The Red Barn

“Dylan, keep an eye on your brother. I have to go into town.” Mama said.

“Aw, Mama, can’t you take him with you? I was going to play video games with my friends.”

“You know Lucas doesn’t like going into town. It’s too busy for him. He likes video games. Let him play with you.”

“But my friends think he’s weird. They say it’s not normal that he doesn’t talk. And the pictures he draws are creepy.”

“He’s not weird. He’s just different. He’ll talk in his own time. They aren’t good friends if they can’t accept Lucas for who he is. Please, he’s your brother. He needs you.” Mama said, kissing Dylan on his head.

Lucas didn’t even look up from his cars as she kissed him too. He was trying to decide. Should he sort them by color or size? Color. Red first. Lucas liked red. He needed more red cars. He didn’t have enough red cars.

“Hey Lucas, come eat your lunch,” Dylan said. Dylan was fourteen. He always said he was too old to play with Lucas anymore because he was only ten. But sometimes, his big brother still played video games with him. He showed Lucas the peanut butter sandwich he was making.

Lucas got up and went to the table. Dylan brought over the sandwich, cut in half from the corners, always from the corners. He set a cup of milk down next to the sandwich. Lucas liked milk. He inspected the sandwich to make sure there wasn’t anything weird in the bread. Sometimes Mama bought a different bread. Sometimes it had tiny little hard things in it. Seeds. Mama had called them seeds. He didn’t like seeds. They felt funny in his mouth.

Lucas held up a triangular piece of sandwich and tapped it against Dylan’s. It was their thing. He took a bite of the sandwich and smiled. Dylan made the best peanut butter sandwiches. The peanut butter covered all of the bread. There were no gaps. And the layer of butter kept the peanut butter from sticking to the roof of his mouth. He licked the peanut butter off his hands.

“Stop licking your hands,” Dylan said.

Dylan’s friends showed up after lunch. Lucas was back on the floor sorting his cars. He tried to ignore his brother’s friends. Dylan wasn’t a good brother when they were around.

“What’s he doing now?” Eddie asked.

“Sorting his cars. He does that sometimes.”

“Little freak,” Eddie said as he kicked the cars. This agitated Lucas. It wasn’t good. It wasn’t nice. Lucas fluttered his hands in frustration. Jeremy laughed as Eddie imitated him.

“Come on. I got that new zombie game.” Dylan said, giving Lucas that look. The one that meant he wasn’t supposed to bother them.

Lucas started sorting his cars again, but they were being too loud. They kept whooping and yelling, which startled him. He got up and went to his room to get the sketchbook Mama had given him. He had lots of sketchbooks filled with his drawings. Some were in pencil. Some were colored. Some of them he had even painted with watercolors. Mama liked his artwork. She said it showed a lot of imagination. He put the sketchbook and some pencils into his bag, which he hung over his shoulder. Back in the kitchen, he added a bag of cheese crackers, the kind in the red bag. He didn’t like the ones in the yellow bag. Dylan had tried to trick him once, but he could tell they were the ones in the yellow bag. They taste different. He added some fruit and raisins and a napkin. Finally, he grabbed his water bottle.

Lucas was happy to see Dylan had forgotten to put the extra locks back on. The ones above his head. He went outside. He squinted because the sun was very bright. Lucas could hear the sound of cars driving on the nearby roads. They didn’t go down his road much. There was a soft whooshing sound as the wind blew the long grasses in the field. Insects buzzed by his head. He didn’t like insects.

They had moved out into the country a few years ago. Lucas liked it there. There was too much in the city. Too many noises. Too many people. Too many lights. Too many weird smells. Out here in the country, everything smelled fresh, especially after it rained. Well, everything except when they fertilized the farms next door. And there were the stars. You couldn’t see the stars in the city. Sometimes Dad would take him outside at night. They would lay on a blanket and look up at the stars. He would try to find the planets among the stars. Dad would point out constellations. It didn’t happen a lot. Since they moved to the country, Dad had to travel for work a lot.

The house had once been part of the farm, but the farmer had broken up the land. Other farmers had bought the fields next to theirs to expand their farms. But there were still parts of the old farm on their land. There was an old ice house that they were using for storage and an old well house that they had locked up. They said they didn’t want him getting in there and falling in the well. Lucas headed to the old red barn at the corner of their lot. He liked the barn. It was quiet, and it was red. Mama kept telling Dad they needed to tear it down before it collapsed, but Dad hadn’t gotten around to it.

Lucas sat down on the smooth dirt on the barn floor and spread out the napkin. He put the fruit and a pile of raisins on it; then, he poured some of his water into an old bowl he left in there. He opened the bag of cheese crackers. There were faint beams of sunlight filtering through the loose boards on the walls of the barn. It was dim in there, but he had enough light to see. He got out his pencils and sketchbook and began to draw.

Eventually, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A couple of sprites made their way over to the food on the napkin. They each grabbed a raisin and darted off to the other side of the barn. Not long after, the kobold wandered up to him. He was about the size of the chihuahua their neighbor in the city had. Lucas liked dogs, but Mama said she was allergic. Dylan said it was just that she didn’t want to take care of a dog.

The little man wore layers of dusty brown clothes. He looked kind of like a lumpy potato with skinny arms and legs and a long pointy nose. Lucas wasn’t scared of him. He had seen the creature in the barn lots of times. The kobold was the one Lucas drew the most. He would draw the sprites more often, but they were nervous around him and usually didn’t pose for him. Lucas had put down the sketchbook and was inspecting his cheese crackers. Nope. That one was too dark. He didn’t like the dark ones. He handed it to the kobold.

The little man sat down on a brick that had fallen from the wall and ate the cracker. He liked to tell Lucas stories of the fairy lands and all the creatures there. Sometimes he would watch Lucas draw and let him know if he had their likeness right. He was Lucas’ friend. The little man didn’t tell him he was weird or stupid or any of the other things people often said to him. Or around him, thinking he couldn’t understand. He didn’t care that Lucas didn’t talk back to him or look him in the eye.

Sometimes he thought he might want to go to the fairylands, but he was worried that they might be too bright and noisy. And time was different there. He might go away longer than he thought and worry his parents. And he might not be able to come back. If that happened, he would miss Mama’s hugs and kisses and Dad talking to him about the planets and stars, and Dylan laughing when they played video games.

While the kobold told him tales and ate his rejected cheese crackers, the sprites returned for more raisins. Other fairy creatures wandered out to drink the water or take some fruit. His friends were accustomed to being around him but they were kind of skittish. Kind of like he was in unfamiliar places.

Suddenly all of the creatures scattered. “Lucas?!” He heard his mother call out in a panicked voice. “You were supposed to be watching him, Dylan. He could be anywhere.”

“I said I was sorry. I forgot to lock the door.” Dylan said. “Lucas? He’s probably in the barn. That’s where he usually goes.”

He was still sitting on the ground drawing when they opened the barn door. He held up a hand to block the bright ray of sun that they had let in.

“Lucas! What are you doing in here again?” Mama asked as she sat beside him to hug him. “We’ve told you it’s not safe. I really need to talk to your father about tearing this eyesore down.”

Lucas kept his head down, continuing to draw. “I like it here. It’s quiet.”

He glanced up to see his mother’s shocked face as she looked to Dylan to confirm what she had heard. His brother looked just as surprised and proud. It was the first time Lucas had spoken. It had been crucial. They couldn’t tear down his barn. Where would his friends live?

His words had convinced his mother to leave the barn standing. Dad hired some people to come to check it out and fix anything that might make it unsafe for him. They hung a cozy red pod seat and added a few other items that helped to calm him down or stimulate him as he needed. After all of the improvements, it took two days of offerings to get the fairy creatures to come back. They had been frighted away by the workers. But they had slowly come back. The Kobold was the first to return.

Things got better at home. Dad opened a franchise office for his company in town, so he was home more. Mama wasn’t as stressed out with Dad around to help. Dylan still hung out with Eddie and Jeremy sometimes, but they didn’t come over anymore. He had told them they weren’t welcome in the house if they couldn’t be nice to Lucas.

They even got him a dog. A red setter he named Red. They took him to a special school where he trained to be a therapy dog. He would keep Lucas safe if he left the house. Red also had to be taught not to chase after the fairy creatures. He wasn’t trying to hurt them or eat them or anything. He just wanted to play. But Lucas got him settled down, and eventually, the fairy creatures began to trust his furry friend.

Lucas was never the most talkative person, but he gradually learned to communicate with people outside his home. When he got into high school, his sketches and paintings caught the eye of the art teacher. She put him in contact with a friend of hers who wrote children’s stories. He still got excited when he saw her books on the store shelves, books with his illustrations.