I barreled along a straightaway where a series of signs boasted of asparagus, peppers, sunflowers, and almonds for sale. All of the farm stands were closed except one. The small wooden structure was set up on the right side of the road, a hinged panel lowered to form a shelf piled high with asparagus spears bundled with fat red rubber bands.

A middle-aged woman sat in a metal folding chair. Beside her, on the dusty berm, an old man stood holding a hand-lettered sign. As I passed, he turned his face and followed me with his gaze. I missed the message, but I could see that his arms trembled from his efforts to hold the sign aloft. Just off the road, a thirty-foot-tall telephone pole had three signs attached, one at the top, one in the middle, and another close to the ground. I put on the brakes, slowed, and pulled to a stop. I put the car in reverse and backed up until I was twenty-five feet away. I parked and got out. I told myself I was interested in buying fresh asparagus for Henry, but in truth I was struck by the old man himself.

I spoke to the woman, saying, “How much is the asparagus?”

“Dollar a bunch.”

My eyes strayed to the old man, who appeared to be in his late eighties. His weathered face was darkened by years of exposure to the relentless valley sun. His pants were too long, bunched across his shoes and tattered at the hem where they had perpetually dragged along the ground. His plaid flannel shirt had faded to a pale graph of gray lines, and where his sleeves were rolled up, his forearms were tanned.

The message on the sign was rendered in a formal lettering he’d probably learned in elementary school. He’d been educated in an era when children were taught the value of good penmanship, good manners, a respect for their elders, and a love of country. The sign read:

Behold, the waters shall subside and the

land shall falter and collapse in its wake.

I was guessing he was the one who’d posted the signs mounted on the telephone pole because the materials were the same: poster board and black ink. Each sign was approximately eighteen inches long and eight inches tall, large enough to be legible to drivers in passing cars as long as they weren’t clipping along as fast as I had been. Now that I was standing in range, I had to tilt my face and use a hand to shade my eyes in order to see the sign near the top, which read “1925.” Midway down, a sign read “1955,” and close to the bottom, “1977.”

I gestured, saying, “What is this?”

The woman sitting at the card table responded on his behalf. “Land subsided twenty-eight feet. Sign at the top shows where it was in 1925. Bottom shows where it sank to by 1977. Monitoring system’s down, so it’s been twelve years since anybody measured.”