I watched with a chuckle before pulling my notepad and flashlight out of a metal box that was screwed onto the wall and prepared myself to candle the eggs and record their growth.
Nudging an irate Rita out of the way I picked up one of her little eggs gingerly between two fingers and held the flashlight underneath it, illuminating the shadowy insides. Rita was one of my best breeding pigeons. Most, if not all, of her eggs hatched and her babies had been some of the prettiest of the bunch. It had been a shame to sell them to other breeders, but if I kept all of the pigeons I bred Rex would kick me out.
Juneau peeked around my elbow to curiously watch what I was doing, her eyes on the egg in between my fingers.
“How do you know if there’s a baby bird inside?” she asked quietly, as if speaking too loud would scare the embryo within the egg.
“Can you see the veins? These eggs are about five days old and you can see the little lump in the middle with the veins coming out, that means it’s viable.” I tilted the egg so she could see the little pouch of the pigeon embryo within.
I went through the rest of the eggs with her, showing her what a non-viable egg looked like and what I did with them. She listened intently, nodding and making small comments here and there.
Once we finished I led her to the mudroom on the side of the house and we washed our hands before I settled, like I always did, onto the wooden bench swing that hung from the huge oak in the backyard.
Juneau surprised me by sitting next to me, close enough that I could throw my arm around her shoulder if I wanted to. I pushed away the urge, reminding myself that she was probably as curious about me as I was about her. My mom would have called us kindred spirits, but I wasn’t sure I believed in such a romantic notion. It also didn’t mean that I should get into her space without permission. I may be a clothes stealing creep, but even I understood bodily consent.
We sat in silence for a while until Juneau finally turned to ask: “Why pigeons?”
“What do you mean?” I asked, already a little offended for my birds.
“It’s just, out of every kind of animal you could keep, why pigeons? Wouldn’t chickens be smarter since you can eat the eggs?” Juneau didn’t sound disgusted by it. Her hands, which were usually fidgeting with something, twitched in her lap until she brought them up and began to plait the heavy curls of her hair. I had never met a person so constantly in motion before. She was like a hummingbird, afraid that her heart would stop if she sat still for too long.
“When we first got back from active duty I had a real hard time acclimating, I couldn’t control my emotions anymore and was prone to bouts of anger,” I began, clasping my tattooed hands tightly in front of me. The first six months back from the military had been a nightmare. Between losing the structure that the military provided and the control that Tug tried to exert over me, I could barely function. “There was an old guy who worked at Veterans Affairs, his name was Gus. He saw right through the chip on my shoulder and brought me to his farm where he was raising different kinds of birds.”
Gus had a barn full of every kind of bird imaginable, and I would have accused him of being a hoarder if he didn’t take such good care of them.
“I helped him take care of all of them, but the pigeons were my favorite. Everyone overlooks a pigeon on the street, calling them air rats and treating them like shit, I guess I felt a bit of a kinship to them,” I rolled up the sleeve of my shirt to show her the pigeon tattooed on the inside of my forearm.
“Gus died a year and a half ago and left me his flock of pigeons. I got this tattoo for him.”
Juneau reached out and brushed a finger down the length of the tattoo, sending an involuntary shiver of pleasure tingling down my spine.
“Is this one of his birds?” she asked, glancing over at the coop as if she could find the bird amongst the dozens inside.
I shook my head, my lips tugging up into a smile. “No, I commissioned an artist to draw him as a pigeon for his birthday a few years ago. This is him as a pigeon, see the slightly pissed off look in his eyes?” I pointed and watched her face twist before a dainty giggle slipped out of her lips.
“Storm said that you name all of them after movie stars, is that for Gus too?” In Juneau’s education about the modern world, the rest of the pack had taken to showing her movies in the evenings. I usually hid around the corner or outside under the living room window, watching her expressions shift and change as she watched movies or TV shows. Doc had tried to explain to her how the whole thing worked, but even he didn’t completely understand it himself. Watching them try to explain Wi-Fi to her had made my entire week.
“No, I just really love old black and white movies, my mom used to watch them late at night and I’d sneak out of my room and watch them with her.”
Old movies were one of the only things my parents had in common. Their relationship had been tumultuous, thanks to Tug’s inability to truly understand my mother’s complaints. Even so, one of my oldest memories of my parents was seeing them cuddled up on the couch, both mismatched in every way, watchingSinging in the Raintogether.
Juneau shifted a little bit closer to me as I spoke, her nostrils flaring as she inhaled my scent and frowned for a moment before I watched her eyes light up. “I finally figured it out!” she crowed happily, sitting up and clapping her hands together.
“What’d you figure out, sugar?” The endearment came easily from my lips. I could tell that it had some kind of an effect on her because her pale cheeks blushed prettily as she answered my question.
“Your scent. You’ve never let me get close enough to get more than a hint of how you smell, but I know what it is now,” Juneau said, clearly pleased with herself.
No one had ever made much of a fuss about my scent before. I guess I could have asked the guys about it, but that seemed too intimate considering we’d never fucked. Besides, I always figured my scent was a mix of blood and pigeon shit, not exactly ideal.
Juneau continued, her eyes sparkling like gemstones in the dim backyard as she spoke. “You smell like the ocean,” she declared.
I frowned, thinking about all of the things I remember smelling while riding my bike on the Cape. “So like rotting seaweed and dead animals?”
Juneau scrunched her pretty little nose and shook her head. “No, not like that. You smell like sea salt and wet sand.”
“That doesn’t sound any better than what I said,” I pointed out. Quite frankly it sounded boring as hell. The other guys smelled like berries and shit, and all I smelled like was dirt.
“My parents used to bring us to the ocean to play when I was small. I never felt freer than when I was running barefoot along the shoreline. You smell just like that freedom,” she said, her eyes growing hazy with the memory as she smiled to herself.
