For several seconds, the boy was silent.
Then he asked, โDoes Dale know?โ
Ezra looked toward the road.
โHe knows pieces of it.โ
Grace frowned.
โThen why would he laugh at Noah for following Frank's drawings?โ
Ezra's expression darkened.
โThat,โ he said, โis a question I'd like answered too.โ
He opened another photograph.
This one showed a young Frank Bennett standing beside two men at the northern fence. The picture appeared to have been taken in the late 1970s.
One of the men was Ezra.
The other was Dale's father, Robert Harker.
Noah recognized the old fence post behind them.
The iron cap wasn't visible.
But the ground had clearly been disturbed.
โWhat were you doing?โ
Ezra smiled sadly.
โFrank thought the old channel was partly blocked. We helped inspect the surface works and make repairs where it was safe to do so.โ
He looked toward the photograph.
โFor years, the system had been neglected. Some sections had collapsed, and nobody wanted to pay for maintenance.โ
Grace nodded slowly.
โWhat happened afterward?โ
Ezra took a breath.
โFrank kept monitoring the wet patch. The other families gradually stopped using the old arrangements because their needs changed and the system wasn't adequate for larger farming operations.โ
He paused.
โBy the time you were born, Grace, most folks barely remembered it existed.โ
Noah stared toward the field.
โAnd Grandpa didn't forget.โ
Ezra smiled.
โNo.โ
The old man closed the photograph box.
For a moment, his expression became emotional.
โFrank wasn't always easy to understand. He'd spend three hours measuring something that looked perfectly ordinary, then tell you he'd learned enough to justify another six months of watching it.โ
Noah laughed softly.
โThat sounds like him.โ
Ezra nodded.
โHe believed understanding a small resource was more useful than pretending you had a large one.โ
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then Grace asked whether the old six-family agreement might still matter.
Ezra became serious.