Across the yard
(Continued from… Barriers)
Mitch closed the gate behind him and trudged slowly, reluctantly through the yard toward the old barn. He felt no joy at this journey. The long walk from the gate – carefully skirting the slough on jagged rocks, watching his step for hazards seen and not – seemed to take a lifetime.
Ever since the argument that morning he’d played this through in his mind and now all that disquiet festered in his belly like a bed of smouldering coals. With every faltering step the old barn loomed ominously before him, each footfall measured with a memory of its own: childhood frolics, teenage angst, burgeoning manhood, all finally settling in a wash of resistance – a defiance of the old order.
The old man held his mind no longer. The battle to prove it was yet to come, but the young man’s heart was already moving on. Even as he trudged up to the barn’s main door his thoughts were of other places, future times. The battle must be, but the outcome was inevitable, and even as the confrontation loomed his methodical mind was building him a future.