Joan Pedzich
Small
Catastrophe
Abel
and Freida stood on the back porch and waited. No sense starting
supper. He
wouldn’t eat anyway. The barn had been leaning for months, the ice
glaze from a
March storm doing it in, sure as night. Abel pounded out the poles he’d
used to
prop the collapsing parts, and called her out to watch with him. It’d
go any
minute. They kept saying it to each other. Any minute.
They’d
sold what was left of their herd in April, and sent the milking
machines to the
auction, but they were old machines and didn’t bring much. The tractor
and
harvester and tiller, same story. An architect had twice
pulled
off the road and up to the barn
to try and buy the boards. He’d offered a sinful high amount to strip
it down
and level the ground, but Abel wouldn’t have it. The man came back and
offered
to build a new one on the same spot, part of the deal. Abel told him to
stay
away.
Now,
in the warm of a June afternoon, going on what should’ve been milking
time,
Freida had to tempt the cats out of the barn with some of last fall’s
catfish
pulled from the freezer, breaking all the rules about how you treat
barn cats.
No sense squashing a couple of first-class
mousers, though. Abel said he would cut a cat door into the cellar so
they
could get in come bad weather. She teased him he was getting soft, but
she
considered if the little black one would take to sitting on her lap. If
it did,
she’d name it. Still, it wouldn’t be like fussing over the calves.
They’d
sat for an hour when Abel got up and rummaged in the back of his
pick-up,
parked next to the porch steps.
“You
sit down,” Freida said. “Don’t be thinking too much. It’ll go.”
“This
won’t do,” he said. “Needs a swift kick with the sledge hammer. Over
and done.”
“What,
knock out the rafters? You’re not going in. Are you looking to get
killed?”
“I’d
have time to get out. I would.”
“It’ll
come down when it’s ready. Couldn’t be long.”
“If
I had the tractor I’d put a chain around the
beams and pull it down from out here.”
“That
heap wasn’t capable of any such thing.”
“Could’ve
been.” Abel squatted and tried to tease the black cat toward him with a
string
yanked from a frayed edge of his shirt. “Just needed a tiny two-bit
part nobody
wants to bother with.”
“It’s
always the way.”
“So
you say.”
She
saw the sag and hunch of his back and the baggy seat of his overalls,
earned
from wrestling the spill-off from what seemed like nothing -- troubles
that
came dressed as a half inch too much of rain, a nickel a pound more for
feed, or
a coat of ice thin as a penny. She fought feeling sorry for him because
he
would hate it, and for herself because it spreads quick and drags deep
if you
don’t give it an argument.
“Are
you getting gloomy on me? Get over here and sit. You’ve waited on worse
than
this,” Freida said. “I’ll get some coffee.”
“Worse
than this?” Abel put a foot on the stoop and spat into the geraniums.
“I guess.”
“Don’t
be getting ideas about demolition. I’ll get coffee.” She rose and gave
him the
eye and the point of her finger. “And if you expectorate one more time
into
those Martha Washingtons there’ll be the devil to pay.”
She
was in and out of the kitchen quick, leaving splashed coffee on the
counter so
as to catch him getting the sledge hammer out of the truck. She stared
hard and
quiet like she could in order to help him locate his common sense, and
he put
it back. She made him sit with his cup and a piece of pie she’d
carried,
balanced on the top of her coffee. Freida set her mug on the edge of
the stair
over the old ring stain on the paint where Abel always put his Saturday
night
Budweiser.
“Eat
that,” she said, “unless you want a sandwich.”
“In
a bit, maybe,” he said. He blew on his coffee and sniffed the pie. “Not
so
hungry.”
“You
are too. And that’s the last of the rhubarb. The mites got the plant,”
she
said. “Don’t waste it.”
He
ate the sharp red fruit out of the middle of it, like always, and then
her
crust. He set the plate on the stoop and they watched the cat weasel
over to
lick it, then clean her ears, her behind, and each paw. Frieda extended
a
finger to the cat, but it retreated and sat all squared off beneath
Abel’s
pick-up, and all they could see were her whiskers and her glossy eyes.
Abel
worried the buckle on his overalls with a fingernail over and again
until
Freida told him to be still.
The
sun was giving out and the gnats came looking for a meal. A bat swooped
low to
them and disappeared under the barn peak. Freida fancied she could feel
the air
it displaced brush them where they sat. It would be headed up to the
surrendering rafters, fixing itself to the side that sloped the worst.
She
thought of it in there, folding its wings in the darkest corner, the
weight of its flesh and skeleton making the wobbly barn lean that one
mote
more. Freida held her breath until she couldn’t. Abel slapped a gnat
off his
neck. She shushed him and put a hand on his knee.
“Watch. Here it comes,” she said.
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