Chapter 14 – No Mood to be Waking Up In

Pain pills had their uses, but waking up with any kind of clarity of thought was not one of them. Peeling his tongue off the roof of his mouth, which had grown just as fuzzy as his brain, Bo fought with the sheets until he was sitting. Rubbed his hands on his face a few times, maybe to wake up his eyes, which were open but still kind of useless, too tired to focus. Still, he knew without trying to look in that direction, Luke hadn't slept here last night. Knew it because there was no way Bo had awoken first, and no way Luke would have left silently. But more than either of those things, he simply hadn't felt Luke in the night, something in the rhythm of Luke's breath or the way he turned over just about every two hours was ingrained in Bo's own sleeping pattern, and though the codeine had made him sleep deeply, he hadn't slept right, not without Luke being there.

He'd gotten over it after awhile, when Luke had been in the military, that habit of sleeping well only when his cousin was in the bed next to his. Hadn't been all that hard (it had only taken everything in him) and maybe he'd need to relearn that little skill. Since it seemed that Luke didn't think enough of him to even stay in the same room with him last night.

And here he'd been so worried about what he would say to Luke, how he could face him first thing each day, say good morning and mean it, but it turned out the point was moot. Luke couldn't be bothered to sleep next to him anymore.

This wasn't any kind of mood to be waking up in. And it hadn't improved by the time he was dressed and clean enough to be making his way into the kitchen. Only Jesse was sitting there, cup of coffee in front of him, and newspaper off to the side, like he hadn't even started it yet. No Luke and no Daisy. The old man met his eyes as he came in, like he was studying on him, deciding whether he looked good enough to be up.

"Mornin'," Jesse finally settled on saying. "You're up earlier'n I thought you'd be. Sleep all right?"

Now there was a loaded question.

"I suppose," he answered. It was easier than explaining things he didn't even want to think too hard about.

Jesse put his heavy old hands on the table to push himself up to standing. "Well then you just have a seat and I'll rustle you up some breakfast."

Reaching down for his boots by the door, Bo turned and spoke over his own shoulder. "I'll go collect some eggs, then." Looked like one of those mornings you couldn't quite trust out there, orange start to it like the horizon was on fire, but that could turn to rain in an hour.

"Sit, boy," Jesse reprimanded. "Luke done already collected the eggs. You need to have breakfast first, and we'll just see how you feel before you start workin'."

The yes, sir ought to have been automatic, and on any other day it might have been.

"Oh, so Saint Luke done all the chores already, huh?" It was like he was twelve again, that was probably the last time he'd called his cousin that. It came from following behind Luke all his life, hearing all the great things the older boy was, better student than Bo, better behaved, played a better game of football, did more chores. Half the time it seemed like Luke did it just to make Bo look bad (and the other half the time Bo felt guilty for even thinking like that).

Uncle Jesse's reaction didn't do anything to make him feel more like an adult, either.

"Simmer down boy, or I'll have you bent over a hay bale before you can count to three."

"Yes, sir." Would have been much more efficient to have just said that in the first place. Now he was about to get an earful. The way Jesse was standing over him, it was clear that any thought of breakfast was in the past.

"Now, Luke told me why you's upset, and I can't say as I blame you. You got a good enough reason to be mad. But," oh, there was always a but, Bo couldn't just be right. "He had his reasons. Oh, I ain't saying they was any good." Funny, Uncle Jesse must have read his mind. "Just that right now, Luke can't see around them reasons very well."

"There ain't nothing to see around." Oh, he hated how his voice betrayed him at times like this, cracking in all the wrong places. "He figured I couldn't keep a secret and he was right about that, I guess. But I wouldn't have done the same to him as he did to me."

"No, Bo, I don't believe you would." The old man laid a hand on his shoulder, like he used to back when Bo had popped up for the last out of a losing baseball game. Buck up, boy, I love you anyway. "Then again, I don't reckon you'd come up with a plan at all. You're way too used to Luke doing that for the both of you."

Bo looked up at his uncle; it wasn't fair that he'd been lulled into thinking Jesse agreed with him only to get the lecture after all.

"Oh, now, I ain't saying he's right, mind. I'm just saying you might not be as right as you think. You boys have a bad habit of taking each other for granted; maybe you done it one too many times."

Bo started to fiddle with the salt shaker; he couldn't help himself. The tone of Jesse's voice was always so wise and it seemed like the words ought to make sense, but this time they just didn't. Luke had— he'd trusted Luke all his life. He always thought that went both ways, but now—

He dropped the salt shaker on the table and stood up.

"Maybe I need some more sleep after all," he mumbled, trying to move away from his uncle, to get out of the room as fast as he could. Jesse's grip slipped down from Bo's shoulder to his wrist, but the old man didn't let go.

"Bo," he said, and he had no plans to turn around and face his uncle. A tug on his arm, and Bo turned in spite of himself. "I love you, boy. And so does Luke." So he gave in and let his uncle hug him, even if he was too big to need such a thing anymore.

Milking goats was always such a pleasure when he had a sore back. A cow would have been better, not by much, but better. Goats were just too dang low to the ground.

And the porch was a poor choice of sleeping locations. Jesse hadn't banned him from the house, just the bedroom, but he was danged if he was going to sleep on the couch. Which made a certain amount of logical sense to his pride, enough sense that he'd gone and dug his sleeping bag out of the General's trunk and set up camp on the porch. Some time around three in the morning, though, the logic had drained right out of it in the hard feel of floorboards underneath his backside. Somewhere, he was sure, Aunt Lavinia was laughing at him still being just as stubborn as the day (and night) was long.

Maybe it had been a form of protest, sleeping outside. Some childish remnant inside of his head stamping its little foot and saying you don't love me followed by I'm going to run away from home. But he was too old to actually run away, smart enough to know he had no place else to go. So what little sleeping he'd done had been on the porch, and that certainly showed them.

He sat the on the old boards for a little while, sleeping bag pulled up over his shoulders against the early morning chill, and thinking his bitter thoughts. Considered getting some coffee, but that would mean going inside, and as much as his little protest out here was obviously pointless, he wasn't willing to give it up. So he threw the sleeping bag back and faced the bracing air, stood right up into the cold, found his boots and headed off to the barn. Might have been wiser to sleep in there, except for the smell. It had been too long since someone cleaned that place out, and now was as good a time as any.

He'd gotten as far as feeding Maudine and cleaning her stall, then milking the goats, when Jesse showed up with a cup of coffee. Couldn't have been five yet, and here was his uncle, who should be sleeping, coming out to take care of him.

"Morning," the old man greeted. "It's a mite chilly, yet. You want your jacket?"

"No sir," he answered, and by then it was true, he'd worked up a pretty good sweat out here. He moved to the next goat and was about to start milking her, when he felt a warm hand on his back.

"Come drink your coffee, Luke."

He wanted to refuse the kindness; accepting meant letting his righteous anger crumble into so much useless dust. But it was too early for Jesse to be up, much less making coffee and bringing it to him, so when it came right down to it, he didn't have the heart to turn it down.

So he stepped out of the goat pen and accepted the still steaming drink, which probably spoke more to the dankness of the morning than the temperature of the coffee. Almost in a fluid motion with passing him the mug, Jesse took hold of Luke's elbow, leading him to the little bench that the old man sometimes used when tending to Maudine's hooves. It was hardly big enough for one of them to sit on, but Jesse made clear that he expected them both to squeeze onto it right now.

"Luke," his uncle said, after he'd managed to swallow half the coffee in one go. The faster he drank it, the sooner he could be back at work and away from sitting here elbow to elbow with the man that had raised him. "Ain't nothing going to make me stop loving you."

He was supposed to say something back into this silence, maybe I love you, too or I'm sorry, because that was how these kinds of things worked, but neither set of words was ready to come out of his mouth just now.

"And I think maybe you got a point. We do look to you to solve a lot of things." Luke was watching the goats, who were watching him right back. Would be easier to justify staring at them if they'd do something interesting. "Then again, if'n we stopped doing that, I don't reckon you'd like that any better." And now he was counting the goats. One-two-three-four. "Luke…"

Look at me, boy. So he did. Because there was no way around it.

"I reckon you made a mistake this time. Lord knows I've made enough of them, and I didn't always recognize them for what they was, not 'til a lot later. But they was mistakes all the same. And your grandmother, rest her soul, always told me that when the time came that you could see clearly about what you'd done, well, you could make it straight with whoever you'd wronged then, and the good Lord would forgive you. But her, she always forgave me right away."

Back to the goats. Four goats had eight eyes. All staring right back at him.

"So, I forgive you, Luke, even though you don't think there's anything I need to forgive you for." Eight eyes and eight ears, and why did Jesse think he wanted to hear that he was forgiven right now anyway? "And I love you. So does Bo." Sixteen legs, and sixteen hooves. He stood up, put a few feet between himself and his uncle.

"Was there anything else you wanted to tell me, Jesse?"

A sigh, full of the weight of raising such foolish children, was the first answer to that question.

"No, Luke, I don't reckon there is, not right now." Not so long as you're too stubborn to make things right with Bo.

The goats beckoned (oh, not really, but they didn't exactly run away, either), so Luke handed his empty mug to Jesse, and headed back for them.

"Except." Right. There was always an except in there somewhere. "I think maybe you done enough work for one day. What you need is to do some thinking, and as long as you're out here working, you ain't doing any. So— go off someplace quiet and think things through." As if it hadn't been Luke's thinking that had gotten them into this mess in the first place.

"All right," he answered, taking his place under the goat he'd walked away from a few minutes ago. "There's just a few things I want to finish first, then I'll go." He didn't have to run away from home, Jesse was sending him. "Can I borrow the pickup?" Because he didn't want to take the General, and he didn't even want to think about why that was.

The old man's clothes rustled, must be standing up to leave. Luke's concentration on the teat in front of him was exactly as intense as it needed to be in order to keep him from turning around and facing his uncle again.

"I'll leave the keys in the ignition," Jesse said.

"I'll leave the eggs on the porch," Luke answered.