Ray returned before lunch, listened to Tom's account, and held the map flat against the workbench with two oil-stained fingers. He traced the diagonal line and asked for the exact position of the old fence post. Tom showed him where it stood. Ray studied Harold's handwriting for a long while. Then he said, "Your dad was trying to tell us something long before any of these tractors broke."
"Do you think the drain's collapsed?" Tom asked.
"I think that belongs high on the list. But the map isn't an X-ray, and a soft spot isn't a diagnosis." Ray folded his cap between his hands.
"We'll go back and compare the line with what we saw. And then I want someone who works on drainage systems for a living. I know engines. I don't know enough about buried clay to pretend this is my repair."
Tom wanted him to declare the mystery solved. Instead Ray insisted on keeping a difference between a good theory and a proven cause. It irritated Tom, then reassured him. A man who admitted what he did not know might be more useful than one who had answered every question at the first mention of trouble. Tom rolled the map carefully and placed it inside a clean tube that Jenny found among the old survey supplies.
Out in the Creek Forty, the wind had picked up, laying the orange tape flat in the direction of the water. Ray and Tom stood on firm ground just beyond the suspect strip and compared the drawing with the flags. The route of the old main lay directly beneath the three breakdown sites, within the uncertainty one would expect from a map made decades earlier. The line did not match the direction of the corn rows or the modern field entrances. It was a buried geometry from a different generation of farming, invisible to anyone looking only at what grew above it.
Ray said, "Now tell me again what you remember about this ground staying green."
Tom pointed to the strip. "Usually it's one of the first places to look good when the weather turns dry. And it's the last place I like working after rain, even though I never gave that much thought." He examined the surface. "Could the drain be leaking water into the soil instead of carrying it away?"
"Could be a break, could be a blockage, could be both. If something has let the soil wash out over time, there may be more going on than a wet patch." Ray stopped and looked toward the creek. "What did Harold write about the outlet?"
"Silting up."
"Then I'd start there, if I were the contractor. But I won't start digging until we understand where it's safe to stand."
That afternoon Tom phoned two drainage contractors. One could not come for more than a week; the other offered an inspection after finishing a job in the next county, but warned that heavy equipment might not be appropriate until the site was understood. Tom explained the machinery failures and the map. The second contractor asked him to send photographs and promised to check the schedule. There was no comforting guarantee in the conversation, but there was a method, and Tom felt how different a method was from hope.