“All right, let’s get ‘er done.” David turned to his water truck and started to pull out the hose that he needed to fill the tank. Lenore had never seen this done before, and she stayed out of the way while he set up a ladder and hefted his hose up to the opening on the top of the three-thousand-gallon water barrel.
He fixed it in place, got down off the ladder, and turned on the water on his truck.
Lenore could not describe the sound of water hitting that plastic container. It sounded like joy and laughter and a busy bubbling creek running over rocks.
Then someone yelled, and another man said, “Turn it off!”
It took David a couple of seconds to crank the big wheel to get the water to stop, and Lenore saw why Henry had yelled. Water poured out of the bottom of the barrel in a steady stream, hitting the parched earth and instantly creating rivulets of mud.
“Yep, this old girl has served her time,” David said as he joined them. “I’m real sorry to say it, but I don’t think you can use this tank.”
“No, I don’t think so either,” Lenore said, her hopes crashing to the ground.
Brandon came to her side and slid his arm around her. He wore a sorrowful expression on his face, but Lenore gave him a smile. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’re better off than we were this morning, because now we have this fabulous tower that we can put a new tank on.”
“You got any tanks?” Conrad asked.
“Conrad,” Lenore immediately started shaking her head. “You’ve done enough.”
“Maybe he’s got one on the truck,” Conrad said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“This is a water truck, fella.” David laughed, and he had a really, really good air about him. He moved over to the tower, put his palm against it, and gave it a mighty shake. It barely moved.
“This is a great tower,” he said. “And the idea here is fantastic. It could holdfivethousand gallons. That might get you through a couple months—especially in the winter.”
Lenore knew how much five-thousand-gallon water storage tanks were, and she didn’t have the money. She probablyshouldlet Conrad buy one for her, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask, or even look at him.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’ll figure out how to get a tank. Or we’ll keep working on the rain catchment system.”
“Oh, it don’t rain enough here for rain catchment,” David said. “But have you considered digging a well?”
Oh, Lenore had considered it.
Brandon stepped away from her, his mouth pressed into a tight line.
“I reckon there’s good water out here,” David continued, completely oblivious to the way the electricity in the air had changed. “My nana had a place out here once, and she had an ice-cold well that never ran out.”
“Out here?” Brandon asked, with extreme interest in his voice.
“Yeah, somewhere out here,” David said. “Maybe just a little further south, actually.” He glanced around like there’d be mile markers out here on the homestead. “It was the old Buttrey place.”
Lenore pulled in a breath. “We bought the Buttrey place.” All eyes came slowly to hers again, but she didn’t know what else to say.
“Was there a well on it?” David asked.
Lenore shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“Well, my grandparents split the land before they sold it,” he said. “Maybe you bought the part that didn’t have the well.”
“There was no well,” Lenore said.
“But there’s a great aquifer out here,” David said. “You’d probably only have to drill fifty to a hundred feet too. Then you’d have water coming right up out of the ground.” He grinned, like this was great news—because, of course, it was.
“Thanks so much,” Conrad said, stepping in and shaking David’s hand. “Tell me what I owe you for coming out even though we couldn’t fill it.”
“Oh, nothing,” David said as he moved back toward his truck. “I love the drive out here.”
Lenore watched him go—a sort of deflated end to the day—but she drew a deep breath and clapped her hands once. “Thank you so much for coming, you guys.”
