The Guardian

bad it was dubbed, “Dead man’s highway.”
    They had their little 5.5 acres back off SR160. Surrounding the compound was tall, flush, very large trees. They had maples and elms. They even had palm trees that reach to the sky so high that looking up at them strained your neck and made you dizzy. Along with the trees, they had large pieces of railroad timber sticking upright out of the ground. They looked like a grand, ugly, huge, brown picket fence. Only there wasn’t any cross members. All the timbers butted up against each other. They stood side by side like a perpendicular wall of huge, brown Tootsie Rolls.
    The house itself was a huge multi-level mansion with God only knew how much Spanish tile covering the roof. There was wrought iron everywhere. It was covering all the windows, the patios on all the levels, the gates and even the entryway to the front door. It almost looked like a huge bird cage.
    The house really was excessively big for him alone. He could have sold it many times for a great deal of profit. Paid for free and clear, there was a ton of equity in it. Three times a week he would have a house cleaner service come in. They would go through the place. They would come in, clean and be done with it. It needed done every day. Living in the desert was a very dusty venture. He wouldn’t even do it weekly but living in the desert as they did it was a full time job. trying to keep up with the dust was near impossible. No more of that live in housekeeper shit. He’d had his fill of that as a boy growing up. Even though he hated to admit it, he enjoyed the security that his mother had seen to. He had laughed at his mother for doing such a stupid thing. If, and that was a big if, any burglars could get over the damn wall they probably would be too damn tired to try to get into the house. But, honestly, it was a plus and it did make him feel secure.
    They had dug the wine Cellar deep into the huge mountain ridge at the rear of the estate so that. As his mother explained, it would be better at keeping the wine at a specific temperature. Bullshit, who cared? He hated wine. Sure, it was fine once in awhile with a meal. To be surrounded by it was ridiculous. Monitoring the temperature, inventory, stock listings, rotations, sorted by dates for the Christ’s sake. So, with the exception of a very few bottles he had gotten rid of all of it. No wine was worth all that bother.
    Any normal person would have thought he was crazy for selling such vast quantities of rare, expensive wine. However, in Vegas, with all the casinos, he not only made a fortune all his own, he got the damn stuff out of his way. He planned to sell the whole business as soon as he was able. He wanted to be done with it all together. As a matter of fact, he would have his lawyers start on that as soon as he finished with his little project here.
    Once all the wine was gone he had hired a bunch of day laborers. They were easy to find. All you had to do is go to the corner of Martin Luther King and Bonanza. They were like roaches. He knew they were illegal and hardly spoke any English if any. They would take his money south of the border once they were paid. He didn’t care about any of that. Paying them well was a given. It was on the condition that they kept their mouth shut about what they had done.
    The project, built from left over railroad ties that his mother had. He didn’t know where she got them. He was just glad he hadn’t gotten rid of them.
    There were six rooms total. Each had its own bed, dresser, small table with a chair and a washbasin. Fixed into the ceiling was a fan to circulate any stale air that would accumulate. There was a large hole in the floor in the corner of each room. Over the hole sat a wooden box. It was a seat just like an outhouse for their toilet purposes. They weren’t fancy but they were comfortable.
    The doors were three inches thick. Each with a slot cut into the Center at the bottom. This was for sliding through a large fiberglass food tray like the ones they used at the prison.
    As for the lighting, that was primitive. It would have to do until he could come up with something better. Bare 60-watt bulbs suspended from the ceiling by large electrical cables.
    Unfortunately there was no heat. It would be comfortable in the summer, being cool inside. The thick walls kept out the hot summer temperatures. It wouldn’t be that bad in the winter. After all, his mother had stored her wine in there, how bad