“How much?”
“About four-tenths of a pound per square inch for every foot of height difference.”
Della stared.
Clifton added:
“Roughly.”
“So ten feet is around four pounds?”
“Little over.”
“Is that enough?”
“For what?”
“Drip tape.”
Clifton considered.
“Some low-pressure tape can operate in that range.”
“Depends on length.”
“Emitter design.”
“Filtering.”
“Elevation differences.”
“Flow.”
Della nodded again.
Clifton looked at Harlan.
“She always like this?”
“Unfortunately.”
Della ignored them.
That afternoon she went straight to Opal’s room.
Opal Pruitt was June’s mother.
Eighty-one years old.
Thin.
Sharp-eyed.
Hair white and cut short because she hated pins.
Her room was technically a bedroom.
In practice, it was an agricultural archive.
Extension pamphlets filled two shelves.
Vegetable guides.
Soil bulletins.
Home-canning instructions.
Pasture recommendations.
Old seed catalogs.
University of Kentucky publications from decades nobody else considered relevant.
Opal read constantly.
She remembered most of it.
Della stood in the doorway.
“Grandma.”
Opal did not look up.
“If you’re asking whether your mother will notice you ate the last two biscuits.”
“She will.”
“I didn’t.”
“Then what?”
“Do you have anything about drip irrigation?”
Opal lowered her glasses.
“For soybeans?”
Della frowned.
“How’d you know?”
“You have your father’s face when you’re planning something expensive.”
“It’s not expensive.”
“That means it’s dangerous.”
“Grandma.”
Opal smiled.
“Second shelf.”
“Brown binder.”
Della spent two hours reading.
Drip irrigation.
Trickle systems.
Gravity tanks.
Low-pressure lines.
Filtration.
Friction loss.
She understood maybe half.
The diagrams helped.
One pamphlet showed a raised barrel feeding garden rows below it.
Another explained that water pressure could be created by elevation.
Della ran outside before dinner.
The Pruitt farm had a shallow draw along its northern boundary.
Not a pond.
More like a natural depression.
During strong rains, runoff from a wooded ridge gathered there.
Usually it drained slowly or soaked into the ground over several days.
At the southeast lip of the draw, land began falling toward the upper field.
Della stood there.
Looked downhill.
Walked to the soybeans.
Looked back.
The draw was higher.
How much?
She had no idea.
That became problem number one.
The next morning, Della borrowed a clear plastic hose from the barn.
Opal asked:
“What for?”
“Level.”
Opal grinned.
“You found that page.”
Della filled the tube with water and began making crude elevation measurements using stakes.
The principle was simple.
Water inside both open ends of a tube settles at the same elevation.
By carrying the hose between marked stakes, Della could estimate changes in height.
She made mistakes.
Lots.
Air bubbles.
Spilled water.
One end falling.
Wren moving a stake because she believed she was helping.
Wren was Della’s seven-year-old sister.
“Why’d you move it?”
“You said move the stick.”
“I said don’t move the stick.”