Clara Whitlock had learned to hate blue skies.
Other people photographed them.
Children drew them.
Tourists loved them.
Farmers in drought country eventually learned better.
A cloudless Texas sky could become a threat when it refused to change for too many weeks.
By the middle of August, the sky above Whitlock Ranch had been blue for twenty-three consecutive days.
Not one useful storm.
Not one soaking rain.
Only heat.
By ten in the morning, the ground became hot enough to shimmer.
By noon, the cattle gathered beneath the scattered live oaks and barely moved.
By three, fence wire felt warm beneath a gloved hand.
Clara stood in the upper meadow with a shovel sunk into dirt that had not behaved like soil for months.
It behaved like fired clay.
She pushed one boot against the blade.
Nothing.
She shifted her weight.
Pressed harder.
The shovel entered less than an inch.
“Come on.”
She jumped on it.
The crust finally broke.
Dust rose around her boots.
Clara pulled out a chunk of earth and threw it behind her.
Then repeated the process.
She had been doing that since sunrise.
Her shoulders burned.
Both palms were wrapped in cloth beneath her gloves because blisters had opened again the day before.
Sweat ran beneath the faded collar of her dark-blue work shirt.
Her brown braid had mostly come loose.
Dust coated her trousers almost to the knees.
She looked downhill.
Eleven finished basins stretched across the slope.
Beyond them were another sixty-three.
Farther still, the depressions grew smaller with distance until they looked like shadows across the dead meadow.
One hundred and nineteen completed.
The shallow hole beneath Clara’s shovel would become number one hundred twenty.
She had deliberately saved the smallest one for last.
Not because it mattered least.
Because she needed something she could finish alone.
Her mule had gone lame two days earlier.
The old scraper sat beside the barn.
She could not afford another animal.
Could not afford machinery rental.
Could barely afford diesel for the pickup.
So the final basin belonged to her hands.
A truck horn sounded near the road.
Clara did not look up.
She already knew.
Harvey Boone’s truck.
Old Chevrolet.
Bad muffler.
Horn that sounded as though someone had stepped on a goose.
The truck stopped beside the fence.
Doors opened.
Voices.
Clara kept digging.
Harvey Boone called:
“You digging to China now?”
Laughter followed.
Clara drove the shovel down again.
Four men had arrived.
Harvey.
Earl McCall.
Tom Weaver.
And Silas Reed.
All cattlemen.
All older than Clara’s father would have been.
All had worked land in Carson County for decades.
Harvey leaned both forearms across the fence.
“What number's that?”
Clara threw another shovel of dirt.
“One twenty.”
Earl whistled.
“One hundred twenty holes.”
“They aren't holes.”
Silas laughed.
“They sure look like holes.”
Clara ignored them.
Tom pointed across the upper meadow.
From the fence, the entire system did look absurd.
Shallow depressions.
Low earthen rims.
Channels weaving sideways and downhill.
Stones stacked into strange crescents.
No water.
No grass worth mentioning.
Nothing visibly useful.
Harvey said:
“How many cattle could you have watered with all the sweat you lost digging those?”
Clara planted the shovel.
“More than you're watering by leaning on my fence.”
Tom laughed.
Harvey smiled.
“Still got teeth.”
“Still got a shovel.”
“That a threat?”
“No.”
Clara pulled the blade free.
“But I can make one hundred twenty-one.”
Earl laughed hardest.
Silas shook his head.
“Your daddy would've bought another tank.”
Clara stopped.
The humor vanished from her face.