Broken Frontier

Hello, writers. A month ago, I told you how I made my first fiction sale. I gave all of you the chance to try your hand at the same exercise I used. Below, I have the two finalists and I want you to tell me – in the Write Handed Forum – which one you think is the best. The winner will receive a copy of John Gardner's seminal text, The Art Of Fiction. And just to make it interesting, everyone who votes will be entered into a drawing for a complete set of Jai Nitz's Stoker Award-Winning "Heaven's Devil's." That's right: pick the winner and you could be one yourself.

ENTRY A

Even his customary morning mug of steaming tea was no comfort this day. The hot liquid scalded his tongue and burned an angry passage through his body, a rude reminder of the terrible burden of being alive.

He walked out of the house that used to feel like a home and into the field that had provided food and wealth for generations. The barn stood before him, unbroken and unweathered. It mocked him with its stoic presence; silent and aloof. It was a figure of stolid leadership while he was overcome; defeated by the day yet condemned to see it through.

The barn was an entity without beginning. It had been built and extended and renovated countless times by unknown hands. It was a being as much of this time, of the here and now, as it was of the limitless past. It defended its charge without question or discrimination much as it had always done. Were it possible to see the barn long ago, in its component particles, it would inevitably have been offering sanctuary as a copse of free-standing trees.

He stood in the shadow of this building, eclipsed.

Beside the barn, leaning against it was the simple swing-set he had built. A simple A-frame supported a single beam from which two ropes hung limply. The seat of the swing, once whole and sturdy was now in two. From where he stood, he could not tell whether it had crumbled or cracked and was held back, as if by an invisible hand, from closer inspection. It did not matter, he decided, whether or not it had rotted through slowly (perhaps eaten by chitinous jaws) or been cleaved by a single violent act because it was inescapably broken.

His own creation had been corrupted, a miniscule failure in the presence of the indomitable barn.

The barn offered no comfort this day. It would no doubt remain on this land, ignorant of the ebb and flow of destruction and decay around it. He was doomed to live out this day and many excruciating days to follow. Before long the broken swing-set would no longer mar the ground aside the noble barn. Before long it would be as if he had never built it at all.

* * *

ENTRY B

Ain’t never heard the hinges on the barn door creak that way before. Din’t notice the way the paint was chippin’ neither. It makes the back of my neck hurt, lookin’ up and seein’ it. I used to hear laughter, and music and the sounds of hard work through the walls of this old barn. Now I don’t hear nothin’.

Momma’s been weepin’ for hours. When she gets sad like this, she wants to be left alone, so I go out to work in the barn. What am I thinkin’? She ain’t never been sad like this before. Held her for a long while, she was kickin’ and cryin’. Then she got real quiet and told me to leave her alone. I left her in the front room and came out here.

Inside, maybe I was expectin’ shouts and yells. Instead, there’s an untouched pile of hay. A pitchfork lay nearby, lookin’ forlorn and abandoned. Sometimes, when there were other hands to do the work, I would strum a guitar and sing a tune. It’s what I would do in those times, not so far gone.

The barn needs some work. Those hinges could be replaced. Layer some paint over the walls. Could be that’s what’ll make this place come alive again. Still, the animals don’t seem to mind the creakin’, so I guess it’ll just be me. Momma never comes out here.

All the stock stands there like usual, not missing anything. Susie, our mother cow, nurses her new calf. She ain’t thinkin’ on causes nor justice. Her calf suckles on teat and that’s enough for old Susie. I put some hay nearby, but if she sees it, she don’t seem to notice.

Over in the back, the workbench, a little too cluttered with tools. When I look at it the wrong way it looks almost youthful, like a box of scattered toys. It’s not right to look at it that way now. There’s a crusted over can of red sittin’ in the corner. Red seems somehow wrong, like blood. But that’s what it is, this barn. It’s all what’s left of my family’s heartbeat.

I head out into the heat of the sun, and lay the pail by a stool. I think on Momma, quiet and lonesome in the house. We each got out own way to get by.

The sun beats down, reminding me of far-away deserts. I tear away at the layer of old paint. Flecks of dull, dried brown, once were red, the way a barn is s’posed to be. They come away easier than I expect. The coat of paint soaks into the wood…

As dusk nears, one job gets done, another left to go.

The hinges loose, I pull at the door. It’s heavier than it was, once. Momma would tell me that I shouldn’t try this by myself. Don’t think I can handle it by myself. Damn hinges! I pound my fists like hammers against the wood.

“Those hinges just need a little oil.”

And there she was, Momma, with a tray of lemonade. She ain’t made lemonade in years. Not since…

We hold each other, not kickin’ nor punchin’, ‘til the setting of the sun. The door still creaks, but some things you just have to tolerate.