The Barn

  FOR ASHLEY CROSS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

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  15

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  22

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  24

  25

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  29

  About the Author

  Also by Avi

  Copyright

  “Your father has met with an accident.”

  Schoolmaster Dortmeister, his wife by his side, spoke gravely to me in the best parlor of their house in Portland, where I was boarding at school. The only other time I had seen that room was when my father had left me there, seven months before. That was also the last time I had seen Father.

  Mrs. Dortmeister put the back of her small hand to my cheek and said, “Benjamin, I understand it’s not so very bad.”

  “But you’re needed at home,” the schoolmaster said. “Your sister has come to take you.”

  Father had brought me to Portland for Mother’s sake. To soothe my upset over leaving our farm, he told two tales for every mile the mule trod on the journey. He recited his best jokes, too — taking on voices, making sounds and gesturing as if he had ten tongues and fifteen hands. We were so full of our usual private mischief that I was much comforted. He promised to fetch me for a holiday in four months’ time. He never came.

  So of course I wanted to rush off and find Nettie; yet I would not leave the parlor without permission. They were fair in that place but strict.

  “Benjamin,” the schoolmaster went on, “you are the finest student I have ever had.” He always called me Benjamin, though I preferred what my father called me: Ben. But that name, Ben, Mr. Dortmeister told me, was not dignified. He said I must put it aside since — as far as he was concerned — I was destined for higher things. “You may be only nine years old, but you’re fit for more than farming. You know your letters, sums, and geometry better and are wiser than all the rest of my students combined.”

  Mr. Dortmeister had round gray eyes and a nose too big for his face. Tufts of hair grew out of his ears. I had always thought him comical. But when I looked up at him that time, in his best parlor, I thought he seemed about to cry.

  As for me, my head was crowded with worry about Father and thoughts of Nettie, who was outside, waiting — impatiently, no doubt. At the best of times, Nettie was not a patient soul. Nothing happened fast enough for her.

  Mrs. Dortmeister said, “Your sister suggests that you’ll be home only a short time. So we shall look for your early return.”

  I replied, “I am sure I’ll return,” though I said it mostly because I thought that’s what the schoolmaster wanted to hear.

  “Do,” he said. “You’ll always be welcome.”

  I made a move to go, but Mr. Dortmeister held me by speaking again. “Benjamin,” he said, “you must tell your father that I agree with him, that your gift of learning is particular fine. He will know then how truly sorry I am to lose you.”

  I said, “I’ll tell him, sir.”

  “Wish your father a sound recovery. I’ll retain the school fees against your return.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, and once again made a motion to leave.

  Still, he would not release me. “Benjamin,” he said, “we want to pray with you now.” He and his wife bowed their heads. So I did the same.

  “Our Father,” the schoolmaster began, “who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

  “Amen,” he ended, as did his wife.

  “Amen,” I echoed.

  Then he sighed. “Very well, Benjamin. Your sister is waiting. We bid you farewell.” Young as I was, he shook my hand, and we parted like two refined gentlemen. At last I turned and dashed away.

  I found Nettie pacing up and down by our wagon. She was tall and thin with hair black as night and a sweet face that never could hide thoughts. The moment I saw her peering out from her poke bonnet, I knew Father’s situation was worse than I’d been told.

  This leave-taking occurred in the spring of the year 1855, in the Willamette Valley, Oregon Territory. Our claim was in Yamhill County, some thirty miles from Mr. Dortmeister’s school, off the immigrant trails. So there was plenty of time for Nettie to tell me on our journey home all that had happened.

  Father had been plowing with the oxen in the west section when he took ill and collapsed. Since my older brother, Harrison, was over by the creek using the mule to haul stone, he had no inkling. It was when Father did not come in for dinner that Nettie and he began to fear something was wrong. Only after some searching did they find him stretched out on the ground.

  Nettie told me that at first she thought he was dead, that we were orphans. Mother had died a year before of the diphtheria. Our brother Jefferson had died on the trail coming west.

  Nettie said that though in all other ways Father appeared hardly alive, his heart was beating. Harrison heard it when he put his ear to Father’s chest.

  Even at thirteen, Harrison was big and strong. He was able to lift Father onto the mule. And with Nettie leading the oxen, they made for home and got Father into bed. All night they watched him. He had opened his eyes by morning. Not much more.

  So Harrison rode to town for Dr. Flannagan, who came late the next night. After a study he said that Father had suffered a fit of palsy.

  Sitting there in the wagon with Nettie, I felt the word “palsy” slide down my back like a cold hand. I had heard of such a thing but was not sure what it was, other than a horror.

  “Nettie, what’s the palsy?”

  “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But Ben, I’ll tell you one thing: it’s as if he’s not there. Most times his eyes are open. And he does move some, but only jerky. Worse, though, is when he tries to speak. I say ‘try,’ Ben, because it’s not words he’s saying, not proper ones, just gargle sounds. It’s as if he’s gone all to foolish.”

  “Nettie,” I said, “is he going to live?”

  At first she did not reply. Finally she answered, “The doctor said he couldn’t tell. He might live for a long time, or he could die tomorrow. No saying when it might happen again.”

  “What might happen?”

  “Another fit. But that one would be worse, because there’s nothing to cure what he has — except time.”

  “How much time?”

  “We waited a couple of days after the doctor, but there was no change. That’s when Harrison and I decided you’d better come home. You’re not sorry, are you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Father was so proud of you, Ben, for being at school. He said that’s what Mother wanted.”

  “I know,” I said. Before our mother died, she had made Father promise he would send me to Portland. I did not want to go. First he told me that such a promise was sacred and we must honor it. Then he added that since Nettie was oldest and a girl, she had to take Mother’s place. And whereas Harrison was a grown boy and so strong, he was needed for fieldwork. I was the youngest and so could be spared. But I felt certain the real reason was that they all thought I was the smartest and thereby different.

  “Ben,” Nettie went on, “Father hadn’t seemed sick at all. Nothing wrong that either of us saw. He was the usual, hardly noticing today for planning tomorrow. I mean, all he would talk about was the barn he said we’d be starting.”

  The idea of a barn was something I had not heard about. Th
e oxen, along with the mule and the cow, were kept in a lean-to Father had built. We had lived in it when we’d first come to Oregon, two years before, traveling from Missouri after having lived in Vermont and in Illinois. I said, “What barn?”

  “Well, Father kept saying we were ready for a real one, that our luck had finally turned.” Her voice broke then.

  “Nettie,” I said, keeping my eyes on the rutted road, “our family doesn’t seem to have much luck, does it?”

  She considered awhile. Then she said, “Ben, I remember something Mother once told me about luck.”

  I turned. “What’s that?”

  “She said, ‘People who talk about luck a lot don’t think much of themselves.’ ”

  “Father always talks about luck.”

  “Ben …”

  “What?”

  “I think that’s why she said it.”

  We reached home in the late afternoon of the second day. Harrison was waiting for us. In the seven months since I’d last seen him, he appeared to have grown about a foot. How I envied his size and strength, his shovel-wide face and those hands as tough as horn. But though Harrison was as big as I was small, his eyes were like a deer’s, always seeming to ask permission. I could tell he was glad to see us.

  “Any better?” were Nettie’s first words.

  “No,” Harrison told her.

  For a moment we just stood there, the three of us. We hardly knew what or how to be.

  Then Nettie said, “Better go inside.”

  The house was the second one Father had built in Oregon Territory. It was not much more than a single large room made from ash tree logs. Most folks used pine, but pine grew huge, so it took more work, and Father was in a hurry.

  The roof was made with bark shakes. The dirt floor was kept strewn with fresh grass during wet times. Harrison had the job of keeping the inside walls daubed with clay to hold the weather out, a constant task.

  When Father first built it, the house had been sweet and clean, but hearth smoke had turned the walls all gray and streaked. That hearth never did draw proper, though Father fussed and fussed with it. Each time he gave up, he would say to me, “Ben, I’ve been thinking. Maybe it would be a good thing to keep the smoke in here.” And I would say, “Why?” And his answer was always, “You know, smoke so confuses a mosquito, he’ll bite another mosquito before he bites us.” I’d laugh at that every time. Anyway, the smoke did cut back on the bugs.

  There were two windows, each stretched over with scraped elk hide to allow in pale light. There was a loft where Harrison and I slept and — between the windows — a shelf that held our Bible, Mother’s copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, and a book of sewing patterns.

  Father’s big bed had a straw mattress that crinkled like a kindling fire when he moved about on it. Nettie’s place was at the other end of the room. Because she was a girl, it was curtained with canvas from our old wagon.

  Most of our furnishings had been brought from back East. There was Mother’s great chest, which still held her dresses. (Father said he was saving them for Nettie, but she said she never would put them on. “If you wear your mother’s dresses, you get your mother’s life” was the way she put it. And Father replied, “She got me, didn’t she?” which made me grin, though Nettie frowned.)

  Also, we had a table that Grandfather had made as Mother’s wedding gift. And five chairs, one for each family member. Four were around the table, one against the wall. That was Mother’s. Of all the things we owned, I liked these chairs best because Harrison had made them.

  In one corner stood an old floor clock from my father’s side of the family. I cannot recall it ever working. Harrison would have tried fixing it, but Father always said that he was Father Time, so the clock was his to tinker with. He had a joke for that, too, saying he planned on finding a way to get time to run backward since, he said, he’d made a couple of mistakes in his life, but now that he’d practiced some, he was bound to get things right.

  Though the clock never did move off two-eighteen, it still was the finest thing our family owned and thus took the pride of corner place.

  That was our home.

  When I came in through the door, I was shocked by the smell, like an open privy. Alarmed, I looked over to Harrison.

  “He doesn’t have much control,” he said, his voice low.

  Nettie gave me a tap and a little push. “Go on up to him,” she said.

  It was then I had my first look at Father as he had become. He lay on the big bed, back propped against the wall. He was fully dressed — faded blue-striped flannel shirt, wool trousers — though his boots were off. His hard hands lay by his sides like soft slabs of clay.

  The last time I had seen him, he was tall and strong. The only thing he’d never owed money on, he’d say, was his handsome face, and Mother bought it right off the shelf.

  Now that same face showed nothing but sick and sour dirtiness. His beard — about which he’d been so vain and about which I had teased him often in fun — was all crossways, as was his gray-streaked hair.

  He made me think of an old corn husk doll without stuffing. As I stood staring, he made fluttering motions at the coverlet, his fingers jumping like small fish hauled to land.

  Nettie whispered, “Go closer. But mind … he won’t hardly notice.”

  I went up to his bed.

  “Father!” Nettie said, though it was not normal speaking. She spoke loud and hard, the way you gee up a mule. “Ben’s come!”

  Father just lay there. Then came jerks of his fingers, causing the mattress to crackle. Finally he opened his lips, and a sound came out. It was not words like people speak, but something squeezed from his throat, thick and mangled. Worse, spit spilled from one corner of his mouth and trickled into his beard.

  As for those eyes, which once had teased and laughed so with me, they had become as deep as a well that sank forever, only to fetch up dry.

  That night the three of us, Harrison, Nettie, and I, sat at the table. Nettie had cooked up some potatoes, and we had them with milk. She and Harrison hardly asked about my schooling, though I did tell them Mr. Dortmeister had kept the fees against my return. Mostly we talked about what we should do for Father. I don’t know if he could hear us or even hear at all, but it seemed proper to keep our voices low. Perhaps we were afraid someone would hear, though our nearest neighbors — the Gartells — were six miles away and standoffish at any rate.

  “You’re the oldest boy,” Nettie said to Harrison. “It’s for you to make the decisions.”

  He shook his head. “You’re two years older than me.”

  She said, “But I might get married.”

  I was surprised.

  Harrison nodded. “Tod Buckman has been sparking her.”

  “You going to leave?” I asked Nettie.

  She smiled some. “I don’t know. Mr. Buckman asked … at Christmastime. Father made no objections, save that we wait. Well, I wasn’t going to wait, but now …” She turned back to Harrison. “Still, it’s up to you,” she insisted.

  Harrison dipped his head. “Nettie, I can’t do it.”

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Keep up the claim. We’ve got to stay two more years before it’s ours.”

  “We’ll be here,” I said. I looked at Nettie. “Won’t we?”

  She said, “I don’t know.”

  Then no one spoke for a while.

  “Maybe he’ll get better,” I finally said with a glance over my shoulder at Father. When they did not reply, I went on: “It’s only a sickness.”

  Harrison and Nettie exchanged a look that I could not understand.

  “Ben … ,” Nettie said.

  “What?”

  “I want you to feed Father.”

  “Why? Can’t he —?” I didn’t finish the sentence. Instead I turned and gazed at Father again.

  “Go on,” Nettie urged. “Do it.”

  I got up, fetched his bowl, filled it, then took it and a spoon to where he
lay. As I drew closer, I saw his eyes flick back and forth over me. Deep as they were, this time I could see they had points of light in them, like distant stars. The sight startled me. But he shifted, and I saw that the light was no more than a reflection of the embers in the hearth.

  “Father,” I asked, “do you want to eat?”

  Other than a few finger twitches, he made no response.

  “Ben,” Nettie said, “you have to be louder.”

  I drew breath. “Do you want to eat?” I cried out, feeling shame to yell at him that way.

  Father opened his mouth a tad, and some of those awful sounds came forth.

  I dipped my spoon into the bowl, scooped up a potato bit, and held it out toward him. I guess I expected him to lean forward. When he did not, I moved closer, inching the spoon near his mouth. There was some twitching in his face but not much else.

  I put the spoon to his lips — his mouth was half-open — I don’t know why, but so was mine — and tried to tip the potato in. The piece tumbled down his front.

  I shrank back, mortified. It took a while before I was able to look at him again. Those eyes of his just blinked.

  I plucked up the potato bit and tried to set it right in his mouth, like a bird doing for its chicks. I almost had to force it in. Doing so made me sick to my stomach.

  Then I stood back, stared down into the bowl, and used my spoon to mash the potato to make a sort of gruel. I fed that to him with more success, but it took a long time. As much dribbled down into his beard as got inside him. It was necessary to wipe him off time and time again.

  When I finally returned to the table — where Harrison and Nettie had been looking on in silence — I was exhausted. I bowed my head in my arms and commenced to tremble.

  Nettie touched me. “You see,” she said.

  But I flung myself away and stood outside. The sky was dark and immense. The stars were far. And I felt so small.

  Later that night, in the loft, Harrison reached over and touched my head. “Ben,” he whispered, “I’m glad you’re home. Father was late with planting. Nettie and I needed you here.”

  “Harrison,” I said, “I can work the fields, too.”