Once in a while the desert chooses a propitious moment to remind you that it can kill you any old time it wants.
Went to town this morning to buy paint. Stopped at the convenience store on the way out for some ecig fluid and a bottle of Southern Comfort. I used to drink a very great deal; now not nearly so much, but once in a while it seems appropriate.
This afternoon after the sun reached a certain point where I could work on the Lair’s east wall without the sun in my eyes, I got back to painting. That went well enough until I saw the black clouds building. Oh, we’re definitely into Monsoon now, and I should have been able to count on another week or two. So I put things away, laid the ladder down so as not to tempt lightning, called the dogs and we went and did our evening chores a bit early.
And like the storm a couple of evenings ago, this one couldn’t seem to make up its damn mind. But around six in the evening as I sat in my sittin’ and thinkin’ chair and the level in the bottle had reached the labels, I happened to look out the window at the front of the lair just in time to get strobed by a big, fat, straight bolt of lightning that landed somewhere just behind the cliff on the other side of the wash. I’m pretty sure there was a lovely shadow of my big-eared head cast on the pans hung from the Lair’s south interior wall, though I can’t testify to it. I was too busy staring wide-eyed and looking at afterimages.
I did the reflexive counting…”One. T…”
BAM!
Ghost immediately headed for safety in the desk’s kneehole. LB got up and moved, leaving a little pee spot where he had been laying. I didn’t reproach him.
As if it was a prearranged signal, the rain started. By Monsoon standards it really wasn’t much of a rain. We got more two days ago. But for the next forty-five minutes there was no second when it wasn’t thundering. Fortunately it started to the north, and these things tend to move north. We’ve had far worse. We will have far worse.
But these are my most atavistic moments. Usually the desert is a very placid place to live, as long as you remember that everything that doesn’t have spikes has venom, except for the things that have both. But once in a while it does seem as though the desert remembers that it can kill me any time it wants, and that it’s thinking it over.
