“For irrigation ditches.”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
Not cruelly at first.
More like a man hearing a joke he respected.
“You are actually doing it.”
Another truck arrived.
Then another.
By 5:20, five neighboring farmers stood near the fence.
Someone had called someone.
That person called two more.
Della should have expected it.
Nothing traveled faster through a farming county than bad weather, equipment failure, or somebody trying something everyone else considered stupid.
Walter Keene leaned against Rayburn’s tailgate.
He was fifty-seven and built like a fence post.
“Fish belong on a dinner plate.”
Della ignored him.
“Not in cotton.”
Still nothing.
Earl Benson arrived last.
Seventy-two.
Retired in theory.
Never in practice.
He looked into the tank.
“What kind?”
“Tilapia.”
Earl scratched his beard.
“At least she picked edible ones.”
Rayburn laughed.
Della looked at him.
“You all get out of bed before five just to watch me make a mistake?”
Walter lifted his coffee.
“Community support.”
“Touching.”
The driver whispered, “Want me to wait?”
“No.”
Della grabbed the first galvanized bucket.
“Let them watch.”
The unloading began.
Fish moved from the transport tank into holding bins.
Della checked temperatures again.
She had divided the irrigation network into six circulating zones.
Each zone consisted of lined channels running between fields, shallow settling basins, pump stations, screened returns, and distribution gates feeding conventional furrow irrigation.
It was not sophisticated by industrial standards.
It was sophisticated by broke-twenty-four-year-old-with-an-old-farm standards.
Her father had drawn the original system fifteen years earlier.
Della had improved parts of it.
Not because she was smarter.
Because pump technology had become cheaper.
Solar-powered aerators existed now.
Flexible pipe cost less.
Electronic water monitors were available online.
But the idea was his.
Everything began with those notebooks.
The first fish hit the irrigation ditch at 5:46.
A bucketful.
Silver bodies flashed in the early light before disappearing beneath the water.
Rayburn laughed.
Walter pointed.
“Look at that.”
Another bucket.
Then another.
Della carried each one herself.
Mud splashed her boots.
The driver offered to help.
She shook her head.
“I need to see how they react.”
She crouched beside the ditch.
The fish clustered initially.
Then spread.
Good.
Flow rate was right.
Water movement was gentle enough.
She stood and walked toward the next zone.
Rayburn followed along the fence.
“You know they’re going to die.”
“Some probably will.”
“That water gets hot in August.”
“I know.”
“You’ll have algae.”
“I know.”
“Disease.”
“Possibly.”
“Raccoons.”
“Yes.”
“Herons.”
“Yes.”
“Snakes.”
Della stopped.
“Rayburn.”
“What?”
“Did you come with a new problem, or are you listing animals?”
Earl laughed hard enough to cough.
Rayburn shook his head.
“Your father would’ve talked you out of this.”
Della’s expression changed.
The laughter stopped.
Rayburn realized the mistake.
Della looked at him.
“No.”
She lifted another bucket.
“He drew it.”
Nobody spoke.
Della walked away.
Her father, Thomas Marsh, had been dead for eight months.
Pancreatic cancer.
Six months from diagnosis to funeral.