When the Storm Took the Coop Roof

When the storm took the coop roof it felt like somebody up in the clouds had borrowed a freight train and been mean about returning it. Wind come through the yard like a cat with a vendetta, and before I could holler for the house, the old corrugated roof had peeled up and sailed off to hang in the pecan tree like a silver tongue. The hens made a ruckus fit for a courthouse — squawks and clucks, like a neighborhood meeting with no agenda — while rain drummed on anything that would listen. I stood there under a sky that looked like it’d been scuffed with a broom and thought, Well, that’s a fine how-do-you-do.

I didn’t waste a minute. I rounded up a ladder, a hammer, my granddaddy’s box of nails, and Mrs. Talley’s spare pieces of tin she’d been saving “for a rainy day.” By noon the pecan tree looked like it was wearing somebody’s umbrella, but by sundown the coop was put back together better than before — tighter seams, an overhang so the hens could gossip dry, and a ridgecap, I swear will make a gale think twice. The hens listened to the hammering like they was sittin’ on the front row of a barn-raising and quieted down to inspect the new roof with the kind of approval you only get from poultry. The only thing left was the tin up in the pecan tree, clinking like a bell, which made the place feel right again — like home patched up and set to keep on.