Warren finally looked at him directly. "You came here before eight in the morning to buy a field that's still filling with water."
"I came to give you options."
"Who wants it?"
A tiny delay appeared before Gerald answered. "There are development interests in the area. You know that."
"The same people who put that outlet in?"
Gerald's expression remained smooth. "I don't know who installed which piece of infrastructure, Warren. I'm your lender, not the project engineer."
Warren nodded slowly. "Then lend. Let engineers engineer. Let me farm."
Gerald sighed, not dramatically, almost with sympathy. "You're seventy-four. You have debt tied to acreage that's becoming less reliable. Nobody is questioning what you've built here. But there comes a point when protecting the farm means making a hard decision before circumstances make it for you."
Warren heard the sentence and remembered it later because of how carefully Gerald delivered it. Water has a way of making decisions for people who refuse to make them themselves.
Then Gerald climbed back into the truck and drove away.
Warren stayed by the fence until the pickup disappeared. The water looked different after that. It was still muddy runoff moving through a ditch, still crop loss, still a practical problem that would have to be measured in seed, fertilizer, fuel, and the cost of replanting if the ground dried in time. But Gerald's visit had put shape around a suspicion Warren had been trying not to name. Someone had changed the way water moved upstream, and the bank seemed remarkably prepared to explain why the consequences should make Warren sell.
Casey found him shortly before eight. She parked her aging hatchback near the lane, got out with her hair pulled back and a camera hanging from one shoulder, and walked toward him carrying two travel mugs. She gave one to Warren without asking whether he wanted it, then stood beside him and stared at the flooded field.
"How bad?" she asked.
"Bad enough."
"How much?"
"Hard to tell from here. Fifty acres underwater for sure. Maybe sixty now. More if it keeps coming."
Casey watched the water for a moment. Then, unexpectedly, she looked up.
"Granddad, look at the birds."
Warren frowned. "I'm looking at beans drowning."
"I know. Just look."
There were more birds than he had noticed. Egrets stood in the shallows, white against the brown water. Killdeer worked the higher edges. Several ducks circled once and dropped into a deeper pocket near the center. Over the next ten minutes more birds arrived, some landing where the flooded rows bent into an old depression Warren had always considered a nuisance to work around.
"They know there are worms and bugs pushed up," Warren said. "Flood any field and you'll get birds."
"Maybe."
He glanced at her. "Don't start making a mystery out of mud."
Casey smiled faintly. "I didn't say anything."
That afternoon Warren called the county drainage office and left a message. The following morning he called again, then called the development company's posted number and reached a receptionist who promised someone would return his call. Nobody did. By the third day the deepest part of the field still held nearly two feet of water, and the soybeans underneath had begun to yellow, collapse, and disappear.