The Day the Water Came Home to Grandma’s Orchard

What the Board Was For

When the turnout was set, Amos went back to the dam board on the bank and picked it up.

“This is a good piece of lumber,” he said. “Two-by-twelve. Rough cut. What’d you pay for it?”

“Forty-two dollars,” Trace said. “At the lumberyard in Delta.”

“Well,” Amos said. “I’d hate to waste forty-two dollars.”

He carried the board back down the lateral to Trace’s turnout, and he laid it across the top of the box like a bench.

“There,” he said. “Now when you come check your water, you’ve got a place to sit.”

The old man laughed so hard he had to lean on his cane. Trace looked at the board for a long time. Then he sat down on it. He put his elbows on his knees and looked at his water running into his field, his six shares and not one drop more.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He wasn’t saying it to any of us exactly. He was saying it to the ditch.

Then he looked up. “Is she mad? Mrs. Pope?”

I thought about Grandma standing barefoot in the headgate with her eyes closed, humming. “You’d have to ask her,” I said.