Finally, Alex asks the obvious and necessary question: “Jacobo, how do you decide to put a lot of water in this place and just a little water in that one?”
The old man pauses, leaning again on his shovel, and gestures downhill to vague places in the field, “Because that water will run together with this one and make too much where it passes the fence over there, and this water can be a lot because it is going by itself more or less to the bottom.”
Jacobo’s words seem more of an incantation than an answer. I am relieved that Alex is also unsatisfied. He presses the question: “But from here, how do you know for sure what each water is going to do?”
“Well you just got to learn, I guess. You got to let the water show you. You can take your time, and sooner or later the water will show.”
