It's strange. The ground is dry and dusty, it's 90 degrees and sunny, yet the water rises. Heavy rains 100 miles upriver are causing the river to flood. The river is so high now that the creeks are running backwards, flooding land that they normally drain.

I stand by the farmer's shed and the toes of my boots are at the water's edge. I stand and watch.

The farmer is in a rowboat with his wife and teenage daughter. There are three yellow plastic tanks that hold 3,000 gallons of liquid fertilizer each. The tanks are empty at this time of year and the water moves under them. As the water rises, it lifts the lowest tank and the tank starts to float. The wife ties a rope to it, and the farmer rows away, towing the tank about 50 yards to a large oak tree. He positions the boat under a high limb and stands up. His skinny daughter climbs up on his shoulders. Next she shifts around until she's squatting on his shoulders, stands up quickly, grabs the oak limb that's over her head and pulls herself up into the tree. The farmer then throws the other end of the rope to her and says: "Tie it good. Use square knots, not granny knots." Annoyed, she snaps back at him: "I AM using square knots Daddy!"

The girl stays in the tree while the farmer rows back to the remaining tanks. His wife ties another rope to the next tank that's about to float off. Unable to help them, I watch until the process is repeated two more times and all three tanks have been secured. The boat rocks dangerously when the girl hangs from the limb and drops back onto her father's shoulders.

The bright yellow tanks, bobbing in the wavelets, now resemble the fishing corks of impossibly huge giants.

I look down at my boots, and the water has advanced to where I'm standing. I step back one pace.

They row over to the shed and get out of the boat. The wife says: "I'm goin' up to the house and fix lunch. You want I should fix you a plate?" I decline with thanks, and the wife leaves in one of their two trucks.

The girl reaches into the back pocket of her jeans, pulls out a rumpled pack of Salem cigarettes and lights up. Then she sits on the tailgate of their pickup truck, says: "I'm damn tired", and stares off into the distance. Sweat has matted her hair, and rivulets of sweat are running down her cheeks.

After the farmer drags his boat a few feet up onto the dry ground, we shake hands. He tells me they've been working down here since before daylight. There are big piles of farming items around the poles that hold the shed's roof up. They have chained tractor and truck tires, everything that might float, to the poles. Every piece of farm machinery that can be moved has been taken to the hilltop where their house is.

I tell him: "I went on down the road before I came here. Your lower fields are under."

"Yep" he says. "I've already lost around 200 acres of cotton."

We watch as the water inches it's way further up into the shed, further up the rows of cotton in the field beside us.

The young cotton plants have just broken ground and their seed leaves are open, welcoming the hot sun with the eternal optimism of spring. The seedlings don’t know what I know; that in 24 hours they’ll be drowned and rotting under muddy water.

Alabama Power Company turned off the electricity here earlier in the day, but there's a portable radio playing. The radio announcer gives the river level at 50.3 feet. "The crest tomorrow afternoon is expected to be 54.5 feet."

The farmer and I look around, trying to imagine what it will be like here when the water is four feet higher. "It'll be under all the way to the blacktop road,” he says. "My whole crop, 900 acres, will be under."

The water, creeping steadily higher, is now nearly to the truck the girl is sitting on. She flips her cigarette butt into it. "I'm gonna' move the truck up a little, Daddy." "Good idea" he says. "Do that."

I ask him if I can help him with anything. He says no, they've done about all they can do. "Unless you know some way to stop the water from risin'." That, I don't know.

On the blacktop road, a mile across the cotton field, a small van with a Montgomery TV station logo turns off and heads toward us. Dust blows behind it as it approaches on the dirt field road. Damn strange I'm thinkin'; dust blowin' and this man is about to lose a year's income to high water.

"See y'all later." I say. "I'll be back next week when we can tell the extent of what's happened."

The girl asks me to stay and talk to the TV people. "You'll know what to tell 'em,” she says. I tell her the TV people want to hear her family's story, not my take on it.

I leave as the TV van pulls up. I'm heading for the next farm down the road, to see the next man's dreams drown under high water, in the bright sunshine and amid clouds of dust.

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