The Ditch That Drowned My Corn
I stood up. I do not like to speak in front of people. My hands were not steady, so I put them in my jacket pockets and said what I had come to say, and I said it slow.
“I’m not here to argue about my offer, Madam President. I’m here because there’s a post at the corner of my field, and my father put it there in 1951, and it has three rings on it. I’d like Michelle Wirick to show the board what we found.”
Michelle came to the front in a navy dress and good shoes, carrying the folder. She laid it in front of Sue Ann Mabry and spoke in the voice she must have used on forty-seven years of school boards.
“My grandson and I have measured the water line on four farms,” she said. “Fourteen inches over the 2008 flood, from an inch and a half of rain. Thirty-six stations, every hundred feet, each one photographed and dated. This is the map.” She turned it so the board could see. “This ditch does not appear on the engineer’s plans.”
“Madam President,” said the man in the gray suit, who was Trent’s attorney, a Mr. Hensley. “This is a collection of lay measurements.”
“It is,” said Sue Ann Mabry. “It’s a good one. Go on, Mrs. Wirick.”
Dallas Rasmussen took his glasses off. “Madam President, may I add something?”
“Please.”
“I drove out last Monday and walked the site. The ditch is there. It’s nineteen hundred feet, give or take, it is not on the stamped plan, and it empties into a twelve-inch culvert in the county right-of-way. The highway department’s records show a twenty-four-inch pipe at that spot until this spring. There’s no work order for the swap, and the permit file for the Sugar Fork drain shows no application for any new outlet from this property.” He opened the binder. “I also called the engineer of record in Fort Wayne. A Mr. Kessler. He put it in a letter on Friday, and with the board’s leave I’ll read it.”
Hensley half rose. Sue Ann nodded to Dallas.
“‘I issued no revision to sheet C-4 of the Sugar Fork Estates drainage plan,'” Dallas read. “‘The east ditch, the capping of the existing agricultural tile and the culvert replacement were not designed by this office, and I was not informed of them.'” He laid the letter down. “That’s the whole letter. It’s short.”
I looked at Trent Garrity. He was looking at the plans.
“I have also,” Dallas said, “a signed statement and a photocopied work log from a man who was on that machine. He’s in the room. He’s asked me to read it and has not asked to be called, and I don’t intend to call him.” He read it. It took four minutes. It said what Josh had said at my table, in Josh’s plain words, with the dates and the station numbers. When Dallas finished, nobody looked at Josh, and that was the kindest thing anyone did that morning.
“Mr. Garrity,” Sue Ann Mabry said. “Do you wish to respond?”
Hensley leaned toward him. Trent put a hand up, not unkindly, and Hensley sat back.