Bad Neighbors

It was more of a big shed than a barn, but, nonetheless, it looked like they were working hard to get it up by nightfall—and were falling behind in the task.

Frank had been raised to be neighborly and he’d been to many a barn raising. The barns on his family’s spread in Pennsylvania had always been raised this way, so he turned his horse into the yard, rode up to the house, dismounted, and tied his horse’s reins to the porch railing. He was stripping off his shirt, preparing to go help on the barn when a man, in his mid thirties, came out of the house.

Frank took his breath it. The man was the spitting image of his own father, but a bit younger, somewhere between his father’s age if he had still been alive and his own. His father had died at thirty-six, though, so, here, standing in front of Frank, was the image of his father when he’d lost him—and when the family had been forced into the poverty that eventually led to Frank doing what he was doing.

“Yes, may I help you?” the man asked. It wasn’t lost on Frank that the man was looking at his bare chest rather than in his eyes. The man looked weary, but his eyes narrowed when he looked at Frank.

“Saw there was a barn raising as I passed, and I was taught never to pass one by without helping.”