Death from the Hayloft (Story Three, to "Voices out of Saigon")

Caroline, a day after she arrived back home, got back home from Saigon went out to the barn, a barn now horseless, manless, Negroless, childless. An old lantern sat on the steps leading up to the hayloft, she picked it up, lit it, it was dusk, mid-November, 1972. For a moment she thought she saw old josh Jr., and Langdon—‘…ghosts perhaps,’ so she muttered; Josh taught him how to ride bareback—taught Langdon how to mount, ride bareback, without a saddle, he was but only nine-years old at the time.
She recalled the day Josh informed her about the night Langdon came into the barn at 2:00 AM, in the morning, thinking he was sleepwalking, but far from it. Josh Jefferson Jr., told her, told Caroline about that night, adding a few things each year to make it more interesting, so Caroline thought, but it was the truth, it was just Josh didn’t not want to let it all out at one time, he had his reasons.

The wind shut the large barn doors, no sound coming from the misty darkness in the barn, the darkness beyond the light’s glow. She was now, her mind was now, putting together, images, of that night, when Langdon came into the barn, asked Josh,
“I want to ride Dan, the old horse, no saddle or anything; I want to ride him around the barn, bareback.”
Josh looked at him strangely, the boy then said,
“Uncle Josh, teach me how to ride old Dan, I can’t sleep, it’s been on my mind for a while, its time I learn, I’ve been feeding him since the day I was born I think, now it’s time to ride him, pa things I’m still too young, but I’m not.”
Josh looked about, all the animals were waking up, the cow out in the corral, the mules and other houses in the barn, in the stalls next to Dan, all big-eyed and sleepy-eyed waking up.
“I suppose I is got to teach ya now, ya done woke up the whole darn barn, what ya pa goin’ to say if I tells him?”
“But you won’t I know it.” Langdon said.
“Hows ya know dhat?” replied Josh.
“Cuss I do…!” answered Langdon.
“Well, you knows more dhen me dhen.” And they started laughing, and Josh got the horse out, and Josh helped him onto Dan’s back, and Langdon rode the horse around the barn several times.
After the ride, Josh put Old Dan back into his stall, Langdon standing by, and Dan starts to whine and stomp his hoofs, like a mad bull.
“Hes like dhe mule, and you Langdon, an’ hes not goin’ a go back to sleep, jes like you!”
Caroline moved some, and began to stare at those dark shadows, beyond the light, thinking what Josh had said, told her: Langdon put hay in Dan’s stall, stood there an hour until he fell to sleep, thinking it was the thing to do, the proper thing to do, like it was the proper thing to do when he went back to Saigon to take care of his boy, his child, Josue, and marry his Vang, his indifferent and insensitive Vang, the one who deceived him, the Jezebel, the Delia that stepped into his life one day, and caused so many ripples within his family; n Never really wanting to see the family, never really having intentions to marry him, never really wanting him to come look for her in Saigon.
After Dan had fallen to sleep, even old Josh had fallen to sleep, the boy must had then went back to his bed because when Josh woke up, he was gone, so Josh told, Caroline; hence, the boy was gone, and everyone, animal and him, Josh, had been sleeping, the last thing he could remember, before he fell to sleep, everything was noisy, and now daybreak had arrived.



Unhurried


Unhurried, Caroline stood up from sitting on the wooden stairway leading up into the loft. She heard the sound of a hound, she opened the barn door, and there was Tabasco, Langdon’s dog, caked with mud. She had forgotten all this time about her, she disappeared six-month ago, sometime around when Cole died, her husband. She brought the dog with her to the house, gave him some beef jerky, and they both went back to the barn, her to reminisce, the dog to sit beside her, and reaffirm he was really home.
She thought: gee the dog must have lived off the land all this time. She could hear in the background, someplace out in the fields, a few other hounds yapping, under the moons light, stray dogs, those dogs folks let loose out of their cars to run wild in farms yards, so they don’t have to have any more responsibility: an out of sight, out of mind thing.
She wanted to go back to day dreaming, she was having some good memories, happy ones, and she had not been happy for a long time, but she was calm now, very calm, unhurried, the yapping of the dogs didn’t even bother her.
She lowered her head, it was nice to have a familiar face, she thought, even if it was a dog. Tabasco sat close to Caroline’s leg, perhaps feeling the warm blood, the scent of familiarity. Tabasco chewed away on that long thick piece of beef jerky, it was nice to be able to make her happy, Caroline thought, it was a long time since she made anyone happy.
She spoke to the dog, “Do you remember old Josh, he died also, just like Cole, just like Langdon, we are the only ones left. Sold the cow and old Dan passed on also, and sold the other horses. No more anybody’s for us Tabasco.”


Tabasco Yelping

Caroline now got thinking of Old Josh’s bad habit of chewing tobacco and spitting it out. Then she gazed at the dog—blank like.
“Don’t have kids Tabasco, you’ll just be hurt. What do you think about all this? Josh, and Dan, and Langdon and Cole; and then there is me and you, we survived them all.”
The old dog said nothing, legs a bit weak; she was comfortable for the moment. Not even a bark. She, likened to Caroline just sat there, not one little bark, just sat there chewing on that leather like piece of meat, happy to have it.
“Tabasco, that old man spat all that darn tobacco out, all over the place. Oh he’d do it carefully, as not to get it on the house, so I’d not see it, but boy you go to the corral, and you step in it as sure as you would cow dung.”
Then she laughed, and the dog looked up, if a dog could smile, she detected it as one, because she patted her on the head, and said,
“You understand, too well.”
“How silly them two were, Josh and Langdon, Cole never played with Langdon all that much, some football, he was always working, so it seemed.”

She stood up, stood without a word said, slowly as not to frighten the dog, without any change in inflection.
“Oh,” she said to the shaggy dog, “You’ll have to find a new home—pity, but I will not be here and everyone else is gone. You don’t need my pity, you’ll do just fine on your own, like you already have, so ‘Sho!’” she told the dog and the dog got up and walked over to one of the horses stalls, Dan’s old stall.
She was now looking at the dog, and she fell fast to sleep, “I wonder what’s she’s dreaming, Cole once told me dogs dream, and Josh confirmed it, something for survival reasons I think, a primitive thing.”
Now on top of the loft, she took a long piece of rope sturdy rope, tied it around a four by four beam, and then put the noose around her neck, and jumped off the edge of the loft, hung herself.
Hanging there, her fingers made a last jerk and she said, whispered to herself, ‘no more time to hate,’ and her throat and nostrils made a sound, and she was dead.


Epitaph

When the dog awoke at daybreak, the neighbors could hear the yapping cries of the dog, he left the stall, guarded the entrance to the barn, waited until the neighbors came, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Unknowing the profound emergency of the matter, it was mid day before they arrived.