Wood Stains

This  old empty barn …

True story, 1922

Standing in front of the big doors to this  old empty barn, these big doors  and  all that lies of memory within the wood stains of the old planked, three inch thick hemlock floor boards and the all-knowing memory  of  past  lives,  I feel small.  And yet as the story goes, when my father was just one day short of  his eighth birthday  his own small  life took on a turn that would change all of his days forevermore.   I reach up and grab the rusted iron latch of the door on the right  and lift,   pulling the dragging, squeaky hinged door open with much effort,  I watch as the daylight magically invades the darkness and so, too, the forgotten memories of the past. Maybe this is why I just love old barns.

In the clicking noises of the warming tin roof  over the  old grey sheathing boards,  instantly  a flock  of barn swallows  take flight,  all of them  moving in choreographed movement of flight and fearsome  beating wings towards the wide open loft windows. They exit out into the cool autumn air to evade my searching presence or whatever fear that lays in their instincts.   I move forward in the returning silence, up from the end of the “high drive,” a ramp  outside of the old barn doors and into the silent darkened and cooler shade within. Allowing a moment for my searching eye’s to adjust, my vision begins to  reveal  the farming implements of those olden days.

My mind also travels  back  in time,  ………and the year 1922,   a dark January afternoon,  a seven year old  curly dark  haired boy walking into this same  barn with a double barreled 12 gauge shotgun  in his arms.  I can hear the wagon and horses  outside, too, as the horses hooves and the carriage wheels creak and squeal on the ice covered driveway as the neighboring  farmer drives his wagon away,   just after handing the boy  the loaned out shotgun to ……….”  Take this down to the barn and  give it  to your father son  ……,”  as I stand here and  think about  certain  moments in time,   I am in awe of how one moment can change a family’s  entire history, a life, a death, one small moment.

I see a boy,  a   very young boy, my father,  walked through this very  same door that I just did,  across from the front of the old farm wagon that his father had just unhooked the team of draught horses,  big tall black and beautiful Belgian work horses that he was so proud of and  was hanging the heavy leather work harness’ on their respective  wall racks, and just as the young boy rounded the wagon tree at his feet  he spoke up ,………

“Dad  , Henry just brought back  our  shotgun “……………and as he stepped over that  wagon tree that  he remembered looking down on to make sure he didn’t trip over it , the shotgun that he was holding  loud blast, knocked him clean off from his feet , the noise instantly deafened him  hurting his head, his hands hurt, his shoulders   and as the  two big draught horses jumped backwards  and reared up together,  for what seemed like a whole hour  nothing happened, he was frozen in time  and yet as the boys senses began to return , as he remembered  his eyes staring at the feet of the horses shifting back and forth on the floor in front of his eye’s  settling down in the ensuing silence , hoping they wouldn’t step on him,  his eye’s began to move slowly, his  senses slowly returning  ……..he realized that the shotgun must have gone off  and  he wondered why would Henry have left it loaded ?

As he slowly moved his legs and came to his senses, as he  raised up to a  sitting position he was half wondering  why his father had not come over to help him up and soothe the pain  that he felt, or why at least  he wasn’t yelling at him for shooting the gun off in the barn and scaring the horses ?   He reached to the back of his head  and felt the bump there already rising  from hitting the wagon tree,  he looked down  at his hand and saw the blood on it,   his eyes began to refocus and make their way timidly towards where his father was standing  knowing he would have his hands on his hips glaring at him, but  he wasn’t standing there , …….his father was bent over or so he thought …….as his eye’s focused he realized that his fathers back was covered in something wet,   that he was slowing sinking down the railing  to the floor,   he had  accidentally shot his own father in the back ! …………………………….

……………..His father died that very evening, sometime long after midnight, after his mother had harnessed the horses  up again to the wagon and  ran them the six miles to the hospital in town without a coat on and where the doctor had worked and tried to save him for hours , where they had waited  for long silent hours of the darkest night that they would ever live through ………..his father at thirty nine years old , was dead.

Today, almost seventy years later, after my father, that little seven year old boy  died at seventy -nine  years old himself,  I returned to the barn  where it all happened,  where so many spirits have drawn me  finally, at times unwillingly,   I can feel the presence of them here and now  and I realize,   although our loved ones will come and go in this life,    if we listen hard enough , if we try hard enough, if we stand and look down at the wood stains on the old floor ….. we can stand right next to those that we loved   and know that they often live on forever .

I love you dad  and you, too, grandfather.

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EdF

Sometime in my life, I started to write about my life journey, in poetry, in story perhaps to sort them out and enter them into a place of safekeeping. The soul of the writer is perhaps best described in their words, emotions and thoughts. If these poems or stories touch something inside you then maybe I have succeeded in sharing. I will not write about my self in profile, because self isn't so important in writing. Only the journey in words and the sharing are important. Why would we say "Now about me!"... I'd rather write about life, nature, serenity ...

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