Mirage 2016 ANNIE
Bonnelyn Thwaits
First Place, Nonfiction Competition Cochise Community Creative Writing Celebration
69
The isolation, the dirt, the flies, the manure, the communality of death, and the tapestry of animal suffering are all part of the ebb and flow of the family rancho. This ugliness competes with the commanding beauty of the brown and green mesas. When the short rainy period storms into our desert, we are overwhelmed by the urgent fertility of every living thing in our realm. It is an orgy of frantic toads, humming insects, operatic song birds, trudging tortoises, and pairs of bounding jack rabbits. Mosquitos fly in squadrons, along with flies and flying ants. Bees and hornets swarm to enlarge their kingdoms. The backdrop changes to an urgent verdancy with ferocious, brutally armed flora. If it is green, it will stab, scratch, or tear your flesh. The water swells the cacti to epic girth, and the thorny mesquite and cat claw trees boldly encroach onto the dirt roads. The sapphire blue sky is empty or dotted with white cumulus clouds. In the space of a few breaths, the sky fills with menacing slate blue clouds and deadly strikes of electric fire. A rider on a horse is the tallest thing on the top of the mesa among the barrel cactus and ocotillo. If he is struck down, he may not be found for days. My family lives alone. Our nearest neighbors are two miles away. But we don’t know any other way to live. My children and I thrive here. No amount of inconvenience can make the monsoons any less glorious. The luxury of surface water is too exquisite. “The cows sure look pretty when the desert puts her wedding dress on,” I said over my right shoulder to my seven-year-old son, Will. My horse shied a little to the right when a jet black baby calf jumped out of hiding from the five-foot-tall wall of careless weeds on the left side of the dirt road. “Goddamn it, Annie,” I said when I kicked her out of the interlocking trees and bushes on the right side of the small road. I had a nasty scratch on my right thigh and also on my right ankle. The
