Everything had a purpose.
Nothing was particularly expensive. Ray had used discarded lumber, old containers, inexpensive fencing, and tools he could repair himself.
He had built it slowly, with whatever he could afford.
And while our relatives had spent years discussing his mistakes, he had spent those same years building something that could help other people.
But Ray wasn’t finished showing me what he had prepared.
He led me toward an old apple tree at the far end of the property.
I remembered it from my teenage years. Back then, it had been little more than a thin trunk with a handful of branches.
Now it stretched over the fence, its limbs thick and strong.
Ray crouched beside the trunk and brushed away some dirt near a flat stone. Beneath it was a metal ring.
He pulled.
A narrow hatch lifted from the ground.
I stepped back.
“What is that?”
