I kept turning pages, and the Best Practices Binder began to change. How to Press the Coffee: Fill to brim, wait three minutes, press slowly so that any coffee that spills can be caught in a porcelain mug. What to Do with Bananas: Only peel one if you are ready to eat the whole thing. Butter Knife: Lick it clean so as not to attract ants. Where to Park the Truck: Use the empty oil drum and the scrap metal pile as markers. Tea: Boil only two cups of water rather than filling the whole pot. Tea Bags: Reuse. Water: On cold nights, leave it at a drip, but so that you can see only two drops fall per minute, no more and no less. Dishes: Consider giving your dirty dish to someone who hasn’t eaten yet to save time on dishwashing. Shit: More than two squares of toilet paper is excessive. Don’t pee in the shit bucket. Cover shit completely with sawdust. Empty bucket when two-thirds full.

Karen got evil. “Best practices, huh?” she said. “Who is this for?”

“It’s for Perley,” Helen said.

“It’s a present for me because it’s my birthday,” huffed Perley. He flopped upside down on the sofa and beamed at Helen.

“It’s not your birthday,” Karen said.

“It’s so that he’ll know how to do things the best way,” said Helen. “There’s so much we try to do out here, and there’s no one to tell us how to do it. There are things we can’t imagine about the mind-set of old-time homesteaders. They worked much harder than we do. They had no expectation of personal happiness. Things are different for modern people. We think we can have it all.”

“That’s such horseshit,” Karen said. “You know even less than I do about these so-called old-time homesteaders. It wasn’t even homesteaders who came up with that acorn shit. The homesteaders just came along, found all the acorns the Indians had stored for the winter, and stole them.”

“Fascinating,” Helen said, making a note of it. “Local knowledge.”

“And me, I didn’t grow up with anything. I left nothing for nothing,” Karen said.

“In the city, no one even thinks about these things,” Helen said. “There’s a right way to do nearly everything. If someone had been here ready to teach me when I first got here, I’d be so much further ahead of where I am now. I’m giving Perley a head start.”

“Perley can’t even read yet,” Karen said.

“I can read,” Perley said. “I am Friend of Snake, and I can read Wolfriders,” which was what he called ElfQuest.

“You’re not really reading them yet,” Karen said. “You’re just looking at the pictures.”

“Then read them to me,” Perley said.

“Not right now,” Karen said.

“You’ll learn to read when you go to school someday, Perley,” I said.