When I went down the hall to the back bedroom that evening, I found Ezra standing beside his bed. He looked tired and cross, but Mrs. Trent never stopped smiling. Ezra’s pajamas hung on his bony shoulders. He’d lost a lot of weight over the last few weeks.

In each hand Ezra gripped the top of a burly-headed cane. Gramp’s canes. Gramp had finished carving them in this room, before he got too weak.

Ezra trembled with the effort of holding himself up. His knuckles whitened with exertion.

Mrs. Trent stepped in to help before he collapsed.

“That is enough for today,” she said, making Ezra put the canes aside. Before Mrs. Trent went down to the kitchen, she settled Ezra under the covers. His head dropped back and he sighed.

“How are you doing today, Mrs. Trent?” I asked.

“Better, Nyle,” Mrs. Trent answered, smiling. “Much better, thank you.” Her hair had thinned during her illness, and she’d lost some weight, but she looked stronger as she made her way to the kitchen.

“Hey, Shep,” Ezra said. “I’m ready for my lesson—in sheep farming.”

“What did you call me?”

“Shep. As in shepherd.”

I wondered why he didn’t use my real name. “What do you want to know?” I asked.

“First,” he said, “why chase those sheep around so much? Mother says you move them—every day.”

I smiled. “Not every day. Besides, they don’t mind. It’s good for them. Until we get the first heavy snow, we rotate them to a fresh section of pasture once or twice a week. It keeps the sheep and the land healthy.”

“Sheep rotation?”

“Ayuh. Not a lot of people farm that way in this country. It takes a lot of time. But it works.”

I sat down in the flowered chair. I liked talking about the farm. Spreading my legs out in front of me, I rested my hands on my thighs. My socks sagged around my ankles.

Ezra sniffed. “Taken a shower lately?”

“You should talk. You’re probably smelling the ripening cellar on my clothes. I’ve been down with Gran, turning cheese.”

“Turning cheese?”

“Gran makes cheese from sheep’s milk.”

“You milk sheep?”

I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. “Ayuh, you milk sheep. Not now. We start up after the lambs are born. Spring, summer, through September.”

“How are you making cheese now then?”

“We started these wheels last spring. It takes a long time to make cheese.”

Ezra picked at a thread on the quilt. “You really don’t need the outside world here, do you?”

His question surprised me. Of course we needed the outside world. Without the outside world we had no market, not for the cheese, not for the sheep, or their wool, not even for the timber we took off our land.

“We can do some without the outside world,” I said. “But we still need it. What’s the good of raising sheep if there’s no one to raise them for?”

“Burn your own wood—keeps you warm, cooks your food. Grow fruit. Vegetables. Even make your own cheese. I want that life.”