Redemption.

Jack wandered up the overgrown path to the old barn, passing the apple orchard, the giant, untended and weed filled garden, the dilapidated chicken coop, and his grandfather’s run-down tool shed. He had walked this walk thousands of times. It was his home.

When he got to the barn, he reached down and pulled the battered handle and slid the door up. The fragrant smells of trampled dirt, tractor oil, manure and hay reached his nostrils in fine delight. He could smell the leather of the covered saddles, the warmed wood of the frame, the dampness of the bricks. He remembered his kind and devoted grandparents. How loved he had been here. The best summers. The best memories.

It had been a great while since anyone had crossed the cement threshold and the old shelter was in desperate need a good cleaning. He heard a soft noise from above and looked up in time to see firefly dust motes floating thru the air, the sun beaming through the old wooden slats above in the floor of the hay loft. Up he went.

He pushed the door open. While woefully unloved for two decades, time had not diminished its charm or beauty. The grain scale, the giant hook which hung next to the large doors that allowed his grandfather to bring in his latest auction treasures, the random lumber stacked against the far wall. At least a hundred bales of old stale hay on the other. Not another living soul in sight, but something was here with him. He walked over to the bale elevator door and opened it up. The corral where the horses had lived was overgrown and filled with prickery weeds. The vast, aged field lay before him like a friend from another time. He recognized it, but it did not look the same. It had been abandoned and left to seed, but the giant, committed old oak was still there, a consoling sculpture in the distance. Still tall. Still proud. Jack looked around. The fences needed repair, the posts needed replacing, the chicken arena rebuilt. Everything needed mending at the moment, he thought. Everything. Single. Thing.

Jack's grandparents had passed two years ago in the fall, within twenty-three days of each other, eleven days before their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Josa had remarked at his grandfather’s funeral that they never spent a wedding anniversary apart. An unknown ache in Jack’s soul had lurched forward, the realization that he wanted what they had had. His many tours of duty had ripped his marriage to Emily apart, left them both broken and wrecked. He had not been able to come back to civilian life with ease. Everything made him jump, balk.... angry. He had tried therapy but had refused the meds the doctors wanted to put him on. For months he had wrestled with ideas of re-enlistments, living off the grid, climbing permanently into a bottle to forget the horrors or finding permanent solitude in suicide. But none of those were options, no way to live. Or die. Jack wanted more. He wanted more for Nathan than an angry memory of his father leaving, letting him fend on his own, letting him down. Left with the hurt that he wasn’t enough to keep his father here. His boy was too young to understand. He would only know that Jack had withdrawn from life. On purpose. How could he do that to someone he loved with everything he was? As broken and sad and unable to breathe most days as he was, it was too cruel. Even for him.

He turned at the sound of car doors opening and shut. He heard the voices of his family, far and close, happy, and sad, all at the same time. His sister Josa could be heard directing traffic. His brother John was barking at Jack’s barking dog Lucy. He heard the coarse voice of his father, the quieter bark of his mother Elly. He listened and heard the sounds but not their words. It was the loud, banging sound of his family, all together, all at once

Jack realized he could avoid it no longer. He thumped down the stairs in his regulation issued boots. Standing next to the old Farmall tractor, he watched his family emerge from the orchard – flowing forward into the day like frenetic lava.

His father, Jacob Hanley was a foreboding man. He was six feet, three inches, broad-shouldered, with tan leathered skin, a scruffy beard of some sort and Ray Ban sunglasses. He looked more like he should be wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and old, beat-up jeans. Not the sports coat, khaki slacks, and white polo shirt he strode across the yard in. He looked out of place – like he didn’t belong. And he didn’t. Never did. Jack considered this new thought. It explained so much, so, so fast in his mind. He wandered out of the barn and hailed them with his ballcap.

“Wondered where you’d gone off to!” thundered his father.

“Not anywhere to go off to. Looking at the barn. Still in decent shape. Given the circumstances.”

“Hmph.” Was Jacob’s only reply.

“OH! Jack!! I have missed you!” his sister yelled from the driveway. She ran up to him and embraced him in a hug that meant to catch up for years of none. “You look good! How are you??”

“I’m good.” he whispered.

“Okay.” She kissed his cheek and walked past him into the barn. “Wow. Nothing has changed.”

“No. Not at all. If it has, I can’t see it.” He replied.

They walked out and up to the house together, murmuring about the state of things. The farm needed a lot of work they agreed. It was worth a lot of money to the clambering developers who wanted to strip the land bare of everything they had known. They wanted to build ugly, track homes with backyards the size of a postage stamp. Jack could see that Josa was trying not to cry. So was he.

The hired cleaner had done a respectable job of tidying up the house. They opened the windows to let in the beautiful spring air. Josa had brought fancy sandwiches, cookies, wine, and beer. Her husband Miles hauled the cooler in as she brought out the paper plates and napkins from a cloth carrier bag. They sat down at the small kitchen table under his grandparents antique coocoo clock that had been rewound, that minute and ate in silence. The old rhythmic ticking sound was soothing in the most savage and strange way. Jack found it unsettling that it was a ticking sound that calmed him in the moment.

Finally, Jacob cleared his throat with an unsavory phlegm sound and declared that it was time.

“Before we begin, I’d like to say something.” Jack began. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’d like to buy the farm.” Jacob made a harsh grunting sound, intended to interrupt his son in the middle of his speech. “But before anyone says anything, I’d like to tell you what I have in mind.” Then, Jack continued to outline his plans for the old family farm, starting with much needed repairs to the house, shed and land.

“Costs money son. You don’t have it.”

“Actually, I do. I have a business partner who has offered to help me.” replied Jack.

“Oh yeah? And who is this ‘business partner’?” Jacob offered gruffly.

“Mason Greene. My Sergeant. He inherited some money from his dad. The idea is that I do the labor and he puts up the money. Our goal is to have a work program for some folks who need a new beginning - a new start. A place for vets, like me, who need a place to heal. A place to work hard and have something to show for it at the end of the day. And a working farm for the community. Not exactly a co-op but similar. We’ll need to build a barracks of some sort, a place for the men to stay. I’ll need to do quite a bit of work on the house so it’s habitable for Nathan when he comes to visit. We'll include animals again for learning, you know - children and the school, horses for equine therapy, plow the field for crops again. It’s the perfect idea.”

Jacob stroked his scrubby beard thing with his hand, thinking. You could almost smell the wood smoke. “Well, that’s quite a dream. I must say, I’m a bit stunned by the idea.” He gets up from the table and walks outside. Josa looks at Jack curiously. “What?” he says.

“Why didn’t you tell me all this?” she asks.

“Because I wasn’t sure I could do it. It’s a big undertaking and I’m still not sure I can do it. Wasn’t sure. Until I got here. It’s exactly what I need to do. For me, my son, my future. It is the only way I can get better. Here. It has to be here.”

“It’s the best idea ever!! We will help, won’t we Miles? We’ll make an investment!” Miles looked up as if struck by lightning; stunned by the idea of parting with money. That wasn’t his thing. The parting part.

Jack looked out the back door and saw his father standing in the orchard, surveying the landscape he had grown up on. This was his. All it. He could do whatever he wanted to with it. He looked skeptical, hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. Jack knew this was his only chance at a future. A life. To begin again to find joy in the life he was still allowed to have. A life some of his brothers would never know. He owed them that. Not to waste their sacrifice on his own pain. He knew it was the best solution. Now, to convince his father that money wasn’t the most important thing after all.