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underfoot, like the sound of Saran Wrap being balled up, shooting off a cloud of transparent blue. Job hurriedly arranged himself and was zipping up his jeans when Ben turned the corner on him. “Dad needs help. He’s got a calf that won’t come out.”
    Since his arrival, Jacob had been some help over the calving season, checking on the cows in the morning so Job could sleep in until seven-thirty or so. But he needed help with every small problem that arose. Job took the midnight and three o’clock watch, checking for signs the cows were close to calving, assisting them in labour, and warming newborn calves under a heat lamp if necessary.
    Job walked with Ben towards the calving pens. Around them a flat landscape covered in barley-stubbled snow. The farm was miles from the buzz of a highway, in a blanket of quiet so thick Job could hear the pit-a-pat the chickadeesmade as they hopped along the branches of the cottonwood and willow his grandfather had planted around the farm as a windbreak. The
flit flit
of their wings as they flew from branch to branch left blushes of tawny rose in the air.
    “Got any matches?” Ben asked him.
    “No.”
    “Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a girl.” Something Jacob had told Job at nearly every visit.
    “What do you want matches for?”
    “No reason.”
    A crow flew up from a fence post as they passed. The first crow Job had seen that year. His mother had always said that you should look to the first crow of the season to tell you what your year would be like. If you saw a crow resting, then you could look forward to a relaxing year. A crow flying in the air made for a busy time. A crow coming in for a landing meant things would slow down after a fast start. Job couldn’t remember what a crow taking off meant.
    “Is it true you didn’t talk ’til you were just about five?” asked Ben.
    “That’s what they tell me.”
    “How come?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “Dad says he talked for you. You’d point things out and he’d tell your mom what you wanted.”
    It was a story Jacob had brought up at every family gathering, gatherings that were few and far between after he left for Bible college. Job had once asked him why he didn’t come home more often. “It’s the old prodigal son thing,” Jacob had said. “I get a better reception if I’m not around too much. If I’m always home, Dad won’t give me the time of day.”
    “When Dad went to school you talked all at once, right?” Ben asked. “like you’d known how to talk all along.”
    “That’s the story.” As Jacob told it, Job’s first words had been, “Can I have a glass of milk?” When his mother asked him why he hadn’t talked before he said, “I didn’t have to.” Jacob had always been the talker in the family. While other boys played football at noon hour, Jacob holed up in the library to read the encyclopedia, and after school lectured Job on whatever he had learned that day. He was Job’s only playmate until Job went to school.
    While Jacob wouldn’t play football with the other boys, he would toss a ball around with Job after school, or rough-house on the lawn before chores. Job often gave up on these games; he was so much smaller, and would always lose, but Jacob would bribe him with gum or offer to take over some chore if Job would only keep playing. They would trip each other up, jump on each other’s back, shove and push and throw each other down in the shadow of the looming silos.
    The Sunstrum farm was split in two by Correction Line Road, running east to west. The occasional driver heading into Godsfinger had to drive right through the Sunstrum farmyard. A few months following Emma’s death, Abe had taken advantage of that bit of luck by painting
Jesus is Lord!
on one of his two silos, and
Hallelujah!
on the other. As an afterthought, on the roof of his barn he painted
This is cattle country. Eat beef
.
    Job kept meaning to paint over the lettering on the silos, or