The bank called on Friday. Ruth answered the telephone in the kitchen, listened with a tight expression, and passed the receiver to Thomas. He stood beside the counter for several minutes saying little more than yes, I understand, and after the harvest if possible. When he put the receiver down, he kept one hand on it as though the weight of the conversation might still be resting there.
That night Eli heard his parents talking after Nana Vera had gone to bed. The bank would review the loan again in autumn, Thomas said, and they needed a credible plan for the next planting season whether or not the coming harvest was decent. Eli lay awake thinking about the ten-foot strip and the remaining acres of dry ground. For the first time he understood that the experiment might matter financially, but he also felt the pressure that came with making something hopeful seem necessary.
On Saturday morning Thomas took him to the feed store for fertilizer and fencing wire. The room smelled of grain dust, leather gloves, and coffee that had simmered too long, and men leaned against the counter discussing the drought as though each had personally negotiated against it. Calvin's father, Warren Reese, spotted Eli and grinned. "Here's the boy collecting every rock in the county," he announced, and several heads turned.
Eli prepared to endure another round of jokes, but Thomas spoke before anyone else could. "He's doing a soil-cover trial," he said, placing the wire on the counter. "It's still early, but there's enough difference to keep watching." He did not raise his voice or claim that the method would rescue the county, and perhaps that was why the room became quiet for a moment.
Warren chuckled as though unwilling to surrender his amusement. "You planning to pave the cornfield next?" Thomas looked at him evenly and said he was planning to feed his family, the same as Warren. The reply was not sharp, yet it settled between them with enough weight that the conversation moved elsewhere. Eli carried the purchase to the truck without a word and spent the drive home staring at the road through the windshield.
"You didn't have to do that," he told his father at last. Thomas kept his hands on the wheel and said he had not been defending a miracle cure. He had been defending his son's right to learn something without having it turned into a public sport. Eli watched the dry fields slip past and felt a mixture of gratitude and sadness that he had not expected.
By the end of July, the center strip was visibly greener. The surviving beans had developed larger leaves and more flowers than the nearby untreated plants, though Eli knew the difference was still confined to a narrow patch. Thomas brought out the measuring rule and counted pods with him, comparing plants of similar size and age as carefully as possible. The numbers were modest, but they were consistent enough to change the conversation from whether the idea was foolish to whether it could be extended.