Waiting For August

Part 4~A late night run

The week went by quickly. I spent my days working on getting the new coop set up. On Monday morning Jackson dropped off a backhoe. I spent the day prepping and leveling the land. Jackson dropped by after work, and we set the frame for the concrete slab.

Tuesday morning, we poured the concrete. Jackson had been building a lot of new houses with concrete floors that had radiant heating, so he designed the floor in a similar manner. The concrete would take a minimum of two days before we could walk or stand on it, so I caught up with the chores I'd be neglecting later in the week.

On noon Thursday: Jackson, Ben and Jonah arrived with a flatbed truck. They had prefabricated the walls and trusses for the henhouse, and it went together rather quickly. By evening the outer walls of the henhouse were complete, it was wired for electricity and the posts for the yard had been installed. They had used a gambrel truss to give it the classic barn-style look. It was now a mini version of my horse stable. It had a door (fashioned to look like it was double) on the end and three windows that ran along its length, which could be opened for ventilation. The nesting boxes would be along the opposite wall with outside access to the boxes for egg collection.

Friday was spent insulating and finishing the interior walls and installing the nesting boxes and the roosts. Outside we shingled the roof, painted, and finished enclosing the run. When we were done, we sat on the grass, drank beer, talked shit, and admired our work. Eventually we would install solar panels much like my stable, but until then I could pick up a radiant heater at the farm supply when I went out for feed Saturday.

Before long Gillian arrived with the twins and Jackson got tackled. She had made a potato salad and brought hamburgers, hotdogs, and buns for a barbeque. It would just be the six of us adults plus the twins and I think we were all looking forward to a nice quiet evening. I know I was.

***

That night I made it to just before three a.m. before waking and slipped quietly out of bed so not to disturb Naomi. When I got to the kitchen, I realized that I wasn't the only one who couldn't sleep. Jackson was on the porch drinking a beer. I decided to join him.

As soon as I stepped out next to him, he grabbed my arm and pulled me down onto the bench beside him, shushing me as he did.

"What?" I whispered and he pointed to the tree line. There were lights there. Flashlights or lanterns bobbed as people made their way through the wood past where we'd cleared for the coop. "How many are there?"

"I count five...no, six. What do you think they're up to?"

I sighed. "Nothing good, probably." I decided to relay the story to him from last weekend.

He looked upset. "We don't need that crap around our kids, and we have a lot of kids."

"I don't know that there's much we can do, not when they're on their land. At least everyone had already gone home for the weekend."

Jackson stood and took off his tee-shirt.

"What are you doing?"

"C'mon." he said as he continued to undress. "They're on our land now. Aren't you curious?"

I nodded and stripped.

We shifted to our wolves. Jackson's wolf was grey with amber eyes and an almost white face, while mine was almost pure black with blue eyes. 

When we were pups, we were so excited about our first shift into wolves. It was something we'd all been looking forward to. When it finally happened to each of us in turn, the other three would relay exactly how we each looked. When they told me I was a full black wolf, I was excited. When they mentioned my eyes had remained blue, however, the excitement ebbed. Blue eyes weren't especially unnerving in my opinion, and I was supposed to one day be Alpha. Then they told me that my eyes glowed red when they reflected the light, and I realized that was a look that I could rock.