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It’s a good year for cactus flowers. You pretty much don’t see them unless you’re on foot in the sagebrush or messing around in someone’s vacant lot, blooming cholla being an extravagant exception, wherever it may be. The most prevalent cactus appears to be a ground-hugging miniature prickly pear-looking thing with plentiful spines. [Above] These right here, about five inches tall, are just across the road. There are definitely others, often found nearby, with brilliant red flowers. And sometimes, if you know where to look, a tiny cactus the size of a quarter puts out amazing multi-colored blossoms a quarter inch across that only last a day or two. I carry my iPhone now. The next one won’t get away.

“It smells in here…” Too long, too long. So smudge, and smudge again. Light the stump of that bundle of white sage we bought years ago. Stuff lasts forever, you know. Took me a long time to work out how to light it over the gas burner and extinguish it in the sink. Now sacred sage smoke in all the rooms as I walk around holding a plate underneath so the ashes and bits of charred leaves from the disintegrating sacrament don’t burn the carpet. Johnny’s off the hook, I realize. Three days off to practice saying that and then we roll away the stone.

This local wrangler isn’t sweating blocking one whole side of the road to lend a stranded stranger cranking power. Right there is a metaphor for the ages. If that were my truck and horse trailer fifty yards from the center of town with traffic creeping by, I’d be way too nervous to do the right thing with the jumper cables.

Ever hook one up wrong? I did once, helping a driver with a stalled car at a drive-through window at my bank in Austin: the top of my battery exploded with a bang like someone shooting a shotgun next to my ear. I ran into the lobby of the bank shouting, “Where’s the restroom? I have battery acid in my eyes!”—which wasn’t exactly true (although I thought so), but got everyone’s attention. I had it all over my face, at any rate, and flushed my eyes a long, long time. To this day, I can’t remember how I got back home. Even with a partly shattered case, the battery must have had enough juice left to start the car and get me on the road. Don’t try any of this at home, please, but at least you know it can be done.

That’s a little piece of the back yard. This is the semi-civilized area, the rest being sagebrush, chamisa, and cactus, but you still have to watch out for the goddamn ants. Man, if ants were money, I’d be rich, assuming I could wrangle them. The only way to sit at that table is with your feet up on the legs, which mostly works.

Those blue flax flowers in the foreground look pretty good, don’t they? They ought to. I think when I took this picture, it was in the middle of a three- or four-day accidental watering period. In fact, you can see a little water there. I didn’t notice when I was back there with my iPhone. That’s because the Llano Quemado Water Association had just replaced the pumps at the water towers just across the road and there was hardly any pressure. We weren’t able to take showers for a week. It took twenty minutes to get a little water in the bathtub! What I’m saying is that even though I forgot to turn the water off that first evening, there wasn’t exactly a torrent coming out of that hose, and it was running so quietly that no one heard it. Another factor is that due to the amazing geology and soils of New Mexico, a hose can run at lowish volume right into the ground and never make a puddle. I mean, never. Depends on where you’re talking about, but certainly the case right here. Who knows where the water goes? “Something to do with exploded volcanoes and tectonic plates,” they whispered near the entrance of the cave. Or maybe just because it’s dry beyond imagining.

Fortunately, our dear dead landlord donated the land for the water towers to the association several decades ago, with the proviso that he never had to pay for water as long as he lived. The property has been locked in probate for six or seven years, and we’ve never paid. It doesn’t make sense, but one tries not to talk. Either the probate process is keeping the old guy alive, so to speak, or the association’s just being polite, but my extended watering of uncharted caverns won’t cost us a cent.

They’re watching us, though. I broke radio silence and called the association to find out what the deal was with the low water pressure. The number I’d found rang the president at home—ouch—but I barreled on through. At this point, we may be the only Anglos in the immediate neighborhood, so he knew right away where I was: “You live in the Blair houses, right?”

The house where the dead man got free water.