At the top of the ridge a huge rectangle was marked out with four bamboo poles. “That’s the spot we’ve already dug,” Darla said. “We’ll work from this edge, throwing the ash into the marked area.”

“We’re digging for corn?” I asked.

Darla gave me that look I used to get from teachers when I asked a stupid question. “Yeah, you’ll see.” She started digging beside one of the bamboo poles, scooping up the ash and tossing it aside. Her mom moved about ten feet off and began digging as well.

Plumes of ash trailed in the wind as they worked. Darla shoveled maniacally, ramming in her spade and hurling each scoop away. Her mom kept up a measured pace, without any wasted effort. Soon they were both sweating and coated with clumps of white-gray ash. I stood watching them for a few minutes, at a loss for what to do. They’d only brought two shovels.

Darla motioned me over. She’d cleared most of the ash from a thin strip of ground. Stalks of corn, squashed under the ashfall, were visible here and there. They were a kind of sickly looking yellow, like grass that’s been covered with something for a while. The ash layer was only five or six inches deep.

“Why’s the ash so thin here?” I asked Darla. “It was almost two feet deep in Cedar Falls.”

“Top of the ridge. Wind’s been blowing it away like snow. It’s about twelve inches on the lee sides of the hills, deeper in the valleys.”

“Huh.”

“Okay, so here’s what you do. Come behind me and Mom and pull up each stalk of corn, like this.” She grabbed a stalk and pulled it free of the remaining ash. She stripped the ears of corn off the stalk and tossed them into a feed sack. “Easy, right?”

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Make sure you don’t miss any ears. Too much damn work unburying them.”

So I spent the day stooped over, picking corn. I tried shoveling for a while, spelling Mrs. Edmunds—Darla flatly refused to give up her shovel—but it put too much strain on my side. I couldn’t shovel nearly as fast as Mrs. Edmunds, let alone match Darla’s frenetic pace. It was frustrating being so weak, unable to contribute my fair share of work. I’ve never been the biggest guy or the strongest, but I’ve always made up for it with effort. Yeah, I might have blown off stuff Mom forced me to do, but if I’m into something, like taekwondo or WoW, I work like crazy at it.

We dragged three sacks of corn to the barn at lunchtime. Mrs. Edmunds made cornmeal mush for lunch—for variety, she said, laughing. And after lunch we did it all again, shoveling ash and picking corn until I was so stiff and sore that I could barely move.

By late afternoon we’d filled three more feed stacks. After we took them to the barn, Mrs. Edmunds returned to the house. Darla walked through an interior doorway, to a part of the barn I hadn’t been in yet. I hesitated a moment, unsure which way to go, then followed Darla.

Chapter 21

Darla led me into a room filled with rabbit hutches, wire-mesh cages suspended from the ceiling by wires. The cages were linked together in two long rows, with eight cages per row. Two or three rabbits lay in most of the cages, just one in a few of them: maybe twenty or twenty-five rabbits in all.

I’d get teased mercilessly if any of the guys at Cedar Falls High heard me say this, but they were cute. Floppy gray ears and gray noses topped their white bodies. They were big, too, at least twice the size of the rabbits I used to see in pet shops.

Darla moved along the row of cages, pulling water bottles out of the little rings of wire that held them suspended beside each cage. I helped her gather up the bottles and then held them as she refilled them, pouring water out of a five-gallon bucket.

“They’re all sick,” Darla said.

“They look okay to me. Kind of cute, actually.”

Darla glared at me. “They’re meat rabbits.”

“Oh.”

“Look at this.” She reached into a cage and pulled a rabbit out of a stainless steel bowl. It had been flopped across the bowl, panting a little. “They started running a temperature and drinking way more water not long after the ashfall. I put extra water bowls in their pens, but they just lie there in the water.”

“Um—”

“I guess it’s not a big deal; we’d have to butcher them soon anyway. I’m almost out of rabbit feed, and I can’t get the dumb bunnies to eat corn.”

“Weird.”

“Can’t say I blame them much, I’m getting sick of corn, too.”

“So if you’re going to kill them all anyway, what’s the problem?”

“It’s just . . . I don’t know what it is.” She spoke in a softer voice than I’d yet heard her use. “It must be something related to the ashfall . . . . What if it gets us, too?”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. The same thought had occurred to me, that the ashfall might be killing me, especially every time I coughed up blood. But I didn’t want to tell Darla that. I didn’t want to admit to her that I was afraid.

“This guy, I named him Buck.” Darla looked at me. “You get it? Buck and he’s a buck. . . .”

I must have had a blank look on my face. I had no clue what she was talking about. And I was still wondering if the ashfall was somehow poisoning us.

“City people,” she said, scowling. “Hold him for me, would you? No, by his haunches, upside down. Hold him tight, okay?”

I held the rabbit as she directed me, upside down in front of me. He waved his front legs feebly. Darla grabbed his head and pulled down sharply, twisting it. There was a soft pop, and he went limp in my hands. I was so startled, I dropped him.

Darla picked up the dead rabbit and said, “Bring the water, would you?”

I followed her into the main room of the barn, carrying the five-gallon bucket. A plastic double-bowl sink was built against one wall, with a couple loops of twine dangling from a beam above one of the basins. Darla slipped the dead rabbit’s back legs into the twine loops so it hung upside down over the sink. Then she pulled a four-inch knife out of a block on the workbench beside the sink and began sharpening it on a rectangular stone.

I put down the bucket and watched. I wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but I had an idea it wouldn’t be entirely pleasant.

Darla reached up and ran her knife around each of the rabbit’s hind legs, right below where the strings held it suspended above the sink. Then she cut a slit along its inner thighs on each side. She grabbed the skin and peeled it down the hind legs, turning it inside out as she went.

It wasn’t nearly as gross as I imagined it would be. For one thing, there wasn’t much blood. The skin peeled smoothly off the legs, although I could see Darla was pulling hard on it. Beneath it I saw the rabbit’s muscles, pink and gleaming in the dim light.

It was uncomfortable to watch. I wondered what I would look like, dangling by my legs, skin slowly peeled back from the ankles down. I told Darla, “I’m going to go see if your mother needs any help.”

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Grossed you out, huh?” She smiled—in victory, I imagined.

“Uh, no, it’s not—”

“So you’re a vegan or something?”

“No, I like meat.”

“You just don’t want to see where it comes from?”

“I know where it comes from: nice plastic-wrapped containers in the supermarket. . . .” I smirked and then shut up so I didn’t sound like a wimp.

Darla was quiet for a few seconds. “Not anymore.”

“Yeah. Look, you’re right. I should learn how to do this.”

“Fine. Watch, then.” She made a couple quick cuts around the tail and pulled on the skin, tugging it down over the rabbit’s hindquarters.

“I’ll learn it better if you let me try.”

Darla shrugged and handed me the knife. “Cut straight down the middle of the belly, from the tail to the neck. Try not to cut too deep. We only want to slit the skin now. We’ll gut it next.”