The following week, a storm swept across Maro County with enough wind to peel loose roofing from several barns and flatten portions of the young corn. Hollow Bend did not escape. One side of the cattle shed lost more shingles, two fence posts leaned dangerously, and the north test plot was bent hard enough that Eli spent the following morning standing beside it with both hands clenched at his sides.
Some of the plants righted themselves. Others did not. Callie documented the storm damage separately from the drought observations and thanked Dutch for insisting they had protected the remaining seed supply rather than placing everything in the field. The distinction between a promising crop and a guaranteed future was one she no longer needed anybody to explain.
By late August, the surviving Voss Flint stalks carried firm ears beneath their husks. The drought had become one of the worst local growing-season dry spells in nine years, and many surrounding fields showed the curled leaves and pale coloring that farmers had learned to dread. The small protected plot remained an island of green and bronze, not untouched by hardship, but standing with enough strength to make the old stories about Silas sound less like exaggeration than they had months before.
Callie walked the rows every morning for two weeks before permitting herself to call the trial a success in any limited sense. She checked the moisture in the soil, looked for disease, examined the fill developing in the ears, and compared the conditions with her notebook. Every observation went onto a page with its date attached, because she had decided that a good story was not an adequate substitute for good records.
On the last morning of August, she found Eli already standing at the edge of the plot. He had come out before breakfast and was looking across the stalks toward the old cellar, its door now protected by a temporary roof. When she joined him, he said quietly that he wished their father could have seen the plants.
"He would have asked whether you'd finished your homework," Callie answered. Eli laughed, but she could hear the thickness in his throat. She put her arm around his shoulders and added, "After that, he would have spent the whole day asking you how you found the cellar."
They stood together until the wind moved through the leaves, producing a low dry rustling that reminded Callie of voices speaking at the far end of a long room. Behind them, the house waited with its unpaid bills, the barn needed its roof, and winter was coming whether the seeds proved valuable or not. Ahead of them, the old corn held its ears toward the late summer light, asking for nothing but time enough to finish what it had begun.