Marcus looked over the flattened fence and the ruined grass. "Could've been worse."
"That's what people say when it isn't theirs."
Marcus laughed as though Eli had made a joke. Then he looked toward the log pile.
Norah watched his face.
The expression changed only slightly. His eyes moved once over the entire jam, then returned to the three largest trunks near the drainage cut. He did not walk toward the smaller broken timber. He did not examine the branches. He went almost directly to the same trunk Norah had been cleaning.
"Well," he said after a moment, "river left you a headache."
"So everybody keeps telling me."
Marcus nudged one blackened trunk with his boot. "Soaked. Half buried. Bark gone. Probably been knocking around underwater long enough to rot from the inside. Cost more to drag this mess out than you'd ever get from it."
Norah stood behind Eli, watching Marcus's eyes rather than his boot.
He glanced at the mark.
Only for a second.
Then looked away.
"Tell you what," Marcus said. "I've got a loader and a log truck free later this week. I can have my boys haul all of it off for you. Save you the trouble."
"What would that cost?" Eli asked.
Marcus waved one hand. "For you? I'll call it neighborly. Maybe fuel and labor. Couple hundred, if that."
Norah frowned.
Marcus had driven twelve miles to look at logs he believed would cost him money.
Eli seemed to be thinking the same thing, though his expression did not show it.
"We'll let you know," he said.
"No hurry." Marcus looked once more at the three big trunks. "Just don't wait until the ground dries hard around them. Easier to move while the mud's soft."
He walked back to his truck.
Norah waited until the engine disappeared beyond the lane before saying anything.
"He wants them."
Eli started toward the fence.
"He wants the job."
"No. He wants those three."
"Norah."
"He barely looked at the rest."
"Marcus looks at timber for a living."
"Exactly."
Eli stopped.
Norah pointed toward the log pile. "If they're worthless, why did he come all the way out here before we called him?"
"People talk."
"If they're worthless, why did he look at the same three logs every time he talked?"
Eli looked back at the pile.
Norah crouched beside the marked end again. "And if that's nothing, why did you get quiet when you saw it?"
Her grandfather rubbed the back of his neck.
For years Norah had learned more from the pauses between Eli's words than from the words themselves. He was not a secretive man, but he believed certainty should be earned. If he told you a storm was coming, you could expect thunder. If he said a calf was sick, the veterinarian would usually agree. He disliked guessing out loud because he had seen too many people fall in love with the first explanation that made them feel clever.
"I've seen marks like that," he said finally. "When I was little. Old men around here used to talk about river timber. Logs floated in drives before trucks took over most hauling. Cypress, oak, whatever they were moving."
"Each outfit had marks. Some stamped ends. Some used axes. Some branded. Floods broke rafts apart, channels shifted, timber got lost."
"Could these be from one of those drives?"
"Could be. Could also be logs somebody cut fifty years later and lost in a flood. Could be three different things stacked together by last week's water."
Norah looked at the tight rings visible beneath the black edge. "But you don't think Marcus drove here for rotten wood."
Eli gave her a sideways look.
"I think," he said, "before we sell, cut, burn, drag, or let anybody haul anything, we learn what we've got."
That was enough for Norah.
The farm could wait one more day before the logs became junk.
For the rest of the afternoon, she treated the lower pasture like a place where evidence might disappear if she looked away too long. Eli let her use his thirty-five-millimeter camera, an old Minolta he usually saved for family trips and livestock sales, and Norah photographed each marked trunk before the mud dried enough to crack. She placed a carpenter's ruler beside the symbols for scale, then photographed the whole pile from the north fence, the lane, and the old drainage channel.