"We'll starve."
"Not likely. Not until everybody else does, anyway."
The woman circled the room and came back to her husband. Her eyes winked, and there were lines between them. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table. "You've gone crazy," she said, as though it were a half-question, a half-pronouncement.
The farmer was relaxing now, leaning back in his chair. "Might have. Might have, at that."
"Why?" she asked.
The farmer turned his coffee cup carefully. "Thing to do, is all. Each man in his own turn. This is my turn."
The woman watched him for a long time, then she sat down on a chair beside the table. The quick, nervous movement was gone out of her, and she sat like a frozen sparrow.
The farmer looked up and grinned. "Feels good. Just to sit here. Does well for the back and the arms. Been working too hard."
"Henry," the woman said.
The farmer tasted his coffee again. He put the cup on the table and leaned back, tapping his browned fingers. "Just in time, I'd say. Waited any longer, it wouldn't have done any good. Another few years, a farmer wouldn't mean anything."