The first chicken cost Clara Bennett twelve cents.
The second cost nine.
The farmer who sold them laughed while he counted the coins into his palm.
“Wouldn’t give either one a name,” he said.
Clara looked at the two birds inside the rough wooden crate.
Neither was impressive.
One had patchy brown feathers and legs that looked slightly too long for its body.
The other was small enough that a child could have carried it beneath one arm.
Clara closed the crate.
“I’m not buying them for conversation.”
The farmer laughed again.
Several people near the autumn market heard him.
A woman selling apples turned.
“So those are really the ones you’re taking?”
Clara lifted the crate.
“Yes.”
The woman stared.
“There were good hens here this morning.”
“I know.”
“Fat ones.”
“I saw them.”
“And you waited until those were all that remained?”
Clara looked toward the mountain ridge.
A line of gray cloud rested along the highest peaks.
“Yes.”
The apple seller shook her head.
“Strange way to prepare for winter.”
Clara gave her a small smile.
“We’ll see.”
That answer traveled through the settlement faster than Clara did.
By the time she reached the flour stall, two men were already looking toward her crate.
One whispered something.
The other laughed.
Clara ignored them.
She bought eight pounds of flour.
Not the finest.
Not the whitest.
A rougher local grind that still carried a faint tan color from the grain.
She bought three onions beginning to soften at the edges.
Two crooked carrots.
A handful of dried garlic.
Then she walked behind the butcher’s stall.
The butcher looked up.
“What do you need?”
“Bones.”
He frowned.
“What kind?”
“Whatever you were throwing away.”
The butcher stared.
“Beef?”
“Some.”
“Chicken?”
“Yes.”
“Necks?”
“Yes.”
“Feet?”
“Yes.”
He laughed.
“You making medicine?”
“Food.”
He looked at her.
Then at the crate.
“Those birds aren’t enough for a proper pot.”
“They don’t need to be.”
That seemed to amuse him.
He filled a sack with bones he would normally have discarded.
When Clara reached for her purse, he waved it away.
“Take them.”
She paused.
“I can pay.”
“I’m not charging somebody for bones.”
Clara nodded.
“Thank you.”
She walked away carrying enough material to make half the market think she had finally become poor enough to lose her judgment.
She had been poor before.
That was exactly why she knew what she was doing.
People who had always owned enough meat believed winter food meant large hams hanging in smokehouses.
Salt pork.
Venison quarters.
Barrels of apples.
Root-cellar potatoes stacked to the ceiling.
Clara had all of those in smaller amounts.
What she did not have was the luxury of wasting anything.
Her cabin sat nearly a mile beyond the main cluster of homes, where the valley narrowed between two steep forested ridges.
In warmer months, the location was beautiful.
In winter, it could become a trap.
Her husband had taught her that during their second year there.
A January storm closed the mountain pass for thirteen days.
No flour arrived.
No salt.
No coffee.
Nothing.
By the tenth day, the settlement began trading in ways that had little to do with money.
A scoop of cornmeal for two candles.
A cup of beans for lamp oil.
A strip of dried venison for a handful of potatoes.
Clara had never forgotten it.
Her husband had.
So had almost everyone else.
That winter had been eight years earlier.
Since then, roads improved.
Wagons became more regular.
The settlement had grown.
A mercantile opened.
People became comfortable.
Comfort made memory soft.
Clara did not trust soft memory.
Especially when frost came early.
She reached her cabin late in the afternoon.
Caleb Morgan was repairing a fence post near the south field.
She stopped.
“What are you doing?”
He looked up.
“Fixing your fence.”
“I can see that.”
Caleb drove the hammer into the post again.
Clara set down the crate.
“I didn’t ask you.”
“No.”
“Then why?”
He looked at the sagging rail.
“Because it was leaning.”
She folded her arms.
“So you repair every leaning fence you pass?”
“No.”
“Just mine?”
Caleb looked at her.
“Yes.”
That answer irritated her more than an excuse would have.