They did not stop speaking when Kora approached the counter. One of them, a broad man named Keith Barlow, glanced at her two feed bags and said that there came a point when selling land was more responsible than pretending a farm could survive. The other man laughed about how banks would soon do the deciding for people who refused to read their statements. Kora paid Delia, the clerk, and carried the feed out without answering. She had learned that men who wanted to be heard at somebody else's expense rarely needed much encouragement.
Delia followed her to the door. "I can put another couple bags on your account until the end of the month," she offered quietly.
"You already did that twice," Kora said.
"That wasn't the question."
Kora looked at her friend, whose own business was hardly free from trouble. "I appreciate it. Let me see what I can move around first."
She left with the two bags, her pride feeling both necessary and foolish. On the drive home, the highway ran past the county waste transfer station, where trucks came and went carrying everything from storm-damaged furniture to restaurant grease traps. She usually paid the place no attention. That afternoon, however, a large refrigerated truck was backing toward the commercial receiving dock, its sides carrying the green-and-gold insignia of Harrington Poultry Holdings.
Kora knew that company. Everyone who raised poultry in southern Missouri knew it, because Harrington's breeding contracts, feed partners, and refrigerated distribution routes reached into nearly every county. The company supplied hatchlings to major industrial farms and controlled enough of the regional breeding market that smaller producers could feel its decisions before they ever received a letter. Its president, Genevieve Harrington, appeared in agricultural magazines speaking about innovation and resilience while farmers like Kora watched the prices on their invoices move in the wrong direction.
Two workers were carrying plastic trays from the truck into an enormous covered bin. Eggs lay in neat rows, hundreds of them, pale brown with tiny freckles, the kind Kora knew could be valuable if the breeding line was right. One tray tipped and several eggs broke on the concrete. A worker stepped backward, glanced at the mess, and laughed as if he had spilled nothing more important than packing foam.
"Whole load failed the scan," he called to the driver. "Nothing alive in there."
Kora pulled to the shoulder. Failed the scan. She knew what the phrase meant, but she also knew that a scanner was a machine and machines could misread their own output. She watched another tray go down the chute and felt an old instinct begin to push harder than her common sense. She could not afford feed for the birds she owned. Why was she thinking about taking home hundreds more?
She turned the truck into the station anyway.