The man in the barn.

The drifter had been staying in the back of the hay barn for almost two whole weeks now. In the mornings he would help daddy move the horses to the feed pens. Throughout the day daddy would have him mend the fences on the back of the property near the oak hills.

On that Friday when he showed up I had been swimming in the tank that sits down below the road that leads to town. I stood behind the oak that gives shade to the tank as he went to the front door and talked to mama and then she called to daddy who was in the barn. He and daddy talked for a long long time, about what I do not know. But I do know that he scared me. He had a very ugly face and a scar on his left cheek than ran deep as if he was knifed by someone who really wanted to make sure that he would never forget it. His skin was dark from many days in the sun and dust and his hands were leather.

Sometimes I would look out of my bedroom window upstairs and would watch him. He didn't speak much and didn't do much else but help daddy with his work. When he wasn't working though he would sit in a chair leaned up against the west facing wall of the barn and just stair out into nothing. Sometimes I thought that he was thinking about a family that he might have had back somewhere else. or maybe he was just the type of man who didn't think about anything. But I knew one thing for sure, I didn't care for him.

The men in town who kept to themselves tended to be the type of men that everyone else whispered about at the grocery. They were the men that mothers kept their babies away from when they were shopping in town. And now we had one of those quiet men living in our barn.