Later, Eli found Vera mending a work shirt in her room. He asked whether his father was right, whether putting stones in a field was as foolish as it sounded. She threaded her needle before she answered. "Your father is carrying more than you can see," she said. "That doesn't mean the ground has stopped telling you things. Start small enough that being wrong won't hurt the farm, and pay close attention to whatever happens."
"How small?" Eli asked. Vera's mouth twitched toward a smile.
"Small enough you can put it back the way it was," she said. "And don't go taking anybody's wall apart without asking. A stone can belong to two different stories, depending on whose fence it's holding up." Eli laughed, and she reached for the next shirt as though she had said nothing especially memorable.
At dawn the following day, Eli borrowed the wheelbarrow from behind the barn. Its tire was soft, the wooden handles had splinters, and the pan was marked by patches of rust where rainwater had stood for too many winters. He pumped the tire, wrapped cloth around the worst part of one handle, and carried a shovel to the creek bed. He told himself he was only going to collect enough rocks to test a strip of ground no wider than the kitchen table was long.
He returned home with more stones than he had intended to gather. The good ones were flat enough to sit low against the soil, but he had also brought rounded pieces and a few that were much heavier than he could comfortably lift. He sorted them beside the barn while morning shadows still covered the yard, separating them by shape instead of pretending every stone was equally useful. Nana Vera came outside with a cup of tea and watched him arrange the piles without offering a word of advice.
When Thomas noticed the wheelbarrow, he stopped beside the barn and stared at its load. "I thought you were supposed to be getting rocks out of that field," he said. Eli showed him the creek stones, explained his idea again, and promised that he would work only in the driest corner after finishing his regular chores. Thomas rubbed his forehead with two fingers, then looked toward the upper rows where the corn was already curling.
"That patch isn't making us anything anyway," he said finally. "Ten feet, no more, and don't move any rocks that keep the creek bank from washing out. I need you feeding the chickens and bringing in that loose fence rail before you go playing at farming." Eli agreed so quickly that his father almost smiled, though the smile disappeared when Thomas turned toward the fields. The permission was small, but to Eli it felt larger than the whole farm.
He chose a strip just below the old pear tree, where three struggling bean plants grew out of soil so hard it rang faintly when struck with the back of a hoe. He marked the ends with two pieces of twine and measured the width using the ruler from his schoolbag. Ten feet long, five feet across, with enough room to walk around without stepping on the roots. He imagined himself explaining the arrangement to his father after a month of spectacular growth, then forced himself to stop imagining and start looking at the ground.