Those Left Behind
By Tess Almendarez Lojacono
Why would anyone put a barn here? Right in the middle of a forest? No water, no access...doesn’t make sense….
But maybe it wasn’t always like that. Maybe in the olden days, back when it was built, maybe someone had cleared the land for a farm and a road. The house must have stood somewhere around here too... If you cock your head to one side and squint, you can almost see a farmer shepherding cows, goats, maybe a horse, into the barn’s cozy recesses filled with sweet dusty hay. If you close your eyes you can smell it, especially on a hot summer’s day.
Hear that dog barking, in the distance?
Shut your eyes tight, and think. A dog could’ve barked when a cow strayed or a fox approached. He might’ve barked to welcome his master. Or his mistress. Maybe the farmer was married. They say Abe Lincoln (or was it George Washington?) passed through here once. Maybe the farmer met him. One day, he put on his good suit and he took his wife, gathered his brood, all spit and polish, to meet the President. And the President could have come back for a piece of pie and said, “First rate farm, you have here! Fine barn, too, fine barn!”
Only, that would have been long before this barn was built.
But that farmer, he could have had a wife, children; a pretty daughter, just like the wife. And sons ...
Oh, damn it all, maybe he had tall handsome sons who were just pig headed enough to follow everyone else to war. The Civil War? One of the World Wars? Or maybe Korea—or Vietnam!
They say those wars were different, but the barn wouldn’t have known. It stood through weather, through lifetimes of animals, of people. Living things, they come and go. A barn just stands still, slowly crumbling, dissolving back into that from which it came.
And some day, years from now, someone else will pass this way; maybe notice a beam, a piece of foundation rock still holding its own in the sorrowing decay. And if I carve a mark, a cross, some initials on something right here, maybe he’ll pause and wonder about the folks who passed by here before him, and whether they had sons.
“What’s that you’re reading, Dad?” Maria Elena walked into the living room to find her father standing by a window, an old English textbook in his hands. He wasn’t looking at the book though. He had a piece of paper with handwriting on it, tilted toward the waning light.
“It’s something your sister wrote, years ago, in school.”
“Can I see it?” She read with a frown on her face. “What war?”
“Vietnam.”
“Was it, like, an assignment or something?”
“No. She was in eleventh grade when the Jones boys were both killed in battle. She and your mother took some food to the family. Mrs. Jones was nearly insane with grief, wouldn’t eat or sleep, wasn’t making any sense. It was three deaths, in a way. So when she got back, your sister walked up to the old barn. Came back all red eyed and wrote this for the school newspaper. She said the thing they don’t tell you about war is that the biggest sacrifice isn’t the boys who go heaven, but the anguish of those left behind.”
“Did they print it?”
“No.” He smiled. “But she didn’t care. She said the writing was enough.”
“Which one wouldn’t care? Trini or Modesta?”
