Not much.
But enough.
He carefully returned the soil and adjusted another rock.
Hank's laughter faded into irritation.
“I'm talking to you.”
Eli looked up.
His brown eyes were tired.
There was dirt across his cheek and a fresh blister beneath his right glove.
“Yes, Mr. Barlow?”
Hank folded his arms.
“You know what people are saying in town?”
Eli waited.
“They're saying your mother ought to sell this place before you ruin what's left of it.”
The words hurt more than the laughter.
Eli looked down.
For a moment, his fingers stopped moving.
Then he answered quietly.
“Mom says we're not selling.”
Hank smiled.
“Your mother works twelve-hour shifts in town, boy. She doesn't know the first thing about keeping a farm alive.”
Eli's jaw tightened.
“My grandfather did.”
For a moment, the men fell silent.
Then Hank gave a contemptuous chuckle.
“Your grandfather was a good man. But he's buried, and the farm's dying.”
Eli looked toward the old red barn.
Beyond it lay forty-three acres of land that had belonged to his family for three generations.
A few years earlier, the fields had been green.
Now the pasture was brown, the creek had shrunk to a ribbon of stagnant pools, and the wind carried fine dust through the fence posts.
The drought had begun with a dry spring.
Then June arrived without relief.
By early July, farmers across the region were watching their crops struggle beneath relentless heat.
Eli's family had already lost much of its ordinary planting.
Their small cattle herd had been sold months earlier to reduce expenses.
The bank was waiting for a payment his mother didn't know how to make.
And the only patch of ground that still showed promising green leaves was the one Eli had covered with carefully arranged stones.
Hank pointed toward it.
“You're wasting your time. Watermelons need water, not gravel.”
Eli looked up.
“They have water.”
Gus laughed.
“Where? You got a river under that straw hat?”
Eli hesitated.
Then shook his head.
“No, sir.”
Roy grinned.