mackenzie sanders open range

billie pulled the bandana over the bruises on her neck, and tied it just tight enough so that she could feel the knot on her clavicle. Then she put a wide-brimmed hat on her head, careful to keep her ponytail down to protect the rest of her neck from the sun. Her father used to tell her that she came out too tan, and that she’d better cover every inch of herself to prevent skin cancer. When she first started working the ranch at eight, if he thought her cheeks showed any redness, he’d make her sit in the shade of the mesquite and hold its thorned branches until her fingers bled, and he’d tell her, “That’s what red looks like. That’s what’s hiding underneath the white.” Then he’d slap her burned cheeks and shutter her bedroom windows until he was convinced the dark had bleached her skin milk again.

Her uncle came once for Thanksgiving that year, five years back, and asked Billie why she looked like the ghost child of Marilyn Manson, and she’d told her uncle about the sun, her skin, and the mesquites before she could stop herself. He looked at her father and laughed and said, “Now Hank I know you’re mad that our ancestors rode the river and the Santa Cruz spit you out here, but you can’t keep denying where you came from.” Her uncle had brought his hand to his chest where a silver man-in-the-maze pendant hung from his neck. The maze was turquoise, inlaid in the silver, and the man was red.

“We come from Elgin,” her father had said. “And we don’t measure that in our blood.”

Her uncle just laughed and said, “I’ve never seen a man so up in arms about six-point-two-five percent.”

And then her father uninvited him from Christmas, or any future gathering. And that was that.

She saddled Charlie and rode out into the eastern corner of the pasture to look for Penelope, who her father’s hand Ricky had said looked “off.” She ambled slowly, examining the barren earth, and Charlie occasionally let out a forlorn whinny at the lack of foliage for him to chew and spit out. They’d rotated the grazing, to prevent overfeeding, in the hopes that the rains would supplement the slow growing lovegrass, but the rains had been minimal, the moisture pitiful, and they were stuck with the unappetizing and invasive bullgrass.

Penelope was chestnut with a white head and legs. She was one of the biggest cows Billie’s father owned, and she had provided him many calves, and her mood from day to day and season to season generally set the tone for the cattle and people around her. Usually, she was content, if not aloof, and she would tolerate the occasional head pat or side scratch, like a once feral dog that had not quite allowed you its underbelly. Billie found her lying near the perimeter fence, and while she didn’t need to dismount to see what had happened, she did so anyway, as a sign of respect, and she lightly touched Penelope’s side. Then she withdrew her hand and remounted Charlie to head back to the barn and tell her father the unfortunate news.

Her father struck her with the back of his hand as soon as she finished saying the word “dead.” her father brought the vet to perform a necropsy, and he held Penelope’s powerful, white, insentient head against his thigh, and he looked away when the doctor made the incision at the base of her neck. He kept hold of her head all the way through, until the doctor pulled a plastic chip bag out of her first stomach, and then he patted Penelope gently on the head, took the bloodied bag, and stared at it like it was an they buried her under the area of fence and barbed wire that had acted as her final crutch. Most of their dead cows were sent to the rendering plant in Phoenix or the slaughterhouse in Cochise to be broken down into saleable and useful pieces like meat and dirt and oil. But Billie’s father told her, “Penelope was already useful enough.” And that was that.

Billie and Ricky rooted the fence upright again while her father presided over them, holding the plastic chip bag in his fist, occasionally pulling his fist tighter, and Billie felt the crackle of the bag beat like lightning against her forehead. She willed it to rain.

“We need rain,” her father said. “That’s all that’s gonna save us now.”

Nobody wanted to sell off their cattle, who Billie’s father, more than anyone else, held close to the root of what little sensibility he had.

Billie stood and wiped sweat off her sleeve and stared at the green and gray rows of bullgrass, firm and unpreferred by the cattle. She watched Samuel, a younger black cow who had thinned since the spring, as he meandered by their threesome, unperturbed by their horses or their exigency to keep him through the winter.

They never underestimated the power of water.

“I know where that bag came from,” Ricky said.

“You know it and I know it,” Billie’s father said.

“I can do a sweep,” Billie said.

“You do that,” her father said. He stepped forward and rested a hand on Penelope’s fence post, then he turned and walked back towards his horse. “Mind the sun, keep to the shade,” he told her.

Billie looked around at the scant shrubs and squatted cacti. There would be the brittle oaks if she rode southwest, closer to Sonoita Creek, and the occasional pocket of mesquites, which made her stiff. She often thought of swallowing their pods like snow peas, and vomiting out all the red inside her.

“Ricky, sweep after her at sunset. That’s when the aliens move quickest.”

The three rode back to the barn. Billie filled a large metal tub with water and flicked her fingers under the hose to make sure the water ran cool. When the temperature dropped, she let Charlie drink and looked into his long-lashed eyes. Billie liked that cows and horses had long eyelashes. It was like a human lived inside each heaving body, and she stared into his umber eyes and wondered if he was conscious of the fact that he was not wild. He had weak back hocks, so only Billie rode him. He’d be kicked and broken outside the ranch for it. Billie pulled at the bandana on her neck.

As she placed her hands on the saddle to mount, her father took her hands and placed the crumpled bag in them, angry and pleading. Billie nodded and put the bag in her pocket. She rode for the northeastern corner of their hundred acres, and would move counterclockwise about their diamond-shaped land, so as to ride the final stretch along the creek, and end at Penelope’s resting place.

The northern point of their land was both barren and teeming with life in the way only desert earth could be. The bullgrass wailed softly in the late summer breeze, and the thick yucca stretched upwards and out, pointing their multitudinous fingers at the empty sky and begging for a monsoon. Even the cholla was dry and eager, and a small joint caught on Charlie’s flank when he brushed too close to the perimeter fence. The long spines stuck out of his hair, and Billie daintily plucked the fruit and threw it over the fence so it would root and birth a child. The cows seemed mostly unaffected by the drought, since her father was supplementing the grass with the last of their stored grains, and so the cows were thinner, but no less fed. Still, Billie watched as Dot and Guinness, a heifer and a steer, touched necks and looked upwards.

“No rain today, guys. Maybe at the end of the week. Eat good in the meantime,” Billie said. She tipped her hat to them.

Guinness turned and flicked an ear back at her. Billie smiled.

She rode southwest, checking on the cows and staring at the ground. She rode as slow as one could without stopping when she came upon larger areas of brush, inside or outside their fence. It was greener here, and green always meant life, be it past or present. She found a baby’s blanket, two empty plastic water jugs, a soleless shoe, and three other chip bags on the other side of the fence under a cluster of trees. She found a tattered yellow backpack hanging on a fence post, and she found an empty Tupperware container and plastic spoon lodged in the unspined stems of an ocotillo.

Billie put most of the items in the yellow backpack and attached it to a saddlebag. She was grateful she found no wire cutters, which were perfect for finding weak spots in their barbed fence. Her father used to say, “There is always something or someone to cut, just not always a means to do the cutting.” To her surprise, she found no larger dens or hastily discarded villages. She guessed it was still too warm for most of them to cross, even at night.

She came to the southern tip of their land and smiled at the late blooming wildflowers. Her favorites were small and purple, and she guided Charlie so he wouldn’t step on them. She stopped here for a moment and dismounted, straining to hear the high hum of the low creek half a mile on. Without rain, the creek would be so underfed it would not make any sound at all, but Billie pretended. She propped her feet up on a fence post and sat her narrow behind on the splintering wood. If she wanted to she could hop over to the other side and breathe in wild air, pricking only her calves on the wire. She thought the sound of running water was like freedom.

Billie rode to Penelope’s place, and it was only when she was about to leave that she saw one. Billie guessed she wasn’t more than nine. She was crouched under a scrawny, half dead mesquite, in a dirty pink shirt and jeans. She saw Billie first, and kept staring at Billie while Billie dismounted. The two stared at each other until sweat beaded on Billie’s forehead and she had to remove her hat to wipe it. Behind her, Charlie snorted at the hulking bullgrass.

“Did you run ahead or did you get left behind?” Billie asked.

“Dejado atrás,” the girl called back. Her voice was small and thirsty, and broke at each syllable.

Billie started to speak, but she did not know which direction to send the girl. It was only a few miles to Elgin. The girl might make it that far, if she wasn’t picked up. It was a short walk to the creek, which is likely where the girl had just come from. It was sixteen miles to the border. It was twenty steps beyond the fence to the girl. Billie felt the plastic bag in her pocket. Billie did not move.

Billie wondered if Penelope had known she was going to die. If she did, was she afraid?

“¿Tienes agua?” Billie asked.

The girl said nothing.

Billie stared at the fence, which seemed to have grown to insurmountable heights, then stared behind her. She could see the outline of the barn and their home with its stiflingly low roof. She could feel her shadow stretch on the ground beside her. She had been out too long.

“There is a creek, allá, for now” Billie said, pointing in its direction. “I can bring you water tomorrow, en la mañana.”

The girl nodded.

The sun sank into the horizon like a ripe egg in water, and Billie felt blood pool under her tongue. She bit into it with the realization that Ricky was following closely behind her. She first placed a hand on the fence post, and she felt her heels push back against the ground in an urge to jump over it. The vein in her neck pulsed, and she exhaled hard and slow. Rays shone directly in her face. She moved her other hand to fix her hat and prevent the red burns from creeping into her skin. Instead her fingers pulled at the bandana, and Billie felt the purple and blue prints of her father tighten around her windpipe.

Billie immediately withdrew as though she’d been bit and stepped away from the fence. The girl stared at her with confused fear as she quickly remounted Charlie.

“You better go, now,” Billie said. “Before he gets you.” billie gave her father the yellow backpack full of trash and jettisoned goods. He nodded at her with quiet approval.

The girl did not move.

“I’ll be back. Mañana.” Billie rode quickly back to the house.

“Any nests?” her father asked.

“No,” Billie said. “Just what I brought you.” There was something sybaritic about a half truth. An outright lie was told out of necessity, fear, or spite. A truth was also told out of necessity, fear, or spite. But a middling was told out of self indulgence or desire.

Her father seized her chin and turned her this way and that to examine her face. Already Billie could feel the rough bark of the mesquite against her palms. He let her go.

“Good work today. Shutter your room. I’ll call you tomorrow when I need you out.” billie sank into the dark. She shuttered her windows and flung herself onto her bed, and against her eyelids she saw red sun spots dance.

Billie nodded and ran inside.

She thought about Penelope and her great, white head and strong belly that birthed seven calves and died from a one ounce bag of Cheetos. She thought about Charlie’s wise, all-seeing eyes and his weak hind legs. She’d be too heavy for him when she finished growing. What would her father do with him then? Release him? He would die in the open range; a wild horse was a mean thing. Would he let him stay in the pasture? He could be given to another child to ride, until that child grew, and he would begin the cycle of obsolescence, a cycle followed only by neglect and curtains. Billie understood the concept of natural selection when it came to ranching well enough, and she sometimes respected it, but she could not appreciate it.

Which way would she tell the girl to go? Either way she went there was little chance of her making it, whether “making it” meant alive or where she wanted to be. So was it more important to run away from something or run towards something? Billie didn’t know.

She sat in her cool, black room and let the heat drag out of her like smoke. After some time passed she heard her father and Ricky swing into the house and talk about money and property, which were the same thing, just inflected differently. For most people, money was about survival, property was about pride. But out here, in the not-gone-but-forgotten, pride was the means to survive.

When Billie was five, her father set her atop a neighbor’s horse named El Gordo. He was relatively small, but the concept of irony had not yet thudded against Billie’s skull, and she told El Gordo his name was stupid. El Gordo booted her off immediately, and Billie had fallen into the dirt and cried snot. Her father had picked her up to ensure she had not sprained anything, and then he’d smacked the top of her helmet and told her that she had insulted El Gordo.

“Even an animal has pride,” he’d said. “You must too, if you want respect, if you expect to survive.” billie’s father did not call her the next day for what seemed to be an exorbitant amount of time, though time to Billie was relative, since time was nearly always associated with light, even the artificial, and Billie was too tame to turn on even her reading lamp. She was, at this point in unmarkable time, so anxious that she had plateaued at a quiet, calm desperation. She was suspended in the lack of color or tone, and she was unwaveringly sure of what she would do when she could reach the girl at the perimeter fence.

Billie did not know what these words meant, but she could understand the look on her father’s face, and she could feel the weight of his words as they left his mouth and floated through the hot air towards her. On this, on instinct, they agreed. It was then that Billie first stared into the eye of an animal.

Billie listened as her father and Ricky argued about how to supplement the ranch’s income. Her father had no money, and Ricky had no pride. Billie scowled in the dark when Ricky used the phrase “dude ranch.” She heard the splintering of a dining chair as her father’s response. And that was that.

Finally, her father smacked his palm flat against her door once, and she opened the door and followed him out to the barn.

It was late in the afternoon, and Ricky had already cut the grass. She helped her father check on the calves, then offered to sweep the pasture and check on the grazing cattle. Her father pushed her away with the wave of his hand.

Billie willed Charlie to sprint the several acres to Penelope’s corner. She dismounted before he stopped and lurched forward into the barbed wire, ignoring the red as it ran down her wrists. Her eyes turned and in a daze she looked at the brambled mesquite.

The girl was gone. Billie stood there a moment in shock, her entire body an open sore. She did her best to cauterize herself as she scanned the flat land and felt the forsakenness infect her.

Her body ached as she rode Charlie back to the barn and returned to her father, who was weighing cattle in the corral. He looked at her with listless eyes. She pulled her hat down over her face. ◆ anne dyer stuart fourteen summers

In fluorescent biker shorts and ripped tie-dye, fourteen summers at the table shrinking. On the grass a rat makes his escape. For all you know he could be a girl.

Elephant ears by the fence cooling mud. Between houses aging cedar. The judge dressed up like Santa Claus. That was never a secret. Beneath these bones buried under the magnolia by the playhouse bought from a girl my age who’d outgrown it lies a cocker spaniel named Little Man. He hated to swim but we threw him in again, again, hoping he’d change his mind.