First Morning

 

I woke at first light. I have always been a light sleeper.  The bed felt unfamiliar and small. It took a second to remember where we were. Jessie was still soundly asleep. I lay there breathing and listening to the morning sounds here, north of Joseph City, in Arizona. 

Crows. I heard crows, harsh and insistent. There were some others I didn’t recognize.

I slipped out of bed and went out to the living room where I saw that Julia was still sleeping, small and snug, wrapped in a patterned hand woven blanket. Billy, the cat, was still with her. His eyes opened and he yawned a great big cat yawn. He was a large gray tabby with yellow eyes.

“Hi Billy,” I whispered, and silently opened the door and tippy toed out to the porch. I stood there in my pajamas just looking around. Well, hello Arizona.

I hadn’t had a single political, socio-economic discussion in days. I had called no one to arms! I wondered if anyone missed me yet.

There is a funny fact about these silent places. Your ears strain to pick up what sound there is, so I listened intently. It seemed like everything I could hear was at some distance. Yes, I could just hear the little stream. As the light brightened, I could hear more birds. I also heard chickens and I wondered where they were because there did not seem to be a chicken coop anywhere in sight.

Inside I could hear Jessie’s aunt snoring a little. I had been of the belief that elderly people are light sleepers and don’t sleep long. Maybe not.

I heard Jessie get out of bed and head to the bathroom.

I went back in to get dressed and talk to him about this first day at home in Arizona.

“What shall we do first,” I asked him.

“Breakfast I suppose. Then we better go look at the hogan and see what it will take to make it livable. I suspect that we may be in for some work, Beth.”

We didn’t want to wake her, but maybe she would just as soon be awakened, so we decided to go start some coffee and see what was available for breakfast. I hadn’t cleared her kitchen rules for us yet, but we would get there too.

In the living room Aunt Julia was sitting up, so we did wake her. But she was smiling. She picked up a cane that had been lying on the floor beside her chair, stood up carefully and headed to the back of the house.

I found a percolator in the kitchen, but no other gear for making coffee. So, percolated coffee it would be. By the time I got that started she was back.

She said we could do anything we liked in her kitchen, that she was tired of cooking and cleaning the kitchen, even just for herself. She said she was pleased to let it go.

I made pancakes and eggs to go with. That seemed to suit her fine. Jessie loved pancakes so no problem there. As we were sitting around the tiny table in one end of the living room area, she asked all of a sudden, “Beth, tell me about your people, your family. Where do you come from? How did you meet Jessie?”

I laid my fork down. “Ok, well, let’s see. My parents were raised in Kalispell, Montana. They married right out of high school. Both of them have some Native American background, but it’s way back.

“When I was born, my father thought they should get out of outback Montana, and he moved us to Seattle. I have two younger brothers. Both living and married. My father was, until he retired, a shift boss at Boeing. Mom was able to stay home and run things from there.

“I went to a small college in a small city in western Washington and I worked in a bookstore for a few hours every week. I met Jessie in the bookstore. He kept coming back and buying more and more books, until I got curious if he was reading all that or just wanted my attention. So, we got to talking about books, and we ended up married Aunt Julia!”

She smiled and nodded. Billy jumped up on her lap and she allowed him to lick her plate.

Next order of business was Hogan Inspection! Aunt Julia said “you two go take a look. I don’t hike around much these days, but I will if you need me to. See what you think. It might be a big job…”

It was a big surprise, in addition to being a big job. I found out where the chickens were. They were strolling around the ground outside the hogan picking at things on the ground and strangely, in this land of wild cats and coyotes, quite alive. When we got inside, we saw that the six hens had been sleeping in the roof timbers and the floor was splattered by their droppings.

“First, we have to do something about these chickens. I don’t see any eggs, but you know they are putting them somewhere. Eggs could come in handy. I wonder if Julia knows where they go to lay eggs,” Jessie said looking around.

It was a round space, with a small steel stove in the very middle. The walls were made of logs, put together log cabin style, not the vertical logs of the older type of hogan. The floor was made of plain boards lying directly on the earth. The pipe from the stove went up to a round opening in the roof. There was a wood frame bed in the back with an ancient mattress and some old blankets on it. Those would have to go. I could see a trip to Joseph City coming up right away for bedding, in addition to a roll of chicken wire. Jessie thought there was enough material lying around to make a chicken house and yard. 

“You know, I wondered why those chickens were still alive,” admitted Aunt Julia back in her living room. “There are coyotes here and there are probably badgers too. For some reason that cat out there doesn’t kill them. I don’t understand. Maybe she scares the others away. Even when she had cubs, she didn’t kill them. It’s like she likes them. No, I haven’t gone egg hunting. If you get them confined, we will be able to collect their eggs.”

We spent our first day there collecting pieces of fencing and other random boards that had been leaning against the back of the hogan and on the ground. Uncle John’s old tool box was inside the hogan and there were enough nails in a hardware store box. Jessie had a small doghouse-like shelter made by evening. We decided to build the chicken area just south of the garden plot, for convenience when cleaning up. He put the little chicken shelter there and started digging holes for some fence posts. It was a long day for him. He had never made a chicken house before.

In the evening, after dinner, in the shadow of the hills, we burnt the old bedding. Sparks flew up and joined the stars overhead. A fire at night is always mesmerizing, so we just watched until it was all done burning.

“Jessie, what kind of work did your uncle do, when he was living? I can’t figure out how he supported them out here,” I asked.

“He had a mine, Beth. That’s why they lived out here. It was only a little claim, not much gold came out of it, but enough. She is still living on that.”