Foolishness meant she did not understand.
Impossible meant they were beginning to suspect she might.
At Briggs Hatchery, Harold heard the rumors.
He dismissed them.
“Farm gossip.”
One worker told him Clara still had nearly three hundred developing eggs.
“Then she’ll have three hundred dead goslings instead of five hundred dead eggs.”
Another week passed.
Then one morning, Clara heard tapping.
She froze beside the warming box.
Tap.
A pause.
Tap.
She leaned closer.
A hairline fracture had appeared near the blunt end of one sealed egg.
Not damage.
Movement.
Clara put her hand over her mouth.
The shell shifted.
A tiny beak broke through.
For the next six hours, she did almost nothing except watch.
The first gosling emerged wet, exhausted, and alive.
Clara laughed.
Then she cried.
Then another egg began moving.
By evening, eleven goslings had hatched.
By midnight, thirty-seven.
The barn filled with small voices.
High, constant, demanding.
Clara had never heard anything so beautiful.
The hatching continued for three days.
Some goslings needed time.
Some never emerged.
A few died after hatching.
Clara worked without stopping.
Warmth.
Water.
Feed.
Clean bedding.
More warmth.
When the final count was made, Clara stood in the barn surrounded by two hundred forty-six living goslings.
Two hundred forty-six.
From eggs officially worth nothing.
The news reached Willow Bend before breakfast.
People came in wagons.
Children pressed against the barn doors.
Farmers stared at the yellow flock covering the straw.
Mrs. Carter laughed until tears formed in her eyes.
The man who had bet that fewer than ten would survive quietly paid his two dollars.
Clara refused the money.
“Spend it at Briggs Hatchery.”
That joke traveled too.
Harold Briggs did not laugh when he heard it.
At first, he pretended not to care.
Two hundred forty-six goslings sounded impressive, but they were young.
Young birds died.
Predators came.
Disease came.
Feed cost money.
Clara still had no guarantee they would survive to maturity.
But Clara understood that too.
She separated the flock into smaller groups.
She built portable pens.
She moved them onto fresh ground.
She kept water clean.
She watched droppings.
She learned which goslings grew faster and which limped.
She marked the strongest birds for future breeding.
She sold none.
That surprised the town.
People offered money.
Clara said no.