First Chapter of The Monster's Daughter

My new novel, The Monster's Daughter, is out! You can find out more about how it came into being here. It's available in print and as an e-book. Enjoy this first chapter.

 





Part One: 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.

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Desert Siren

(Here's the first chapter of the new novel. As always, keep in mind this is first draft. I'll change things later and add more specific details, particularly about the setting. This novel came to me like many of my stories do: as a single image. I kept seeing a spigot out in the desert. From that evolved this novel, which I am writing while at the Sanctuary in Arizona. I won't finish it before I leave but it's over half done. Enjoy!)

Chapter One

Connie heard Jimmy barking in her dream. And a truck speeding away. She opened her eyes--her heart racing--and the dog still barked. She threw off the covers and ran to the window. In the near distance, she saw Jimmy chasing Chuck's pickup as it headed toward the open ranch gates. Dust billowed up behind the yellow vehicle, like an instant smoke screen, enveloping the truck so that it disappeared from view sooner than it would have normally.

Normally?

Connie frowned. Did that mean something was abnormal?

She could still hear her heart in her ears.

Why hadn't Chuck taken Jimmy with him? Why was he heading out of the ranch, going west toward town? He was supposed to go out today with her brother Philip, to round up strays.

Jimmy was howling.

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

The clock read 6:10 a.m. Alarm was set for 5:30.

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. She had spent most of the day over at the Ellis Ranch helping Alice with a sick foal. It had eaten something it shouldn't--probably some kind of trash the illegals or drug runners had left behind on the land. Alice's horses were more like scavenging dogs than horses, Connie thought. Alice believe they were adventurous gourmets: Ready to try to eat anything once.

Connie's neighbors believed she had a gift with horses. Connie knew it was just that she preferred horses to cattle and she would use almost any excuse to avoid a day out on the range if it meant she had to get down and dirty with cattle.

Connie left the bedroom and hurried down the stairs. She had always thought a second story was ridiculous out here in the Sonora Desert where it got 120 degrees on a good summer day, but Chuck believed a real home had to have a second story. So they had built an addition butted up to the end of the ranch house that had been in Connie's family for a hundred and fifty years, give or take. In the summer the addition was unbearably hot; in the winter it was too cold. Plus it prevented the rest of the house from taking advantage of any cross breeze.

Fortunately it was spring. So the temperature was just right.

"I feel like Goldilocks," she murmured.

She hurried down the hall to the front door. She flung it open and went out and stood on the porch. The air was cool. It smelled slightly of mesquite. Desert scrubland 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 far 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 cattle. I can relate." The black and white Australian sheep dog ran into the house past her.

Connie followed Jimmy 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 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 never wrote her notes. He never 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, Terry's birthday right, your birthday left."

Connie pulled out a kitchen chair and sat in it.

"What lock?" She didn't remember any lock.

She wanted to fixate on the lock.

Her hands began to shake.

"He took money." What money? They didn't have 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.

He could have 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 was 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. Connie had thought it. She had thought about Midas as she stood out and watched the sun set. Because of the gold. She had thought about saying something out loud. She had thought about reaching for Chuck's hand. It had been a long time since she had felt his calloused fingers wrapped around her fingers.

But she hadn't said anything. She hadn't wanted to explain to him who Midas was--how Midas had wished that everything he touched turned to gold. He got his wish, only he forgot, and when he touched his daughter, she turned to gold. Connie had not wanted to explain to Chuck about the tale of Midas and have him look at her blankly.

She couldn't do that anymore.

Chuck had 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 talk about horses. Or the children--who were now both grown.

Connie had thought their silence was companionable.

They had been together 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 Beaver 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.

Manuel would help.

Or maybe she should call her children, Amy or Terry.

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.

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?"

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 24. Terry's birthday was May 24th. She turned it left to 21. 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 told him. "That would make you my sister."

"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 10. Then to the right to 24. Then to the left to 5. Chuck's birthday was November 5.

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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Butch

I've been thinking about New Mexico. Since I can't be there now, I've started work again on my novel Butch, which takes place in New Mexico. I started it a while ago, and I want to get back to it. I read the first chapter last night and laughed. That felt like a good sign. Here's a little bit of it. It is a first draft, so be kind. We'll see how it goes. I feel like I need to go back to Taos and spend some time there to finish it.

Chapter One

Near Taos, New Mexico, 1918, or thereabouts. Space and Time being a continuum and all.

Butch McShane 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 McShane.

On that late night in April no one fussed much when Butch kicked open the door to Angel’s Heaven on Earth, while holding a pistol in each hand, and called, “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 pot shots 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. Someday 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 and 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 just 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 Connelly and Johnny Jack. Butch sighed and turned back to the bar. This was not the ending to the night she had envisioned. She 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, dontcha , Jay Jay?”

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

“Hey,” Butch said. “He was a lot better lookin’ back then, 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.

Butch's horse 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 with a man.”

She 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 actually 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. The cottonwoods 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 walking 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. Then she 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 just 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 into a brick wall--or 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 or a rattler 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 Arizonian all rolled into one singsong drawl. 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 two 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 went to step around her. Butch moved to block him.

“I heard a woman cry out,” Butch said, noticing a black shape near a medium-sized palo verde 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 rico 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 asked.

“That’s a fact,” Butch said, “I am pleased to report.” She kept her eye on the 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.”

“Shit.” The English word out of the man’s mouth sounded desperate.
Butch stood and looked at the Bandito. “You wanna tell me something about this?”

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

Butch could see the man’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 it’s bleeding heavy.”

“He shot me some time back,” he said quickly, as though relieved to speak of it. “He and his compañero have been tracking me. My ex-wife and her husband took my daughter. I went to México to get her back, and her husband sent his thugs after me. After I made...fuss.”

Butch laughed. “A fuss, eh? I kinda like making a fuss now and then.” Something about this young man tickled her. Like Angel’s blonde curls.

“I did fall from my horse. And I did find this man 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. “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,” the man said.

“Wouldn’t we all.”

Butch and the Bandito hurried 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 McShane, by the way,” she 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.

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Jewelweed Station

Updated September 6, 2010. Here is the prologue and first chapter of my new book. Wish me luck!

Prologue

Callie Carter stood near the east entrance of the Larmiteau ballroom while the orchestra played a Viennese waltz. She moved her scarlet-colored iris-shaped mask to the side now and again to get a better look at women dressed in colorful silk gowns and men dressed in white ties and tails. They all wore masks to disguise themselves as some kind of exotic flora, but Callie was determined to discover the true identity of each and every person. Or at least, each and every interesting person. She was equally determined to keep her identity a secret to everyone at the ballroom except for Reby.


Reby stood next to Callie dressed in a burgundy-colored satin dress. The long earrings Callie had lent her reflected the golden glow from the gas lamps. She kept turning her wrists so that the gold bracelets on her brown arms clinked together. Callie knew she was not accustomed to wearing jewelry. Her mask was shaped liked the mythical black orchid.

"If I get caught," Reby said, "I am going to put all the blame on you."

"Of course," Callie said. "If I get caught, I will put all the blame on my poor upbringing. I'm an American and didn't know what I was doing." She fluttered her hand in front of her face.

Reby laughed.

Callie smiled. She liked being far from Virginia and the families who lived along the James River near Mount Joy, her father's plantation. For one thing, Reby was free here. They could walk the streets as sisters. Maybe no one bothered them because Reby was light-skinned for a slave and Callie was dark-skinned for a white Southerner, so no one knew what to make of them. Callie did not care about the reason. She just knew here she was surrounded by culture, freedom, and handsome young men and women.

"Tonight I will be Countessa Iris Mountjoy," Callie said. "And you?"

"I will be Duchess Wilhemina Orchid," Reby said. "From Barbados. An exotique!"

"I think the Countessa will have two children and one husband," Callie said. "Or maybe she is a widow with three children."

"Last night the Baron Margrave actually believed you when you said you had three children. We are not yet eighteen. How could they think such a thing?"

"Mother says men know nothing about women," Callie said, "and we should take advantage of their ignorance because we have so few natural advantages out in the world."

"You are very good at pretending," Reby said. "This all makes me a little nervous."

"Father says it's the little liar in me," Callie said.

Callie heard someone say her name. She turned around. Their hostess Madam Larmiteau stood behind Callie holding an opened telegram in her hand.

"Callie, dear, I'm afraid there has been some bad news," Madam said in French. "Will you come to the sitting room to hear it?"

Callie shook her head. "No, tell me here and now."

Madam Larmiteau held out the telegram to Callie and said, "I'm sorry to tell you but your parents have been in a terrible accident."


Chapter One

Callie Carter stood with her hand on the cold gray marble tombstone. She wanted to run her fingers inside the chisel marks that became her mother's and then her father's name: Emma Jean Ames Carter and Jacob William Carter. Beloved Mother and Father to Calantha Carter.

Her parents could not be dead. Not in some freak carriage accident. She had spent many wakeful nights during the winter she was forced to spend in France and ten on the sea-voyage home trying to figure out what had happened--and then even more hours trying not to picture the accident over and over in her mind's eye.

Now she stood quietly in the small family cemetery outside of the boxwood that surrounded the Georgian mansion that was her home. She couldn't see the mansion from here, at least not all of it. Pieces of the red brick became visible here and there through the bare branches of the willow and poplar trees.

She tried not to listen to her uncle Charles Ames drone on to Preacher Jones about the quality of the lettering on the tombstones. The day was too cold for March. Callie shuddered. It didn't feel as though spring was right around the corner. Everything looked dead. Felt dead.

Her old life was certainly dead. Seventeen years old and now her uncle Charles, her mother's brother, was her guardian. Callie didn't like Uncle Charles. Something about his pale fat little fingers that didn't quite match his tall frame. Or the way he never looked anyone in the eyes even while he was smiling slyly. Or maybe it was because her mother had always tensed when he came into a room. Her true legal guardian was her godfather, her uncle James, who was on a botanical expedition to the Amazon.

No one had heard from him in over a year, so Uncle Charles convinced Judge Zebadiah that Uncle James might be lost for good and his "very young niece" must have adult supervision until such time as James's body was recovered, dead or alive.

Judge Zebadiah. Callie's father had never liked him much either. But he was a good friend of Uncle Charles's, so by the time Callie stepped off the ship in Norfolk, Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Charles had moved into the main house. From there, Uncle Charles claimed, he could better oversee the plantation and Aunt Elizabeth could better oversee Callie.

Callie had not been in the house yet. Uncle Charles had whisked her immediately out to the cemetery, as though he was delaying her return to the house for as long as he could.

Callie wasn't sure why Preacher Jones was in the family cemetery with them.

She sighed. She was so tired she could barely breathe. Nothing in the world seemed right. Not a single thing.

A bird called out just then. She looked toward the sound. A crow hopped along the edge of the cemetery, near the wrought iron fencing. It looked straight at her, then bounced up and flew away, quickly becoming a black speck on the overcast sky.

As Callie looked back at the grave site, she glimpsed of a bit of color. On the soggy ground near the tombstone, along the side of the grave marker, a single trumpet-shaped orange flower surrounded by teethed egg-shaped green leaves grew up from the ground.

Callie smiled. Jewelweed. Usually it grew closer to the water and was surrounded by other jewelweed. It was one of her mother's favorite flowers. Her mother said people often didn't see jewelweed or ignored it all together if they did see it even though it was a great healer. Get stung by nettle or touched by poison oak and the juice from jewelweed would sooth the inflammation away.

Her mother believed wildflowers could fix anything.

Uncle Charles cleared his throat. Callie dropped her hand from the cold marble and looked at him and Preacher Jones.

Mr. Jones smiled. "I wanted you to know, Callie, that your parents got a lovely service. Everyone in the community came out for it. They were well-loved and will be missed." Jones glanced at Uncle Charles, as if to see if he needed to say anything else.

"Your uncle spared no expense on these tombstones," he said.

Callie glanced at the stone. Really? Then why was a crack running up the left hand side of the stone. And some of the chisel marks were ragged.

"I should like to pay for it myself," Callie said.

Jones looked at Uncle Charles again.

Charles said, "You mustn't worry your pretty self about such things now. The judge has put all of that into my capable hands. Now say goodbye to Reverend Jones and we'll get you something to eat. Unless you'd like to stay for dinner, Jones?"

Jones looked at Callie this time. She had not noticed before how small he was. Or how nervous. He kept smoothing his black hair over the ivory-white bald spot on the top of his head and then turning his hat in his hands. Callie's mother once said he had beady eyes.

"No, thank you," Jones said. "Let me know if you need anything, Callie."

Jones put his hat on his head, then walked back toward the mansion. Charles looked at Callie.

"Ready to go, dear?" he asked.

Callie tried not to scowl--or growl. She had to keep her own council for a time, at least until she figured out exactly what part Uncle Charles was to play in her life. Uncle Charles thought of her as a child. As a stupid child. She would let him. For now.

"We have got to keep this place looking better," Charles said. "Your mother always let every weed thrive. It's so untidy. I've hired an overseer. We'll get more work out of your father's worthless slaves yet and get this place cleaned up." He bent over. Before Callie could say anything, he pulled up the jewelweed and crushed it in his hand. Then he tossed it over the fence.

"Come, child," he said. "We have much to show you." He held out his arm for her. She gritted her teeth, then put her hand on his elbow, and they walked out of the graveyard, toward the boxwood and the mansion. Callie looked over her shoulder once to try and spot the ruined orange flower. But she saw only gray.

"Callie, I hope your time away was profitable for you," Uncle Charles said. "I know you disagreed with our decision to have you spend the winter in France. But we knew your parents would have wished you to continue your education, even though your aunt and I didn't quite understand why you were there."

Callie said nothing. She had gone to France to study art and improve her already remarkable drawing and painting skills--and to learn more about the world and get away from the sometimes claustrophic community of people who lived around Mount Joy.

"It was difficult to be alone in a strange country mourning the deaths of my parents," Callie said.

Difficult was not the right word. It had been excruciating. After she got the news, everyone seemed a stranger, even those friends she had made during her time in France. She and Reby stayed inside the apartment together most of the time, although sometimes her tutors visited, and she drew a bit, painted even less. She had not been capable of coherent conversation. And she had no money. Her aunt and uncle cut off her funds so that she could not get on a ship herself. Fortunately, she stayed with friends of her parents, Madam Larmiteau and her husband, so she was not thrown into the streets while she waited for permission to come home. Besides her mother's three brothers and their families, Callie had no other relatives. So she had waited until Uncle Charles released some funds, and she and Reby headed home.

She shook herself and looked ahead as she and Uncle Charles neared the mansion.

It was a relief to see Henry standing just outside the door, so tall and straight, dressed in his black suit, his white-gloved hand on the door as he prepared to open it. He wore a black armband on his left arm--the black a little darker than his coat--in honor of her parents, no doubt. It was more than her uncle had done.

Callie let go of her uncle's arm and walked up to Henry.

"It is good to see you, Henry," she said. She smiled.

Henry bowed and said, "Welcome home, Miss Callie." He opened the door. Callie noticed his skin seemed a little ashy and maybe his hand trembled slightly. She would not ask him about it now. Instead, she strode through the open door into her home. Her parents were gone, but this was where she had grown up. This was where Henry, Pearl, Reby, Martha, and Joseph still lived--well, they lived nearby in the Little House near to this Big House.

As soon as Callie stepped over the threshold, she stopped so suddenly her uncle nearly ran into her. She heard Henry close the door behind them. She waited for her eyes to adjust.

Why was this room so dark?

They stood in a kind of foyer with gentle arches that led into the East parlor to her right and the dining room to her left. Beyond the parlor was the sun parlor, then the ballroom. Beyond the dining room was one of the pantries, the kitchen office, the kitchen and another pantry. And the stairs were straight ahead.

When Callie left for France a year ago, the walls had been cream-colored, and a vase of brightly-colored flowers greeted guests and family all year round. Now a kind of dark gold urn stood on a tall black table and the walls were a hideous shade of brown.

Callie heard the rustle of satin. Aunt Elizabeth came out of the east parlor, dressed in blue satin. She smiled and held out her hands to Callie.

"Isn't this lovely?" Elizabeth said. "I can't imagine your mother actually liked that other color. It was so light! It gave me a headache. I hope you don't mind. We've made little changes here and there. We were certain your poor dear mother would have made the same changes had she lived."

Callie glanced at Henry. He practically blended into the walls. She reminded herself that she was going to hold her tongue until she got the lay of this new land. She needed to get upstairs to see if Reby had found out anything yet.

Her aunt embraced her slightly, kissed the air on either side of Callie's face, and then stepped back to look at her.

"Oh my! Didn't they have parasols in France?" she asked. "You're dark enough to be mistaken for a pickaninny! You're nearly as black as your dress."

"I hardly think that is true," Callie said.

Her aunt shrugged. "I have some powder if you want, before you see anyone."

"No thank you," Callie said. "I'd like to go up to my room and change."

"Of course," Aunt Elizabeth said. "Dinner is at the usual hour. Heddie has made you a welcome home dinner."

"Who is Heddie?" Callie asked.

Aunt Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "How silly of me. You don't know anything about what's been happening, do you?" She looked over at her husband. "Have you told her nothing?"

"I leave it to you, wife," he said. "And now if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do." He bowed slightly. Then he slipped off his coat and handed it and his hat to Henry.

Callie watched her uncle walk down the corridor to her father's office, beneath the stairs. He unlocked the door, opened it, and went inside. Then he shut the door.

Her father had rarely kept that door locked.

Callie closed her eyes. Uncle Charles was in her father's office! Her father would be appalled that Uncle Charles now knew all the intimate details of his business life.

"Heddie is the new cook," Elizabeth said. "Pearl was unbearable. I could not eat her food!"

"Pearl has been our cook since before I was born," Callie said.

"Yes, I know your mother brought her into her marriage," Elizabeth said. "But she is old. Her taste is off. She's better off where she is now. She can be of more use there."

"Where is she?"

"She's out in the slave cabins by the fields. She can cook for the pickaninnies and field hands all day and night. They won't notice her tasteless food!"

Callie's stomach fluttered. Her heart started to race.

"Pearl has never lived in with the field slaves," Callie said. "Mother promised she would come with me if she got too old to cook, to care for my children one day. She would have never put her outside."

"Dear, you're overtired and forget yourself," Elizabeth said. "She is a slave and goes where she is told."

"With the death of my mother," Callie said, "she becomes my responsibility."

"We are your guardians," Elizabeth said. "We could not, in good conscience, let you continue to eat that gruel Pearl cooked. Your mother wasn't able to send Pearl away. So I've done it for her."

"My mother would have never sent Pearl away!" Callie said.

Elizabeth stepped back from Callie and arched an eyebrow.

So much for holding her tongue.

"This household is now my responsibility," Elizabeth said. "And will be until you come of age. Pearl will go where I wish. Now, I noticed some of your dresses were a bit frayed. If that is how Rebecca takes care of your things, perhaps it is time to send her away, too. She's at a good age to breed."

Callie stared at her aunt. Was her aunt trying to intimidate her by threatening to take Reby away?

All of this was so wrong.

How was she going to fix this situation? How was she going to get her home back? Her life? How could she get Pearl into the kitchen again? Panic rose in her throat.

How could her parents have left her so vulnerable to these people? Where was Uncle James?

This was not right. None of it.

She would write to Uncle Peter in Richmond again. Until then, she needed to keep things as peaceful as possible.

"I am very tired, dear aunt," Callie said. "I would like to go upstairs now."

"Of course," Elizabeth said.

Callie turned and started walking up the curving staircase.

"See if Reby can find you a dress that isn't torn or soiled at the hems," Elizabeth said. "And no more black. It depresses me."

"But, Aunt Elizabeth, I am in mourning for a year," Callie said. "It would be disrespectful."

"Nonsense," Aunt Elizabeth said. "Your mother was not that old-fashioned and neither am I. I am very proper, but not old-fashioned. And with war so close at hand, we need to live every day to the fullest."

"Please, auntie."

"I know you miss your parents," Elizabeth said, "and I certainly don't want to stop you for mourning in your own way. I'm just giving you permission to take off the widow weeds. It is spring, after all."

Her tone was sugary. Callie felt nauseated. She picked up the hem of her dress slightly as she walked up the stairs. She glanced at the portraits of her ancestors. Her four grandparents from both sides of the family. Her mother. Father.

She wished one of them could come to her rescue now.

"Oh dear," Elizabeth said. "I forgot to tell you that we've moved you to another room."

Callie stopped on the stairs and looked down. Elizabeth had her hand on the banister.

"Excuse me?" Callie said.

"It was time you had a grown-up room, away from your parents," she said. "So we put you in a room on the third floor. That way you have more privacy. Your room was so close to your parents' room. We're staying in your parents' room now."

"You are staying in my parents' room?" Callie asked.

Callie's fingers gripped her dress.

"Of course," Elizabeth said. "They were the best rooms in the house. This is an ordeal for us, you know, to be away from our home to care for you. We knew you would want us to be comfortable."

Callie chewed the inside of her cheek.

"Of course," she finally said.

She turned from her aunt and continued up the stairs.

Reby was sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs waiting for her.

"This way, Miss," Reby said formally.

Callie looked down the stairs. She couldn't see Elizabeth, but she sensed she was still there, listening, waiting.

Callie followed Reby up the second set of stairs and then down the hallway to the end of it. At least Elizabeth hadn't redecorated this floor. The wallpaper with pale red and pink roses brightened up the corridor still.

Reby opened the door to the last room. Callie couldn't remember ever being in this room. Reby had already opened the windows. Good thing. It still smelled a bit stale.

Callie looked around the small room. She didn't see any other door besides the one they had just come through. A small window seat looked down at the garden, the row of poplars beyond, and the James River beyond them. A wardrobe, bed, dresser, dressing table, and writing desk practically filled the room.

"Where's your room?" Callie asked. Reby had slept next to her nearly her entire life.

"Miss Elizabeth says I have to sleep in the Little House now with the others," Reby said. "She wants me to do more kitchen duty, help in the smoke house and with the sewing more. She says you don't need a maid full time and she doesn't have enough slaves to do all the work that needs to be done."

"There is truth that I don't need a fulltime maid," Callie said, "but she doesn't need to know that."

Callie sat on the bed. Reby sat on the floor and leaned against the bed.

"Come sit with me," Callie said.

Reby shook her head. "Miss Elizabeth catches us, we're done for."

Callie sighed. Everything had changed. Reby was acting and talking strangely. Like she was back on the farm.

Which she was. They both were.

"She was lookin' at your clothes," Reby said. "She said if I couldn't do a better job, she was gonna have Mr. Charles sell me."

"He can't do that," Callie said. "I know that for sure. According to the law you are mine and I wouldn't consent to your sale."

"They've got Pearl down by the fields," Reby said. "I heard she's doing poorly."

"Aunt Elizabeth told me," Callie said.

"You ever been down there?" Reby asked.

"Once, when I was little," Callie said. "Father came close to whipping me when he found me." She had been sitting on the floor in the dirt, eating with the other children when her father strode into the cabin.

"Mr. Carter," someone had said. Callie didn't remember now who it had been. "We was just comin' to git ya."

And then things got confusing. Her father yelled. The driver got out his whip.

Callie shook her head. She didn't want to remember that.

"It ain't fit fer man or beast," Reby said. "Not them places."

"Reby, quit talking like that," Callie said. "You sound like a field hand."

"We ain't in Paris any more," Reby said. "I've got to know my place and be in my place until this blows over or Miss Elizabeth is going to get rid of me. I talked to Martha. She says your aunt and uncle have come to stay and they're going to run things wicked hard."

"My parents didn't raise any shrinking violet," Callie said. She stood and began pacing the room. "I need to see a lawyer. Find out what my rights are. Uncle Charles showed me the papers the judge signed. And he signed. About them being my legal guardians for the time being. And I tell you I intend to spend no time being under their thumbs. I'll write a letter to Uncle Peter, too. But for a while, Reby, I will pretend to be on my aunt and uncle's side. They think I'm an ignorant child, so that's what I will be. But first I've got to dress for dinner."

Reby got off the floor. Callie turned around so her back was to her. Reby took off Callie's coat and lay it on the bed. Then she began unbuttoning Callie's dress. When it was loose enough, Reby helped Callie step out of it.

Callie walked to the wardrobe and opened it. She pulled out a blue-silk dress. It was almost the same color as the one her aunt was wearing.

"It would be so gauche if I wore this tonight," Callie said. "Auntie might feel as though I was trying to outshine her." Callie nodded. "Perfect. She wanted me out of black. I will obey her."

She handed the dress to Reby. Reby took it. The two looked at each other for a moment. Callie turned away first. "I better hurry," she said. "Before she comes looking for me. You keep your head down, Reby. Let's not rock the boat until we're ready to sink it."

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