The stone had come from the old Henderson boundary wall, a broad stack of field rock built long before Eli's birth. Time and tree roots had pushed part of it down, leaving a small mound where grass and weeds survived better than the surrounding pasture. Eli knelt beside a flat stone, worked his fingertips beneath its edge, and lifted it. The earth beneath was darker than the dusty ground only inches away, and a pale earthworm disappeared into a narrow channel before he could touch it.
He set the stone down again and stared at the place where it had been. It had rained lightly four days earlier, not enough to make the river rise or soften the fields for long. Yet moisture remained beneath that rock, held in a space the direct sun and drying wind could not reach. Eli lowered his hand onto the cool patch and kept it there until he could no longer pretend the difference was imaginary.
He checked another stone, then a third. Near the dry creek bed he found flat rocks whose undersides carried dark smears of damp clay, while the exposed ground around them had turned gray and brittle. Beneath one, small beetles moved through a network of fine roots, and beneath another he found a thread of green growth that had survived without anybody watering it. The evidence was not uniform, but there was enough of a pattern to trouble him in the best possible way.
That night, at supper, he told Thomas what he had seen. Thomas listened while cutting a piece of cornbread into smaller portions than usual, his attention divided between Eli and the figures Ruth had left beside his plate. "The dirt under the rocks is cooler," Eli explained. "It stays damp after the rest dries. What if I could get that to happen around the beans?"
Thomas wiped his mouth and looked tiredly toward the dark window. "Rocks don't grow beans, Eli," he said. There was no cruelty in the reply, only the weariness of a man who had spent months trying everything he knew and had no strength left for another experiment. He added that Eli had chores enough without rearranging the entire creek bed, and he asked him to pass the salt.
Eli nodded, disappointed but not surprised. Across the table Nana Vera lifted her eyes from her plate and gave him a small, deliberate nod. Ruth caught the exchange, though she said nothing, and Eli recognized something important in that silence. His father had not forbidden him to think; he had only said no to a solution he did not yet believe in.