The story of the water is the story behind the story of Ira Hayes.

It is the history that explains the poverty he grew up in.

It is the history that explains why the opportunities available to him when he came home from the war were so limited.

It is the history that the bond tour didn’t mention and the photograph didn’t show and the bronze memorial in Arlington couldn’t contain.

He was the son of a people who had been rich in the thing that matters most in the desert, and from whom that thing had been taken.

He grew up in the absence of what should have been there.