"I hate that word now."
"Been useful to me."
Marcus stood.
At the steps he turned toward Norah.
"You were right about one thing."
She waited.
"Those three are the ones I'd buy first."
"Why didn't you say that the first day?"
Marcus's face did not change.
"Because I was buying."
Then he left.
Norah watched the truck disappear.
"Was that an apology?"
"No," Eli said.
"Thought not."
"It was honesty. Sometimes that's the best you're going to get."
With the logs no longer in immediate danger of being sold blindly, the next challenge became extraction without damaging the pasture or the timber. Heavy equipment could tear through still-soft ground. Eli waited for several dry weeks before moving anything large. He built temporary corduroy paths from scrap boards and old timbers where the loader would cross the lowest spots, and Aaron Pruitt lent a small crawler tractor that distributed weight better than a wheeled machine.
They began with ordinary debris.
Roots and broken branches first.
Then recent logs.
Then older candidates one by one.
Norah stood clear during every pull, camera ready, notebook open. She marked where each trunk emerged from the mud and photographed sediment layers clinging to the underside. Some old logs were only partly buried. Others had been sealed beneath several feet of compacted clay until the flood carved them free.
Log 5, impressive on the surface, turned out nearly worthless. Its center had decayed into a soft brown cavity.
Log 7 split lengthwise during recovery along an old internal crack.
Log 9 was sound but twisted badly enough that sawing yield would be low.
Norah felt oddly relieved by each disappointment.
The failures proved Raymond's warnings true.
They were not forcing the evidence toward the answer they wanted.
Then they reached Log 2.
It was thirty-eight inches at the exposed base and nearly thirty feet long, though several feet remained buried when they first measured it. The squared notch near one end appeared to be an old rafting or handling cut. Once freed, the trunk revealed remarkably consistent diameter and few visible cracks.
Raymond came to inspect before they made any cut.
"Not your marked end," he reminded Norah.
"I know."
"Saying it because excitement makes people stupid."
Eli nodded toward her. "I've been saying that fifteen years."
They selected the damaged opposite end where a natural break already exposed wood.
The first trim cut produced a surface dense enough that Raymond whistled softly.
No hollow center.
No major rot.
Mineral staining faded into rich amber heartwood.
"This one's special," he said.
Norah looked at Eli.
He did not smile immediately.
He ran a hand over the cut.
"How special?"
Raymond's answer remained careful.
"Special enough that you don't turn it into two-by-fours."
They did not saw the whole trunk.