Growing Up Chaos

 Frank awoke in great pain. He had fallen asleep leaned up against the basement stairs of Raven's home. Someone had slid a pillow behind him sometime in the night, but it did little to help the odd position and his aging body. He could hear Raven talking to someone outside. The chickens in a little room in the corner of the basement clucked silently. He had thought he had smelled something odd occasionally during his checkups on his mother. The birds were much quieter than he would have thought and much cleaner.

 Raven's wife and her twin were sitting in a corner chatting quietly around the radio. Frank opened the outer door and ascended the steps to where Raven was talking. Nearing the top, he could see several pairs of boots and shoes on the other side of the trucks. Frank went around the trucks to see who the new people were. 

 "We'd have no problem helpin Jim out or any folks ya'll know who'd need stuff as long as we have what we need too. A few of ya'll can help us keep the shit safe and work on the gardening, it'd help us out a ton," Raven was saying as he shook the hand of a middle aged black man.

 "Hey, you got some good ideas. If ya'll can help folks out around here, you know we got eachother's backs. You been hookin folks up with water and stuff for some time now. Least we can do when ya wanna do somethin to benefit all of us is help get it done. I know there're folks around here that ain't got the purest intentions though too. We got you man."

 "What's up Raven? Who're all these guys," Frank asked mildly conerned.

 "Ah, these are friends of Jim's people. A few guys from over near Fourth and some over by Ninth. They all know my mom from the clinic too, so they've heard my name a few times. They've offered to help us get the fence up within a couple days and hurry up and try gettin the garden ready for plantin."

 Frank sighed inwardly, "ok, so uh, whaddya want me doin? Want me workin on a section of the wall?"

 Raven knew Frank was fishing for an easier task. He liked the man well enough, but hard labor was not his best suit. He seemed like he could supervise well enough so long as he wasn't fully tasked with leading anything.

 "Yeah bubba. You've been seein how to measure the spacing between the posts and what all we've been doing. So you can guide these guys on the rest of the way. Thinkin of a couple mods we can make to it later on if we still got enough material, but otherwise, I'll start layin out the different plots for the garden. Garden, farm, whatever the hell we wanna call it," he chuckled.

 A sigh of relief and Frank was on his way. Raven knew the guy was angling for those exact words. Which folks who wouldn't say what they wanted irritated him beyond reason, but Frank was new to their lives and needed some leeway until he learned his ways. He knew he himself had some unreasonable issues due to being adhd and autistic. It may have been high-functioning autism, but it colored his views none-the-less. 

 Another thing he wanted to do was see about something for the twins. He knew where the dvd player and laptops were, but even with their extensive dvd collection, cable would be helpful to finding out the news or something. With that in mind, he headed over to Jim's. Jim just happened to be sitting in the main alley with the older men who had been waiting over at the stockpile. They all greeted Raven as he approached.

 "I see you puttin the boys to use with yer man Frank. Smart thinkin. Them boys'll work their asses off as long as they got us grown folks around leadin the way. Look like yer on a mission though."

 Raven went over the conversation he had planned out in his head, "yeah boss. The girls have been jonesin for tv and I was wonderin if you might have a way to help a bit more than what I have. Like, I have a couple different lil cheap antennas. But they ain't really gonna cut it in the basement. We could probably move back upstairs, but I wanna wait until we have everything secured. Think you could get somethin rigged up to that big antenna next to Frank's place? My grandma used to use hers for the longest time. I think I know how but you've got more experience than me with that kinda stuff, at least I'm gonna guess."

 "Yeah buddy. I can't really climb towers no more, but I think I can get something scrambled up for yer girls."

 "Thank you boss. I know them girls'll appreciate it. Probably try and bake ya somethin if we get things figured that far," he joked. At least halfway. They probably would bake some sweets and stuff as soon as they could.

 Jim waved him off, helping him extract himself so that they could resume the conversation they had been having. The vet seemed to already have an understanding of him. Now he could head over and start situating the garden. Which got him thinking about seeing what they had as far as seeds and starter plants. There were herbs that were growing in the room next to the chickens. Those could only go so far though. 

 He spun around to head back to the basement. His mind leapt to the next task and the one after that, ending up on a third separate thing. He tried to quiet down the other things that needed to be done screaming for his attention so that he could get the seeds. The seeds were what he needed to do first and foremost. He jogged down the outside stairs and walked quickly to the boxes of seeds.

 Lyn came over to him from her little corner, "hey, did you talk to Jim about the tv? We don't have anything to watch in the dvds."

 Raven paused for a moment before raising his voice to her, "you mean the few hundred movies and stuff there ain't a thing to watch. Don't worry, Jim said he is gonna get somethin hooked up so ya'll can watch something other than the choices we have upstairs."

 She huffed and went back over to her sister. He could hear her moaning and groaning loudly, trying to get a response from him. He ignored her behavior and started counting the seed packs. In reality, he didn't need to. It was all written down on a spreadsheet on his external hard drive. This kept his hands occupied as well though. Raven moved each ziploc bag full of packets. He had everything he could think of needing from apple tree seeds to zucchini seeds. A lot of it could wait to be planted until a little later in the season. The weather was barely warm enough to be out there working in the yard, let alone nurturing healthy plants. It would be nice to eventually build greenhouses for all of the plants, or at least enough of a portion to be viable through more of the year.

 He sorted the seeds he wanted to get planted now and then he remembered that, before he could even start planting, he had to go and actually get a half dozen more things out of the way. Raven sat the boxes back down and headed back outside. To his surprise, one of the four stockpile men was organizing some of the neighborhood teens and the tools they had on hand. There were hoes, rakes, shovels, among other things. There were even bags of soil and fertilizer being unloaded into one corner of the unfenced property. That made him a bit nervous. If that land didn't get fenced in, then all of that material was open for theft.

 It was like the man in charge of the guys working on the fence could read his mind from across the yard. He walked over confidently.

 "Don't worry bub, I see you lookin. We're gonna have this fence up today. Yer boy over there is tryin to help, but I hope yer not countin on him to give to many ideas ya know?"

 Raven smirked, "yeah no, I was hoping that one of ya'll would take the lead minus him chimin in with the spacing. His heart is in the right space but the man isn't a leader in any way. And yeah, I was worried about this stuff bein out in the open overnight or for a few days."

 "Nah, don't worry about that. We gon have this fence up today. Probably won't get to the gardenin bit til tomorrow. But we gon get it done. Squawk said this isn't just for ya'll, but for e'erybody in the neighborhood. Give it a bit and you'll probably have more help o'er here afore ya know it."

 "Well," Raven said, "it'll be welcome for sure. Quicker we get things goin, the quicker we get things growin. Granted, it's a hurry hurry wait kinda thing, but we'll have hopefully a decent first harvest. But we'll learn more as we go. I've only ever done herbs."

 "Well, there's a reason we call Marc Thumbs. Boy grew up on a farm back afore we went to Nam. He could grow a pine tree in the ocean you give im the time."

Again, Raven smiled. Jim had certainly provided even more help than they could've hoped for. He wondered if any of the younger guy around were familiar with firearms or any other kind of weapons that would be useful. He would have to ask Jim about that later.

"If any of them kids have any kind of training or introduction, it'll be icing on the cake Jim has baked us."