I shoved again but then turned back. “Look,” I said, talking to everybody, “whatever your beef is—and I know you’ve got some real ones—it’s not with Nate Lundgren. Are you going to let him and his folks get hurt, just so you can make a point?”

“If we’ve got to!” Apple answered fast.

We must have stared at each other a full half minute. I was wondering how I could have got him so wrong.

Then he nodded. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

Nobody tried to stop us after that, but no one else joined us, either. As we stepped out onto the sodden ground, Apple said, “You know we’re not going to be able to do much by ourselves. Except maybe not have to feel quite so bad when the dam gives. If it does.”

Then he waved toward the sky, dark and full of clouds, and said, “And it probably will.”

A patter of raindrops was already signaling the start of a new downpour. I wondered how much rain would need to come down before the pressure of water in the reservoir became too much for the crumbling concrete work to withstand.

I could imagine how it would be: roiling, rain-swept water creeping higher and higher against the failing spillway, going into the cracks, wearing away at the weak points, pushing harder and harder, till suddenly . . .

Maybe a single spout of water would break through, but that would be enough. There’d be a roar as the water tore through the breached wall and poured out toward the Lundgrens’ fields, with all those acres of fragile young plants.

Likely, too, the sudden rush of water would take some of the reservoir berm with it, along with willows and shrubs that hadn’t had time to take root.

I wondered if the disaster would be enough to cause the Cold Day Camp to fold. Maybe nobody around Monroe would put trust in the camp again. Maybe they’d turn their backs on the good ideas our project was supposed to teach.

What did Apple say ? Going out alone, we’d just be giving ourselves a reason not to feel so bad?

I told him, “You’re right. We’ve got to take the others with us.”

“Listen,” I said in a voice so loud I didn’t know who was most startled by it, B Barracks or me. But it got me a moment of quiet that I knew was all the chance I’d have to pick what I wanted to say.

“Apple was right, saying we’ve got to show them we’re all in this together,” I began.