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couldn’t figure out
why he’d tracked me down to say so little. Why didn’t he just tell me exactly
why he’d cornered me?
    And finally,
why did he want me to keep moving south?
    I thought all
these questions through and I probably wouldn’t have been able to stop thinking
them through, which would’ve kept me up all night, if the long day’s work
hadn’t finally caught up to me. I fell asleep right away with only one issue
resolved. I wasn’t going to take Jim Crater’s advice. I wasn’t going to keep
moving south. I’d finish my job and head north, back to Clearview.
     
     
    A few hours later, dawn rose and
lit up the forest, and I geared up for the day. I planned to work as hard as I
could so I’d be able to head back home tonight. But as soon as I stepped out of
my tent, my eyes fell on something that threatened to change that plan.
    I saw a sketch
in the dirt. It was crude, but I could tell what it was. A reptilian body with
four squat legs, a long thick tail, a broad snout, and protruding eyes.
    It was a
salamander.
    And above it,
I saw twigs laid out in the form of an arrow. The arrow pointed from the salamander
to the charred wood from last night’s fire.
    The element
was Fire.
    The animal was
a salamander.
    The direction
was south.
    Fire stole
salamanders from Water and headed south. That connection was engrained in me
from childhood. Engrained right alongside the memory of my father. It was part
of my father.
    Maybe the
animal wasn’t a salamander. Maybe it was an iguana or a gecko or a chameleon.
But it wasn’t. It was a salamander.
    Fire stole
salamanders from Water and headed south.
    Crater had
drawn the salamander to reiterate his message from last night. Keep moving
south.
    But how did he
know about the ancient elements? That each had their own animals? That each had
their own direction ? Had he learned that as a child, like I had? But how
did he know that I knew about them? How did he know that for me ,
drawing a salamander would turn Fire into south? And that question led to the
most disturbing question of all.
    Did Crater
know my father?
     
     
    I didn’t stop to think more about
that question, but went right to work. As I was repairing the pump, all the
questions from the prior night ran through my mind. But I couldn’t come up with
any answers. I didn’t have enough information.
    By late
morning, I’d decided that the only question I had to answer was whether to head
south or back to Clearview. Even though I’d already dismissed heading south, it
now seemed like the only way to get some answers.
    The repairs
went smoothly and the hours passed quickly. At three, I took a break to eat. I
sat by the pumping station, staring south, where the wilderness rose to a peak,
and that’s when an answer to one of those earlier questions took shape. I
understood why someone had sabotaged the pumping station. They wanted to draw a
Corolaqua worker out here. The next man on the list. The man with the theory
about the water.
    I was sure
that Crater had waited on that peak in the distance, waited until he saw me
arrive, then, in the dead of night, he had hiked down to deliver his message. Keep
moving south. And he’d added such a compelling illustration to his message,
that he knew I’d take it seriously.
     
     
    Just before evening, I finished.
Then I cleaned up the pumping station, checked again to see that everything
worked perfectly, and under the setting sun, I hauled everything back to the
van.
    Then I just
sat in the van, on the shoulder of the road, ready to go, but not sure where
to. South or north? The engine was idling.
    The easiest
thing to do was to pull out and go forward. I was facing north, toward
Clearview, so I’d be heading home. I looked to the west and saw the setting sun
was now turning red. A dark, deep red. Night would soon fall and that triggered
a new option. I considered camping for another night. Maybe Crater would come
back and answer some of my questions. Maybe those