After his death in January 1933, relatives had suggested selling the place while the buildings still had value. One cousin had spoken gently about the difficulty of a woman trying to maintain a full farm alone, while another had offered to help locate a buyer at what he called a sensible price. Vera had thanked them both and told them she would decide after the spring crop. She had given the same answer in summer and again in autumn, and by the following year people had stopped asking quite so politely. They spoke instead about stubbornness and pride, two qualities the county recognized immediately in anyone who refused to behave as expected.
The drought made every decision feel larger than it was. A broken pump might mean carrying water farther than her arms could manage, and a single sick animal could turn a thin month into a dangerous one. She had sold the last two pigs in November to clear the interest on a note, and she had planted less wheat than the previous year because the soil could not be persuaded to hold moisture it did not possess. When she opened the kitchen account book each Sunday evening, there were more columns describing things owed than things received. Yet the taxes were current, the house was still hers, and each morning the sunrise found her where it always had, in the yard with work waiting.
On that March morning, she had asked the co-op manager, Mr. Pritchard, to calculate what feed would cost if she collected it a week later. He looked over his glasses and told her the price might rise before then, as he had told her on nearly every visit that winter. Vera marked the figure in her notebook, thanked him, and walked out without purchasing a sack. She had reached the truck when the livestock dealer rolled into the yard, brakes squealing beneath a load that sounded like an entire farm arguing with itself.
The vehicle was an old flatbed with slatted partitions and a canvas cover tied down in three places. Two pigs complained from a wooden pen at the rear, a calf stood with patient misery near the cab, and a cluster of geese stretched their necks toward anybody who passed. Beneath the cover sat three crates of young chickens, one full of yellow chicks and another holding ordinary brown birds with darker wing feathers. The third stood partly in shadow, and something in the way its occupants moved drew Vera toward it before she understood why.
There were twelve of them, each a pale blue-white that looked almost silver when a gust raised the canvas and sunlight entered the crate. They were past the smallest, most fragile stage of hatching, but they were still young enough for the down on their necks to soften the shape of their heads. Their emerging wing feathers looked fine and tightly laid, with a cool sheen beneath the dusty light. What held her attention, though, was not the coloring but the way the birds watched her hand when she rested it against the slats.