On the drive home, Renata asked:
“Does it bother you?”
“What?”
“The talking.”
Maisie looked out the window.
“Not really.”
“You know you can tell me what you’re doing.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to?”
“Not yet.”
Renata smiled despite herself.
“You get that from your father.”
From the driver’s seat, Daniel Callaway said:
“I heard that.”
“You were supposed to.”
The Callaway farm covered sixty acres of red-brown Nebraska ground.
Some pasture.
Some corn.
A little alfalfa.
And, nearest the farmhouse, several acres of vegetables that had become increasingly important to the family’s finances.
Three years earlier, Daniel had signed a seasonal contract with a regional produce cooperative.
Tomatoes were the centerpiece.
Beans, peppers, squash, and cucumbers filled out the shipments.
The co-op did not make the Callaways wealthy.
It made them viable.
That distinction mattered.
Corn paid slowly.
Cattle required feed.
Vegetables, when the season went well, created cash during the months when the family needed it most.
The problem was that summer had stopped going well.
It had not rained properly in twenty-seven days.
The sky remained blue day after day.
Beautiful to anyone without crops.
Terrifying to anyone who depended on soil.
By noon, wind moved across the fields like air from an open oven.
The ground cracked.
Dust collected along fence rows.
Tomato plants wilted by ten in the morning.
Bean leaves curled inward to reduce moisture loss.
Squash leaves became soft and dull.
Daniel walked the rows before sunrise and again at dusk.
The more worried he became, the quieter he got.
That was Daniel’s way.
He did not shout when machinery broke.
He did not curse when bills arrived.
He became still.
Renata feared his silence more than anger.
One evening, she placed dinner on the kitchen table.
Daniel barely touched it.
After the children went outside, he opened a brown folder.
Inside was the co-op contract.
Renata saw the expression on his face.
“How bad?”
“If we lose the tomatoes, we probably lose the account.”
“Probably?”
“They need minimum volume.”
“We have insurance?”
“Not enough to matter for this.”
Renata sat across from him.
“The Fletchers put soaker hoses through their garden.”
“I know.”
“They said they’re using almost half the water.”
“On half an acre.”
“We could do the same.”
Daniel shook his head.
“Price them.”
“I did.”
“How much?”
She told him.
He leaned back.
“We don’t have it.”
“We have savings.”
“Not enough to buy irrigation and still cover fertilizer, diesel, and the machinery note.”
Renata looked toward the dark window.
“What if we only do the tomatoes?”
Daniel calculated silently.
“Still more than I want to spend without knowing whether the well can support it.”
Their irrigation system was not designed for efficient vegetable watering.
A pump fed several sprinklers that threw water over the rows in wide arcs.
It had worked reasonably well in ordinary summers.
During drought, the inefficiency became obvious.
Water drifted with the wind.
Evaporated.
Landed between rows.
Ran across hard surface soil before soaking in.
Daniel knew it.
Knowing a problem and affording the solution were two different things.
At the end of the table sat Grandpa Earl.
Earl Whitaker was Renata’s father.
Seventy-two.
Retired officially.
Not actually.
He still appeared every morning wearing a denim shirt and work pants, carrying a coffee thermos and an opinion.
Earl had farmed through the brutal drought years of the 1970s.
He understood dry weather.
He also understood that panic made farmers spend money in exactly the wrong order.
He listened to Daniel and Renata.
Said nothing.
Then looked through the kitchen window toward the barn.
Maisie was there.
A small figure dragging something black across the yard.
Another hose.
Earl smiled.
Renata noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You have that look.”
“What look?”
“The one where you know something everybody else doesn’t.”
Earl lifted his coffee.
“Maybe I’m just enjoying the meatloaf.”