Chapter 15

Earl Beckett came out one afternoon to see it for himself. He walked the rows, slowly pressing his own hands into the earth at intervals, and he didn't say anything for a long time. When he finally spoke, he said he hadn't seen the southern section of that land look like this in more years than he wanted to count.Harvey Denton drove past twice that week. He didn't stop either time, but the truck slowed noticeably as it went by the field, and Bryson noticed it both times without looking up from his work.By late September, the vines had covered the ridges completely and were running dense and low across the surface of the southern section. The field looked like a different place than it had in July: full and green and purposeful—the kind of growth that signals something significant happening below the surface rather than just above it. Bryson had been monitoring the plants closely enough that he was confident about his timing: another two to three weeks, and the soil would tell him the crop was ready. He was allowing himself, carefully and without announcement, to begin believing it was going to work.Then, the weather forecast changed.A storm system that had been moving up from the Gulf shifted track and strengthened, and the revised projections put Rutherford Crossing in its direct path: not a routine autumn rainstorm, but a weather event with wind and prolonged heavy rainfall expected to arrive within the week and last for the better part of two days. The fields would flood, the county road would wash in sections, and the sweet potato crop that Bryson had spent four months building—sitting in the ground ready to be pulled—could be severely damaged or destroyed if standing water reached the root zones and stayed there long enough.He had a few hundred dollars left. There was no equipment he could rent, no pump he could buy that would handle what was coming, no contractor he could call. He checked the weather reports twice each day, hoping the track would shift again.It didn't shift; it held.

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