my uncle's barn




I find it incredible how hot the inside of a car can get. The air conditioner hums away in vain, sending murky lukewarm air bursting into my shins from the vent between the two front seats. My older brother next to me fans himself uselessly with his hand, flapping it at the wrist with his head tipped back against the window, mouth open like an old fish. He plucks at the small padded headphones over his ears, wiping them free of sweat before replacing them with a grimace. The heat presses down on us like a blanket that can’t be kicked off, an entity in itself. I can feel it fill my lungs when I breathe in and feel it swirl back into the stale air of the back seat when I breathe out. My dad, seated in the driver’s seat in front of me, has fashioned a fan out of a road map folded back and forth and he waves that at himself, steering the car with only his left elbow. The gusts of wind from the map don’t reach me as whole-heartedly as I’d have liked, and instead just lick against the glass of the window on his side.

Even the stereo’s broken. I stare at it, it’s dusty black knobs and dull orange digital numbers telling me it’s two thirty-two, with the colon between the two numbers flashing every few seconds. If stereos had mouths I would kick this one in its because I’m sure time has stopped moving completely; I checked what I thought was five minutes ago, and the broken stereo told me it was two thirty on the nose. Maybe the clock has finally broken along with everything else is this dinky car.

Looming in the distance on this hot summer afternoon is the stark white roof of my uncle’s barn, nestled among the tall chestnut trees with their thick sheltering plumes of leaves like a dark canopy over whoever walks beneath. I can’t wait to lie in the grass under those trees and have a nap, the only way to avoid talking to relatives at this reunion. I’ll put a husk of wheat between my teeth to honor the country life and then I’ll fall asleep, knowing too well that no one will wake me.

My father makes a comment about almost being there, as if we can’t see. He puts his folded map fan on the dashboard covered in a fine sheen of dust and swipes his hand over the passenger seat, sending an empty doughnut box, today’s newspaper and empty cardboard coffee cup tumbling to the floor. He’s making an attempt to seem cleaner when we arrive. Following his lead, I take the warm bottle of orange soda from the back window behind Mark’s head and I stuff it under the seat along with a paper fast food bag.

The barn nears, it’s red walls caked with years of dirt and grit. The farm spreads out beyond that: The golden fields of corn, the foul-smelling cow pasture, the wide cape cod farm house, the shed Uncle Tim calls his garage. Glimpsed through the leaves and trunks of the chestnut trees and hedges lining the property, the cars of our other relatives lined up down the curved driveway like dominoes waiting to be toppled over. Part of me wants to ask my father to bump our car into the one ahead of ours to see how much like dominoes they really are, but I stay quiet as he pulls into the property with a crunch of tires on gravel.

We pull up behind Aunt Leslie and Uncle George’s old station wagon and I crane my neck, pressing my cheek to my window, hoping see who has already arrived. Many of my cousins are younger than me and the ones that aren’t are far too old, nearly adults. I’ve brought a stack of books to occupy myself with this weekend, and I plan on taking Mark’s walkman when he isn’t using it, since I broke my own last winter. I see Jake and Tamara and Carrie, Aunt Cecile’s kids, playing wiffle ball on the front lawn with Mary, Louise, and Tom, my cousin Morgan’s kids. They’re all either six, seven, or nine and are having a great time, or so it seems. The older women and men I see sitting on the front porch in padded armchairs, smoking and talking, supervising the wiffle ball game – Grandpa John, Grandma Morna, Granny Kate, Nana Fran.

Dad turns the car off and I unlock my door, opening it with vigor to the fresh air of the afternoon. Deep breaths bring the clean air into my lungs as the stagnant air from inside the car blows out into the world, carried on the breeze. I grab my pile of books from the middle of the back seat and shut the door behind me, leaning against it, pulling the books to my chest. The paper jackets of the hardcover volumes are warm against my palms, baked from the long drive here. Mark crawls out of the car on the opposite side, kicking his long awkward legs out, having gone numb in the past few hours. He slips his headphones around his neck, rests his walkman on the roof of the car, and looks at me blandly; he isn’t fond of these gatherings either. I look back, mimicking his expression, sympathizing without words.

Once he’s dusted the powered doughnut sugar from his shirt, my dad steps out of the car and slams the door behind him, his own way of alerting people that someone has arrived: us. The wiffle ball game does not cease, but Uncle Tim wanders over from the vegetable garden, the other adults he was giving a tour to trailing behind him. Loud greetings and hugs and pats on the back ensue, and I stand there silently with my back pressed to the dirty car door. My aunt June and about three other adults tell me how tall I’ve grown since they last saw me, which I smile and nod in response to, having heard it all before.

Soon the adults go back to their tour of the house and grounds with my father among them. Mark and I carefully venture through the property as if it were a mine field. We always feel out of place here, mostly because we’re our dad’s kids, and no one likes our dad very much. We get greeted by a few more relatives, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, as we make our way to the house. The screen door is open, so we step inside, removing our shoes before pushing them to the side along with dozens of others. Mark mutters something about them getting stolen as our socks slip on the hardwood floor past so many relatives that I’m not sure if I can name them all. There’s laughter all a around, a jovial yet somehow hollow laughter, not honest-to-goodness laughter, but being-told-a-joke laughter. There’s a difference.

In the kitchen with a glass of lemonade and a slice of cinnamon babka, Mark finds our cousin Eli, whom he’s close friends with. Eli is a very irresponsible guy about Mark’s age; they’re like two peas in a pod. They hug, those boyish man-hugs that consist of just a leaned-in pat on the back, off-limits to any woman, and Mark hands me his babka and goes off with him. I pick at the babka on the plate engraved with bluebells but eventually leave it on the counter next to Courtney, assuming that someone will blame her for taking it then not eating it. The lemonade I refill and keep with me as I tuck my books under my arm and wander out the back door onto the balcony.

Here more parents are clustered in the patio furniture, commenting on the hot weather and their individual children's accomplishments, secretly competing to see who has the most well-rounded child. My father will soon enter me in one of these parent-held competitions, I realize as I thump down the rickety wooden steps. He won’t be able to resist. Mark will get to stay out of it because he hasn’t accomplished much of anything, which is both a blessing and a curse when it comes to this. I, however, was in a concert in school last month. I played the guitar. I thought I was bad, but dad will throw it at his brothers and sisters and their spouses like I discovered the cure for cancer.

After a few minutes plodding around, dodging children's games of soccer and catch, I decide it’s far too hot to be in the sun. Condensation beads down the side of my glass of lemonade, running down my hand. I keep walking, adjusting the books under my arm, saying hello to the various aunts and uncles that don’t bother me as I start heading back around to the front of the house, past the sizable vegetable garden, past the quaint wiffle ball game. The chestnut trees are lined up in a row, tall knotted trunks twisting into bows and branches carrying fluffy leaves and spiky little green capsules of nuts. The grass under them is long and cool and I settle beneath it, tugging my shorts a little lower.

I nestle the tall glass of lemonade in the un-cut lawn and rest my back against the bark of the chestnut tree, closing my eyes for a moment in the tranquility of this summer day. When I open them, I look at the books I’ve spread out on the grass. I haven’t started any of them, I borrowed them from the library just for this trip. I choose the one that looks the best and pile the others high next to me, then cap the pile with the lemonade glass. Content and warm, I crack the book open, listening to the crisp sound of the pages fluttering as I flip to the beginning. I rest the spine on my knee and start to concentrate, reading the first line. The snow started to fall several hours before her labor began ...

A voice calls my name out, ringing out over the sounds of the day, over the clink of glasses and the giggle of kids. Irritated, I close the book on my thumb and look around. The person calls again, a boy, I’ve decided, and I find the source of the noise. Paul, leaning against the shed of a garage, waving his hand at me, beckoning me over. Paul is, to my knowledge, the only non-family person here, along with his parents and sister. His father and mother grew up closely with my father and his siblings, so it’s like they’re family, even if they aren’t. Paul and I have known each other since we were babies, but we aren’t quite friends for one reason or another. He’s just the dorky kid I grew up with, someone who’s always there.

I put my book down with the others and stand, wiping crushed grass from my knees. I leave the lemonade where it is as well, silently praying that a leaf or fly doesn’t land in it and ruin it, making me go back into the house for more. The garage is a dozen or so yards away and Paul watches me near, rubbing a tanned hand through his short hair, smiling crookedly. I smile back, I think. As I walk by the open carports of the shabby shed, I run my fingertips over the hoods of the dirty vintage trucks, gathering a grey-brown sludge.

Paul greets me with one of those cheery man-hugs - Paul has always been a bit odd - but I don’t pat his back as he pats mine because he wouldn’t want the dirt from the trucks on his white t-shirt. He says it’s been a long time since we saw each other, and I agree, mimicking aunt Jill’s voice when I say ‘You’ve grown so tall!’ He laughs and makes a face, then chides me for being such a loner, reading at a family gathering. I smack him and tease him, asking him why he’s even here if he isn’t family. He hits me back, grinning, saying he was dragged along as he assumes I was. He goes on to say it’s far too hot to be ‘dicking around in the sun’, so we walk off to find some shade.

We pass the chestnut trees, heading off across the wide lawn to the right of the house, dotted with empty picnic tables covered in filthy leaves. We gripe about the long, annoying drive here; Paul lives just as far away from the farm as I do, but to the east instead of the south, and he has a loud little sister to make the drive even worse – at least Mark is quiet. We reach the fence running alongside the pasture and curve to the left, towards the big red barn I saw like a beacon from down the road before we arrived.

Paul grins cheekily and asks if we should go inside. I shrug noncomitally, telling him that there was probably nothing interesting in there. He opens the tall, heavy door and the sweet smell of hay rushes out, mingling with the scents of summer and barbecue outside. I turn my head to look towards the house, trying to spy a grill of some kind, the source of the smell, but nothing is in sight. When I turn back to the barn and Paul, he’s moved in close. I look up at him – though he’s only an inch taller, if that – and his cheeky grin has been replaced by a much more serious look.

My heart thunders when I realize that the door he’s holding open with his right hand hides us from the view of anyone in or around the house. He leans in towards me and I smell cinnamon babka on his warm breath. I tense but hold still, just waiting, letting my eyes close. We kiss in the shade of my uncle’s barn with my thumbs hooked in my pockets, with one of his hands holding the door and the other holding my arm, fingers pressing just hard enough to be considered pressure at all. His lips are wide and warm, gentle but chaped. This is a kid’s kiss, nothing more than a press of mouths on one another's, but a heady flush runs from the tip of my head to the tips of my bare toes.

He lets the heavy door fall and before it hits us, his right hand grabs my other arm and he pulls me into the barn. He lets his lips leave mine and the air in the barn is thick and hot like the air in the car, a blanket you can’t kick off. I smile, just showing my top teeth in a grin I want to bite back.



back to archive ~ <3