The Bell demonstration had answered the worst version of the question, and word traveled fast in a valley this small. These were just neighbors standing at the fence or asking to walk the rows, looking at the pots, asking how it worked. She explained it the same way each time. The clay, the porosity, the burial depth, the spacing calculation. She showed them her ledger pages, the moisture logs, the grid diagram she'd drawn in April.
Some of them understood the physics immediately. Others grasped only that it worked, which was a less technical understanding, but perhaps the more durable one.
Ruth Bell came alone on a Tuesday morning in the first week of August. She came to the back gate rather than the road fence, which was a choice that told Evie something. People who came to the road fence wanted to be seen looking.
People who came to the back gate wanted an actual conversation. Evie was at the well when Ruth arrived and she recognized her immediately. She'd spoken to Ruth maybe four or five times in 3 years. Always at the mercantile or the post, always brief and surface. Ruth Bell was several years older than her husband and had the quality that certain women develop when they've managed a difficult man for a long time.
A kind of practiced steadiness that could look like coldness until you got near enough to see it was just the face of someone who had learned to carry things without advertising them. She was carrying something now. "I'm not here for the demonstration," Ruth said. "I've heard it three times already." A pause.
"I'm here because our field failed." Evie set down the well rope. "The corn died in two weeks," Ruth continued. "What Hiram planted in May, by June it was past saving. We have enough preserved from last year to last until October, maybe November if we're careful."
She looked at the green field behind Evie. After that, the sentence didn't finish itself. It didn't need to. Evie looked at her.
"What are you asking for?" "I'm not going to call it asking," Ruth said, without pride, just precision. "We have nothing you need from us right now. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. What I'm asking, what I came to ask, is whether you have any seed from this crop that we could keep, not for this year, for next year, if there is a next year for us here."
Evie did not answer immediately. She went through the arithmetic yield projections, her own community reserve. She'd already been quietly planning what seed retention meant for a harvest that hadn't been brought in yet from a field that was still standing in the ground. "I don't have seed yet," she said.
"I have a standing crop and I won't harvest for another month and a half, minimum." "I know." "But yes, when I harvest, I'll set aside seed." She looked at Ruth directly.
"Not just for you, for whoever needs it. You're not the only family that planted and failed." Ruth held her eye. "I know that, too. I came because I thought it was better to ask than to wait and hope."