In the Rafters

There were no pigeons in the rafters today. Odd, with the rain outside. Where were they? They shouldn't fly in this weather. The rain would make their feathers heavy and make it difficult to see. Pigeons can't have very good eyesight. Very inefficient. They must be resting somewhere else today. Why? What was wrong with my barn? I keep it much cleaner now than before. The rafters are high and stable, with absolutely no splinters. I made sure. I almost broke my wrist getting rid of them. I have a doctor, though, and I don't need to use my wrist to hold onto telephone wires or branches like they do. Plus, I've practiced always catching myself with my left hand so that I can still hold a fork if I'm injured. I would have been fine. The pigeons don't have any health insurance.

I love my barn in the rain. The dust settles out of the air, and the gray light shows me where the walls need patching without the ugliness of bright sunshine. I know that sounds strange, calling sunshine ugly. Lots of people have told me so, enough to believe them, I think. I've memorized how to talk about the weather correctly -- Nice weather we're having, when it's sunny and warm. Hot one, huh, when the air is thick and wavy. Makes you just want to curl up with a book, when it's raining. I love to curl up with a book of course, but I never really understood what that has to do with rain.

Maybe that's where the pigeons are! Curled up with a book, in someone else's barn! Johnny would laugh and cuff me on the shoulder if he could hear my pigeon theory. He always cuffed my shoulder when I said something absurd. I liked to make him laugh. And he never cuffed me hard enough to hurt. Not like Sterling when he got hungry, or the boys on the school playground. Sterling was my favorite horse. He lives in my barn. The boys on the playground laugh, too, when I talk, but their cuffs and shoves and laughter feel different in my stomach than Johnny's did. Johnny's laughter made me feel warm and tall. When the playground boys laugh, my eyes and mouth get smaller, even though I have learned to laugh with them. Your mouth shouldn't get smaller when you laugh. Your eyes can -- Johnny's did, they even squished closed most of the time -- but your mouth should get big, stretching open and moving with the sound. I've been practicing laughing with the boys, so they don't push me down anymore, but I can't make my mouth big yet. I'll keep trying though. Johnny always told me to keep trying if I couldn't do something. Johnny's mouth got so big when he laughed that one time I told him a bird might fly into it. I learned that joke from an old TV variety show. It was a teasing joke. That's different than a dirty joke or a word-play joke, Johnny taught me. Johnny laughed even more when I told him a bird would fly in his mouth, and cuffed me again on the shoulder. I always felt tall around Johnny. I wonder if I'll get shorter now that he's gone.

Another reason I love my barn in the rain is the smell. The rain takes away all the built-up smell that grows in the summer. After a few days of sunshine, my barn smells like sweat and gasoline and Sterling's food, before and after he eats it. Johnny liked that joke too. Grown-ups don't like when I talk about Sterling's poop, so Johnny taught me how to talk about it without saying so. There's a lot of things grown-ups don't like me to talk about. Johnny didn't have time to teach me how to talk about all of them.

After it starts to rain, my barn smells like worms and hay, and that's it. It's much nicer. I don't mind Sterling's dinner before he eats it. It's cleaning up what he gives back afterward that smells. I always have to clean up after Sterling. Those were the rules when I got to keep him. Johnny used to help, though. He teased me that it was because I was too slow, and he wanted to hurry me up so we could go into town for ice cream or throw around his football instead, but I know it was because he liked to help me. I told him I liked him helping because I was small and I might die from the smell. Really, though, it was because he would tell me stories about the boys at school and the teachers and what he would do when he finally got his motorcycle.

It takes me a lot longer to clean the barn now, but I don't mind because I can remember Johnny's stories better when I'm cleaning up after Sterling than I can any other time. It's like he left them in the last place he was. Mom tried to help me clean the barn a few days after, but she couldn't keep from crying, and I told her I didn't mind. Maybe I'll try telling her one of his stories.

I don't get sad when I go to the barn. I get sad about Johnny when I go to church on Sunday. But that's ok -- it's ok to be sad in church. I asked. I don't have to go to the hospital, but I know I would get sad there too, if I went. But there aren't happy memories there to spoil, either, so that seems ok. I guess someday maybe I'll have a baby in a hospital, but that will be long enough to feel better. I don't know if it will matter which hospital. Maybe I'll even name him Johnny, if it's a him. I know Mom gets sad when she comes to the barn because she remembers how she found him. If I tell her some of his stories, maybe she can remember those instead.