“What are you cooking for dinner?” Henry asked.

“Who says I’m cooking? Mother just said we have to do it.”

“Lizzie, please. You know I can’t cook.” He held up his hands, always stained with dirt and rough from work, his fingernails black and chipped. “These hands were made for man’s work.”

I held up my hands too. They looked exactly like Henry’s, only smaller. He grimaced, then said wryly, “Geez, no wonder you can’t find a boyfriend.”

“Shut up, Henry,” I exclaimed, but I was laughing as I said it, because he seemed so much better that afternoon. The day off the farm seemed to have lightened his mood. “I think I’ll make us hot water corn bread and heat up canned rabbit to go with it.”

Henry had a love-hate relationship with that canned rabbit meat. Jackrabbit had been breeding like crazy through the drought, and the population was now dangerously out of control, so the community had to reduce numbers. We would line up in a giant square, across acres of land, spaced out at first but gradually coming closer together, pushing the rabbits into a fenced area in the middle. There, the animals would be clubbed to death, and the carcasses distributed for food. Jackrabbit drives were unpleasant—brutal, even—but we knew they were necessary. Henry knew those animals would destroy our crops and breed until they took over every square inch of our land, but he could not stand to see them suffer, and as hungry as we were, he struggled to eat them.

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

“Not that I know how to cook.” I shrugged. He sighed, nodding in resignation. “We have to wash some clothes too.” I was dreading that task even more than the cooking. We were washing the clothes in handmade soap, formed with tallow and lye. It was hell on my hands.

“Well, since you’re doing the washing and the cooking, the least I can do is to fetch you the water,” Henry announced.

“So gentlemanly of you,” I muttered. “And then what are you going to do?”

“I might take a nap.” My jaw dropped, and he threw his head back and laughed. “I’m kidding! Mother asked me to shovel some of the dirt away from the barn in case we get another storm.” The dirt was halfway up the side of the barn now. We’d only been shoveling it away from the door, doing the bare minimum to get the animals in and out.

“Henry, we are idiots,” I said suddenly. “We should have offered to take the eggs in for them.”

Henry and I looked at one another, and then we both started laughing.