Hi, Bunny Blue!

The first time I can recall laying eyes on that barn, something tugged at my little heartstrings like a cherub playing a harp. Its exterior wasn't particularly eye-catching in the way that would make one marvel at its beauty; rather, the old wood with chipping white paint, the asymmetrical roof, the large double doors that hid all of the barn's history and secrets—they gave the structure a sort of rustic, mesmerizing magic.

My grandparents owned the barn and the four acres around it in Adair, Oklahoma. Every summer during my childhood, my parents would strap me into our old teal Ford Windstar and take a road trip from our home in Denver, Colorado to visit my mom's parents, Granna and Gramps. I was three when Gramps passed. According to Mom, I was his "Bunny Blue," with curious, ocean-tinted eyes as wide as a rabbit's. Granna would call me by the nickname sometimes, but to her I was mostly just Darcy.

Gramps had built a small ranch house for himself and Granna, just as he had built the barn. At one point, my dad had asked Granna if she would ever consider living with us after Gramps's death, but she was too attached to her home and the land. It was the same place in which my mother was raised. I could understand not wanting to part with it, having brought in a life and losing another within the same walls. Staying in Adair to take care of what Gramps had built was probably somewhat cathartic to Granna. During many visits, I would sometimes catch her aloof, grazing her wrinkled fingers over the mahogany dining table, or the kitchen walls, or the arm of the big, cushioned reclining chair, as if reliving memories with Gramps through their surfaces.

The land itself was a rural paradise: a plain of lush green grass stretched all around the house, divided by only the narrow dirt road in front that eventually reached town. We must have always gone at the right times, because even with the rainy season mainly occurring over the course of summer, I can only remember crystal-clear skies of the most vibrant blue. On breezy days, the air would smell like wheat, the many clusters of Brazilian verbena dancing along with the wind. Granna and Gramps had owned a few horses and goats long before I was born. I would often imagine the animals happily trotting around in the grass.

One summer, when I was eight, Granna and I were sitting on the back porch as we snacked on the blueberries and strawberries we had picked from her garden. Mom and Dad had gone into town to pick up some groceries. Across the way from our spot on the porch, the barn quietly guarded the field, looking straight at us with its dark window holes.

"Granna," I said, my tiny hands fidgeting with the stem of a strawberry, "what's in there?" I knew well that I had noticed the barn a few years in a row, but had never been curious enough to ask about it.

The question seemed to take Granna by surprise. She paused, hesitating to finish chewing the blueberry in her mouth, and followed my gaze toward the barn. "Old dreams," she sighed. "Shadows and cobwebs, for sure." Granna faced me with a melancholy smile.

As a child, it looked like a place to have a make-believe adventure. Somewhere to camp out for a night with Dad and report to Mom the next day that Dad and I had taken on an army of zombie cowboys with only a plastic spoon and a flashlight as weapons.

"Can I go inside?" I asked Granna, popping the too-big strawberry into my mouth.

She sweetly laid a hand on mine across the glass table. "I'm afraid not, Darcy Baby. It was one of his last wishes to have the barn with him when he went up to heaven, so I tucked the key to the padlock in his hands at his memorial. You probably don't remember the memorial, do you?"

I shook my head "no," cheek bulging with half-chewed berry.

Granna's glossy, hazel eyes went far away, past the barn and beyond the acres of land behind it. "He was my hero, your Gramps. Do you remember what he looked like?"

Another negative shake of the head from me.

From the pocket of her floral skirt, Granna pulled out a wallet-sized, hinged picture frame with a bronze case. She unclasped it and inside were two photographs. The left side contained a picture of Granna and Gramps probably only a few years before I was born. They sat side by side, her smiling at the camera, and him beaming at her. He was plump and jolly, wearing big, square glasses on his sun-kissed face. White hair curved around his head, the top of which was very bald. On the right, a sepia capture of Gramps in his youth, no older than my father at the time. Back then, he had a full head of thick, dark hair, friendly eyes with crow's feet caressing the corners, and a genuine smile of accomplishment, pride, and joy. He was standing in front of what I realized were the barn doors, the paint smooth and fresh compared to the weathered coat it now wore.

"I'm sure he's high above, smiling at you right now," Granna said, now fully smiling as she picked up another blueberry. "He would have loved to show you the barn."

I stared out at the wooden structure again. I didn't know what I was missing out on, but the longer I stared at it, the more it seemed to call to me. Whisper to me. Figure me out. Figure me out.

✤

The following day, I asked Granna if I could color, so she situated me in the kitchen with a few sheets of paper, a pack of colored pencils, and a small box of crayons. But I decided to take my supplies to the living room, where the view out the back door was a straight shot to the barn.

I placed myself on my stomach on the tan carpet and kept my upper half propped up by my elbows. One look out those glass doors, and I knew what I wanted to create. So my clumsy hands worked as well as I knew how to use them, messy lines of gray and brown coming together to resemble the barn's general shape. I made sure to include those two hollow squares near the top of the building, aggressively filling them in with black. The sky and ground were scribbles of blue and green, respectively. There was little remaining to the drawing other than a giant, floating yellow orb with equally yellow spikes protruding from it to depict the sun.

But I wasn't happy with it. I kept switching my glance between my work of art and its inspiration, and decided it needed more. Needed something to help it not feel so lonely, despite the gleeful sunshine I gave it.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember the photographs of Gramps that Granna had shown me just the day before. Do I draw old, or young Gramps? I decided on the latter. The version of the barn in my doodle lacked the aged wear-and-tear that the real one boasted, so I figured it deserved the version of Gramps that had gotten to see it when it was new.

The photograph had only shown him from the waist up, but my imagination pictured him to be a tall, lanky man, who wore the same dark shirt as in the picture. At eight years old, I was no prodigy when it came to art, but I tried my best with the crayon labeled "apricot" to give Gramps a shapely head. For his face, even though I couldn't tell what color his eyes were in either photograph I'd seen, I made them sky blue circles, and in one careful swoop gave him a U-shaped smile. I drew him waving at me through the page, the round nubs and stubs sticking out of his sleeves barely decipherable as fingers. Above his head, encapsulated by a thick speech bubble, I messily wrote the words, HI, BUNNY BLUE!

At last, I put my crayons and pencils down and stared at what I'd made. I was satisfied.

"Granna!" I shouted, a grin on my face with my paper flapping in hand. I stood up and wandered through the house. "Granna, look what I made!"

But there was no response. I walked into every room. My parents weren't in the house, either. The small heart in my chest pumped with anxiety. I checked the entire place a second time. Nobody.

So I stepped out the front door. Immediately I heard familiar voices. My dad was talking in a low, comforting tone. My mother sounded like she was on the verge of tears. Drawing still clutched in my damp palm, I walked around the corner to the back of the house, where grandma lay collapsed in my mother's arms. I couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. The three of them were just within the blind spots of the patio door. I hadn't heard them at all the whole time I'd been drawing.

Dad caught a glimpse of me. "Darce, head back inside, baby." He immediately turned his attention back to Granna as he stooped down to pick her up.

But something moved in the corner of my vision, and I snapped my head in its direction. I was now looking at the barn. It was the same as it had been yesterday. Those window-eyes observed me, bore into me as my own eyes landed on the tall figure standing by the barn doors. It was a man. A man whose age I couldn't quite guess, but he was far from old. Something about him was familiar.

"Daddy," I said too quietly, "There's a man over there." I pointed and looked up at my dad.

Alert with Granna draped across his arms, he followed my finger. "Where, honey?"

I looked again. The man was still standing there. He didn't look harmful, or so my young brain thought. The drawing in my grip suddenly felt heavy for a piece of paper. I unfolded it. Studied it. Stared into the circle eyeballs, the smiling face.

Once more I lifted my gaze toward the barn. The man hadn't moved anywhere. He was too far to see in detail, but it was without a doubt the man I had seen in that sepia photograph.

He lifted his left arm, the same one he raised in my drawing. His arm gently waved back and forth.

"Hi, Bunny Blue!"

The words, that rich voice, echoed across the field. My eyes shot to my parents for a reaction, but they were now disappearing inside the house through the sliding glass doors, not indicating that they had heard a thing.

Gooseflesh broke out on my arms. I wondered if Granna had seen him. If that was why she fainted. Slowly, my head turned again in the direction of the barn.

Young Gramps was nowhere to be found. And those black windows seemed to laugh at me.