Puddles formed in only a few places.
Clara knelt.
She pushed her fingers beneath the decomposing layer.
Water had moved down.
She grabbed the steel probe.
Sixteen inches.
Then seventeen.
She laughed.
Nobody was there to hear it.
The rain stopped before sunset.
Clara returned to the house soaked from the knees down.
Mud covered her boots.
Daniel’s coat smelled like wet canvas and soil.
She entered the kitchen.
The developer’s offer still sat beneath the bank papers.
She looked at it.
Then at her father’s notebook.
For the first time, she did not imagine selling.
She imagined waiting.
June arrived hot.
The first week brought one small shower.
The second brought none.
Temperatures climbed.
Farmers liked to say there was always a dry spell in June.
Sometimes they were right.
The early wheat came off under clear skies.
Corn roots pushed deeper.
Soybeans held.
People complained about dust but did not worry.
Not yet.
Clara planted a late summer vegetable crop on the experimental eighteen acres.
Pumpkins.
Winter squash.
Peppers.
A smaller section of field corn.
She chose crops with different root habits because she wanted to see how they behaved under the soil treatments.
The untreated control sections received the same seed.
Same planting date.
Same equipment.
Same everything except the mulch and decomposed market waste.
By June 14, seedlings were established.
By June 19, temperatures reached ninety-seven.
By June 22, the weather service removed meaningful rain from the ten-day forecast.
Earl stopped at the fence one evening.
Clara was repairing drip line.
He rested one arm on the post.
“Pretty dry.”
She nodded.
“Yep.”
“You irrigating?”
“Not yet.”
He frowned.
“Why?”
“Checking moisture first.”
“You’re going to wait until they’re stressed?”
“They aren’t.”
Earl looked at the field.
Leaves were still broad.
Green.
The untreated strip farther east was already beginning to curl slightly by late afternoon.
He noticed.
Clara noticed him noticing.
Neither mentioned it.
Earl cleared his throat.
“Heard the bank’s been calling.”
Clara looked at him.
“Small town.”
“Wasn’t gossip.”
“What was it?”
“Concern.”
“Whose?”
He shrugged.
“People.”
Clara returned to the drip fitting.
“People should find hobbies.”
Earl stayed.
“My brother-in-law knows that Wichita developer.”
Clara stopped working.
“What about him?”
“He says the offer’s still open.”
“I know.”
“You could sell the road acreage, clear most of what you owe.”
Clara tightened the connector.
“I know.”
“You’d still have nearly a hundred acres.”
“Ninety-seven.”
“Still plenty.”
She looked toward the road.
Twenty-two acres.
The frontage included the eastern field.
The garbage field.
The land everyone considered her worst ground.
The developer wanted it because County Road 18 was expected to widen within five years.
Daniel had refused three offers.