"I wouldn't ask."
"And no claim that the logs are definitely from the 1891 loss."
Clara smiled. "You've been talking to Ben."
"Ben charges me every time I use an adjective now."
The exhibit opened in late July in a glass case inside the historical society's modest museum room. Clara titled it WOOD BENEATH THE PASTURE: A RIVER CHANNEL REDISCOVERED. Norah approved because it emphasized the landscape rather than imagined riches.
The display explained how the Mississippi Delta's waterways shifted over time, how abandoned channels could fill with sediment, and how timber lost in commercial drives might become buried in low-oxygen mud. It included a map showing the Bell farm's modern boundaries laid over the former west chute and carefully described the recovered cypress as "consistent with historically lost or stored timber associated with nineteenth-century river commerce."
People came.
Retired farmers recognized place names on the old maps.
A former sawmill worker identified tool scars in one photograph.
An eighty-three-year-old woman named Mrs. Haney remembered her father using the phrase "Bellamy sticks" for old cypress recovered near low channels when she was a child, though she could not provide details precise enough to prove anything.
Clara recorded every recollection separately and labeled them oral history rather than evidence.
Norah began to understand that history had layers of reliability just like wood.
There was what people remembered.
What documents recorded.
What material showed.
And what could be inferred when the three agreed.
One Saturday Raymond brought a man named Joseph Landry to the farm. Joseph was a retired scaler who had spent decades grading timber and advising mills on recoverable yield. He walked around the numbered logs with a small hammer and probe, inspecting ends and listening to the subtle differences in sound when he tapped wood.
"You can hear rot?" Norah asked.
"Sometimes."
"How?"
Joseph tapped a sound section.
Tok.
Then a compromised one.
A duller sound.
"Experience."
Norah frowned. "That's not teachable."
"Sure it is. Takes thirty years."
He and Raymond spent the afternoon classifying the remaining candidates conservatively. Of the sixteen old-looking logs, five appeared unlikely to yield enough sound material to justify specialty handling. Four might produce useful boards but had substantial splits or twist. Four were promising. Three—the original marked group—were exceptional enough to leave largely intact until buyers, milling strategy, and historical significance were clearer.
Joseph looked at Log 1 for a long time.
Its base was more than five feet across, making it by far the largest. The registered Bellamy & Cross mark sat near one edge of the cut end, weathered but visible. Only roughly twenty feet of trunk had been exposed by the flood; the rest disappeared under compacted bank material where the old channel curved.
"How much is buried?" Joseph asked.
"Don't know," Eli said.
"Could be another ten feet. Could be thirty."
Norah stared at the ground beyond the visible trunk. "We thought it ended there."
"Mud lies about size," Joseph said.
They chose not to excavate the entire log yet.
The lower pasture was finally becoming usable again, and digging deeply into the channel would cost money and risk destabilizing ground they had just repaired. Eli marked the location with survey stakes and recorded the exposed dimensions.
That decision bothered Norah for exactly one evening.
Then she realized something important.
Not knowing did not always require immediate action.
Sometimes preserving a question was wiser than forcing an answer.
Marcus Sterling visited again the following Monday.
His timing suggested he had heard about the museum display and outside buyers.
He arrived shortly after breakfast and found Eli greasing the rebuilt tractor while Norah recorded moisture readings on the stacked boards.
"You're making a business out of this," Marcus said.
Eli wiped his hands. "Already had a business. Farm."
Marcus looked toward the covered lumber stacks. "Heard Shaw bought some."
"He did."