Fiction: Remnants

By Michael Terreri
arttimesjournal July 27, 2019

The barn was nearly a hundred years old. Its ruddy red-clay paint complexion had faded to an unhealthy tan. The bottom of the Dutch-door entry was missing and the top was propped up and kept closed by a wooden stick, the shaft of a tine-less pitchfork. In the loft, disuse was obvious. Apart from a few broken bales of timothy and a few olfactory vestiges of a working farm — the faint smell of livestock and the rich aroma of the earthen floor wafting up from below — there was little to indicate a once-successful operation that lost its battle with time and progress. The tires of the old GMC pick-up truck, parked behind the barn, had sunk into the soft earth.

It was still his farm though, and his last visit to the old place, fifty miles away from his last residence, a nursing home, was important, important enough to make the long trip, especially for those who were with him, following close behind. He needed to say goodbye. It would probably be sold in a few months, carved up by a developer, but for now it was still intact, still his farm, even as the hearse made its final pass.