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you?”
    Fred turned and pointed, and she could see something glinting in the sun, up high in the remains of a sun-bleached cottonwood tree. They crossed the dead field and Birdie squinted up at a mass of tangled metal in the skeletal tree.
    â€œWhat is it?” she asked.
    Fred flapped his arms like wings and grinned.
    She looked again.
    â€œCrows?”
    He nodded.
    With nothing growing, no hay or twigs or leaves lying about, the crows had chosen the most plentiful resource: barbed wire, which littered the landscape, poking up through the drifts or hanging from buried posts. A giant barbed-wire nest.
    â€œIsn’t that something,” she said. Why it made her feel better to see the nest she couldn’t say, but she liked the stubborn way it looked. “Thanks, Freddie.”
    He raised his eyebrows together in quick succession until she laughed. He’d first noticed the nest months ago, and he sat out here every so often at the base of the dead tree, motionless, until a crow flew in. After the men had bombed the skies and killed the birds, he was relieved the nest was still occupied.
    â€œI’m thirsty,” Birdie said. “You coming?”
    He wanted to hold her hand the way he used to, but he knew he was too old for that.
    *   *   *
    â€œT HE RABBITS,” J ACK said. He smoothed his hand over his folded napkin, a faint brown stain on its corner.
    â€œThe rabbits,” Styron said, taking a bite of a donut, the sugar coating the top of his lip. “The little critters are everywhere.”
    Styron had been fascinated by the overrun of rabbits, the plaguelike nature of it. Only out here. But it was more than that. In those quiet dark moments before the sun came up, he knew the Panhandle had changed him and he couldn’t imagine going back to East Coast life. What would he do, wear a suit and become a banker like everyone he used to know? He was different, wilder. The land was huge, the sky unpredictable, the elements punishing, and he had come to believe that it was good to feel small against all that. He could see opportunity even if no one else could.
    â€œSo they are.”
    Jack sipped his coffee and glanced around at the empty tables. Ruth’s was the name of both the restaurant and the bar next door, where old Ruth herself, all four feet ten of her with her white bun and red lipstick, tended bar. Her daughter, Jeanette, ran the café, always ready with a caustic laugh and an easy sway of her hips. Jeanette’s husband, Dwight, worked at the grain elevator; he was a charmed fiddle player who, when drunk, would often let his fists loose on Jeanette. Jack had seen the black eyes from under her heavy face powder.
    At the counter, Jeanette drawled mm-hmms to two farmers as she dried cups and saucers.
    â€œWhat did they have to lose?” he heard her say. “I mean, good Lord. The whole sorry bunch of them.”
    Half the town had a crush on Jeanette. Jack wished Samuel Bell wasn’t such a goddamn upright citizen. If you were going to covet your neighbor’s wife, it sure would feel better if your neighbor was a son of a bitch like Dwight.
    â€œBoss?”
    Jack focused on Styron. “There are a lot of rabbits, yes.”
    â€œAnd people eat them, right?” Styron said.
    â€œYes, Styron, people eat them.” Jack didn’t have the patience for Styron’s antics today. He felt sluggish, the coffee not yet kicking in. “You have sugar on your lip.”
    Styron wiped his face with his napkin, and still the sugar clung. “So I was thinking…”
    Jack clunked his forehead down against the table. “Just get on with it.”
    â€œCome on, hear me out,” Styron said.
    Jeanette sauntered over with the pot of coffee. She was pretty, still, despite years with Dwight.
    â€œMore for you, Mayor? Or something to eat? You look a little pale.”
    â€œI feel a little pale,” he said. “I’ll