The Bales & Barnabas Batty

Barnabas Batty had grown spitefully accustomed to the unflattering moniker his fifth-grade classmates saddled him with last summer. Coincidence or kismet, he couldn't say, but the irony of how he was branded as "Batty Barny" bore consequences all the same.

Barnabas was born into a modest family of modest means who mostly made ends meet by harvesting the hayfields fronting their farmland in Chickasaw County near Huskerville just off the highway. Cherokee Plains Elementary School was nine miles up the road and the #9 bus picked him up at 7am every weekday from the dirt lane that led to his house.

People said they named his school to honor the Native Americans. Tales stretched back centuries of this hallowed expanse skilled horsemasters once tamed, ranging its far reaches to channel the meandering riverbeds into agricultural deltas. The way Barnabas' grandfather told it, "honor" veiled centuries of guilt as corrupt politicians whitewashed their history. "Perfunctory Skunkery", Gramps liked to say. Barnabas found that funny.

The perils of grade school were a class of perfunctory skunkery all their own. Barnabas used to love learning about maps and science. He hated school now. The moment Mrs. Hawkins turned her back, Barnabas would receive a hard flick to the arm, a smack to the back of the head, a kick to the shin under his desk. He always seemed to get in trouble whenever he responded in anger, so he'd taken to silent endurance when it started up. "Takers," he thought, spitefully. He still didn't understand how telling everyone at school about the most amazing summer experience anyone could ever imagine had made him an outcast. But ever since that magical evening last summer, he'd become a target: "Batty Barny."

"Barnabas! Come out here and help me with the door! We gotta get these bales in the stalls before dark!" Barnabas closed his book and walked to his open bedroom window facing the barn. "Coming, Pop!" He raced down the stairs and tore out the front door. He loved knowing his dad entrusted him with such a big responsibility when he made Barnabas official "keymaster," and he beamed with pride as he wrangled loose the rawhide necklace from beneath his shirt where the keys jangled. Skidding to a stop in the dust before the locked barn doors, he quickly twisted the heavy metal key left and reveled in the sound as the lock popped open. Barnabas flung open the bolt, pulling with all his might on the massive door to make way for the eight large hay bales balanced on the wide platform his dad towed behind the tractor. He dropped the deadbolt into the ground to secure the left door and jetted over to grunt his way through the same series of maneuvers on the right door. Once the berth was cleared for landing, his dad backed the tow-hitched platform into the cavernous barn's first level as Barnabas moved backwards slowly guiding his descent like an air traffic controller.

"STOP!" Barnabas shouted sternly. His father hit the brakes and put the tractor in park, cutting off the rumbling engine. They dropped the sides of the platform and began shuffling off the large mounds of rolled hay and shimmying them into their respective stalls which lined up four to a side along the east and west walls of the barn's first level. Twenty minutes later they were dusting themselves off with a cool sheen of sweat on their brows. Mr. Batty pulled a couple handkerchiefs from his pocket and gave one to Barnabas. They both wiped down their faces and folded up the platform walls, securing them in place with deadbolts along the tailgate. Mr. Batty got back into the tractor seat and cut on the engine, sending a plume of exhaust that roiled up into the barn's loft. Catching his cue, Barnabas raced past his dad driving the vehicle back through the doors and readied himself for the grand closing.

Washed up and ready for dinner, Barnabas gulped water as Mrs. Batty served meatloaf and potatoes. "How'd it go, Bernard? First day baling hay always hints how the summer might play out, don't it? How's it lookin'?"

Mr. Batty took a deep breath. "Should be fine. This meatloaf looks better'n fine though. Don't it, bud?"

Barnabas whistled. "Shoot, I'm starvin'! Looks great, Ma!"

"Why, thank you, my fine gentlemen. Bet y'all brought big appetites in from all that work on the haystacks. Say grace and go on and dig in!"

Barnabas bowed his head as his dad blessed the food and the farm and the family. They mowed down their dinner while his mom sipped her glass of red and picked at her portion with a bemused grin. "How anybody could tear through a plate of food fast as you two is beyond me," she laughed.

Dinner and dishes all done, Barnabas grabbed his baseball mitt and tennis ball and went out to practice his throwing and fielding against the side of the barn in preparation for the upcoming little league season. After a year mostly benchwarming, he promised everyone he'd get into the starting lineup this season and he wasted no time making good.

Whipping the tennis ball against the barnside over and over again, varying angles to force himself to chase down the ricochets, he'd become an ace at fielding grounders. His arm was growing stronger too, and more accurate. He'd shift gears and take aim at the chalk boxes he drew on the barnside and wouldn't move on until he'd nailed each one seven times in a row. It was during a break between throws when he first heard the whimpering of a small animal coming from inside the barn. He stopped, still as a stone, then inched closer. There it was again, clear as the battered chalk boxes on the barnside. A softly sobbing voice, less like an animal whimpering, and more like... a girl, crying.

"Hello?" Barnabas called. No reply. "Hellooo? Anybody there? That's our barn." The whispering sobs continued, unbroken, but now he heard other voices overlapping the first. "Hey. Y'all okay? What y'all doing in there? I'm 'bout to open the door, just don't scare me, 'kay?"

He fished out the side door key from the rawhide string under his shirt and slipped it into the padlock, turning it until the u-bar popped open. He took the lock and put it in his pocket and opened the door to the barn's east side. There, from his vantage point at the back of the east side stalls, the echoes of whispering sobs came at him from all directions, beguiling his defenses and piquing his curiosity. "There's nobody here."

He sauntered into the center of the barn's open first level, juggling fear and fascination at the cacophany of whispersobs surrounding him with no soul in sight. It was like standing in a forest while the breeze played tricks on your senses as it ruffled your clothing, rattled branches, and rustled leaves from every direction at once. He stepped into the center of the floor between the four stalls lining each wall and sat cross-legged on the cold cement ground.

"Hello?" he tried again. "Anyone?"

"You can hear us?" came a small voice. She sniffled. "You hear me?"

"Nobody hears us, Kaya," came another small voice. This one a boy.

"I think he does, Mato," came yet another small female voice.

"He does NOT hear us, Isi," said the one she just called Mato.

Another small voice sounding like an older boy, "Settle down, Mato. We're all afraid but lashing out won't help."

"Nobody's lashing out, Tawa. You know nobody ever hears and acting like this kid does is ridiculous," said Mato.

Kaya sniffled and choked back a sob. "Stop arguing, you'll scare him off."

Barnabas fended off the suggestion like an insult, "I'm not scared!" The four small voices drew gasping breaths in unison.

"He DOES hear us," Isi shouted! "He hears us, Tawa!"

"You can hear our voices, young settler?" Tawa asked, hopeful.

"I can't see anyone, but I sure do hear all four of y'all." Barnabas replied with enthusiasm. "Where y'all at, though? It's weird."

"Ha!" Isi cried out in laughter.

Barnabas flinched a little, then stiffened up. "I ain't scared, but I don't get it. Why can't I see anyone but I can hear y'all clear as day?"

"What is your name?" Kaya asked.

"My name's Barnabas. You're, uh... Kaya?"

She chuckled. "Yes. I'm Kaya. Isi is my big sister," she replied.

"Hello, Barnabas," said Isi in response. "Mato, don't be rude."

"Mato. Hi." he said gruffly.

"And my name is Tawa, Barnabas. Forgive us, this is all coming as a shock. We've never been able to reach anyone outside the Lost Nation before now. The reason you can't see us is another matter perhaps we can explain."

"Yeah, I'm stumped! Why y'all in our barn, though? And how long y'all been here? We've been taking in the hay at least five summers since I got out the kindiegarden. And I been practicin' my baseball on the barnside all year, but I ain't never heard a peep out of here before tonight. Where y'all been at? I mean, wherever you ain't still at now? Does that sound dumb? Aw, shoot. I mean, go on. Sorry."

"I will do my best," Tawa said. "You see, we have all passed into the spirit world long ago. In the course of a few dozen years of what your forebears would call "colonization", our people were eradicated from this sacred land that generations of our ancestors loved and tended in harmony. Ours was the last community still bound to this good Earth when on this night 150 years ago, takers surrounded our people and cut them all down. We fled. But soon enough the four of us were driven to the very field your father plows each harvest and trampled down by our own stolen horses, saddled by the invaders, stilling our nation's breath forever. Other tribes withstood the perils of westward expansion, barely recognizable as shadows of once great nations. Ours is a Lost Nation, wholly undone. Our blood cries out from the soil. We are bound to the harvest. Forever, it seems. Or at least it has been so since that night. Until you caught the traces of our whispers on the night wind this evening, we've mourned into the vacant silence. Our tears fall afresh every time the bounty of our land is collected from where we were parted from it. 400 nights and counting..."

Kaya and Isi were crying. Even Mato's sniffles could be heard piercing the darkness as Barnabas sat stunned, wiping his own tears with the back of his hand, smearing streaks across his dirty cheeks. "Why?" is all he said.

"They had no souls," Mato said bitterly. "They felt no shame."

"Greed and power poisoned their spirits," Isi said shakily.

"The land was good; their hearts were not," wept Kaya.

"We do not know the answer... only the sting of it," sighed Tawa.

Barnabas wept quietly as his mom called from the porch, "Barnabas! Time to get ready for bed! Where'd you get to? Barny-boo!"

"Coming, Ma!" he shouted. "I gotta go. I'm sorry." He spoke softly to the bales of hay. "But I'll tell them all about your Lost Nation. Everyone, I swear it. Even if they call me crazy. I promise."

"Promises buy all. Or nothing, depending on the merchant," Tawa replied. "Careful what your costs may call to account, Barnabas. We have seen it."

"I promise, okay?" There was no reply. "Hello?" Only the silence.

Barnabas got up from the ground, dusted off his pants, and sauntered slowly back out through the barnside door. "Good night."

Silence...

Taking the padlock from his pocket, he secured the side door, walked into the house and went straight to bed. Not a word of the Lost Nation spoken to his parents. But he couldn't wait to tell everyone at practice tomorrow...