasses. She handed one to me and the other to Hayword. I looked at the drink. It was slightly darker than any martini I had ever had. And the glass was warm. Room-temperature.

“This is your one great thing?” I asked.

“How do you know we’re not both recovering alcoholics?” Hayword asked, “and if I drank this it would end a decade-long dry spell?”

“If that’s the case,” she said, “you might want to do something about that garden house. If you named a place by what was inside it, you’d have to call it the liquor cabinet, not a garden house.”

Hayword laughed.

“There is one caveat,“ Eartha said. “You have a choice. This will be the one great thing for the day. And there are only two glasses of this drink. One each. Once you drink it, it’s done. It’s over. I cannot make another. This one great thing will be gone forever. Do you understand?”

I frowned. I wasn’t sure I understood.

Hayword said, “Sure.”

He downed his martini. Just like that. I yelled his name to stop him, but it was too late. She could have poisoned it. She could have put drugs in it. She could have done anything to it. We had no idea.

“Oh, man,” Hayword said. “What did you do, Eartha? Brooke, you’ve got to taste this.”

I sighed.

“She’s waiting to see if you’ll go down,” Eartha said.

“What?” Hayword asked. “Oh.” He laughed and looked at me. “I don’t think she poisoned it.”

I smelled my drink. The scent of juniper went up my nostrils and seemed to tickle my brain a bit. I closed my eyes, carefully brought the glass up to my lips, and took a sip.

For a moment, I thought I was in a forest. I could smell the pine trees. I could feel the slight chill of the snow on the floor of the forest. And somewhere, someone was brewing hot chocolate.

The martini had a slight sweet taste of chocolate.

“Just the right amount of gin and vermouth,” Hayword said. “And maybe lemon? I love lemon. Or orange. I wish I had savored it. That is a continual lesson for me to learn. Savor, savor, savor.”

I took another sip.

It was the best drink I had ever tasted.

I held my glass out to Hayword.

“No,” Eartha said. “One each. That’s yours.”

“Do you want the rest of it?” I asked.

“I don’t drink,” she said. “So do we have a deal?”

Hayword looked at me. I looked back at him.

“I want to see some ID,” he said to Eartha. “And then we’ll take it one day at a time. One great thing at a time.”

“Good,” she said.

Hayword stood and reached out his hand to her. “I’m Hayword,” he said, “and this is Brooke.”

“Nice to meet you,” she said. “And now, I’ve been walking for a long while. I’d like to rest.”

“I’ll show you where everything is,” Hayword said.

He picked up her bag, and together they went into the garden house.

I sat in my lounge chair looking at the martini. It was absolutely the best thing I had ever drank. I suddenly felt like that little boy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe who wants more of the magical Turkish delight the White Witch feeds him. I wanted to keep drinking this liquid forever. I felt so relaxed after two sips. Happy. Contented. I wanted more. And more.

I stared at the gulp of drink left in the bottom of the glass.

Who did she think she was creating something like this and only making enough for two drinks?

I was no Edmund Peevish in Narnia. Or whatever his name was. And she wasn’t the White Witch.

I tossed the rest of the drink in the straggly bush next to me.

I gasped. What had I done?

And then I licked my lips.

More about this book here...

Butch: A Bent Western

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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for Butch & Other Tidbits

I think I was driving back from the Southwest when I got the idea. The character came first and the book is named after her: Butch. I loved the idea of writing about a tough capable woman in the Old West, a woman who has a predilection for pretty women and hard living.

My novels are populated with GLBT characters—just like real life. Diverse sexuality is an integral and normal part of the lives of my characters. A majority of the characters in Butch are GLBT, including Butch. I didn't want any of my characters to come to harm because of their sexual orientation. I was tired of reading books or seeing movies where something awful usually happened to one of the gay characters because they were gay. Nope. That wasn't going to happen to Butch or anyone else. Crap happens to Butch, but it isn't because of her sexuality.

Butch is a flawed and capable woman, tough, sexy, and sexual, and just the kind of person I would want watching my back. She is orphaned as an infant, and then she lives for several years with Grandma Crow, a sometimes abusive woman. After Grandma Crow dies, Butch endures several years in a home for wayward boys—even though she is not a wayward boy! So when Butch is an adult and she finds people who care about her, she protects them with all her might and heart. I love that.

In some ways, Butch has similar sensibilities as Church of the Old Mermaids, even though it's different! Wayward Ranch is mentioned in The Fish Wife: An Old Mermaids Novel, and the faery sea horses mentioned in Butch are the focus of my novel The Desert Siren (which will be out this summer). I like these sly nods to the Old Mermaids.

I wrote the first chapter of Butch about four years ago. I loved it so much that I got nervous about writing it. I felt like I had to know more since the story took place in 1918. But really, I was just nervous about writing the rest of it! So I stopped.

Originally I had the story set in Taos, New Mexico. I had visited Taos and New Mexico many times, but I hadn't been in a few years and I wanted to do some research there before I started writing Butch. I didn't have the funds to travel at that time so I started a kickstarter project. Although I didn't meet my goal, the enthusiasm of my kickstarter supporters gave me the confidence I needed to finish the novel.

I also realized I didn't have to go to Taos again. I was a fiction writer: I made stuff up. I thought it would be so much more fun to have Butch take place somewhere like Taos but not quite. That's when the small town of Santa Tierra, New Mexico, came into existence. I love Santa Tierra, and I can't wait to write more Butch novels so I can go back. Oh, didn't I mention that? Yep, I have several more Butch novels planned.


Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book

One Sentence Pitch

Anything can happen in Santa Tierra, New Mexico, in 1918, and often does, with Butch McLean there to witness it all and save any damsels or dudes in distress, whatever the occasion.

Cover Blurb

Santa Tierra, New Mexico, 1918

Anything can happen in the weird and wonderful town of Santa Tierra, where Butch McLean protects the residents of Wayward Ranch, finds lovin’ in the arms and up the skirts of her beloved Angel, and keeps one step ahead of the possibly supernatural jaguar who may or may not be stalking her. Come hell or high water, Butch will rescue any dude or damsel in distress with humor and aplomb.

But when Angel dumps her (for a man, no less), a wounded stranger stumbles into town, and the deputy is murdered, Butch may have more mysteries on her hands than even she can solve. Especially since she is suddenly plagued by memories of the terrible childhood years she spent at St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Boys. And to top it all off, she becomes obsessed with finding her prostitute mother’s suicide note.

Butch is not accustomed to being haunted by anything—and she is not interested in ruminating about her life—but now even the animals who cross her path tell her a time of reckoning is near. And when the mystery of the dead deputy leads to revelations about Butch’s own parentage, she might just have a shot at solving the greatest mystery of all: Who is she and why did her mother end up at the end of a rope?

Chapter One

In or around Santa Tierra, New Mexico, 1918 C.E. or thereabouts, Space and Time being a continuum and all

Butch McLean could shoot, sit a horse, spin a yarn, track a varmint or villain, and pleasure a woman better than anyone alive. Butch’s particular talents held little value for the new folks pouring into the Southwest like locusts to a barbecue, but the old-timers still appreciated and tolerated the likes of Butch McLean.

On that late night in April no one fussed much when Butch kicked open the swinging doors to Angel’s Heaven on Earth, while holding a pistol in each hand, and called out, “I am here to rescue Miss Angel. Everyone out now or I will be forced to shoot you.”

The five or so men still in the saloon left quickly, backs to the wall, watching Butch as they scurried out. Butch had been known to take potshots at more than just rabbits. Thirty seconds later, the room was clear, except for the smoke, and Angel came from around the bar, hands on her cinched waist, blond curls framing her face and tickling the top of her bosom.

Butch walked toward Angel, guns still in the air, and leaned over and kissed her pearly white neck, and then her breasts—one at a time.

“Don’t be doin’ that unless you mean it,” Angel said.

“Darlin’,” Butch said. “I always mean it. I don’t have an insincere bone in my entire body.”

“Dammit, Butch,” Angel said. “Those were paying customers. Some day I’m gonna really be in trouble and nobody will believe it!”

“Just call me the cowboy who cried wolf,” Butch said.

“Cowgirl,” Angel said.

“Aww, Angie,” Butch said as she dropped the pistols onto the bar. “I was just trying to have some fun.”

“Sometimes you are more of an asshole than any man I know,” Angel said. “The law is gonna put you in jail if you keep doing this kind of thing. Just wait until I close up and you can sneak in the back like all my other girls do. Now I’m gonna let the boys back in.” She started walking toward the door.

“Let me take a trip up your dress first,” Butch said.

Angel laughed.

“I’ll be glad to,” she said. “After the boys finish their drinks. Now you can either stay here and be good or come back later and be bad.” She opened the door and leaned outside. “Come on in, boys. She promises not to pistol-whip anybody.”

Doc Broome stumbled in first, followed by Merle T. Connelly and Johnny Jack.

Butch sighed and turned back to the bar. This was not the ending to the night she had envisioned. Butch started to pick up her revolvers, but Angel slapped her hands down on them, pulled them away, and slipped them out of sight behind the bar.

“You can get them later,” she said. “You know I don’t allow weapons in my establishment.”

“Well, then,” Butch said, “I had better leave, since my body is a weapon. A weapon of love.”

Hearing all this—since Butch did not understand the concept of a whisper—Johnny Jack and Merle laughed as they climbed back onto their bar stools.

Butch leaned close to Johnny Jack’s right ear. “You remember, don’t you, Jay Jay?”

Merle and Angel stopped and stared at Johnny Jack, whose dark skin was turning darker.

“He was a lot better lookin’ back then,” Butch said, “and I was a lot less particular.”

With that, Butch staggered out of the bar. Or maybe she swaggered. It depended upon who you asked. Memories fog the truth, distort it, amplify it. Or expose it. But everyone appeared to be in good spirits, especially Butch, when she left Angel’s Heaven on Earth. Rosey stood next to someone’s automobile, her black and white coat nearly fluorescent in the moonlight. Her white tail swept across her black rump. Butch patted Rosey’s almost all-white face. Black circled her left eye, and white spread across her neck, barrel, and flank and down her left rear leg like a kind of jagged almost horse-shaped white continent across the sea of black horse.

“I need to take a leak, Rosey. Then we’ll be on our way. Or maybe not. Where’s George? Have you seen George? Oh fer chrissakes, I’m talking to a horse’s rear end.” She giggled. “Not so much different than talking to a man.”

Butch had come into town earlier with George, but he had business at the other end of this street a few blocks from the plaza. The nearly full moon lit up the ramshackle wooden buildings that seemed to lean one against the other. On the few occasions Butch actually noticed this particular bent to the buildings—like now—she wondered what kept them up. “Whiskey, of course,” Butch whispered. “We all need something to keep us standing.”

She breathed deeply. A romp with Angel would have been fun, but this night air was bracing, nearly knocking the drunk off of her. She gazed up at the clear dark sky. The stars shivered and winked. She could hear the whisper of the acequia madre even though it was some distance away. She grinned. The full moon, silence, and alcohol made her senses preternatural. A chorus of coyotes began yipping at the moon. Someone was shouting out in the desert. Butch listened. Crazy Betty. Could be yelling at the coyotes or the moon. Or space aliens. Who knew? Her shouts died away.

The cottonwood trees across the street and down a bit stood tall and nearly bare in the moonlight, like tangled members of a Day of the Dead tableau, or a Danse Macabre. Despite this, the air smelled of spring the way only New Mexican air can: like dust, peppers, and the color blue.

Butch started to walk away from the buildings and into the night, forgetting why she was there, only wanting to get closer to the sound of the coyotes and the mother ditch. Suddenly the north sky lightened, and Butch looked up. A shooting star streaked across the sky. Butch laughed. If Crazy Betty saw that falling star she’d be full of space alien stories for days.

Butch heard a woman cry out in the darkness. Instantly she ran toward the sound, up over a silver rise and then down again. Running in the desert was plain stupid; running at night in the desert was a death wish. However, Butch could never resist the cry of a woman in trouble. And she was drunk.

Suddenly, she ran right into a person. They both fell back onto the ground. Butch jumped instantly to her feet. Nothing or no one was going to catch her on the ground: not a scorpion, rattler, or a man, certainly.

The body she knocked into was a bit slower getting up off the ground.

“Are you all right?” Butch asked. Butch always talked in a kind of drawl. Not Texan. Good Lord, no. Not Southern. Kind of Mexican, Native American, and plain American all rolled into one.

She reached her hand out. The man stood on his own, quickly dusting off his chaps with one arm; he kept the other arm bent at his side. He wore ammo belts crossed over his chest like a Mexican bandito; a cowboy hat shaded his face from Butch.

“You Pancho Villa or something?” Butch asked.

The man tried to step around her. Butch moved to block him.

“I heard a woman cry out,” Butch said, noticing a black shape on the ground near a medium-sized paloverde whose yellow flowers looked bright white in the darkness. “That her?”

The man shook his head. “I was the one who yelled,” he said, his English accented. Mexican. Clipped almost. From the upper class?

“I was thrown from my horse and was trying to get my bearings. I stumbled over that—that body. I yelled.” He hesitated. “Like a woman. My voice . . . rises when I am . . . afraid.”

“Happens to the best of us,” Butch said. “I scream like a woman, too. Nothing wrong with that.”

“But you are a woman,” the man said.

“That’s a fact,” Butch said, “I am pleased to report.”

She kept her eye on Bandito as she went toward the body. She squatted next to it. A man. She found his arm and felt for a pulse at his wrist.

“He’s not dead,” Butch said.

“Shit.” The English word out of the man’s mouth sounded desperate.

Butch stood and looked at Bandito.

“You wanna tell me something about this?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t know you. I don’t know him.”

Butch could see Bandito’s arm now in the moonlight. Part of his sleeve was dark.

“He shot you?” Butch said. “I didn’t hear a shot. Looks like you’re bleeding kind of heavy.”

“He shot me some time back,” Bandito said quickly, as though relieved to speak of it. “He and his compañero have been tracking me. My ex-wife’s husband won’t let me have my son, Frederico. He’s four years old. He needs his—he needs his father. I went to Mexico to get him back, and my ex-wife’s husband sent his thugs after me after I made a . . . fuss.”

Butch chuckled. “A fuss, eh? I kinda like making a fuss myself.” Something about this young man tickled her. Like Angel’s blond curls. “So there’s two of them? Where’s the other one?”

“I fell from my horse. And I found this man who was tracking me. I hit him with a rock from behind. I don’t know where the other man is.”

Butch tried to remember if she had seen any strangers at Angel’s. The man on the ground moaned.

“Come on,” Butch said to Bandito. “I guess I better get you outta here. The doc is drunker than I am, so I’ll take you home. TomA and Trick will either cure you or kill ya.”

“I’d prefer the cure,” Bandito said.

“Wouldn’t we all.”

Butch and Bandito went over the rise and down again, toward Rosey. Butch untied the horse and got up into the saddle. She reached her arm down and helped the man up behind her.

“I’m Butch McLean, by the way,” Butch said as she turned Rosey around. She gently kicked the horse into a gallop.

“I’m Mateo Cruz,” the man said.

“Yeah, well, hang on, Bandito,” Butch said. “We’re gonna get out of Dodge.”

A moment later, the darkness swallowed the trio.

Mateo Cruz’s grip on Butch’s waist began to weaken as they neared their destination. In the distance, Butch could see the soft glow of the lantern TomA had left outside the gate of Wayward Ranch, the former home of St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Boys.

“We’re almost there,” Butch said, gripping Bandito’s good arm that loosely held onto Butch’s waist.

Butch reached for one of her pistols to shoot it off to let TomA or someone know that she needed help, and then she remembered she had left her pistols at Angel’s.

Rosey trotted up to the closed wooden gate. Butch leaned over and grabbed the clapper of the bell and rang it.

Bandito slumped against Butch.

“Sorry, Bandito,” Butch said. “You ain’t my type. At least not tonight. I was in the mood for some Angel. But what the hell, put you in a dress and we’ll see what we can work out.”

The gate opened, and TomA and Patrick—Trick—were soon next to Rosey.

“Shot,” Butch said as the two men reached up to pull the nearly unconscious man off the horse. “Doc was drunk.”

The thin TomA hooked one of Bandito’s arms around his neck, and Trick, who was slightly bigger, put the other arm around his neck. They half-carried and half-dragged Mateo Cruz toward the Big House.

Butch rode Rosey through the open gates, then jumped down, picked up the lantern TomA and Trick had left on the ground, then pulled the gate shut. She made certain the gate was closed tight, the latch in place. After all, it was her responsibility: She was the head of security at Wayward.

“Come, Rocinante,” she said to the paint. “If I stall long enough I won’t have to watch all the bloody bits.”

The horse followed Butch away from the Big House, past the casita, chapel, and bunkhouse to the corral. Butch set the lantern on top of a fence post. She could hear the horses chewing in the corral, saw their dark shapes under the moon. One horse let out a short whinny. Rosey answered it.

Butch undid the cinch strap and pulled the saddle and blanket off Rosey and set them just inside the barn.

“I’ll take care of her.” Hunter stepped out of the shadows.

“She’s been ridden hard,” Butch said. “She needs to walk it off.”

“Whoa!” Hunter said as she came closer to Butch. “Smells like you need to walk it off, too.” The girl waved her hand in front of her face.

“You need to have more respect for your elders, child,” Butch said as she started to walk toward the Big House. “Or I’ll tell you-know-who that you were out communin’ with nature again.”

“Go ahead,” Hunter said. “Seventeen is old enough.”

“Old enough for what?” Butch stopped and turned around. That didn’t sound good.

“For everything,” Hunter said. Her arm moved up and down as she curried the horse.

Butch walked back to Hunter and Rosey.

“What’s goin’ on?” Butch asked. “Something happen? I thought you were out doing the wild with Jimmy.”

Hunter stopped and looked at Butch. “That’s all I meant. TomA and Trick like Jimmy. You know that. So it would be all right to tell them.”

Butch took the girl’s chin in her hand and gently turned it toward the light. Her face was dirty, and she had a red spot over her left cheekbone.

“What happened? Did Jimmy hit you? I’ll kill him.” She reached for her guns. Still at Angel’s. “Goddamn it.”

“Jimmy wouldn’t hurt me, Butch,” Hunter said. “You know that. I tripped. I was trying to get back to the house before . . . before they figured out I was gone, and I tripped and fell.”

Butch squinted. “I’ve known you since you were born,” she said. “I’ve always known when you were lying. Always.”

Hunter looked at her. “So? Am I lying?”

They stared at each other for several seconds. Breathless.

“Oh hell,” Butch said, letting out her breath. “I don’t know. I was bluffin’. You sure you all right? Want Trick to look you over?”

“Geez, Butch. You’re worse than an old woman. I tripped is all. I’m all right.”

“Well, how about I go shoot Jimmy anyway? Your daddies would probably give me a raise. You’re too young.” She started to walk away again.

“How old were you?” Hunter asked.

“Jesus, girl. You want to have that discussion now? I’ve got a man in the house with a bullet hole in his arm.”

“Yeah. So? I’ve known you since I was born, nearly. You hate the sight of blood.”

“I don’t so much hate it,” Butch said. “I just don’t want to get in the way while Patrick works his healing charms.”

“You could bullshit the skin off a rattlesnake, but you can’t bullshit me,” Hunter said.

“Watch your mouth, girl,” Butch said. “Awright. I’ll tell you. When I was staying here, when it was still St. Anne’s and my momma was long ago hanged and dead and Grandma Crow was dead and they brought me here, I had to learn to fend for myself to survive those nuns and those boys. I was ten and the boys were all . . . wayward.”

“Horny as hell?”

“That, too. Before long I had to fight off their advances. That’s how I learned to fight. I kicked, gouged, and cursed my way out of more than one encounter. Then Sister Jeanmarie—she was Irish—came along and she showed me how to really fight. And how to shoot. She also kept me out of the dormitory and living with the nuns. Sometimes that sick fuck Sister Claw and Father Brufield had me inside the dormitory as a temptation for his boys to resist, he said. But that’s another story.”

“Yes, it is,” Hunter said. “I asked about your first time having sex, not the first time someone tried to rape you. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to scare me. But Jimmy doesn’t scare me. He’s very gentle.”

“Oh Christ, sister. I do not want to talk about this.”

“Since when? Your conquests are legendary.”

“That’s just bragging,” Butch said, leaning against the fence. “But talking about the first time. Hmm.” She shook her head. “The first time I was kissed proper was under that old cottonwood in back of the chapel here. Her name was Suzanne. I was thirteen and she was about the same age, maybe a little older. She wanted to practice on me before she kissed her boyfriend. At least that’s what she said. She was quite enthusiastic. That’s all I’ll say. Except that her lips were so soft. So soft. Like when your lips first touch a peach. That soft peach fuzz. Mmmmm. Suzanne.”

“Butch, not your first kiss. Your first time having sex.”

“That is a story for another night,” she said. “Now walk that horse.” Butch pushed away from the fence. “You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m sure,” Hunter said.

“You know you can always come to me,” Butch said. “About anything. I’ll help. I might make fun of you first. But I’ll help you out eventually.”

“Go away,” Hunter said. “I hope that man’s wound is really bloody. Gory. I hope you faint.”

“Honey, I don’t faint,” she said. “How could a woman be a woman if she fainted every time she saw blood? Wouldn’t that be inconvenient. And ain’t that a terrible thing to wish on a man. A bloody wound.” Butch slapped the girl on the butt. “See you later, kid.”

Butch walked to the back of the Big House, ran up the short stack of steps, opened the thick wooden kitchen door, and went inside.

Mateo Cruz sat at the long wooden table, his left arm resting on the table while Trick wrapped it in gauze, a wash bowl with a bloody cloth swimming in hot water and a bottle of alcohol nearby. TomA sat by the huge kiva fireplace where a small fire snapped around green wood. On the other side of the room, Maria stood at a counter, spooning what looked like chicken verde onto two plates.

Cruz glanced at Butch, then looked quickly away.

“What are you doing here this late, darlin’?” Butch asked as she walked over to Maria and sat at a stool at the counter. Maria dropped a fork onto one of the plates, then pushed it across the counter to Butch.

“Satisfying your every whim,” Maria said.

“Hardly,” Butch said. She took a bite of the chicken verde. “You are a goddess, Maria. Javier at a card game?”

She nodded. “At our house. Let him wake up in the morning surrounded by their mess and clean it up. Not me. Have you seen Jimmy?”

Butch shook her head.

“You’re lucky,” Trick said to Bandito. “It’s just a graze. A deep graze, but it’ll heal. Probably have a scar and you might lose some muscle strength.”

Butch looked over at them. In the golden light of the lamps and fire, Bandito looked even younger than Butch had first guessed. He still had cheek fuzz rather than stubble. Twenty? Twenty-five? Already with a kid and an ex-wife? And running for his life. He had a more complicated life than Butch’s. Not that her life was really that complicated. Kind of routine actually, when she thought about it.

“Butch,” TomA said, “please tell me you did not have anything to do with this.”

“If I’d a shot him, he’d be dead,” Butch said.

“Really?” TomA said. “Last I saw you target practicing, you couldn’t hit a broad standing at the side of a barn, let alone a man in the dark.”

Butch raised an eyebrow. “Normally I would shoot you for such blatant disrespect, but I left my pistols at the gates of heaven.”

“Beneath Angel’s skirts?”

“Something like that.”

“Keep this wound clean,” Trick said to Mateo. “I’ll change the dressing tomorrow.”

Maria took the other plate over to the table and put it in front of Mateo.

Trick patted Mateo’s arm lightly, then picked up the wash basin and left the room.

“Where you come from, Mateo Cruz?” Maria asked in Spanish.

“Chihuahua,” Cruz said.

“You are a long way from home,” Maria continued in Spanish.

Butch and TomA glanced at each other. Had Maria forgotten they spoke Spanish too?

“As are you,” Cruz said.

“I was born here,” Maria said. “And I don’t like strangers tracking blood to our door. Then all kinds of trouble starts sniffing around.”

“Hey, Maria,” Butch said. “You keep flirting with him, I’ll be forced to tell Javier.”

Maria looked over at Butch, seemingly startled. TomA got up from the fire and sat at the table with Cruz. Maria went back to the counter.

“What’s eating you?” Butch asked Maria quietly. “We have strangers showing up here every day.”

It was that kind of place, a ranch but also a way station of sorts—or a sanctuary—where artists, misfits, and other lost souls came to sit for a spell. Or as TomA often put it, “Where queers have no fears.”

Maria opened the door on the wooden stove and peered inside for a moment. Then she slammed it shut. It popped open. She shut it again, this time more carefully.

“Here,” Butch said, pushing the plate toward her. “Why don’t you eat some of your own cooking? It’s mighty tasty.”

Maria stared at her. Butch smiled and handed her the fork. The older woman took it and made a stab at the chicken and came up with a bite.

“Isn’t that better?”

“Something is not right,” Maria said. “I can feel it.”

“It’s only the full moon,” Butch said.

Butch had known Maria since a group of white people had dropped Butch off at the front door of St. Anne’s School for Wayward Boys. Sister Michael Joseph Tom Dick and Harry or whatever her name was—Butch thought of her as Sister Claw—had stood next to Butch as the white people in the wagon left them in the dust, her hand on Butch’s shoulder, her fingers digging into her like a vise. Later that day after Sister Claw forced Butch to put on a dress, Butch ran away to the kitchen where Maria stood behind the counter slapping flat bread dough back and forth between her hands. Maria was probably twenty years old then, maybe younger.

“You are the new one,” Maria had said. “You must be hungry.”

Butch had pulled out a wooden chair and sat at the table. A few minutes later, Maria set a plate of blue corn tortillas, spotted beans, and squash in front of her.

“Don’t tell the Father or Mother,” Maria said. “They think the blue corn is poison. Of course they think anything to do with the Indians is poison. What’s your name?”

“Butch,” she said.

Maria went back to making flat bread at the counter. “Your mother named you Butch? Did the women bless you with corn pollen at dawn as the sun came up?”

“My mother was white,” Butch said. “And a whore. She killed herself when I was a baby. I’ve eaten food like this at the Pueblo with my grandma.”

“Some day you should have the blessing,” Maria said. “I can make you another plate if you’re still hungry, Butch.”

“Her name is not Butch.” Sister Claw came into the kitchen then, her hands hidden within the folds of her habit. “She won’t tell me her true name. I have consulted with Father Brufield, and we have agreed we will call you Mary until we find out what your Christian name is.”

“I am not a Christian,” Butch said, “and my name is not Mary.”

Sister Claw’s hand came out of cloth, slapped Butch across the face, and withdrew into the fabric once again so quickly that Butch thought she had imagined it—until her face began pulsing with the red mark Sister Claw’s hand had left behind.

“Sister Michael Joseph!” Maria said.

“My hand is an extension of God’s love,” Sister Claw said. “She has been living as a heathen long enough. It’s time she became civilized, like all the boys here. It is our duty and responsibility.”

Sister Claw turned and left the room. Butch listened to the whisper of the cloth as she went and knew she should memorize that sound, become alert to it.

Maria said, “They’re not all like her. And she doesn’t mean to be so heartless. It’s just that she was born without one.”

Butch smiled and finished her meal. She took the dress off soon after that. She walked about the place in her underwear. The boys laughed and pointed. Sister Claw and Father Brufield beat the crap out of her. She persisted. Every time they put a dress on her, she took it off, ripped it to shreds, and walked around in her undergarments. Then they whipped her. Finally one of the nuns suggested a compromise: Butch could wear pants except when she went to church. Then she had to put on a dress. She agreed, and the beatings stopped. For the most part. And the kitchen—with Maria in it—became Butch’s sanctuary.

Now Trick returned to the kitchen. “It’s time for bed,” he said. “TomA, you’ve been up since before dawn.”

“Painting, love,” TomA said. “It’s not like I was working.” He grinned, stood, and stretched. Trick took one of TomA’s hands in his and kissed the top of it.

“You are welcome to stay as long as you like,” TomA said to Cruz, “although we’re going to have to put you up in the attic. We’re expecting a full house after the ditch cleaning for the Wayward Art Spectacle. You’re welcome to stay for that.”

Butch groaned.

The three men looked at her.

“Nothing more boring than listening to a bunch of men discuss art. Women, yes, maybe. Then at least there’d be something beautiful to look at.”

“Women come, too,” TomA said. “Don’t listen to her. It’s quite stimulating. She loves it.”

“By the way,” Trick said, “Jezebel might be back in the area.”

“What?” Butch said.

“Javier heard it from one of the men at the card game,” Maria said. “A couple of calves were taken from the Foster ranch.”

Butch shook her head. “Naw. Just some tourist or Easterner who doesn’t know the difference between an Appaloosa and a jaguar.”

“Anyway,” Trick said. “Could you check it out? She does have a habit of showing up where you are.”

“Not true,” Butch said. “Whoever told you that is a liar.”

“You told us,” Trick said.

“See what I mean?”

“Take Mr. Cruz up to his room, will you?” TomA said. “I am a bit tired and those stairs are hard on my knees. Put him in the one at the west end. The door to the other room sticks. If you see Hunter, please tell her to get to bed.”

Trick put his arm across TomA’s shoulders, and they left the room. TomA appeared to be limping a bit. Butch started to say something and then stopped. Hunter was right; she was acting like a worried old lady.

“You ready, Bandito?”

Cruz stood. “That was very good, Señora Maria. Thank you.”

“Why do you need all those bullets?” Maria asked. “You look like you are dressed for a war.”

“It is just the style where I come from,” Cruz said.

“The style of bandits, you mean,” Maria said. “We don’t allow guns in this house.”

Cruz glanced at Butch.

“Hey, don’t look at me,” she said. “I left my guns in town. Some uppity woman took them from me.”

“As you can see,” Cruz said, “I have no guns, only bullets. The guns were in my saddlebags.”

Maria picked up the dish from the table. “Drink that tea,” Maria said. “You think I made it for my health? No. It’s for yours. It will help with the pain.”

Cruz picked up the cup and gulped the tea. Then he set the cup back on the table. Maria picked it up and went back to the sink.

“I’ll show you your room,” Butch said, and she led the man out of the kitchen and down the long hallway.

“I don’t suppose there’s any way of going back and finding my horse?” Cruz asked as they walked into the Big Room.

“What kind of horse is it?” Butch asked. “I’ll put the word out in the morning.” She picked up the lamp on the low table next to the leather sofa.

“An Appaloosa I—I found,” he said.

They climbed a set of stairs that led to the second floor.

“A gelding, stallion, mare?”

Cruz frowned. “I don’t really know.”

What kind of person didn’t know what kind of animal they were riding?

“You are a strange bird,” Butch said.

They walked down a long narrow hallway and then up a short stairway to the upper floor. Every time Butch came up to these rooms she thought about Sister Claw and Father Brufield. They locked her up here—in the punishment room—after her beatings because they knew she could not bear being kept indoors in such a small space.

They never found out that she had quickly figured out how to escape her prison and wander freely through the nearly empty house.

Butch shook her head. That was ancient history, and she was not one of those whiners who spent time ruminating about her past.

“If your horse is a stallion, he’s probably gone to find a mare,” Butch said. “If it’s a mare, she’s probably looking for food and water. Gelding might stay right where he dropped you.”

“He didn’t drop me,” he said. “I fell. I’m not a true horseman.”

“Honestly? I wouldn’t have guessed,” Butch said. Her sarcasm was lost on the bandito.

The light from the lamp barely made a dent in the close stuffy darkness of the top floor. Butch walked down the hall without a glance toward the punishment room and opened the door to the other room. The lamp illuminated a small bed and tiny dresser. Butch set the lamp on the dresser and went to the window. It looked out over the silvery desert. She pushed the window open.

“There’s a little night air for ya,” Butch said.

Butch heard a scraping sound. She looked toward the open door.

“What was that?” she asked.

Cruz shrugged. “Sounded like it was close by.”

They walked out into the narrow hall. Butch went to the punishment room door, turned the handle, and pushed on the door. It wouldn’t open. She couldn’t tell if it was locked or stuck, like TomA had said. She stood still for a moment and listened.

“Maybe a rat or squirrel,” Butch said as she walked back to Cruz’s room.

“Or a madwoman in the attic,” Cruz said.

“What’s that?”

“Have you ever read Jane Eyre?” Cruz asked.

“As a matter of fact,” Butch said, “I have not. That been translated into Spanish?”

“I read it in English,” he said.

“Do tell?” Butch could speak and understand Spanish fluently, but she could barely read it.

“Jane Eyre is a governess to a rich older man’s charge,” Cruz said. “They live in a mansion and sometimes when she’s on the upper floors, Jane hears strange noises. She falls in love with the man, Rochester, and he with her. On their wedding day, just as she is about to say her vows, a man stops the wedding and declares Rochester is already married. His first wife is insane, and Rochester has her locked in the attic.”

“Sounds like a good story,” Butch said. “Especially if Jane rescues the first wife in the attic, and they run off together.”

Cruz laughed. “That is not quite what happens. Jane does leave the man. The wife gets loose and burns down the mansion, crippling and blinding the man. Jane Eyre returns then, and they live happily ever after.”

“Happily ever after?” Butch shook her head. “I like my version better.”

“I think I might, too,” he said. “Although when I was younger I felt sorry for the man. Now I am not quite so sympathetic.”

Butch’s mother’s name was Jane. Maybe she had run afoul of her own Rochester. Only she hadn’t made it out alive.

Outside the dog began barking.

“I better go see what’s bothering Archie,” Butch said. “When he was young, he’d bark at anything. Now that he’s old, he doesn’t usually bark at anything.”

“Thank you for all you have done for me,” Cruz said. “I appreciate it.”

“Any time,” Butch said. She glanced at Cruz, smiled uncomfortably, then hurried down the dark hall and stairs. He had a nice looking face, this Cruz fellah, and—quite frankly—a nice ass. She had not been attracted to an ass of that persuasion since she saw George coming out of the water a few years ago, his long black hair touching the top of his backside, and she had gasped at his beauty and had been glad (once again) that she was not a male and could easily hide her desire. She had been uncomfortable around him for many days afterward. Until he belched. Or farted. Or something. And she stopped lusting after him. He was just a guy. Sometimes she wished she was more attracted to more men more often. It would be easier. Women were a pain in the ass. Too much courting required. Which was probably why she had taken up with Johnny Jack for a short time a long while ago. And she had crossed to the other side on a few other occasions.

Why was she even thinking about this? Still drunk. Still unsatisfied. Angel had invited her to come back later. Maybe now was later.

She walked through the kitchen. Maria was gone. Archie still barked. Butch reached for her guns.

“Goddamn it!” she said when she realized they were still gone.

She stepped out the back door into darkness. Suddenly George was there beside her, carrying a lamp and a rifle. He tossed Butch the rifle and pulled out his pistol from its holster.

“Heard Jezebel is back in the area,” George said. “Where’d you go anyway? I was looking for you in town.”

“Long story,” she said. “I’ll believe Jezebel is back when I see her.”

They walked toward the chicken house which was not far from the Big House. Butch heard the kitchen door open. She turned. Hunter stood on the steps.

“Don’t shoot it if it’s a coyote,” Hunter shouted as Butch and George walked toward the coop that was near the backside of the house. “Or a mountain lion!”

“We promise to give whatever it is a stern warning, darlin’,” Butch said.

As they got closer to the chicken house, Butch could hear the chickens squawking.

“Archie!” George called to the dog. “What do you see?”

The dog ran up to George, wagging his tail. George and Butch walked around to the front of the chicken house. Archie loped away to Hunter. The door to the chicken house was open.

George took the lantern and looked inside. The chickens chuck-chucked at him. “Nothing dead.” He counted. “But one is missing. Isn’t this door supposed to be latched?”

“At night,” Butch said. Even so, they had a tall fence around the back to keep the critters away from the vegetable garden and the chickens. Butch squatted on the ground and looked for prints.

“I smell cat,” George said as he stepped out of the chicken house and closed the door.

“Is this your Indian seventh sense or something? I thought you told me all that mystic stuff was bullshit.”

“You can’t smell anything because you’ve got the stink on you,” George said.

“But cat?” Butch said, standing. “A lot of trouble for a mouthful.”

They walked a bit until they were looking up at the branches of a cottonwood tree leaning over the fence. A coyote wouldn’t climb a tree, but a mountain lion would. They had never had trouble from a mountain lion. Not this close to the house, not in April.

“Could be Jezebel,” George said. “You know what they say.”

“I don’t know who the fuck they are,” Butch said, “but they’re wrong. Animals don’t visit revenge upon people. People are the only ones who do that kind of shit.”

“I’m with you on that, Butch,” George said as they stood staring at the cottonwood in the darkness, “but you did kill one of her cubs.”

“I don’t believe I did,” Butch said. “Goddamn it.”

George laughed. “All right, we’ll ignore the evidence for a minute. Maybe she wants you to hunt down the real killer and bring him to justice.”

“You assume the killer is a he? Women can be as cruel as men.”

“Witness you with your lovers.”

“I am not cruel. I’m—”

“Inattentive? Indifferent? Inaccessible?”

“Jesus, George. I’ve got a hangover and I’m still drunk. Now you’re ragging on me about how I treat women. What’s your problem?”

“Just secretly in love with you, I guess,” he said, “and wish you’d treat me so bad.”

Butch looked over at him. He laughed.

“Nothing else we can do right now,” he said. “Call it a night? I got some coffee on the stove in the casita.”

They turned and walked back toward the Big House.

“Hey, I found this amazing-looking Appaloosa wandering around in the desert near Angel’s,” George said. “I tied it up near the saloon, but I’m hoping the owner doesn’t show up. I was going to go back in the morning and get it.”

“I know who owns it,” Butch said. “He’s here. Some guy shot him. Bandito. Er, Mateo Cruz. He claims his ex-wife’s new husband sent some goons after him. Sounds pretty strange since he looks about two years old. Not old enough to have an ex-wife and a kid. I found one of the guys he said was following him. He had knocked him out with a rock. He thought he’d killed him, but he hadn’t. The guy will wake up with a bad headache. I told Bandito I’d try to find his horse. He seems . . . a bit lost. I think I’ll ride in and get the horse now.” Maybe she could make a quick stop at Angie’s on the way back. “You wanna come? I need to stop by Angie’s and pick up my guns anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” George said. “I’m not sitting on my horse waiting for you all night again.”

“No chance of that,” Butch said. “The night is just about over.”





The Appaloosa was still standing in front of Angel’s, tied to the post. Butch and George got off their horses and looked at the pony. No one else was about. No lights. No sounds.

“I’ll go in and get my pistols,” Butch said.

“I’ll take the pony and start back to the ranch,” George said.

“You’ll miss my great wit on the way home if you leave without me. You know you will.”

Butch tried the saloon door, but it was locked. She went around the back and tried the door that led to Angel’s apartment. It opened easily. Butch smiled. At last. She could almost feel Angel’s skin against hers. Could imagine falling to sleep in her arms on her bed—which was much more comfortable than Butch’s raggedy ass bed in the casita. She was about to shout her arrival when it occurred to her Angel might be asleep. She would be considerate and keep her voice down. And then she’d tell Angel how considerate she’d been when she woke her up to make love to her.

Butch walked softly down the hall to the bedroom. The door was open, and she could see by the lantern light that Angel was in bed.

And Merle T. Connelly was on top of her.

“Oh shit, Angie,” Butch said, standing in the doorway.

“Butch!” Angel said, pulling up the covers as Merle climbed off her and sat next to her, shaking his head.

“I’ve seen you naked, sugar,” Butch said. “No sense covering up now. Merle T. Connelly? That’s disgusting.”

“Don’t shoot me, Butch,” he said.

Butch reached for her guns. “Goddamn it. I gotta get those things back. I ain’t gonna shoot you. Angie, I knew you had other lovers. But this one? He’s got a dick.”

“He’s not a dick!”

“I said he has a dick, Angel,” Butch said.

“So do you!” she said. “You just can’t see yours. Except when you’re waving around those pistols.”

“Let’s not get insulting,” Butch said, “so we can end this peacefully.”

Butch turned away and walked toward the door that opened into the saloon. Why did it have to be Merle T. Connelly? Something about him always got on her nerves. He reminded her too much of the boys at St. Anne’s Home for Wayward Boys, especially the ones who were always trying to start a fight and then blaming her when the nuns came running. And as far as Butch could tell, Connelly didn’t work for a living; he lived off his daddy’s income.

A moment later, she heard Angel’s bare feet on the floor behind her.

“He wants to get married,” Angel said. “And have children. He’s stable. He’s constant. Goddamn it, Butch. Look at me.

Butch stopped and turned to face Angel in the dark. They stared at each other.

“Well, don’t you have anything to say?” Angel asked.

“I’ll miss you, darlin’,” Butch said, “and I wish you all the best. Now I’m gonna get my . . . cold hard guns and go on home.”

She turned and pushed the door open and stepped into the saloon. It still smelled of beer and smoke. She had the room memorized. Even in the dark she could easily walk to the break in the bar and reach around for her guns. Which she did.

Then, without a backward glance, she went to the front door, unlocked it, and went through it to where George was getting on his horse. He held the reins of the Appaloosa in one hand and the reins of his horse in the other.

“That was quick,” George said. “Even for you.”

Butch didn’t say anything. She got back on Rosey.

They headed away from town. The night was graying into morning. Some warbler began to sing, but Butch could not quite place it. Her drunk was now almost completely gone.

What a waste of whiskey the night had been.

They traveled in silence as the gray night turned to gold green day. The sky became that perfect blue Butch had never seen any other place except in a New Mexican sky.

“George,” Butch said, “did you ever wonder where the hell your life is going?”

“No,” he said. “And neither do you. You need to listen to the dawn.”

“I’ve got a hangover, and I haven’t even slept yet.”

“Some corn pollen crushed on your forehead,” he said. “A prayer to the directions. A dip in the water. You’d come to your senses.”

For a moment, Butch imagined herself next to the water, beside Sacred Lake, naked, awaiting the dawn, awaiting the plunge into the icy water.

“Things are changing,” Butch said. “I can feel it. And you know that’s sayin’ something because I don’t feel nothing.” She laughed. George was silent.

“I found Angel in bed with Merle T. Connelly,” Butch said.

“That could not have been an attractive picture,” George said.

Butch laughed. “That’s putting it mildly. She was mad at me. I don’t think I understand women, George. At all.”

“I don’t know what to say to that, Butch.”

Butch heard an automobile horn behind her.

Deputy Martin Paper drove up next to them. They reined the horses to a stop.

“You hear?” Martin asked.

“Hear what?” Butch said. “It’s the butt crack of dawn. All I hear are the birds and the ringing in my ears.”

“Found a dead man just over the hill,” Martin said, pointing behind him, out the window. “Sheriff’s over there right now. Told me to go look for anything suspicious. The man was shot through the heart. Or the liver. Heart’s in the middle, right? Or is that the stomach? Anyway, they’re already talking about renaming that place Dead Man Gulch. Has quite a ring, doesn’t it? And won’t that be ironic? I mean finding a dead man there.”

Butch and George looked at each other.

“Who exactly did you fuck to get that badge?” Butch asked.

“Gotta go,” Martin said. “Nice Appaloosa.”

He drove away. Butch pulled her neckerchief up around her nose and mouth.

“Those things stink,” she said. “Should be a law against them.”

“I suppose that dead man is your unconscious man,” George said.

“I suppose he is.”

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