Pages filled with handwriting, sketches, dates, rainfall totals, crude maps, measurements, arrows, and circles fluttered beneath the construction wind.
The engineer looked down.
Then back at her.
“What is it this time?”
“The west pad is wrong.”
The engineer stared.
“We moved the test boring twenty feet after your last complaint.”
“You moved the boring.”
She pointed toward the towering drilling machine.
“You didn't move that.”
One of the younger engineers exchanged a look with another.
The girl continued.
“There is a void running under the pad.”
The senior engineer exhaled through his nose.
“No, there isn't.”
“Yes, there is.”
“We have geotechnical surveys.”
“I know.”
“Ground-penetrating radar.”
“I know.”
“Core samples.”
“I know.”
“Electrical resistivity imaging.”
The girl nodded impatiently.
“I know what you did.”
One supervisor muttered, “Apparently she knows everything.”
A few men laughed.
The girl ignored them.
She turned several pages.
“There.”
A hand-drawn map covered two pages.
The engineer glanced down.
The farm appeared in rough pencil lines.
Fence boundaries.
Creek.
Old barn.
Sink depressions.
Tree lines.
Drainage channels.
And beneath the current construction site, the girl had drawn an irregular chain of circles connected by dotted lines.
The senior engineer frowned despite himself.
“What is this supposed to be?”
“Void pattern.”
“Based on what?”
“Water.”
“Water?”
“Where it disappears.”
One of the men laughed again.
The girl looked at him.
“After heavy rain, runoff from the north field crosses here.”
She pointed.
“It used to reach the creek.”
The engineer said, “Used to?”
“Seven years ago it stopped.”
The laughter weakened.
She continued.
“My grandfather noticed first. We thought someone blocked the drainage ditch, but nothing was blocked. Water was entering the ground.”
The senior engineer looked toward the construction field.
“You understand this entire property drains differently now because we've graded it.”
“I’m talking about before you came.”
The girl turned another page.
Rainfall dates.
Handwritten measurements.
“Every year I marked where standing water disappeared after storms.”
The engineer flipped a few pages almost despite himself.
“You've been doing this since you were nine?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
The girl hesitated.
“Because I live here.”
Several workers smiled.
The senior engineer did not.
She pointed again.
“The disappearances moved east over time.”
“What do you mean moved?”
“Not the same openings. New ones.”
“Sinkholes?”
“Small ones.”
“How small?”
“Some only six inches across. Some several feet. Most filled again after rain.”
The engineer folded his arms.
“And you believe those indicate a large underground cavity.”
“I believe the limestone underneath is broken up.”
“Based on puddles.”
“Based on seven years.”
The engineer looked toward his colleagues.
One smiled.
Another shook his head.
The girl understood what they were thinking.