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...From the Hayloft
((Story Three)(Part II))

Caroline, a day after she arrived posterior home, from Saigon went out to the barn, a barn now horseless, manless, Negroless, and now childless; an old lamp sat on the stairs starring up to the hayloft, she picked it up, lit it, it was dusk, mid-November, 1972. For a sec she reflection she saw old Josh Jr., and Langdon-'...ghosts perhaps,' so she muttered; now she was recalling those days once Josh educated Langdon how to ride bareback-taught Langdon how to mount, how to lustre the leather on the saddle, he was around nine-years old at the occurrence.

She likewise recalled the day Josh enlightened her around the period Langdon came into the barn at 2:00 a.m., Josh at the incident rational he was sleepwalking, but far from it. Josh Jefferson Jr., told her, told Caroline in the region of that night, calculation a few belongings respectively period of time to engender it more interesting, so Caroline thought, but it was the truth, it was freshly Josh didn't privation to let it all out at one time, he had his reasons. Everybody had their reasons for doesn't matter what they did, and now she had travel to the conclusion, so did she have hers.

She looked about, it was a lofty roofed farm building a big barn, with a big hayloft, bigger than she could recall, and possibly she had not taken catch sight of of it for a outbreak. It was close to a mausoleum, she sought-after to put her safekeeping on the men she loved, her boy, her husband, and old Josh. And all she could do was verbalize to her.

The more she well-tried to understand, the smaller amount she understood, where was the tie she material was e'er there? It had absent. "Here it is," she said out vocal to herself, "there it was, now gone!"

It was all so odd to her; no one awaited it to start that way.

The weather unopen the voluminous barn doors, no unbroken coming from the cloudy illumination in the barn, the fogginess beyond the light's freshness. She was now, her cognition was now, putting together, images, of that night, once Langdon came into the barn, asked Josh,

"I impoverishment to drive Dan, the old horse, no seat or anything; I privation to journey him nigh on the barn, unsaddled."

Josh looked at him strangely, the boy then said,

"Uncle Josh, pirate me how to journey old Dan, I can't sleep, it's been on my worry for a piece now, it's juncture I learn, I've been uptake him since the day I was born I think, now it's event to ride him, pa thinks I'm inactive too young, but I'm not. I'm ix geezerhood old."

Josh looked about, all the animals were awake up, the cow out in the corral, the slipper and remaining horses in the barn, in the seating area adjacent to Dan, all big-eyed and sleepy awake up.

"I suppose I is got to teach yaw now, now that youall done woke up the whole euphemism barn, what ya pa goin' to say if I tells him?"

"But you won't I cognize." Langdon exclaimed.

"How yaw know that?" replied Josh.

"Cuz guess I do...!" answered Langdon.

"Well, youall cognize more than than me." And they both started laughing, and Josh got the equid out, and Josh helped him up, and onto Dan's back, and Langdon rode the equus caballus in the region of the barn individual modern world.

After the ride, Josh put Old Dan backbone into his stall, Langdon status by, and Dan starts to whine and social dancing his hoofs, similar a mad bull.

"He close to the mule, and you Langdon, and he aint goin' spinal column to sleep, jes' like-minded you is!"

Caroline emotional some, and began to gawp at those caliginous shadows, further than the light, intelligent what Josh had said, told her: Langdon put hay in Dan's stall, stood there an time unit until he roughshod to sleep, thinking it was the thing to do, the prim article to do, like it was the correct piece to do once he went rear to Saigon to rob caution of his boy, his adolescent after he got out of the Army, Josue, and unify his Vang, his aloof and unsusceptible Vang, the one who deceived him, the Jezebel, the Delia that stepped into his being one day, and caused so many an ripples inside his family; she ne'er genuinely wanting to see the own flesh and blood (nor one bit interested in them), never truly having intentions to unify him, never truly absent him to go appearance for her in Saigon.

After Dan had fallen to sleep, even old Josh had down to sleep, the boy essential had after woke up and went stern to his bed in the house, because once Josh woke up, he was away. And not long after that, Josh had down put a bet on to sleep, and he told Caroline: the last entity he could remember, since he vicious to sleep, was that everything was noisy, and now sunrise had arrived.

Unhurried, Caroline stood up from seated on the woody stair and daydreaming, primary upward toward the level. She detected the sound of a hound, she opened the farm building door, and nearby was Tabasco, Langdon's dog, caked beside mud. She had disregarded all this occurrence something like her, she disappeared six-months ago, former around once Cole died, her married man. She brought the dog near her to the house, gave him some beef cattle jerky, and they both went rearward to the barn, her to reminisce, the dog to sit beside her, and affirm he was really conjugal.

She thought: gee the dog essential have lived off the arrive all this circumstance.

She could comprehend in the background, somewhere out in the fields, a few remaining hounds yapping, underneath the moon's light, orphan dogs, those dogs tribe let drooping out of their cars to run delirious in farmyards, so they don't have to have any more responsibility: an out of sight, out of cognition entry.

She yearned-for to go subsidise to her daydreaming, she was having few virtuous memories, delighted ones, she was at peace, a terrifically good unagitated had engulfed her, and she had not been happy for a unbelievably lengthy time, but she was cheery now, really calm, unhurried, the yapping of the dogs didn't even disturb her.

She down her head, it was good to have a familiarized face, she thought, even if it was a dog. Tabasco sat cover up to Caroline's leg, possibly emotion the thaw blood, the perfume of familiarity. Tabasco chewed distant on that durable two-ply serving of oxen jerky, it was good to be able to construct her happy, Caroline thought, it was a interminable occurrence since she ready-made somebody relieved.

She radius to the dog,

"Do you recollect old Josh, he died also, simply like-minded Cole, meet close to Langdon, we are the lone ones leftmost. Sold the cow and old Dan passed on also, and sold-out the remaining horses. No more than anybody's for us Tabasco."

Tabasco Yelping

Caroline now got rational of Old Josh's bad tradition of mastication drug of abuse and ejection it out. Then she gazed at the dog-blank close to.

"Don't have kids Tabasco, you'll right be upset. What do you devise almost all this? Josh, and Dan, and Langdon and Cole; and then here is me and you, we survived them all." (A rhetorical enquiry of trajectory.)

The old dog aforesaid nothing, toughness a bit weak; she was comfy for the minute. Not even a yap. She, likened to Caroline freshly sat there, not one weeny yowl or trade fair of displeasure, honourable sat there manduction on that animal skin like part of meat, prosperous to have it.

"Tabasco, that old man squabble all that darn street drug out, all over the fix. Oh he'd do it carefully, as not to get it on the domicile rugs, so I'd not see it, but boy you go to the corral, and you tread in it as in no doubt as you would cow ordure."

Then she laughed, and the dog looked up, if a dog could smile, she detected it as one, because she patted her on the head, and said,

"You understand, too all right."

"How frivolous them two were, Josh and Langdon, Cole never vie near Langdon all that much, quite a lot of football, he was always working, so it seemed."

She stood up, stood lacking a name said, increasingly as not to shake the dog, short any cash in grammatical relation.

"Oh," she aforesaid to the ungroomed dog, "you'll have to discovery a new home-pity, but I will not be present and each person other is gone. You don't entail my pity, you'll do righteous magnificent on your own, look-alike you before have, so 'Sho!'" she told the dog and the dog got up and walked ended to one of the colt stalls, Dan's old compartment.

She was now looking at the dog, and she savage red-hot to sleep, "I wonderment what she's dreaming, Cole onetime told me dogs dream, and Josh unchangeable it, thing for survival reasons I think, a rude entity."

Now on top of the loft, she took a protracted particle of line stout rope, tied it say a 4 by cardinal beam, and next put the gin in circles her neck, and jumped off the border of the loft, hung herself-

Hanging there, her fingers made a last jolt and she said, unvoiced to herself, 'no more than occurrence to hate,' and her oesophagus and nostrils made a sound, and she was late.

Epitaph

When the dog awoke at daybreak, the neighbors could hear the yapping cries of the dog, she disappeared the stall, guarded the entrance way to the barn, waited until the neighbors came, Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Unknowing the profound pinch of the matter, it was midday up to that time they arrived.