The Pool

If you could cure the world, would you?

I took my family on a little camping trip in the desert. It was supposed to be a time of bonding before Melanie, my daughter, went off to college. Of course, she would much rather have spent the time with her friends, so she didn’t want to be there. She got angry the first night, locked herself in the car to read, and fell asleep, draining the battery. That left it up to dad to trek across the desert to the closest town for help.

Six hours into my journey and the twenty-four ounces of water I took with me were gone. It was getting harder and harder to swallow, my lips were cracked, and I swear my tongue felt fifty times bigger. I’m stumbling along, not sure how much farther I’m going to make it, I felt so faint. I had blisters on my feet and to make matters worse my shoes kept filling with sand and rock. The sun was unrelenting. I was burnt red all over. Between the sun scorching my head through my thinning hair and the constant squinting against the sun’s hellacious brilliance, it felt like my scalp might rip. I wished the buzzards above would circle a little tighter together and give me a dot of shade to hide under.

“What is that,” I asked myself, deliriously. “Is that water? Now that’s not supposed to be there. It’s not on the map.”

I hoped it was there as I pushed my way towards it. It didn’t look much bigger than a small pond. I could have been hallucinating. It was devilishly hot, and I was dehydrated.

I started to smell a flowery essence as I got close, something like orchids, but I saw no plant life at all. I fell to my knees at the edge of the water and cupped my hands, praying that this be real. It was and I cupped water to my mouth fervently. The water was cool, clear, and purer tasting than anything I had ever tasted out of a faucet. My mouth and throat were like dried sponges soaking up the water. I felt the water flow through my body in an instant and irrigate my organs. I rubbed my lips, and they were no longer cracked.

I took off my shoes and emptied them of their contents before soaking my feet in the pool’s cool water to soothe them. I watched as my busted and bloody blisters healed right before my eyes. I took my glasses and clothes off and dove in. I swam and let the water rejuvenate my burnt skin, the red turning to a nice golden-brown and its elasticity returned. I pushed my hair from my eyes and could feel that my hair had filled in nice and thick. In fact, I could see clearly without my glasses, and I have worn glasses since the fourth grade. I lay there floating weightlessly. Breathing came easier, deeper. I felt my muscles tighten and saw the veins in my arms like when I was a young man. I stood up and walked out, noticing that the old beer gut had shriveled away, leaving me with a nice flat stomach.

=

I made it into the town on the map and went straight to the sheriff’s office. He addressed me as “young man.” I’m fifty. Before leaving to get my family, I went into the stations restroom to sneak a peek in the mirror. I looked twenty years younger and very much felt that way too.

My wife, Lesly, and kids, Melanie and Kyle, looked at me with jaws wide open when we got back to the camp. I told them to keep quiet and I’d explain everything after the sheriff left. As soon as his headlights were in the distance, I was barraged with questions.

“What happened to you?”

“Why do you look so young?”

“How are you going to explain this to everyone?”

“It was the most amazing thing,” I told everyone. “I was dehydrated and not sure if I was going to make it, but I came across this pool of water. It reverses aging. It healed my skin, healed my vision, reduced my weight, grew out my hair – it was amazing. I have never felt so good. A good night’s sleep and a hundred cups of coffee couldn’t give me this much energy. Come on, Lesly, you have to try.”

I drove them up there and had the kids wait in the car while Lesly and I went down to the pool. Lesly was apprehensive, but took a drink and got in. When she got out, she looked like she did when she was in college: her hair thickened into a shiny strawberry blonde, her eyes brightened to an emerald green, crow’s feet and frown lines were gone, her lips ripened, her breasts were plump and firm, her stomach was flat and her stretch marks gone, she regained that hourglass figure, and her legs were slender and silky smooth. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

We got back to the Jeep and the kids hopped out. “Holy shit, mom, you’re hot,” Melanie exclaimed.

“Language, young lady,” her mother reprimanded.

“She’s not kidding, mom. It was bad enough that my friends came around to hit on my sister. Now I have to worry about you too,” Kyle said, making his mother’s night.

On the way home Lesly asked, “Seriously, Scott, how are we going to explain this to everybody?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” I told her. “We just inform them that we discovered a Native American secret to looking and feeling younger, and if they want in on it, it’s going to cost them. I don’t know how much yet, but we can throw bags over their heads and drive them out for a swim once they pay.”

“Really? You want to throw bags over people’s heads like we’re in some sort of mobster movie.”

“Well, you know what I mean. We can’t let people know where it’s at, otherwise they’ll do what we’re trying to do – make a profit.”

“Well, let’s talk to Pam and Allen first. He’s been fighting cancer for over a year now and the doctors don’t seem to be much help. Maybe this will help. I’ll call her in the morning and see if they won’t meet us for dinner.”

=

“Well, it’s worth a shot. I mean, look at you two. I don’t think you two looked that healthy when you were that young,” Pam told us. “What do you think, Allen?”

“At this point, I’m ready to try anything. The doctor gave me six months to live. I have two kids in college and a mortgage that’s almost paid off. I have things to do before I can just give up and die.”

“We can go tonight,” Lesly told them.

“This is supposed to be a money-making venture for Lesly and me, but we’re not going to charge you a thing. You do, however, need to wear blindfolds, so not to give up the location.”

“Why don’t you just cut us in. I can get you clients from the Cancer Center. You’ll be rolling in it.”

“I don’t know, Allen. We don’t take insurance. How are these people going to pay,” I asked.

“Geez, Scott, I didn’t think about that, but maybe we should be more charitable about this. Maybe we should reach out and help the terminally ill,” Lesly said.

“Tell you what. Let’s just take care of Allen tonight and go from there. Let’s make sure it cures the cancer, then we have something to discuss,” Pam suggested.

We took Pam and Allen to the pool, and both came out looking like spring chicks. Allen said he felt better than he did before the cancer.

=

Allen went to the doctor. All his tests came back negative. The pool cured him of his cancer. His doctor had a lot of questions. Acted very suspicious since Allen was looking twenty years younger. Allen avoided all questions and just said he was happy to be feeling better and left.

Now that I know the pool can cure the terminally ill, I can’t consciously move forward with this as a money-making venture. There are too many sick and dying people in the world to be that greedy, and it’s not like I’m not doing alright as an editor.

Allen started reaching out to people at the Cancer Center. Pam developed a website. Lesly started making appointments. Allen and I started running clients out at night, making two trips a night. We were all doing our part and we were all feeling good about what we were doing.

Once Allen exhausted his contacts at the Cancer Center, he began soliciting at other hospitals and treatment centers; that is until he was approached by a couple of guys in suits flashing FBI badges. The feds took Allen to their regional office in Alburquerque, questioning him for hours. It shook him up pretty good.

“I’m telling you, Scott, something is going on. I think the doctors are seeing all these patients coming in, looking twenty years younger and cured, and they want to know how. So, they called the feds,” he told me, sounding nervous.

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell them anything right? Nothing about the pool's location or me and Lesly? We have appointments lined up for months. Some of these people are going down to the wire with hopes of living. I can’t cancel on them. You don’t have to do any more solicitations and we can take down the website, but we have to make these scheduled runs."

“Not we, you. I’m out. I’m seeing black SUVs all around my house. If you need someone to go with you, take Lesly. But no, I didn’t give up any information. I stalled long enough for my lawyer to get there, and they had to charge me or release me.”

=

Lesly and I pulled up to the bus stop where we pick up our clients. Lesly rolls down her window. “Mr. Gains? I’m Lesly Brewer. This is my husband, Scott. We talked on the phone.”

“Right. Nice to meet you in person. Should I grab my car or just ride with you?”

“Hop in with us. It will take us a couple hours to get out into the middle of nowhere, so if you want to stop at a gas station or anything, now is the time to do it.”

“No, no, I’ll be just fine.”

We made our way to the pool and Mr. Gains looks at it bewilderingly. “This is it?”

“That’s it. Just take a drink and get in, swim around for a while and you’ll feel like a new man. The wife and I will wait up at the Jeep to give you some privacy.”

Fifteen minutes later Mr. Gains comes walking back up, looking very much like a forty-year-old man. “Can you come around to the front of the Jeep and look at my back? I want to know if the scar from a car accident I was in is gone,” he says.

I oblige the man. He pulled up the back of his shirt and I told him I didn’t see any scar.

“Good,” he said, wielding around, pointing a gun in my face. “You too, princess. Come on out here,” Mr. Gains commanded Lesly.

She did what he said, and he scooted behind me with the gun, so he had his eyes on both of us. He then pressed his ear and said, “It works, and I have them. Move in now.”

Lights appeared over the ridge and three SUVs came roaring over.

“Set up a perimeter,” Gains told the armed men who emerged from the vehicles.

Two men forced Lesly and I to our knees. We saw two more men wrestle Pam and Allen out of one of the SUVs and throw them on the ground next to us.

“This hereby is top secret federal property. Trespassers will be executed on site. You folks are trespassing.”

I grabbed Lesly’s hand to try and comfort her. She was scared and crying. I was trembling myself.

“We don’t want any trouble,” I told those men. “We can easily forget all about this. We have kids and…”

A series of bangs was the last thing I heard.

We were all buried deep there in the desert. Soon after our deaths, a building was constructed over the pool. The building is under twenty-four-hour surveillance and is surrounded by miles of electrified fencing. No one goes in without the highest government clearance. It is as if the pool never existed.

So, I revise my question. If you would cure the world, could you?