Not For Sale

I caught sight of this kid crawling through the weeds at the back of this property I was listing. Her red hair gave her away, contrasted among the yellow weeds. She disappeared.

“Is that Flora way back there?” I asked Mrs. Hart.

Mrs. Hart pulled on her cigarette. “Oh probably,” she said. “That kid’s in a world of her own. Tell her to come in, will ya?”

I walked toward the back of the one-acre lot through knee-high dry weeds on a narrow path that ended at a scrub of manzanita brush in front of a stand of sycamore trees. The path pointed to an opening in the brush big enough for a small dog or maybe a skinny kid.

I forced my way on hands and knees through the scratchy manzanita into a hidden and lush little oasis walled by the brush and the back fence, and domed by the sycamores. The centerpiece of this secret garden was a rusted hose-bib atop a stand-pipe about three feet tall. Beads of water dripped slowly from the hose-bib into a shallow pool surrounding the base of the stand-pipe. The place was a tiny green paradise surrounded by dry fields.

Flora Hart sat cross-legged beside the pool with her beagle dog, Buddy, lying at her side. She looked sad, and didn’t acknowledge my arrival in her secret world.

I had met nine-year-old Flora the day before. I felt bad when her dad yelled at her for objecting to the sale of their house. Her dad signed the listing agreement. Flora gave us the stink-eye.

This day I smiled at her and said, “Quite a place you have here.”

“Shhh,” she said. I realized we weren’t alone. A train of thumb-sized bright green frogs lined the stand-pipe from the pool to the hose-bib. Yellow-jackets zoomed aggressively about, and drank from the mouth of the dripping hose-bib. A skinny green snake slithered on the ground inches from Flora’s feet.

Flora was apparently unfazed by the threat of yellow-jackets and the snake, and sat calmly like a monk.

Orange and black butterflies were parked around the edge of the pool, sporadically flying about. A pair of quail ran under the back fence; songbirds flitted in the field beyond, occasionally landing on the fence-top.

“Wow. Quite a place,” I said quietly.

Flora, with butterflies in her hair and a frog in the palm of each hand, narrowed her eyes.

“Too bad for you,” she said, “it’s not for sale.”