Sorrow
The structure’s weathered hide rose sixty feet before joining the peaked roof, its tin now polished into shimmering sheets of silver by spring rains and winter snows that had come and gone during the last century. My gaze moved up and over age-warped boards, dropping unexpectantly into dark holes from which time and Ohio’s harsh elements had expelled the knots. Although my mind easily identified each void, my eyes wept as they struggled to escape from each tiny pool of darkness as if I were actually staring into the bullet holes scarring his uniform. I wondered how many hours he and his emptied M16 had lain beneath the pounding downpour of rain before being lifted from the blood-tinted mud.
Forcing my mind away from its morbid contemplation, I looked up at the hand-hawed oaken beams, then down at the foot-wide plants that covered the floor. I’d learned from my grandfather that he’d cut and then dragged these timbers by mules from the stand of hardwoods located on the back of the property. Well-loved horses, and 4-H steers, and laughing children had been passing through the twenty-foot, doublewide doors of this time-tested shelter for more years than I could remember and I had rightly expected there would be lots of smiling grandchildren, and great-grandchildren doing the same…long after I was gone.
As I stepped outside, a light rain began. I angrily swiped at tears, now mixed with raindrops that continued to stream down my cheeks. Tears and raindrops plopped across the tops of my dusty boots, leaving a trail of sorrow behind me as I stumbled toward the house; my clutched fist protecting his purple heart.
