Rain

The Honest Season

Chapter 9: Rain

It came on the twenty-sixth of May. It came from the northwest, from the direction of the Highline, from the direction of Canada, from the vast cold reservoir of Arctic air that collides with the warm Gulf moisture over the northern Great Plains and produces the thunderstorms that Montana farmers watch the way sailors watch the horizon — with hope, with fear, with the understanding that the thing coming is the thing they need and the thing that can destroy them and the thing they cannot control and the thing they must accept.

Ruth saw the clouds at 3:00 in the afternoon. She was in the field, walking Section 12, checking the stand. The wheat was three inches high. Three inches of growth in twenty-six days, three inches of proof that the seed had germinated and the root had anchored and the shoot had found the surface and broken through and begun the work of photosynthesis, the conversion of light and water and carbon dioxide into the sugar that the plant used to build itself, the sugar that was the plant's fuel, the plant's construction material, the plant's reason for existing.

She saw the clouds and she knew. She knew from the shape — the anvil top, the dark base, the particular architecture of a cumulonimbus that has reached the tropopause and spread laterally, the flat top that said this storm has altitude, this storm has energy, this storm has the potential for rain and hail and wind and the particular violence of a Great Plains thunderstorm that can produce two inches of rain in thirty minutes or two-inch hail in five minutes or a wind that strips the leaves from the wheat and flattens the stems and turns a good crop into a field of debris.

She did not run. Running was not what you did when the storm came. Running was for people who had somewhere to go, somewhere to hide, somewhere that the storm could not reach. Ruth had nowhere to go. Ruth was on 2,400 acres of open ground under an open sky and the storm was coming and the coming was not an intrusion but an arrival, not a threat but a visit, the visit of the thing the wheat needed, the thing the soil needed, the thing the season needed to make the planting real.

Without rain the seed is just seed. Ruth knew this. Every farmer knows this. The seed in the ground is potential, is promise, is the intention of growth expressed in the form of a kernel that sits in the soil and waits. The seed waits for moisture and warmth, and the warmth was here — the soil at fifty-eight degrees, well above the minimum — but the moisture was diminishing, the stored winter moisture declining as the wheat drew on it, the profile dropping inch by inch as the young plants pulled water from the soil and transpired it through their leaves and the transpiration was the cost of growth, the price the plant paid for the sunlight it captured.

The wheat needed rain. The wheat needed rain the way Ruth needed coffee, the way Hector needed work, the way David needed logic — not as a luxury but as a condition of function, a prerequisite of operation, the input without which the system stopped.

She walked back to the house. She walked steadily, watching the clouds. The clouds were twenty miles to the northwest, she estimated. They were moving southeast at perhaps thirty miles per hour. They would arrive in forty minutes. Maybe thirty. The timing of storms was imprecise — the speed changed, the direction shifted, the storm breathed and contracted and expanded and the breathing was the storm's version of life, the dynamic instability that made storms dangerous and necessary and beautiful and terrible and honest, because storms were honest, because storms did not pretend, because a storm that was going to produce hail produced hail and a storm that was going to produce rain produced rain and the farmer could not negotiate with the storm any more than the farmer could negotiate with the soil or the sun or the price of wheat.

She reached the house. She went to the porch. She sat on the step. Rust came and sat beside her. He pressed against her leg, the warm pressure of a dog who sensed the change in the air, the barometric drop, the electrical charge, the alteration in the atmosphere that the dog's senses registered before Ruth's instruments could, the animal perception that preceded the human perception, the ancient awareness that survived in dogs because dogs did not have weather apps and did not need them.

The clouds came. They came across the sky the way a hand moves across a table — steadily, deliberately, covering the blue, replacing the sun. The light changed. The gold of afternoon became the gray of storm, the gray that was not one gray but many grays, the layered grays of a cloud mass that contained different densities of moisture at different altitudes, the dark gray at the base where the rain was heaviest and the lighter gray at the middle and the white-gray at the top where the ice crystals spread and the anvil formed.

The wind shifted. It had been from the south — the warm wind, the growing wind, the wind that carried the heat of the Gulf and pushed it north across the plains and into the wheat fields where the heat accumulated and the soil warmed and the crops grew. Now the wind was from the northwest. Cold. Sharp. The wind of the storm's front edge, the gust front, the boundary between the warm air and the cold air, the collision of air masses that produced the instability that produced the storm.

Ruth felt the wind on her face. She felt it change from warm to cold in the space of a minute, the sudden shift that said the storm was here, was overhead, was no longer approaching but was present, was now.

The first drops fell.

They fell heavy and far apart, the advance drops, the scouts, the drops that preceded the main body of rain the way a single soldier precedes an army. They hit the porch boards with a sound like fingers tapping, irregular, tentative, the sound of rain that has not yet committed, rain that is still deciding how hard to fall.

Then the rain committed.

It came down hard. It came down steady. It came down the way rain falls on the Great Plains in late May — without apology, without restraint, with the full force of a storm system that has gathered moisture from a thousand miles of Gulf air and compressed it into clouds and carried it north and released it over the wheat fields of eastern Montana, the fields that needed it, the fields that had been waiting for it, the fields that received it the way the earth receives everything — openly, without resistance, with the total acceptance of a surface that cannot refuse what falls on it.

Ruth sat on the porch and watched the rain fall on her fields.

The rain hit the soil and the soil absorbed it. This was the thing — the absorption, the taking-in, the way the soil opened itself to the water and drew the water down into the profile, into the layers, into the root zone where the wheat roots were, the roots that were six inches deep now and growing deeper, the roots that were the plant's anchor and the plant's straw, the anchor holding the plant in the ground and the straw drawing the water up from the soil into the stem and the leaves and the head that would form in July.

The absorption was not instant. The first rain on dry ground runs off. The first rain hits the surface and the surface resists because the surface has been dry and dry soil is hydrophobic, is repellent, is the state of a surface that has not been wet and that must be convinced to accept the wet, the way a person who has been alone must be convinced to accept company, the initial resistance that precedes the opening, the opening that precedes the absorption.

But the rain continued and the soil accepted and the acceptance was the point, the acceptance was the thing that Ruth watched, the thing that mattered, the thing that made the rain not just water but commitment. The rain committed to falling and the soil committed to accepting and the wheat committed to using and the three commitments — the sky's, the ground's, and the crop's — were the covenant, the three-part agreement that the season depended on and that could not be forged in the absence of any one of the three.

The rain was the covenant's seal. Before the rain, the planting was provisional. Before the rain, the seed in the ground was a bet, a wager, a hope expressed in the form of kernels placed in furrows. After the rain, the planting was real. After the rain, the seed was not a bet but a commitment, not a wager but a contract, the contract between the farmer and the ground that said: I have given you seed and you have given me germination and now the rain has come and the covenant is sealed and the season has begun in earnest and the beginning cannot be called back.

This was what Ruth understood about rain that David could not understand from Denver. The rain was not precipitation. The rain was not weather. The rain was the moment when the season became irrevocable, when the planting became permanent, when the work that had been done could not be undone. After the rain, the season would proceed to harvest or to failure but it would not proceed backward, it would not return to the state before planting, it would not un-seed the field or un-grow the wheat or un-commit the commitment.

The beginning-that-cannot-be-called-back. This was what Ruth knew. This was what the land taught, what the season taught, what the rain taught. Commitment is the beginning that cannot be called back. Marriage is the beginning that cannot be called back. Having children is the beginning that cannot be called back. Planting is the beginning that cannot be called back. And the inability to call back is not a trap but a truth, is not a restriction but a freedom — the freedom of a person who has committed and who therefore does not have to decide, who does not have to weigh and calculate and assess, who has made the commitment and who lives within the commitment and who finds, within the commitment, the structure that holds the life together.

Ruth had committed to this season. She had planted 2,400 acres. The wheat was growing. The rain was falling. The season could not be called back. And the inability to call back was the thing she needed, was the structure she needed, was the framework within which she could address the question of the offer without the paralyzing freedom of having infinite options, because she did not have infinite options, she had one option, which was to tend the crop she had planted and to harvest the crop she had tended and to let the season tell her what the season wanted to tell her and to listen, the way she listened to the rain, which is completely, which is with the total attention of a person who understands that the thing speaking is speaking the truth and that the truth is the only thing worth hearing.

The rain fell for forty minutes. It fell hard and steady and then it eased and then it fell hard again and then it stopped. The stopping was as sudden as the starting. The clouds moved southeast, toward the Missouri, toward the breaks, toward the country beyond the county where other farmers were watching other clouds and hoping for other rain and receiving or not receiving it, the lottery of weather, the geographic lottery that said this field gets rain and that field does not, this quarter-section is saved and that quarter-section is dry, the randomness that was not random but was meteorological, was the physics of air and moisture and pressure and temperature, the physics that the farmer could not control but could observe and accept and endure.

The sun came out. The sun always came out after the rain in May, the sun breaking through the retreating clouds, the light hitting the wet fields, the wet wheat, the wet soil, and the hitting produced a flash, a glare, the reflected light of a landscape that was wet and that threw the light back at the sky like a mirror, like a signal, like the fields saying: we received it, we took it, it is in us now.

Ruth stood. She walked off the porch. She walked into the yard. The yard was wet. The grass — she did not mow the grass until June, letting it grow tall around the house, letting it do what grass does in spring, which is grow, which is the imperative of all growing things — the grass was wet and her boots pressed the wet grass flat and the pressing left footprints, dark prints in the lighter grass, the evidence of her passage.

She walked to the edge of the field. Section 12 began at the yard fence, the wire fence that separated the farmstead from the cropland, the boundary between domestic and agricultural, between the house where she lived and the field where she worked, the boundary that was also a door, a gate, the place where she crossed from one life to the other, from the life of a woman in a kitchen to the life of a farmer in a field, the crossing that she made every day and that was, each time, a small transformation, a putting-on of the farmer the way a person puts on a coat, the assumption of the identity that the field required.

She opened the gate. She stepped into the field. The wheat was wet. The young plants were bent slightly by the weight of the water on their leaves, the bending that was not damage but was load, the temporary load that the sun would evaporate and the plants would straighten under and the straightening would be the plant's response to the rain, the recovery that demonstrated the plant's resilience, the resilience that wheat has developed over ten thousand years of cultivation, the resilience of a crop that has survived drought and flood and heat and cold and hail and wind and the particular stress of being the staple food of human civilization.

She walked into the wheat. The wheat was three inches high and she walked through it and the wheat brushed her boots and the brushing was the first contact of the season, the first physical interaction between the farmer and the growing crop, the touch that said: I am here, you are here, we are doing this together.

She bent down. She picked up a handful of soil. The soil was wet. The soil was dark, darker than it had been that morning, darker because the water had saturated the surface layer, had filled the pore spaces, had turned the dry brown-black into the wet black, the black of healthy soil at field capacity, the maximum amount of water the soil could hold against gravity, the state that the soil achieved after a good rain and that the soil held for days, the reservoir that the crop would draw on.

She squeezed the soil. Water seeped between her fingers. Not a lot — the soil was not saturated, was not waterlogged, was not the mud that made fieldwork impossible and that drowned the seed. The soil was at capacity. The soil was full. The soil was holding everything it could hold and the holding was the thing, the holding was the state that Ruth wanted, the state that meant the wheat had water and the water would last and the crop would grow.

She dropped the soil. She wiped her hand on her jeans. She stood. She looked across the field. The field was enormous and it was green — the pale green of young wheat, the green that would deepen through June and darken through July and then shift, slowly, to the yellow-green of maturity and then to the gold of ripeness, the color change that was the season's calendar, the visual record of the crop's progression from emergence to harvest.

The field was wet and the field was green and the field was hers and the rain had come and the covenant was sealed.

She thought about what the covenant meant. She thought about it not in the abstract — covenants, commitments, the philosophical architecture of obligation — but in the concrete, in the physical, in the specific reality of 2,400 acres of spring wheat in Roosevelt County, Montana, in the last year of May, in the aftermath of a thunderstorm that had deposited an inch and a half of rain in forty minutes.

The covenant meant that the season would proceed. The covenant meant that the wheat would grow and the wheat would need tending and the tending would require Ruth's presence and the presence would require Ruth's body and the body would be here, on this land, in these fields, for the next three months. The covenant meant that Ruth could not sell the land before September, could not accept the offer, could not leave, because leaving would be abandoning the crop and abandoning the crop was the one thing she could not do, the one violation she could not commit, the one transgression that would make her something she was not, which was a person who plants and does not harvest, a person who begins and does not finish, a person who makes a covenant and does not keep it.

She was not that person. She had never been that person. She had planted forty crops and harvested forty crops and the planting and the harvesting were the two poles of her year, the two anchors of her calendar, the alpha and omega of her working life. She did not plant and walk away. She did not begin and abandon. She committed and she completed and the completion was the proof of the commitment and the commitment was the proof of the character and the character was the thing she had built over fifty-eight years of being a person who kept her covenants.

The rain had sealed this year's covenant. The rain had said: you are in this, Ruth Enger. You are in this season. You will tend this crop and you will harvest this crop and you will stand in this field in August and watch the combine cut the wheat and you will know, in August, what the season has taught you and the teaching will be your answer to the question that Jim Grayson asked and that David asked and that Sarah will ask and that the land itself asks, every year, every season, the question that the land asks without words, without language, without the human apparatus of speech: will you stay?

Will you stay.

Ruth stood in the wet field. She stood in the wheat. She stood in the rain's aftermath, the air clean, the sky clearing, the sun coming through, the light hitting the wet leaves and producing the particular brilliance of sunlit water on green surfaces, the brilliance that was not beauty but was life, was the visual evidence of life, was the light showing what the rain had done and the rain had done the thing that rain does, which is to give water to the ground and the ground gives the water to the wheat and the wheat uses the water to grow and the growing is the season and the season is the truth and the truth is the thing that Ruth is looking for.

She walked back to the house. Her boots were muddy. She left them on the porch. She went inside in her socks. She stood at the kitchen window. She looked at the fields. The fields were wet and green and the sun was hitting them and the light was sharp and clean and the world outside the window was the world she had known for fifty-eight years, the world that was wet and bright and honest, the world that had just received rain, the world that was doing what the world does after rain, which is glow.

She made tea. She sat at the table. She drank the tea and she thought about the rain and the covenant and the season and the offer and the question.

She did not think about the answer. The answer was not here yet. The answer was in August, in the harvest, in the number on the yield monitor, in the weight of the grain in the truck, in the check from the elevator. The answer was in the future and the future was three months away and the three months were the season and the season was the time she had asked for and the time she had been given and the time she would use.

The rain had made the planting real. The rain had committed the ground to the seed and the seed to the ground and the farmer to the season. The rain had sealed the covenant that planting begins and harvest completes and that the time between is the time of honest work, the time of tending, the time of watching and worrying and waiting and doing, the doing that is the farmer's contribution to the covenant, the thing the farmer brings to the table, the labor that the sky cannot provide and the ground cannot provide and that only the farmer can provide, which is the daily attention, the daily care, the daily presence of a person who has committed and who keeps the commitment because keeping the commitment is what she is, is her identity, is the name she gives herself when she stands in a wet field after a rain and says, silently, to the ground: I am here. I am staying. I am yours for this season.

The next season will ask again.

The land always asks again.

Ruth finished her tea. She washed the cup. She set it on the rack. She went to bed.

Outside, in the dark, the wheat grew. The rain had given the wheat what the wheat needed and the wheat was using it and the using was silent and invisible and was happening in every plant in every row in every section of the 2,400 acres, the simultaneous growth of millions of plants, the collective act of becoming that the rain had made possible and that the season required and that Ruth would tend, faithfully, honestly, the way she tended everything she committed to, which was completely, which was with her whole self, which was the only way she knew how to tend.

The rain was over. The season was sealed. The growing had begun.