Ruth called him inside just as the rain began. The first drops darkened the dust in round spots; then the sky opened and the water came down in thick, slanting sheets. Thomas and Eli stood on the porch listening to it strike the roof, neither willing to say aloud how much depended on what happened in the field. Nana Vera sat in a chair behind them, hands folded over her shawl, her face lit occasionally by the lightning beyond the hills.
For twenty minutes the rain was violent enough to hide the far fence. Water poured from the roof gutters, and the yard became a patchwork of puddles and muddy channels. Eli watched the narrow track leading toward the field and thought of the two bean plants he had drowned during his first experiment. He pictured the stone strips turning into dams and the careful rows becoming shallow troughs that would hold water where it could do harm.
Then the storm eased. The thunder moved south, the heaviest rain became a steady patter, and a thin strip of lighter sky appeared behind the barn. Eli reached for his boots, but Thomas put a hand on his arm and told him to wait until the lightning had passed. They stood together another twenty minutes, listening to the water and doing the difficult work of staying still.
When they finally walked the field, the light was nearly gone. Small channels carried runoff away from low spots without washing out the protected rows, and water had soaked into the loosened soil around many of the plants. One section near the lower boundary had filled with silt, and several stones had shifted, but most of the arrangement remained intact. Eli crouched beside the first ten-foot strip and felt dampness beneath a broad stone that had been in almost the same position since his fourth attempt.
"It held," he said. Thomas looked along the adjoining rows, then knelt beside another protected patch. He examined the soil, pressed a finger into the earth, and remained silent for a moment. "Most of it did," he replied. Eli appreciated the correction; after months of work, he was learning that most of it could be a wonderful result.
The following afternoon the difference was visible. Exposed sections had already begun drying at the surface, while the sheltered rows held their color longer, and the plants near them stayed more upright through the heat. Thomas and Eli measured several areas again, comparing them with plots that had received the same rain but different treatment. The results were not perfectly uniform, yet enough sections showed improvement that the two of them began speaking about the method as something they would continue to investigate next year.