Assignment:

Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son has just been killed in a war. Do not mention the son, or the war, or death. Do not mention the man who does the seeing.

Waterless clouds squatted over my barn promising another day of unrelenting sunshine. It’s been this way for so long. Day after day, the same bright heat tears up my fields and beats down my barn.

Tommy said the lobbyists they sent this year were no good. Said some hippy-dippy liberals were pumping the brakes. There wouldn’t be a bailout if we failed.

There wouldn’t have been one anyways. The government was neck deep in it’s own crap and two seconds away from swallowing it. What do they care about a barn and some fields in the middle of nowhere? What could any thing that big care for something so small.

I grabbed my toolbox out of the shed and headed towards the barn, like I’d been doing for the past eight months. I didn’t need Tommy to tell me any of this. The only help that was coming was me.

The roof was shiny and sturdy. I went up there two months ago and fixed the weak parts. Then I got inspired and polished off the rust, that’s why it took two months. It was worth it though, seeing the way it throws back up the sun.  It’s almost like the barn was silently whispering, “fuck you.”

The wood siding was good too. After the roof, I power sanded the whole thing smooth, and from the outside nothing much else was wrong with it. The inside was a nightmare that I’d face next week, but for now, it needed some paint.

Six months of solid sunshine and the red paint Mr. Jobes had sold me was already peeling off my barn. The droopy strips were like dried jerky and they were wilting faster than a prom date’s corsage. He told me this paint would last a lifetime. Looks like Old  Man Jobes owes me some money.

I stripped down the whole left side of the barn until the acid in my arms built up to a slow burn. I didn’t mind it much. But every now and then I’d open my mouth in pain and the hot air would fly into my lungs and blow me around like I was a cornhusk. Then that same wind would filter in through the barn window and make the building whine softly.

Unholy wind. I put it aside. I couldn’t stop the wind, or save my fields, but I could fix my barn.

I stripped the rest of the barn down until I couldn’t lift my arms any more. It was way past dark, but I didn’t need light to see this beast. My father had made this barn with his hands. He planned it for years, saving fancy barn cutouts from magazines like they were paper-thin slips of gold. He made this with his hands, and now it was falling apart in mine. Falling apart because of the sun, and the government, falling to pieces in this newborn desert.

I heard a crash inside that shook the barn so hard my ladder fell down. Probably termites. Or that cursed wind. A few years ago it would have made me angry, but knowledge of the future helps with things like this. I’ll get in there next week and that unruly piece of whatever it is will submit to me. By the time I’m through with it, it won’t dare to fall down.

Nothing to worry about when you can see what needs to be done, you have no cares when the important facts root themselves in your mind.

Exhausted, I put my toolbox away and stared at my almost perfect barn, breathing the only words that made sense any more.

“I can’t save my farm, I can’t help myself, but I will fix this barn.”

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