Vance walked directly toward the first row. "Water has been dropping here," he observed. "Did any cuttings wash out?"
"Twenty-three after the last flood. I marked the places. I haven't replaced them because I want to compare survival by position."
He stopped. "You recorded that?"
"Every morning. I brought the notebook."
He glanced at it as though seeing a different kind of object than the school exercise book it was. When he opened it, the pages showed uneven pencil grids filled with dates, water measurements, weather notes, and small diagrams. Clara had drawn the bend of the creek with arrows showing the direction of floodwater as she observed it. Vance turned several pages without speaking and then returned the notebook to her more carefully than he had accepted it.
"This is useful information," he said.
Blackwell snorted. "Useful for proving how long it takes to drown brush."
They had reached a cutting near the third row when Vance bent for a closer look. He touched the base with his thumb, started to scrape at the bark, then paused when Clara shifted beside him. She knelt instead and pointed to a pale swelling where the mud had fallen away after the water receded. A few hair-fine threads extended into the damp soil. She had noticed them the previous evening and had barely allowed herself to believe they were roots.
"Is that what I think it is?" she asked.
Vance lowered his magnifying glass. He looked once, then longer, then moved to a nearby branch. The second had similar threads at a node near the base. A third cutting was still firm but showed no sign of new growth. He examined several more, keeping his own counsel while Clara watched the change come over his face.
"Some have formed roots," he said at last.
"Mold," Blackwell announced from behind him. "Anything grows mold in a swamp."
Vance stood up slowly. "No, Tom. Those are roots. Adventitious roots forming from living tissue along the lower nodes."
Blackwell stepped closer, his smile fading. "I thought you said they were dead."
"I said the conditions were likely to make them fail," Vance answered, more sharply than Clara expected. "I didn't know exactly how long they'd been stored or how far the flooding would fall. Survival is not a guarantee, and it doesn't mean every cutting will take. But those are roots."
Clara heard the sentence as though from a great distance. She knelt beside the little branch and looked again at the pale threads that disappeared beneath the dark mud. The evidence was smaller than a strand of sewing cotton. Yet it was the first answer the field had given her that no amount of argument could take away.
"There's another one," she whispered.