The Magic

Scott stood and watched as the workers tore down the old barn. Every plank of wood hitting the ground kicked up dust and ripped away another piece of his heart. The old wood held the stories of almost two hundred years on the farm. From when his however-many-times-great-grandfather, Abraham Hammond, raised it with his neighbors until that very moment, it had stood watch over the valley. Sheltering, hiding and protecting those around it. The barn was imbued with the magic from those stories and many more.

In 1837, Rachael Johnson and her sister had taken shelter in the barn from a sudden summer thunderstorm. They had been travelling back home after visiting their aunt and uncle in Chillicothe when the storm blew up, spooking their horse. Ethel had barely been able to control the animal when they saw the barn, it’s door open. Throwing caution and manners to the wind, she steered the carriage into the barn for shelter. Elijah Hammond was working in his father’s barn when the two young women had careened inside, thunder booming outside, sheets of rain chasing them across the field. Fourteen months later, standing outside the same barn, Rachael Johnson became Rachael Hammond, the barn’s magic having put them together.

Twenty-five years later, the barn had been an active station in the underground railroad, helping escaped slaves find their way north and to freedom. Elijah, along with his two sons, hand dug a hidden room under the barn to allow “passengers” a place to remain hidden if slave-hunters were tracking them. Scores of escaped slaves and other refugees passed through the barn over the decade it was active, some bound for Canada, others hoping to get to Chicago or New York. The barn’s magic protected them for part of their journey.

The Hammond family had held the property all that time. Scott’s great-great-grandfather had brought steam to the farm, using a giant J.I. Case tractor. The neighboring farmers scoffed, but before long, they had bought into a co-op, and that tractor was plowing fields for miles around, and then working the harvest in the fall, helping him and his neighbors increase their crops when others were suffering during the Great Depression.

Scott thought back to his experiences in the old barn. Even when he was a small boy, the barn, with it’s severely weathered red paint, had been a magical place. His mother, Beverly, had carried him from the house early one morning. He couldn’t have been more than five at the time. Inside, his father and the vet were delivering a foal, and he watched as the ungainly horse slid free of its mother. By the time he was eight, he began to ride that very Colt. He’d named it Chase, short for Steeplechase.

As the barn came down, memories and stories flooded into Scott Hammond. The first time he tried to lead Chase around the paddock next to the old barn. The first time he was able to mount a saddle and ride the horse. The pride he had when he rode across the back fields to Mandy Wilson’s house.

Years later, he rode across the fields to pick up Mandy so they could ride back to the barn together. That was the place that they gave themselves to each other. As a thunderstorm raged outside, they laid together in the hay loft, Chase and her horse, Diamond, milling about beneath them. They talked for hours, each building the courage to move their relationship to the next level. A few years after that, they stood in the middle of the barn with the local minister and delivered their oaths of undying love before God and those assembled.

The giant steam tractor had pulled out of the barn under its own power a decade ago, destined for a museum in Indiana. Chase had passed away a decade before that, at the ripe old age of thirty-one, Diamond soon to follow. The last time the barn had been a real working barn was sometime in between. Scott and Mandy had recognized that the old structure had served its usefulness and needed to come down. They had been hoping for the barn’s magic to find a new home.

Winter snows and summer storms had taken their toll on the old building. Its weathered exterior beyond the point where paint could hold it off any longer, and no roofer willing to work the top of the structure. But the timbers were still solid, the frame holding up amazingly well.

“Part of me hates to see that thing come down, Mr. Hammond,” Bill Tooley, the foreman of the crew taking it apart said as he walked over to the older man. “Nobody alive has seen this valley without that old barn.”

“Been there since 1831,” Scott replied.

“I still wish you’d sell me that wood,” Bill said.

“Mandy and I have a plan for it. Take care, and I might let you have what’s left.”

“What’s the plan, sir?”

“First things, first,” Scott smiled.

Bill nodded and smiled back before turning and walking back over to the barn and the work crew. He’d been trying to buy the old barn wood seemingly forever. He’d even offered to build a new barn in its place in trade.

***

Mandy Hammond hopped up on the tailgate of the old truck next to her husband. She leaned into him and wiped away the tear she watched roll from the corner of his eye. Then, with the same finger, she wiped away one of her own. Her relationship with the old red barn wasn’t as deep as his, but she loved it almost as much.

She’d fallen in love with Scott in that barn, and it was well before they’d given each other their virginity there. She couldn’t pinpoint the moment when she had decided that she wanted to spend her life with him, but she was sure it was while they were together in the barn.

His horse, Steeplechase, had a cousin. She hadn’t been there when it was born, but she had been the one that did most of the training for it. Scott’s mother had seen the way Mandy had looked at the young horse, Diamond, while she was visiting with her mother.

“Mandy, do you want to work with Diamond?” Mrs. Hammond had asked. “Scott is out there with Chase… he can show you what you need to do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl had replied, seeing the two foals in the paddock with Scott and his father.

Soon, Scott’s father had the two kids leading the young horses around the paddock. After that, she and Scott went inside the barn and brushed them. Scott had asked her if she was going to help every day, and she had nodded vigorously.

True to her word, Mandy had come over just about every day. Each time, she fell a little more in love with the horse that she’d begun to think of as her own. And each day, she’d gotten just a little closer to the boy she also thought of as hers. As time passed, Scott and Mandy had grown closer to each other than they had even to the horses they trained. Their camaraderie turned into friendship, then affection. Eventually, passion ignited, which turned into a long-lasting love, marriage and children.

Mandy watched as the skeleton of the barn was revealed, the outer skin having been peeled away and piled into the open truck used to carry it to its temporary home. She was the one that had developed the initial idea, and Scott had been easy to convince.

“Of course it’s a good idea. There is magic in that wood,” she’d told her husband. She looked at him, her eyes sparkling the way they always seemed to sparkle at him when she was happy.

“There is,” he agreed, thinking of the barn’s history “and you’re just the person to bring that magic to the surface again.”

***

The winter snows had come and gone since the old barn had been torn down. Every stick of wood from the old place had been stored inside the barn on Mandy’s parent’s old farm. Load after load of wood had been transported, then sorted and stacked. Scott and Mandy’s son, Elijah, and his best friend, Philip, directing and watching over the process.

After the spring melt, the old barn’s site had been prepared, and the new foundation poured. Rachael, their daughter, had designed the new building that would be going on the site. She had planned out the usage of all the wood her brother and his friend had inventoried. She herself had spent countless hours in her maternal grandparent’s barn, selecting each piece of wood that would be used, and deciding where to best use it.

Bill Tooley looked at the drawings again as Rachael Hammond watched over his shoulder. He turned and looked at her. “You think it’s going to work?” he asked.

“The building or the business?” Rachael asked.

“Both, I guess…”

“That wood has magic, Bill. They’ll both be fine,” she smiled back.

“How did you figure out the joinery?”

“There isn’t a single detail of that old barn I haven’t studied. It was why I decided to be an architect. It was always so strong and beautiful and functional. I hope this will stand for the next two hundred years, too. If you build it right, it will.”

“I spent a month earlier this year learning barn building from a group of Amish carpenters. No nails or screws,” he said to the young woman.

“It worked for the last nineteen decades. Like magic,” she grinned.

***

Mandy rechecked every detail. She wanted everything to be perfect. Not only was it the launch of their new event space, but it was also her daughter’s wedding and reception. Scott watched on, grinning. He already knew it would be perfect. There was too much magic in the wood for it not to be.

Rachael stepped from the Bride’s Room into the vestibule. The organ started playing the Wedding March and he put out his arm. She slipped her arm into his and he smiled over at her. He patted her hand as the doors opened in front of them.

Sunlight streamed through the skylights and the high windows behind the dais. The minister stood, light bathing the floor in front of him where Rachael would soon be standing to marry the young man she had fallen in love with in the barn. Philip was Elijah’s best friend and had always seemed to be around. But, as they grew into teens, he was as interested in seeing Rachael as Elijah. Soon, he was coming over and spending time just with her. He would help her with her barn chores, as the barn worked its magic. The day that Rachael told him what her mother had planned for the old wood, he proposed.

“Rachael,” Philip had said as he dropped to his knee, the wood from the old barn piled around them, “I’ve wanted to ask you this for years. Will you marry me? We can be the first wedding in the new space you’re designing.” She had wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply as he rose and spun her around.

Scott ushered his daughter forth as she joined Philip in the pool of light in front of the minister. There, surrounded by the magic of the old barn made anew, she joined with him in marriage.

“My grandmother always used to say there was something magical in the old barn that used to be here,” a woman said to Rachael as she stepped up to her in the reception line. “My son told me that you used the old wood to build this place. You must have, because the magic is still here.”

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Next in the series is "Shelter of Providence"