Chapter 8

At 8:41 in the morning, they craned the whole assembly onto the trailer and chained it down. The discharge gauge, still bolted to what remained of the header, sank slowly while they worked, and I photographed it at 87, then 60, then 31, then flat.Vanessa watched the trailer strap tighten with an expression of real satisfaction, and then she walked over to me, lifted her sunglasses, and gestured at the empty concrete like a woman presenting a gift.She said, "You see? Nothing happened."I looked past her shoulder at the far tree line, where the number 14 sprinklers were still turning in the sun on stored pressure from the tanks, and I said the only word I had left for her.I said, "Not yet."She was already walking away.At 2:19 that afternoon, my phone rang, and it was Everett, and he did not say hello. He said the irrigation main was reading 32 pounds at the pump house panel and falling, that the west reservoir had dropped 11 feet since noon, and that his cycle controller was throwing low-pressure faults across four zones.I asked him what the ambient temperature was. He said 104 in the shade with a dew point in the 30s and a steady wind out of the southwest, which for turf is not weather—it is a blowtorch. He asked me if it was true. I told him yes.

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