The Barn

Mildred Hampton stood in the gaping entrance to the barn, her beady eyes tracking Ethan as he moved back and forth with bales of hay. She paid no attention to the splinters prying into her upper arm but instead placed her hands over her stomach and felt her breakfast swirl around—the same thing they had eaten for the past two months. Toast, jam, and a hard boiled egg, although the hens had started to slow down, she thought to herself. They would most likely need to be put down and replaced with time, but neither herself or Ethan had gone down to the Smith’s for chickens in months.

Ethan finished throwing his last bale of hay with an exasperated sigh. He wiped his hands on the front of his slacks, flashing new, deep red marks from where the hay binds had been. A cloud of dust floated to the ground around his feet. He trudged through the pile, leaving a trail of faded footprints as he made his way over to the rack of harnesses. These hung haphazardly, the exhausted leather peeling at the creases as if to mark their retirement. The rack itself seemed out of place, as each knob was smothered by a saddle or harness, but only one exhausted mare remained. 

Lacey stared at Ethan with sorrow eyes as he approached, much like Mildred had been observing him for the last three months. She stomped a tired hoof when he entered the stable as if she was trying to say, “I’m tired.”

Mildred spoke up from her perch against the door. “There’s much to do today.”

“Yes,” Ethan replied shortly.

The break in silence seemed to startle the audience in the rafters. A mourning dove scuttled from the ledge back to its nest, and Charles, the ruggedly striped tabby flipped from lounging on his back to instead crouching forward on both paws, amber eyes twitching between the two polarizing forces. The shift in position allowed for the scattered rays of light filtering through the crumbling roof to land straight on Ethan’s head, highlighting the newborn patches of grey hair racing from his hairline to the nape of his neck.

He positioned the harness on the mare and led her out of the stable, pausing to collect his chopping axe from the ground. Before slipping it into a pocket near Lacey’s back leg he felt reflexively for the engraving of the two letters near the butt of the handle. There was a sense of relief as he dragged his thumb over the tiny shapes that formed the initials: J.H.

“What are you doing?”

Like needles through his skull.

“We need lumber for the oven,” he replied matter-of-fact, and began to guide Lacey towards the opening of the barn.

Mildred scowled and turned away, fixing her attention on the fading sky over the horizon. He had gotten maybe two, three tasks done in the course of the entire day. She had refrained from saying anything since winter in hopes that he would recollect his strength and display more initiative, but instead he seemed to only become drained of energy and emotion as time went on. 

They were simply doing the minimum required to survive.

By the time he returned with the lumber it would be far past dusk. Without an oven, Mildred would be reduced to serving bread and jam for dinner—something that they, too, were running low on. It was not that they were poor or sick, but rather that they had lost any motivation to continue above the levels of bare minimum effort.

She took a step to the right, blocking the small opening Ethan had planned to pull Lacey through. She stood defiantly, taller than she had felt for a long, long time, and stared straight into his eyes. This was the closest they had been by each other in weeks besides the tiresome, sleepless nights spent in bed. Breathing. Thinking. Mourning.

“I need to get going, Millie,” he whispered.

She stood still. “I think we should fetch a hired hand to help around the barn.”

Ethan seemed repulsed, pulling back slightly from Mildred’s iron presence. “We’re doing just fine here.”

For a moment Mildred stopped and tried to think of what was considered just fine in their household. If his definition of just fine included scraps for meals, heat only during the nights, and a mare who seemed to be a dead girl walking then she could see where he was coming from. But he was wrong, and for once she spoke up for what she believed was right.

“We’re not, and you know that,” her voice cracked, but she continued, louder. “There’s plenty of colored folk in town looking for work ever since—”

Ethan cut her off. “No.”

Instead of diffusing the situation, it seemed to only heighten their anger. Every hidden emotion came creeping from the rafters and the hay bales and the rotting leather harnesses and consumed them. Mildred pressed harder.

“We don’t even have to pay ‘em, we can give them room and board. We can clear out the spare…”

It felt as if she wanted to continue, but neither of them had uttered the name since they received the news. Ethan grunted, moving Mildred to the side and lumbering past with Lacey in tow. After a moment he turned back to her, as she stood gaping in a state of despair, and told her what they both knew: “That room is not a spare room and it never will be.”

Mildred looked down at her feet in submission, tucking her hands inside her apron. Her skirts pooled around her as if they were suddenly cinderblocks weighing her down, suffocating her. He lingered for a moment before heading off towards the forest. Mildred felt herself shake with every echoing sound of the hooves patting the ground. She lingered for a moment, stopping to feed Charles a collection of meat scraps, and then started up the path to the house, where she would prepare the berry jam for dinner.