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.
