Barn | Tina Bishop

Mary Ann sat on a stump just outside of the old brown barn in her black dress and black pumps. She stared at what used to house her grandfather’s sheep and shearing tools. The sheep were gone now and horses replaced them in the meadow. The barn had become more of a storage shed for the current generation, but still stood strong against the mountain’s harsh winters. There were a few holes in the wooden structure, but for the most part the patches from earlier years were holding fine.

Moments passed before she got up and slowly walked into the barn. She noticed that horse riding accessories like saddles, bridles and blankets were stored on the north end of the barn, while inflatable toys for the nearby lake filled up the shelves on the southern end. The hay lofts above were cleaned out and bare, but an old brown couch was still up on top for someone to look out of the large windows on the west side. Mary Ann smiled as she contemplated the many kids and grandkids that had graced the barn with playful laughter, spooky ghost stories, and sleepless slumber parties in the hay.

Then, she looked up to see if the old zip-line was there. A zip-line is a line tied at a high end and a low end. A person could hold onto a specially designed handle with rollers and slide down the line from top to bottom. Her son Kyle had constructed a zip-line years ago that started at the top of the hay loft, was drawn length-wise through the barn, out the large back window, and ended at the big pine tree on the west end. Kyle broke his arm on the first ride down the line because he had tied the end of the line too low to the tree and too close to the ground. That didn’t stop him, though, because he said true soldiers never give up. He was back up the next weekend fixing the engineering of the device so that there was plenty of time for the rider to jump away before hitting the tree. Kyle became a great soldier, she reflected, and that zip-line was still there to prove it.

She looked down at the triangular piece of cloth in her hands and decided to fly the colors at the top of the barn where the zip-line began. She unfolded the flag and placed it horizontally on the wall with the stars on the left-hand side. She sat down on the couch with her back to the colors and looked out the windows across from her. Her son had become a valiant soldier and it all started here with a zip-line. She fell asleep and dreamed of Kyle running into the barn, up the ladder, and over to the zip-line. As he flew down the line out through the window she said good-bye.