OLD BARNS, PAW-PAWs, SPECIAL LITTLE GIRLS and HORSES…
A short story by Charity M. Richey-Bentley
Copyright © 2014 Charity M. Richey-Bentley
For me, Sunday afternoons tend to be either spent on a horse or spent on back country roads taking photos. Yesterday, I spent late morning time with my horses, loaded up my camera bag and headed out for some perfect shots. I love all kinds of shots out in the country, but I am very drawn to old barns and old Churches. The weather was perfect—sun shining and about 65 degrees.
Instead of traveling the same roads I have always traveled, I opted for a road I had never been down before. Some of these old roads go for miles and miles with nothing on either side. As was the case with this road. I had been riding on it for about ten miles and had seen nothing of photographic interest. I was looking for somewhere to turn around and there just after a sharp bend in the road, stood the perfect old barn.
I pulled onto the dirt road which led onto the property. The road split the property, barn on one side, house on the other. The house was lovely with a huge wrap around porch. But the barn is what held my attention. It was large and made of old perfect-patina gray barn wood, with darker wood on all the edges and a partially rusting tin roof. Once up in the yard, I could see that it had a huge hay loft and stalls on each side of a large center aisle.
‘OK’, I thought. ‘I’ll go knock on the front door and ask if it’s ok to take some pictures of the barn’. That’s when I realized that several cars were parked to the side and back of the house. My heart sank. It looked like I had come by during Sunday afternoon family time. Oh, well. The barn will be here tomorrow and I’ll come back.
I was about to get back into the car when I saw someone come from around the back of the house. He was an elderly gentleman, wearing overalls with a shovel in one hand and a bucket in the other. He lifted the shovel as if he would have been saying hello if he hadn’t been holding the shovel. I threw up my hand and yelled out a “hello!” to him.
We both walked toward each other.
“Hello”, I said to him. “I’m Charity and I stopped by to see if I could take some pictures of your beautiful barn.” He leaned the shovel up against his leg and put out his hand. We were shaking hands as he said, “You can call me Thomas”.
“So nice to meet you, Thomas”.
He turned and looked at the barn. And looked and looked. He looked at the barn for about 20 seconds and turned back to me. I think I had started to fidget.
“It is pretty nice, ain’t it? I got lots of memories in that old barn”, he said softly.
I began, “If today’s not a good day, I can come back tom—“.
“No, no today is perfect”, he said. “We can’t really count on tomorrow, can we?”
I smiled and really looked at him. He was probably close to 80 and his hands had seen many days of hard work. His face was more wise than it was weathered and his smile touched my soul.
“Were you about to go down to the barn? If so, I’ll just walk down with you to see where I should be to get the right shots.”
“Yes”, he responded. “I was just going down to clean out a couple of the stalls. Cleaned ‘em a couple of days ago so I don’t have hardly anything to do. Just a little touch up. My granddaughter is coming out to ride in a few minutes. She is a special little girl.”
“Well, why don’t I help you do that for a little bit? I’m certainly dressed for it (I had on my overalls and my pair of not-so-bad mud boots with horse heads on them). I’m one of those weird horse women that doesn’t mind mucking stalls. It helps to clear my mind. Could you use the help?”
He smiled and said, “Well, I’m never going to turn down the offer of help from a pretty, little thing like you, so come on. It isn’t much to do.”
Camera bag forgotten, I followed him toward that beautiful barn. Once there, I inhaled deeply, looked around and let the barn feeling overtake me. There’s nothing quite like it. It smelled like horses and love.
I reached for a rake hanging on one wall of the center aisle and asked, “OK if I use this?”
“Yes, that’s fine. Don’t hurt yourself with it”, he said. I smiled at that.
“You don’t have to do a lot. Just keep me company till my granddaughter comes out to ride. She’s a special little girl”. He said that as if he couldn’t mention his granddaughter without saying “she’s a special little girl”. As if it was automatically tacked on to each thought of her.
We’re raking and shoveling in the first stall when all of a sudden we hear, “Paw-paw, I’m here! Where you at?”
And then she burst into the stall like a pink, forceful wind bundled up in a tiny, little body.
“Oh, hey! Didn’t know Paw-paw had company. I’m Shara and my horse is Sharo. Get it? Shara and Sharo”?
I was about to say, “Yes, I get it”, but she didn’t stop.
“I like ‘kim boots. They nice. With the horse heads and all that. I’m gonna tell Mama to buy ‘em for me. Paw-paw, do you think she will? What’s your name? Do you work with Paw-paw now? I’d like to have a job cleaning out barns when I get bigger. But Mama says I’m going to college. Ain’t that right, Paw-paw? You go to college?”
I opened my mouth to get something out, but before I could, she came further into the stall and took my hand. She asked, “Paw-paw, can she stop working for a few minutes? I need to show her Sharo. Is he ready?”
Everything was said with no periods, no stops and it seemed as if she didn’t stop to breathe. That little girl was so full of life, so happy and joyous that love-of-life gushed from her. She was constantly moving and her hair shone from natural highlights.
As I was led away, I heard Thomas say, “You just have to bridle him. He is saddled”.
She half skipped, half ran and I walked fast to keep up. We got to the end of the center aisle and turned left out of the back of the barn. There stood Sharo. Wouldn’t you know it? Sharo was a 15 hand leopard appaloosa gelding. A beautiful boy. The second she turned out of the barn toward him, he called to her.
“Hey, my sweet boy, Sharo!” He had a little rope on his lead and he starting moving around his back legs like he couldn’t contain himself. He was as happy to see her as she was to see him.
“Paw-paw says I have to learn some responsibility about my own horse so I have to bridle him. He has to put the saddle on because I can’t pick it up. I’ll be able to in a few years. I hope Sharo is OK with somebody else having to saddle him. You think he is? He says he is. You stay right here and I’m going to get the bridle.” Again, no stops and no periods. Everything just gushed from her.
Seconds later, she returned with her bridle. She moved a step stool around and put it right in front of Sharo. “Head down, Sharo”. She softly commanded him. He dropped his head and she slipped it on like a pro. She kissed him on the nose and said, “Good boy”.
She climbed down, moved the step stool next to the saddle, climbed up and swung her little leg over him and she was on. She yelled to her Paw-paw, “I’m ready, Paw-paw! Come watch me!”
He rounded the corner and said, “Sweetie, stay inside the fence where I can see you right now”.
“K, I will”!
I couldn’t look away from her. She was talking to her horse constantly. I could hear her voice, up and down, as she talked to him, praised him and asked him questions without waiting for him to answer. And he loved it. He was almost prancing as she rode round and round.
All of a sudden, I was crying. Not the soft, little sniffle kind of crying. I was crying the trying-not-to-but-can’t-help-it-crying. And because I was trying not to, it was loud.
Thomas never really looked at me. He knew I was crying, but understood. He softly said, “I sometimes cry when I look at her too. She’s a special little girl”.
I half-laughed and half-cried and said, “Yes, she is. Thank you for letting me share in this beautiful memory”.
“Any time, honey. Any time.” We stood there for a long time. She rode around the fence and sometimes she would wave as she got near to us, but more often than not, she was so immersed in her conversation with Sharo, that she didn’t even know we were there. The sun started to go down and it was beginning to get dark. I hugged Thomas and told him I’d better be getting home. He called out to Shara and she came riding over to tell me goodbye. I couldn’t reach her, but I asked if I could kiss Sharo bye and she said I could. I leaned in, inhaled deeply and kissed him on his soft nose and told them goodbye.
I couldn’t say anything. So I hugged him again and walked to my car. I was a long way down the road before I realized that I hadn’t gotten one shot of the barn.
~–Charity M. Richey-Bentley–~
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