He looked at the sticks and then at her, the expression on his face so close to grief that it made her angry.
“Don’t,” she said before he spoke.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t look at me like I’m sick.”
Ben rubbed his forehead. “Clara, your grandmother kept things. Old clippings, seeds, herbs. That doesn’t mean every bundle in her attic was some secret crop.”
“She left instructions.”
“She also planted beans by moon phases.”
“They grew.”
“So do beans planted by people with calendars.”
Clara crossed her arms.
Ben sighed. “I’m trying to keep you from getting hurt.”
“No. You’re trying to keep me from doing something you think is foolish because watching me fail will hurt you.”
His face changed.
For a moment he seemed angry. Then only tired.
“Sell the place,” he said. “Go to school. Let this county swallow somebody else.”
Clara looked toward the dark line of trees beyond the field.
“What if I don’t want it swallowed?”
Ben did not answer.
The next morning Miller’s Creek rose another foot.
Clara carried the first bundle down to the drowned land.
And the county came to watch her fail.
The first day after planting, Clara woke before dawn because she had dreamed of water filling the bedroom.
In the dream, the creek ran through the hallway, over the braided rug, beneath the kitchen table, and out the front door in a broad, silent current. Evelyn stood in the kitchen wearing the blue housedress she had favored in summer, calmly shelling peas while the water climbed past her ankles. Clara called out that the house was flooding, but Evelyn only looked up and said, “Then stop trying to make the house dry.”
Clara woke with her heart pounding.
For several seconds she could still hear water.
Then she realized it was only rain striking the tin porch roof.
She dressed in the dark, pulled on her rubber boots, and walked to the bottom field before breakfast.
Nothing had changed.
Two hundred sticks rose from brown water beneath a low gray sky. Some leaned slightly after the night’s wind. Clara waded out and straightened them one by one, pressing mud around the bases with both palms. She knew this was probably unnecessary, but the work gave her something to do with the helplessness.
That became her morning ritual.
At first light she checked the creek. Then she counted the cuttings. Then she looked for changes she knew were too small to see. She ran her thumb along the bark, tested the firmness of the stems, and examined every node for swelling. Sometimes she imagined a faint green beneath the gray surface, only to discover the same lifeless color when she looked again.
By breakfast, she was usually wet to the knees.
Then she went back to the house, changed clothes, and caught the bus toward town for her hours at Brackett’s Five and Dime.
The dime store smelled of floor wax, cloth, candy, and fertilizer tracked in from the street on farm boots. Clara worked behind the notions counter measuring ribbon, cutting dress fabric, and wrapping purchases in brown paper. Before Evelyn died, people had treated her as the Jennings girl who might become a teacher. After the sticks were planted, they treated her as a story.
Customers found reasons to bring up farming when she was near.
One woman asked whether Clara was selling trees now. Another told her she had seen a magazine article about people in California growing fruit in desert sand and supposed strange things happened everywhere. Two high school boys came in one afternoon, bought a spool of twine they did not need, and asked whether it was strong enough to tie dead branches together.
Clara wrapped the twine without reacting.
They left disappointed.
Mr. Brackett was kinder.
He was sixty-six, short, bald at the crown, and had owned the store since before Clara’s father was born. He never asked about the field, but one Saturday when Clara’s shift ended, he handed her a paper bag containing a loaf of bread, coffee, and two cans of peaches.
“You overstocked?” Clara asked.
“Terribly.”
“There are only three cans of peaches on the shelf.”
“Catastrophe.”
She looked at him.
He adjusted his spectacles. “Your grandmother once sat with my wife through a fever for three nights while I was away helping my brother. I remember what I owe.”
Clara tried to refuse.
He put the bag on the counter and walked into the stockroom.
She carried it home.
The county’s laughter sharpened when Harold Vance’s warning became known.
Clara had not shown the document to anyone, but Vance had discussed his concerns at the co-op and someone repeated them. Within two days, the phrase “anaerobic conditions” had entered local conversation without most people understanding what it meant. Men who had never heard the term before said Clara Jennings was growing anaerobic fence posts. Somebody chalked DEAD STICK ORCHARD on the side of a feed bin at the co-op.
Clara saw it when she went in to buy chicken scratch on credit.
She stood in front of the words for a moment.
Then she asked the clerk for a rag, wiped them away herself, and paid for the feed with money she could barely spare.
The laughter bothered her less than pity.
Pity implied the outcome was already known.
Mrs. Phelps lived half a mile north in a white farmhouse with green shutters and a windmill that squeaked whenever the breeze changed direction. She had been Evelyn’s closest neighbor for thirty years. Her husband had died in 1947, leaving her with twelve acres, twenty hens, three dairy cows, and enough stubbornness to manage all of it alone.
She came by every few days with eggs or milk.