Something beneath the clay reflected sunlight.
Metal.
He dug with his fingers.
Green-painted iron.
“What?”
He returned with a shovel.
Twenty minutes later, the object still had not ended.
Not pipe.
Too large.
Not a normal tank.
Too thick.
He dug wider.
Clay piled around him.
At roughly eighteen inches down, curved metal emerged.
Riveted bands.
Heavy shell.
The more Marcus exposed, the more impossible it looked.
Eight feet six inches long.
Nearly three feet in diameter.
Rounded ends.
Built more like an industrial boiler than a farm tank.
There was almost no rust.
Then he saw brass.
A rectangular plate.
Mud filled the engraving.
Marcus wiped it with his sleeve.
Nothing.
He used water from his canteen.
Rubbed again.
Letters emerged.
GRAYSON COLORED FARMERS COOPERATIVE
J. HOLLIS, KEEPER
SEALED 1914
Marcus did not move.
His fingers remained against the plate.
Hollis.
He read it again.
Then again.
Not because he doubted the letters.
Because he did not know where to put what they meant.
J. Hollis.
Josiah?
He sat back in the mud.
Ruth’s story.
The land.
The oak.
The old stone wall.
Impossible coincidences began arranging themselves into something else.
Marcus stood and paced the distance from the cylinder to the eastern wall.
Then looked toward the oak.
His mouth went dry.
“No.”
He said it aloud.
Then:
“No way.”
A pickup passed along the road.
Marcus suddenly became aware he was visible.
He covered the plate with his jacket.
Then laughed at himself.
What was he hiding?
He did not even know what he had found.
He walked to the truck.
Reached for the door.
Stopped.
Call the sheriff?
County?
Historical society?
Something about that felt correct.
Something else felt wrong.
Marcus had no plan to steal anything.
The object was under land he had purchased.
But he also knew how quickly control could move away from a nineteen-year-old farmer who did not understand the law.
Officials.
Claims.
Equipment.
Someone could decide the thing had to be removed immediately.
Maybe it did.
Marcus wanted documentation first.
Not secrecy.
Evidence.
He drove home.
Ruth sat in the living room watching television.
Marcus walked past.
“Where are you going?”
“Need your camera.”
“My Polaroid?”
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“Farm.”
“That answer tells me nothing.”
“I know.”
She watched him.
Marcus took the camera.
Film.
Bought more at the drugstore.
Spiral notebook.
Returned to the field.
He photographed everything.
Cylinder in place.
Plate.
Plow position.
Depth.
Boundary walls.