"He would have cursed the wiring first," she replied.
Daniel smiled. "That, too."
They repaired the southwest wall together, speaking mostly about the work in front of them. When Daniel offered to nail up the last board, Vera took the hammer herself and told him to hold the ladder steady. He did, without taking offense. It was a small adjustment, but she remembered it afterward because he had helped without trying to become the person in charge. Men in the county often spoke about helping a woman as though the help transferred ownership of her decision to them. Daniel seemed to be learning that the quickest way to make himself welcome was to leave that assumption behind.
June arrived hot and reluctant, with more wind than rain and fields that had begun to lose their green at the edges. Vera walked the wheat each morning, lifting a handful of soil and feeling it crumble between her fingers. She could tell the crop was struggling without being told by a county agent, but she attended the extension meeting in town anyway. The agent spoke about conserving moisture, protecting topsoil, and reducing unnecessary cultivation, and Vera made notes because pride was no reason to refuse information that might keep her land productive.
After the meeting, a farmer named Lewis Brant asked whether she was still raising those strange-colored chickens. He had heard that they'd grown enormous and wanted to know whether they were good for meat. Vera explained that she hoped they were layers, and Brant laughed and advised her to stop wasting time on a flock that had not yet produced an egg. Several men nearby smiled into their coffee cups. She thanked him for the advice and returned to her truck without offering the full page of measurements she carried in her notebook.
That evening she found herself angrier than she had been in town. Brant's words were ordinary enough; farmers had always laughed at each other's plans until a harvest settled the argument. What troubled her was that he had spoken as though the birds' future could be judged by the absence of something they were not yet old enough to produce. She thought of the land itself, which everybody wanted to evaluate by one season of wheat when its history stretched across generations. Patience did not guarantee a reward, she knew, but impatience could make people throw away opportunities before they had properly begun.
She spent the next week repairing the old run and constructing a higher roost. The pullets were now strong enough to explore the enclosure without needing constant warmth, and they approached each new object with almost comical seriousness. One discovered a knot in the fence rail and pecked it for three days before losing interest. Another repeatedly tried to stand on the edge of the water pan, upsetting it until Vera replaced the vessel with a heavier one. The birds were livestock, not miracles, and their ordinary mischief made her care for them all the more.