Richard Dell was driving his golf cart following the long, gravel path to his barn. He was going to spend the day working in it. His great-grandfather, Leon, raised the barn. Well, he coordinated the raising of the barn. He had help, back then, by his neighbors, the McTavish’s and the Compiseno’s and the Mollerus’. The story he had been told about it was that particular year, the four family fathers, Ron McTavish, Chris Campiseno, Tom Mollerus, and his grandfather, Leon, decided that they would erect barns on their farms. It was fascinating to learn that they pooled their money, planned in the winter, began in the spring, and have the last one up in the fall. And they did it! And they worked their farms, too.
“Amazing,” Robert said to himself as he drove to his barn, Leon’s barn. It was the last of them to be completed. Great-grandpa was pretty clever going last because he must have known that the learning curve would be at its peak and he would have the best of the structures. All their farms were basically, vegetable farms. They grew corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, and watermelons. One piece of property on each farm was dedicated for wheat that they rotated with soybeans and those fields were used for the basis for their financial growth. The barns were built for those who worked vegetable farms. However, the group had decided to include a row of three stalls in case any of them wanted to own any livestock. They were all built the same, smooth wooden floor, three stalls, approximately 48 ft. square. As you enter the 12 ft. high, 12 ft. wide doorway, you are walking on 12 ft. wide aisle flanked by three 12 ft. wide stalls on the left and, in Leon’s barn, open space to the right. He decided not to have livestock, like the others eventually did, and he used the open space to store major equipment.
Robert steered the golf cart beneath a small window that was stationed to the left of the barn doors. He stepped off of the cart and walked around the back of it and paused in front of the doors and looked at the barn. Leon’s barn was painted forest green even though they are traditionally cherry red. The roof looked like an inverted “V” and it seemed taller than it really was. It was covered with dark gray asphalt shingles. A white cupola was placed in the center of the roof to allow limited light in, but it was there to provide air to flow inside and heat to escape the building. The door consisted of two 12-foot-high, 6-foot-wide sides that open separately, and swing out. The two doors are cherry red with a white border and a large white “X” on the front of each one. Robert stepped forward and swung open the door on his left. He then walked over and pulled open the right side.
He then stepped inside the barn and reached into his jacket, removed his work gloves, and pulled them over his hands. He looked down the aisle at the rear of the barn. There are three massive anchor beams that held the roof in place and the inside structure is formed around it and it seems as though it was a tunnel. In front of him, his pull wagon sat with its hitch resting on the ground. His tractor, a John Deere Generation II with its driver’s cab settled on top of it. His combine was still attached to the tractor as it was last used to harvest his corn. The planter rested on the floor nearby.
To his left, in the stall closest to him, were three rows of box shelving that were stacked on top of each other and held various sizes of lumber. The top shelf was meant for 2 x 4’s, the middle, 4 x 4’s, and the bottom held 4 x 8’s He used them to repair fencing. An aisle split this stall in half and two large cabinets that held small tools, like hammers and screwdrivers, stood to his left. Scraps of wood and a variety of tools were scattered on the floor in the aisle. In the corner, just beyond the cabinets, rolled sections on chicken wire were stacked. Two wooden sawhorses stood facing one another directly across from the entry to the stall. A 2 x 4 was placed across the top of them. A variety of saws hung from pegboard to the right of the sawhorses, just past the end of the box shelves. His goal today is to tidy up and clean this stall.
At first, as he began to work, his thoughts were of nothing, but they eventually turned to those of his Anna. She was so darn independent. Maybe because she had to be growing up without a mother. She had to face and make decisions by herself. Yes, he was there for her and tried to help her when she did reveal problems to him. Yes, he was not comfortable that she wanted her own car. He worried about her being out by herself. He was protective when she started to date. He really did not know all of her friends, but he knew she had a best friend, Erin, who she ran to when things got tough. Erin was nice enough to him. She was pleasant and answered his questions. She had supper with them and helped cook, set the table, and even insisted on saying grace. Erin, he decided, was a pretty nice kid.
The stall floor was clear of debris, all the tools in its cabinet but not put in their places yet, the scrap lumber was thrown into a small cage that sat to the left of the sawhorses. He walked out of the stall and entered the stall next to it. In this one, he opened a cabinet, selected a push broom and a mop, and pushed the door shut with his knee. He continued into the rear of the stall to a large sink. In the sink, a large bucket attached with wheels waited to be filled with water. He complied by turning the water faucet jetting a steady stream of water into it. As it filled, he added a liquid soap suitable to be used on his wooden floor. When the bucket was adequately filled, he turned off the flow of water and lifted the bucket to the floor. With one hand, he placed the mop inside of it and pushed the bucket with the mop handle. The push broom he dragged behind him as he left the stall and returned to the first one.
He dropped the mop handle to the ground and used the push broom to sweep the floor before mopping it. After he pushed the unsettled dust from the stall to the barn’s main floor, he leaned the broom to the side of the stall and bent to pick up the mop handle from the ground. As he did so, a thought came to him and he began to speak aloud to himself.
“Erin! I wonder if she knows exactly where Anna is? She is her best friend, after all, and you tell your best friend everything, right? Why didn’t I think of that months ago? I think I still have her phone number. Do I? Sure I do. I think I do. It’s up at the house.”
By now, he was hurriedly mopping, shoving the mop left and right, up, and down, into the bucket, move the bucket, back to the floor and repeat. When finished, he returned the mop into the bucket, pushed it back to the sink, dumped the water, and left the bucket in it. He also left the mop next to the bucket to dry and went to return the push broom to its cabinet. He hurried back to the golf cart, leaving the barn doors open.
As he pushed the accelerator to the floor of the cart trying to urge it to go faster, faster, he tried to remember where he had put Erin’s phone number. He was hoping and praying he wrote it in his wife’s old address book. He had tried to keep up with new addresses and phone numbers of their friends and families, but he soon became uninterested in that practice. He just hoped he had done so this one time. He stopped the vehicle directly at the bottom of the three steps up to his backdoor. He leapt past them and entered the kitchen of his home. On the edge of the back of the stove stood a small wicker basket that held a variety of trinkets and a small address book. He reached in and removed the thin booklet and focused on the alpha tabs that ran down on edge of it. His thumb separated the tab marked “E” from the pages. His eyes hastily scanned the names written on the sheet of address blocks and there at the very bottom scrawled “Erin, Anna’s friend” and the phone number. He was so excited, he nearly dropped it. Clutching it, he hurried to his wall mounted phone, dialed the number, stretched the cord to the kitchen table and sat down in the closest chair. The sound of ringing in his ear began. It rang once. It rang twice. He groaned. It rang a third time and then…
“Hello,” a voice spoke to him. It sounded like her, like Erin.
“Erin?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Really? This is Erin?”
“Who is this?”
“Sorry,” Richard started over. “It’s me. Richard Dell, Anna’s dad.”
“Oh, hi, Mr. Dell,” Erin laughed through the phone line. “I am so glad you called.”
“Really?” he asked. “Why?”
“I hate keeping secrets, Mr. Dell. I really do.”
“Do you know where Anna is?!” he practically leapt up from his seat.
“I do. She is safe,” Erin hurriedly spoke. “And she misses you. She told me if you called me that I could tell you where she is and how to reach her.”
“Where is she? Why didn’t she call me herself?” he asked her best friend.
“First, you do know Anna. She is quite bull-headed and independent. You raised her.”
“Yes, you are right, and I do know what she is like if you challenge her. I applaud you for being her friend,” Richard responded more calmly than before.
“You got a pencil?” Erin laughed.
The name and number were indeed of her Aunt Trisha and now he dialed that number. The phone was answered at the first ring.
“Hello.” It was Tricia.
“Hello, Tricia. How are you?” he answered her.
“Richard, is that you?” Tricia asked him.
“It is.”
“I don’t think this is a good time,” Tricia told him.
“Well, I just found out from her friend, Erin, that Anna is staying with you. Can you tell me how she is?” Richard softly said to his sister-in-law.
“She is doing pretty good,” Tricia’s voice softened. “She has a job. She is there now. She goes to the junior college nearby and she is paying for it herself. Her Mom would be proud of her.”
“She is and so am I,” Richard agreed with her.
“Really?” Tricia asked him.
“Erin says Anna misses me,” Richard answered the question.
“Really?” Tricia responded. “You wouldn’t know it by me.”
To be continued…
My First Stories 