Most young chicks scrambled toward a strange movement or away from it without seeming to decide which response was best. These twelve grew quiet, tilted their heads, and followed the movement with an intentness that reminded her of the rare moments when her father used to stop in the middle of a sentence because he had noticed something important. One chick stepped forward, touched the slat with its beak, and waited. Vera counted the birds again, checking their feet, the set of their legs, and whether their breathing seemed even. She found twelve pairs of clear eyes and no obvious sign of the rough treatment the truck must have received along the road.
"What breed are these?" she asked.
The dealer was a thickset man named Whitfield, with a leather coat and a face that had spent too many miles squinting into dust. He came around the truck slowly, wiping his palms on his trousers as though deciding how much of an answer the question deserved. "Couldn't tell you with certainty," he said. "Bought them outside Wichita from a fellow who said they came out of Missouri. Some old cross, I suppose. I've never seen feathers quite that color either."
"Are they supposed to be laying stock?" Vera asked.
"That's what I was told. I wouldn't give you a guarantee on it, not with a mystery bird." He lifted the corner of the canvas and looked into the crate himself. "Twelve for six dollars. You take the lot, and I don't have to haul them another forty miles."
Six dollars. Vera heard the figure with the force of a door shutting somewhere inside her head. It was almost half the money in the household account, and she could name everything that money was supposed to purchase before she came to the end of her next breath. She looked toward the co-op building, where ordinary feed had been too expensive to buy, and then back at the twelve birds. They were an extravagance she could not explain and an opportunity she could not yet prove existed.
"Where exactly did the Missouri birds come from?" she asked.
Whitfield shrugged. "A place near Sedalia, I believe. The man in Wichita didn't have much to tell me. Somebody's flock got scattered after a property sale, and I ended up with these. If you want a breed certificate, you're asking the wrong fellow."
Vera leaned closer to the crate. The largest bird raised its head and gave a small, irritated chirp, as if it resented being kept waiting while humans debated its future. Her father had sometimes brought home things other people considered useless: a rusted cultivator that needed only a single missing