I pulled on Arnies waders that same night, walked the dike to the pump house in the dark, and one whack of the hammer brought down the tin box, and inside was the water permit that ended the cranberry companys bluff, because it was not in Arnies name at all. It was in mine.
The lawyer in his price-tagged boots had told me the company controlled the water upstream, that my permits expired when Arnie died because they were in his name, that without water I could not flood, that theyd get the bogs either way.
He did not know what Arnie did the week he went to Madison in 1972.
My husband put the water permit in my name in 1972, signed by the state, so that it would never lapse when he was gone, and the second letter in the box proved the company upstream holds only junior rights, which means their water legally comes after mine, not before.
Arnie built the flume gates himself, and every October we flooded the bogs at dawn and watched the berries float up red, and he knew that water is everything to a cranberry grower. So he quietly put the permit in my name over fifty years ago, and never said a word, and kept it in the pump house with a letter laying out exactly where the upstream company stood, which was behind me.
A permit in my name does not expire because my husband died. And senior water rights come first in a dry year. The companys whole threat, to shut my water off, was backward. If anybody runs short upstream, it is them, not me.
I drove to the Department of Natural Resources in Madison myself the next morning, and the man there pulled the records and confirmed it, my 1972 permit valid and senior, the companys rights junior, and he was not pleased to hear a company lawyer had told a widow otherwise.
When the papers came Friday, I sent them back with a copy of my permit and I did not argue. I called the lawyer and said, my permit has been in my name since 1972, and its senior to yours. You cannot shut my water off. If anything, you had better hope I do not need all of mine in a dry year. The bogs are not for sale.
He did not send more papers. My grandson ran the harvester that October, and we flooded the bogs at dawn, and the berries floated up red, the way they have since 1968.
Either way we get the bogs, he had said. They did not. Arnie went to Madison in 1972 and put the water in my name, and never told me, because he was the kind of man who protected you quietly and let you find out how much he loved you only when you needed it most.