by John Maclay
There was a sawhorse at one side that held the remnants of leather harness, the ruin of a saddle. I didn’t remember any of that—it must have belonged to a tenant. I perched on its end and breathed the dusty straw scent. This smell, at least, had not changed at all.
There was a rustle overhead, and I looked up. The snowy owls were still nesting high in the rafters. Somehow I had expected them to be gone, though these must be the many-times-great-grand-children of those I had known. When I looked back down, I almost expected to see my cousins sitting about on the straw covered floor, waiting for me to begin a game.
What I saw, in my mind’s eye, was Arthur’s face, quite distinct against the dimness. He looked sad. Sad and older than I remembered. He was gazing at me, and in his eyes I could see something I had never allowed myself to notice.
“He’s miserable too,” I said to myself. “As much as I, or more.”
There was another rustle from overhead. A mouse scurried somewhere in the piles of straw.
“I’ve been thinking about how I feel, and I never did consider how he feels. Isn’t that true?” I spoke aloud, and the muffled echo was still there, muttering my words back to me.
I sank into a kind of reverie, staring blankly at the dark-shadowed wall. The barn sighed and rustled around me, and its sounds were part of me.
The cousins were there. I could almost see them. Grandmother was outside, tending to the calves. I was ten again, full of importance because I was the one who had the imagination. I was the one who made up the games, solved the problems, told the stories. I, I, I. Always.
Now I moved outside myself and looked hard at Elizabeth Sanderson. It had never occurred to me to do that before, not at home, not at work. I was always too busy talking or examining my feelings or agonizing over my woes.
How long had Arthur looked like that? Trapped? Desperate, almost? Probably for as long as I had felt that way. Or maybe longer—I had been too full of self to notice.
He was a gentle person, Arthur. Never would he hurt anyone if he could help it. How long had he wanted his freedom? How long had I ignored his needs in fooling myself about my own nobility?
Grandmother had sat here, in this very barn, I recalled suddenly, and told me something like that. “Nobody loves a martyr,” she had said. “I don’t want to find out that you’ve turned out to be one. Elizabeth the Martyr isn’t my idea of a useful person. Be Elizabeth the helpful, Elizabeth the interesting. Anything, oh Lord, but the Martyr.”
The old woman had cocked her head and fixed her pale gray eyes on her granddaughter. “Martyrs think I, I, I. When they think they’re dying for a Cause, they’re really polishing their egos.”
I could almost see her. And I felt a blush spreading over me from forehead to toes. I had forgotten her words, forgotten everything she had taught me in her self-disciplined, caring life.
I rose from the sawhorse and looked up at the owls. “Thank you,” I said softly.
I hurried back to the house and flung the camping stuff together. I could be back home before night. Arthur wouldn’t leave before tomorrow at noon. I could make it with time to spare.
Cranking the car, I pulled away from the farm, knowing that I would accept it as my heritage. I needed it to remind me of the things I might forget again. It would be a good place to live—afterward.
For I was on my way, as fast as I legally could make it, to set us both free.
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