Page 8 of Tommy

Pip yapped at me some more. He was still excited after meeting someone new. In a way, I held some of that excitement too. The suitcase had been covered in stickers of cartoon bears, a TV show I’d never watched myself, but recalled seeing in the background once or twice many years back.

There was no way I was getting any reading done while my thoughts were elsewhere.

After a little toast and some scrambled egg whites, the sky had darkened significantly. I had to milk the goats again and make sure all the doors were secured in the barn. While we hadn’t had bear sightings in a while, I still worried some form of wild life would get in amongst the chickens.

In a heavier fleece jacket to keep warm, I took my shovel as a precaution, and the kid’s pair of shoes. I didn’t want todisturb him, but I didn’t want his shoes sitting on my porch all night. Through the window of his cabin, I saw him laid on the rug in front of the fireplace, reading a comic.

He noticed me, snapping the comic shut. He raced to the door.

“Your shoes,” I said.

“Thank you, I was going to come over, but flying in and then the cold, I just didn’t want to go out again,” he said, hugging himself as the cold breeze pushed in. He looked around me, by my feet.

“I’m going to milk the goats, if you want to come, I could show you how to do it,” I said, feeling June’s words spill through me. “I think it would be beneficial for you. But if you don’t want to endure the cold, I won’t blame you.”

He scoffed. “I can endure the cold. Let me just—”

“Then I’ll wait in here while you get ready.” I walked right inside. “Don’t worry. The dogs are home. They get in the way when I’m with the goats, so I prefer they don’t come during the evening.”

“Thank you for bringing my shoes, again,” he said, grabbing the large jacket from the hook by the door. “What time do you usually wake up to do the animals?”

“Six-ish, sometimes seven,” I said. “It really doesn’t matter too much.”

The kid blinked wildly at me, his jaw and mouth slack. “That’s—early.” He gulped hard.

“Not if you’re in bed at a reasonable hour,” I said. “And this place won’t sustain itself. But I don’t think about it as work. It’s being part of something.”

He nodded. “Maybe this is what I needed,” he said, the corners of his lips twitching as he smiled.

I wasn’t completely against him helping, it meant I’d get more time to enjoy downtime which is what I’d been hoping to get a lot of during the month.

Once he was ready, we headed to the barn. He had a lot of questions about the goats and why they needed frequent milking, they were only small and producing milk at a rate they would need to sustain their young. These goats in particular didn’t need to have given birth before they could be milked, they were a Swiss breed, maiden milkers they were referred to as.

Inside the barn, all the chickens were in their coops and the cats were now underfoot the moment we walked in, rubbing themselves against our legs.

The kid almost shrieked at Midnight, the black cat. He ran off to Snowflake standing majestically on the fenced walkway into the barn.

“Relax,” I told him.

Daisy and Marigold ran to the gate, budging each other to reach me first. I grabbed the small step stool and the bucket from the hooks on the inside wall.

“So, how do I milk the goats?” he asked, rubbing his gloves hands together.

“Firstly, you’ll have to take those gloves off, they don’t like the feel of it, and they’d run away,” I told him. “We’re gonna have to go inside as well.”

His face grew red as he blew air up. “How is it so hot in here?”

“Insulation, ventilation, a lot of hay, and those heaters up there,” I said, nodding to them. “They only run during the evening on a portable generator. It’s on a timer, so it usually shuts off before I come down in the morning.”

Looking around, he hummed to himself.

“Go on then,” I said, nodding to the gated area of the fencing where the two cats were resting and glaring at him.”They don’t bite,” I told him.

“Are you coming in with me?”

I shrugged. “I might want to see how you do on your own first.”

“But I’ve never—”

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