Memories of Another Life

As she drove the small rental car down the highway towards her home town, Alice really had no idea if she would be able to find the dirt road in her memory. She hadn’t thought about the place in over twenty years. It had been almost that long since she had seen the man who had put this place in her memory to begin with.

They had been so young; she nineteen and he only eighteen. They had met when her family moved into the house next door to his when Alice was twelve. He spent his teenage years getting into trouble and she had spent hers being a good student, good friend, good employee, good girl. Why do good girls fall for bad boys? Some psychologist has probably answered that question, but at this point, it’s not really important to Alice to know why. She just knew that she fell for him and she fell hard.

Alice exited the highway at Kingdom City and headed south on Hwy 54 towards Jefferson City. Her family was expecting her; her nephew was getting married this weekend, but the trip had another purpose and hopefully she could make it happen. She would do her best to take care of this item on her list before enjoying time with her mom and her sisters. They wouldn’t understand why she needed to do this; she didn’t really understand herself. She felt compelled to try and find the place.

If she did, miraculously, find her way to the location, the old barn probably wouldn’t even still be there. It had been run down and unused when she had spent most of a night there almost thirty years ago; before marriage, before children, before college, before she became the woman she is today. She was still naïve and hopeful when she started spending time with him on a regular basis. They would take her car all over mid-Missouri: homes of HAM radio operators in Fulton, a backwoods bar and grill to play pool in Portland, the river front in Cedar City. Every night they listened to music and drove to someplace that good girl had never been. One night it been an abandoned barn in New Bloomfield.

As her thoughts wandered to all the adventures they had shared, Alice mindlessly drove to the very little road that led to the barn. There was new fencing, but no gate. Instead, a cattle guard crossed the ground of the opening in the fence. Maybe someone was using this as pasture land now. Maybe the barn would still be there. She slowly drove over the cattle guard and followed the road around a corner to the right, blocked by a grouping of trees, and immediately recognized the structure shining in the headlights.

It was the same barn, but it had been painted and the roof was new. She knew she should turn the car around and leave. She was already on probation; how would she explain trespassing? Even as she spoke these words out loud to herself, her hand touched the door handle and she stepped out of the car. Trespassing be damned, her soul needed to see this through.

Alice used the same side door of the barn that she had entered with him those many years ago. Her eyes adjusted to the low light and she was glad that she had arrived before total nightfall. When she was last in this room, it contained two sets of metal bunk beds. She had a memory of what had happened that night in one of those bunk beds, but she didn’t need to dwell on that particular thought today. Oddly, the most vivid picture of that event included his green boxer shorts covered in frogs and lily pads.

She passed through the room, which now appeared to be an office, and made her way to the open area of the barn. The ladder to the loft had been replaced with narrow stairs, for which she was grateful. Her body wasn’t as limber today as it had been then. She climbed the stairs and her emotions began to overwhelm her.

How is a person supposed to feel when someone from their past dies? Someone they once loved with all their heart? Someone who had fathered their children? Someone they had made the difficult decision to remove from the lives of those same children?

Alice hadn’t cried since learning of his tragic death. She hadn’t really felt anything at all. But as she reached the loft of this old barn where she had fallen in love with the man she thought he could be, tears leaked from her eyes. Two months after that night, they would be married. Six months after that, he would go to prison for the first time. She would wait six months for him and when he came home, she would have their daughter. Three years later, she would have their son. Five months after that birth, he would go to prison again. That time, Alice didn’t wait. They divorced and she met and married the man that would be a daddy to her children and adopt them as his own, forever severing ties with the man who chose crime over family.

There was no hay in the loft as there had been long ago, so there was nothing for Alice to sweep away from the corner to find the board that would lift to reveal a small opening. That night there had been a .22 hand gun in the compartment. Alice never asked where it had come from or how he had known that it was there. She learned very quickly not to ask those questions of him because she wouldn’t want to hear the answer, if he were even willing to tell. It was the first time she had fired a hand gun. They had shot at fence posts as they stood at the edge of the hay mow. She had been so scared and he had laughed and said she was adorable. If Alice had been a tarot user then, her card for the day would probably have been The Fool: a youthful adventurer caring nothing for the dangers that lie in his path.

The compartment was empty today and probably hadn’t been touched since he had replaced the board, keeping the gun. Would his fingerprints still be on the wood? Now hers would too.

From her pocket, she pulled a Matchbox motorcycle and turned it over in her hands, amazed at the resemblance to the bike he had purchased after they were married: a green Honda. He always did love motorcycles.

The day after she learned of his death, she was cleaning up her grandson’s room and the small motorcycle had fallen from her hands as she gathered up a pile of toys. The universe had spoken to her and flooded her mind with memories of that night and this barn.

Alice kissed the toy motorcycle and laid it in the compartment, replacing the floor board tightly. Maybe someone would find it someday, maybe not. This was where she had loved him and this was where she would leave him. May he rest in peace.