Inside These Walls...

The sun was beating down on that hot summer day. The year was unknown as a young man nailed and cut the long pieces of wood. My pieces of wood. He took his time with each one as he built the skeleton of my building. He made me tall and able to withstand the strong winds that were sure to come. He pulled out some red paint and covered all my boards and trimmings, careful not to get it on my windows. As he finished me up, he got on his tall ladder and under my pitched roof and carved in his initials. I could feel them as he dug into my fresh paint.

T J H

I never knew what they stood for but I knew they were his. He climbed down off his ladder and looked up at me, proud of what he had accomplished. He had built me. He put his arm around his young wife and patted her growing belly. "I think this will do, I can bring the horses and other livestock in now." I now knew what my job was. I was there to provide shelter and storage.

I was dedicated to my job as the years passed. As that baby turned into a young boy. He would climb high in my hayloft. Clinging to my beams and ropes as he swung and meandered across my rooftop. The boy was growing up and went from spending every day doing some kind of activity inside my walls. He would muck out the stalls for the horses and refill up the hay.

To one day when he snuck a young girl in. They laid up in the hayloft, talking and kissing. Talking about a future together, I was happy to be a part of moments like this. I was proud to watch the family grow. Even when there were hard times. When things changed drastically.

I was standing strong against the winter chill, my red paint not so red anymore. It was quiet, no one had been around me much but I still did my job. In the distance, singing could be heard along with a drum. The family from the farmhouse started to stir, they moved out onto the porch. Their faces seemed grim as men in soldier uniforms surround me and the farmhouse.

I could hear yelling as the soldiers were everywhere. They seemed to be searching for something. They came and violently kicked in my two large doors. They started to take all the animals and anything else they found useful. I became empty but it didn't last long. Soon after, gunfire could be heard in the distance, it was loud and I could feel it rattle my walls. A few bullets even managed to embed themselves in my walls.

There were people everywhere, in and out of the house and the gunfire and cannon fire continued, it seemed to go on forever. Until it suddenly stopped. It was an eerie kind of silence, it stayed as the snow started to fall and started to cover up all the red that surrounded me. Then suddenly the world seemed to burst open again, a scream shook through the night sky. More and more sounds filled the air, screams, and moans.

Life started to bustle around me as men of all ages were brought inside of my doors. They were laid out each in a row, in different levels of injury. Crying out and moaning as my floors became full. A doctor moved from each man and would do what he could, removed a leg or arm. Sometimes there wasn't anything the doctor could do for a man and a sheet would be pulled over his face.

I lost count of how many men came into my walls and never left. Some of the hay was moved until my dirt floors were seen and a hole was dug, those men went into that hole and never came out. Then the world became quiet again. My walls were empty, no life to be found. The farmhouse was as well, the white paint began to fade and flake.

Weeds and vegetation started to grow all around me. Vines crawled up my walls and intertwined into my windows until you could no longer see my once red exterior walls. I was abandoned, alone. The years past and I fell more and more into disarray.

I don't know how long I sat there, my wood was having termites. I was dilapidated. If my ladder to the hayloft had any weight put upon it, it would crumble into dust. I had a strange smell of rotting inside of my walls. I thought all hope was lost, that my job was at an end. The forest had started to reclaim me as trees grew closer and closer to me.

It was early on a spring morning when I heard a noise I never heard before, it was a soft growling noise. A large metal machine was coming towards me, its four wheels making it slowly down the old rocky road. A young man got out of the truck and looked up at me. He slowly approached me, placing a hand on one of my walls. His fingers lightly gracing over where one of the bullets had hit me in years passed.

He looked all throughout me, at the ropes that hung from my rafters as they disintegrated in his hands. Then he suddenly left and went back to his truck. He was there for a while talking on a small black device. "I think the house and barn can be salvaged. No need to tear them completely down." The young man said into the cellphone. "I don't want to sell it. This is where my great grandfather was involved in the civil war. At least let me give it a go." The young man went on.

After a time the young man left but he wasn't gone long. He came back and new pieces of wood were added to me. I was being rebuilt and I couldn't be happier, my job wasn't done yet. I was going to keeping standing for as long as I was needed to.