This Old Barn (Writing Exercise)

(Oh yeah: I found the missing Gardner book. It was in Zuzu's music class bag. Thanks for asking.)

Not crazy about this one, but my eyes are crossing from working on it and I can't think anymore. Long week.

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Consider the following as a possible exercise in description: Describe a barn as seen by a man whose son was just killed in a war. Do not mention the son, the war, or death. Do not mention the man who does the seeing.

- John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, p. 37

From a hazy distance, the structure took on the profile of a broken battle horse making the best of desolate retirement in a pasture. The horizon of its roof line sagged. A hayloft door was missing, leaving a gaping hole like an empty eye socket. The side of the barn that received the worst beating from many summer suns was white-gray, rough, splintery. Long-abandoned bird nests unraveled from eaves. If it had ever been painted, had ever triumphed in its youth in a proud uniform of red, there was no sign of it now. But in spite of it's own state of decay, still the barn stood in defiance of its years, of nature's rout, of the oppressive, thick heat.

It had been used and forgotten, and it had long ago lost any hay-scent memory of the glee of children, the birth of livestock, the smell of motor oil, the secrets of teenagers. To peer through its dilapidated doorway, assuming one could push open the warped doors on their broken hinges, was to gaze into a darkness long ago stripped of purpose. Even the crickets and cicadas that filled the heavy air with their din seemed to fear this dank, musty interior, finding no nourishment. The particularly curious visitor might pause in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the black in hopes of spying anything that would deliver some history. But there was nothing to be learned. The barn just was.