Mrs Barnes #2
Mrs. Barnes had impressed upon me her wanting me to stop over late on Sunday night, long after sunset. That worked for me just fine because I was still at that tender age when I worried about what others might think. After all, Mrs. Barns wasn't only old enough to be my mother --she was old enough to be my grandmother.
And so it was on a chilly fall Sunday evening with the big hand on nine and the little hand nearly on ten, that I pulled off that country road and down the long limestone driveway into what had been John Arnold's farm. There were no lights evident within the house. Pulling on around the back of the house I was greeted by a woman with a dim flashlight in hand, guiding me and my car into the large hay barn. The barn was very much like the one we had on the other side of town. Twenty feet tall and forty feet wide, the doors swung open to either side. Mounds of hay and straw were stacked in front, above on both sides and off to the left. On the right was a stall where either horses or cattle could have laid.
"Help me," the woman pleaded as together we swung the doors closed. "Those fuck'n kids of John's were here all day. Bloodsuckers. Come, let's get inside."
Mrs. Barnes was wearing a three-quarter-length woolen winter coat. It was cloudy out and no moon was yet present to discern its color. She seemed in a hurry and a bit flustered.
The wake had been on Tuesday with the funeral on Wednesday afternoon. Saturday had been a busy day with the auctioning off of most of the farm equipment, tools, and assorted lifetime accumulations. What little I knew of auctions it seemed to me to have been a success judged solely on the number of cars and trucks that had parked in the drive, along the road, and in the adjacent pasture-turned parking lot. What I later learned is that Mrs. Barnes was not to become the recipient of any of the proceeds of the auction, for she had never actually married John. John's two, out of nowhere, children arrived after the funeral to keep tabs on the auction cash box. Perhaps that was why my stay at the auction was so short. Perhaps that was why Mrs. Barnes was nowhere to be seen.
At the time, I was still living with my parents. I informed them that I had a date and might be home late tonight. My parents were never ones to show much interest in my school grades, my social life, my interests, or my future. Theirs was an unhappy marriage.
To say I was apprehensive about pulling back down into the driveway this late at night would be an understatement. My emotions were a mixture of fear, excitement, puzzlement, and hope. For I knew if word ever got out about me and her, it would immediately become the town's scandal of the century that it would follow and haunt me for a lifetime. I was young but I was also scared of counting my chickens before they hatched. Maybe all she had invited me over for was to give me something she had baked before going away. For the large sign out front along the road gave ample notice that the farm was up for sale. Everything that wasn't nailed down had been put on the market. A scandal had already arisen when word got out that there had been no marriage and that Mrs. Barnes had merely been John's housekeeper and cook. I wondered what would happen to her. Where would she go? Would she stay in town or disappear in the night? It was all too evident John's two children didn't give a flip. Gertie, aka, Mrs. Gertrude Barnes, informed me that she had been given her evacuation orders. I remember thinking how sad it was that families often ate each other alive over their self-absorbed dreams of inheritance. This wouldn't be the last time I saw it either.
Just inside the kitchen door, I watched as she laid the flashlight on the table before striking a match to light a candle. "Forgive an old lady for being silly but I don't want those two leaches thinking I'm still up and that they can show their despicable faces here this late at night." I watched as she then lit a storm lantern that filled the room with a soft, yellow glow of light. However, as she turned back to me, she was still a shadow. "Come give an old woman a hug, would you?" As I walked closer to her, I realized that she had unfastened the large button of that woolen coat. She grabbed my hands as I was about to surround her with them and slid them inside the coat, drawing herself up close against me. Those massive, naked pillows were crushed purposefully against me as she squeezed me hard. I sensed tears were being stifled.
"Brian, I don't know what the future holds for me. I suppose I deserve this. John had offered to marry me but not for love. I don't know," she sighed, taking a deep breath to stave off the tears, " I guess I fooled myself into thinking he had left something for me."
At the shop, we all had concluded that John was a tight-fisted, no-nonsense, curmudgeon. He got along with the older men but he was cold and mostly intolerant of youthful antics that many of us displayed frequently at the shop.
