STORY 3, Part 6

On the way back to civilization I pondered ways to save more money. One luxury could go. I was still paying for a storage unit to keep all the treasures of my former life. I had not been able to bring myself to part with the ice cream soda glasses, the button collection, the bronze Christmas angels. All of the physical evidence that I once had a four-bedroom house, happy children, a need and a place for three dozen coffee mugs. I'll have a garage sale one day, I told myself. But no longer had a garage. So the next day off I rented a U-Haul and took my cache out to the Chocolate Mountains.

Cleaned out the other two cabins and loaded the stuff in. Walker Hadley showed up with the first light the next morning.

"Place takes on a kind of magic, don't it?" He said.

"I'm beginning to think so," I admitted.

"Tried the water?" He was moving in that direction.

"I don't know how it operates. I didn't even look." I said.

He showed me the cleaned out, newly-fitted-up water system, how to work it. Hadley had cleared away the sand around the pool, and, circling the pool was crescent-shaped rock bench set into a curving wall. Back at the house, the water ran clear from the spigot.

"Lots of water around here," he said, proud of my amazement. "You just got to dig for it."

Begin/Flora/Fauna/Humana/Aura/Agua/Quit