The Wooden Shed
After a decade of wandering I find myself back in Roswell, Georgia, where I grew up, a place of regret but also solitude. As I walk up I recognize many of my old spots: the weathered tree stump, the porch swing, and the wooden shed. The old porch creaks under my weight as I settle into a place that seems so distant from my mind. The wood splinters at my touch, being weathered by years of sun and rain, holding memories etched in its grain.
“Here we go. . . .” I say to myself. “Georgia.”
Each creak, each sway, telling stories of lazy summer evenings and nipping winter nights. The chipping in the paint from the pan my mother threw at me when I was a young boy. There it was. The white house, the white paint cracked and flawed, the gritty dirt road marking the beginning of my house, and the wooden planks filled with an endless supply of memories.
“Josiah. . . yous a sight fa sore eyes, how long has it been?” Aunt Rose said, “. . . Yo parents woulda oughta loved to see ya’ face one last time before… ya know.” Her wrinkled face and her slouched shoulders offered a touch of wisdom.
“Ten years… I know Aunty. Yous know what happen?” I asked.
“Yes, your pa was in the shed fieldin’ some crop for the season and ma was helpin’ when a match fell and blew the whole shed,” she said.
“I was young. . . leaving home. I didn’t expect Ma and Pa to be gone so soon,” I said. “I can’t believe it, I didn’t even get to say goodbye.” I continue walking up the steps.
The porch was where I retreated to ponder life's mysteries. I brought a book with me to put in the wicker basket, but for now, I simply basked in the tranquility of the moment. The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting a warm, golden hue over everything it touched. I remember Ma's calloused hands from working in the fields, the cuts and bruises from providing for our family, and Pa always covered in the debris from his job at the mill.
The white house riddled with uneven floorboards brought back memories, bringing me to tears. It was sour, like many of the conversations with my folks all those years before. The chaos of life and the pressure of family. I tap the floorboards, still managing to find the divot that I created when I was eleven. The gentle rhythm of the screen door with the rushing sound of the hot stove. As I walk into my old house, it feels distant yet familiar, and I see my uncle Roscoe.
“Yous a bit’ bigger than the last time I seen ya Jo. Ya home for a celebration not sadness enjoy ya time, we all missed you.” He touches my shoulder, “Ya parents always loved you, no matter what. We all had issues, but nothing was ever more important than family.”
“I made a mistake. . . . ” I say.
Roscoe cuts me off, “Your mother wanted me to give you this, she said if anything ever happened to her she wanted you to have this and open it when yous ready.”
He hands me the note and whispers in my ear, “You will always be lil’ Jo.”
As I woke up the next morning, I heard the rumble of a plow and, as I began walking onto the grass, I noticed my young sister, Pamela, controlling it.
“Hey stranger,” I say. Pam returns with a side eye.
As she turns toward me, the charcoal color of her face rears me back. Half her face seemed gone, as if it was never there and I was confused.
“Yous was. . . Yous was there? With Ma and Pa?” I said.
“Yea,” She returned. “It was always just me, for the last ten years it was just me, herding the cows, feeding the chickens, I was the man of the house.”
Her face still has me stopped in my tracks, the last ten years flash before my eyes as I continue to walk into the house. The walls feel as if they are closing in on me. “Did I leave them by themselves?” I thought to myself. How could I?
As I walk through the white house, I am met with the smell of fine-grained wood and as I get to the backyard, I see the remnants of the shed. I walk around the damaged shed, touching the iron of the mill, which sends chills down my spine and takes me back to when I was thirteen.
As a thirteen-year-old boy, there I was with Pa, a hardworking man, toiling day and night at the local mill, providing for my family. But I was never into the strain of the mill, my heart beat to a different rhythm, one that echoed with dreams of adventure and creativity.
“Pa, why do we have to work here?” I asked. “I don’t want to be like you, I want to be my own man and this family is hurting me.”
“Our lives are tough right now Jo, ma working day and night up at the ‘tation and I am taking care of ya and ya baby sista,” Pa said.
After this, I stormed to my room and cried and cried for hours because this is my life. I began reading, which takes up most of my spare time, the broken spine feeling like pins scraping up and down my fingers. The pages flow and flow as I visualize each scene with an even greater passion than the last page. As I continue reading, my sister enters my room.
“Hey Jo,” she says. “I heard you and Pa outside the shed talking about the mill and the family business.”
“Yea. . .” I return. “I want to read and explore the world, not drill, grind, and plow, that's just not me!”
“You don’t have a choice Jo, it's us, Ma and Pa, and right now you’re being selfish. There is no place for books or studying. This family needs you. . . I need you.” She says.
From a young age, books were an outlet for me, helping me recognize myself in worlds far beyond the confines of my reality. Pa, however, saw things differently. To him, the mill was not just a means of livelihood; it was a legacy, a tradition to be passed down through generations. And he was determined that I would follow in his footsteps.
The next morning it was misty. I walked to the shed, the dew marking my feet as I walked through the tangled grass, finding my usual reading spot. The door was split down the seam, its wood exterior always bringing me comfort. I stayed there throughout the night because I couldn’t sleep. . . reading and reading.
As the days passed, tensions simmered throughout the white house as I could feel the weight of Pa’s expectations pressing down on me, suffocating my dreams of becoming a reader and a writer. Each day feeling like the last, wake up, rig, plow, repeat. . . an endless tune.
I feel like my gifts are being wasted on this farm. I thought to myself. Is this all I am going to be? The son of a mill worker whose dreams will never be fulfilled? The thought of spending my life toiling away in the dusty confines of the mill fills me with endless dread. I want to break free, to chase after my passions with reckless abandon.
The next morning, I am awoken by the hues of the sunset painting the sky. I made a decision that would alter the course of my life forever. With a heavy heart and a determined spirit, I packed a few essentials into a worn-out backpack. I slipped out into the night, leaving behind the only home I had ever known, and went to find myself and a new life. On my way out, my sister had followed me from her bedroom and she caught me by the shed.
“Jo, where are you going? Yous leaving me to care for our family all by myself?” She began to tear up, her scrawny shoulders facing me with such disappointment.
“I don’t want this life anymore, Pam. All Pa sees me as is the boy who’s supposed to carry on the legacy of the family, I don’t want that kind of pressure. . . This isn’t my family anymore.” I look at her with tears streaming down my face.
“Reading is who I am,” I continue. “I was never made for this life, my shoulders were meant to carry ideas, not bricks. It’s time for me to move on and get out of the white house.”
I walked away, embarking on this journey into the unknown. Each step took me further away from the familiar comforts of home and closer to the uncertain promise of freedom. My mind raced with a whirlwind of emotions – fear, excitement, doubt – but amidst it all, there burned a fierce determination to carve out a path for myself in this world.
As I continued walking away north, I found myself on the outskirts of town, a lone figure against the vast expanse of the countryside. With each passing mile, I left behind the shadows of my past, embracing the boundless potential of the open road. But, on my journey, all I could think about was the shed. Calm and easy was what I was thinking. The shed was my sanctuary, a small place that had everything I loved. My family, at one time, all gathered in the shed where I read and wrote stories, which pulled me back to the present.
The days went on and I could feel the tension in the home grow with every waking moment. My sister’s eyes were peeled, wondering what I had done for the last ten years, looking for any answers. Finally, after feeling the burning stare of my sister from across the room, she spoke.
“Our family was everything to me. I looked up to you Jo. I understand you wanting to pursue your own dreams, but abandoning our family.” She looks at me with a look that I saw ten years before in front of the shed.
“You left me alone Jo. For the first time I didn’t have you by my side and I was afraid. I had to do your job and mine while still attending school. It was just hard. . . You know? Ma and Pa were devastated. . . we all were.”
“I know. . . I know, but I have grown,” I said. “I can’t change the past, but I can be here for you now, rebuild what we lost, and try to make things right. I never meant to hurt you or anyone in the family, I just felt my life was more than just the shed and the white house. . . I thought. . . I thought I was more.”
“You are more Jo. I always thought so, your mind and your spirit were qualities that I always looked up to you for. Ma and Pa were always so proud of you and your reading, Pa would always tell me that he pushed you so hard so you could work for your dreams.”
I stumble back. “Really? Pa was proud of me?” I sit down and put my face in my palms and remember all of the times that I felt I let my family down. The countless arguments with Pa over my workload and how I felt burdened by the pressure of being Josiah, the son of “Big Jo.”
My sister sighs and continues.
“Jo, I have had a lot of time to think about our lives together and I forgive you. Leaving us was not what I wanted, but it is what you needed. I grew up without my big brother, which was tough, but I realized family is what you make it.” We hug and it feels like my life falls back into place.
After I opened up to Pam, I felt a painful burden lift from my chest. The grief, the shame, and the uncertainty of family were weighing me down. Pam was my motivation; every day over those ten years I never went a day without thinking of her. The white house was a burden to me for a long time. It weighed me down and held me back, but here I am ten years later. . . my sister picking me up.
The next day, I woke up and noticed the note (written by Ma) that my uncle Roscoe had given me days before. The crinkled paper was covered in markings of lead from the dust that it had collected. I set it aside, not wanting to reopen old wounds, but I opened it anyway and it read, “Dear Lil Jo’ we miss you. Life here hasn’t been the same since you left. Your pa and I have stayed by the shed each night praying you would come home. Pam has become the reliable one now in the house, cleaning up and looking after us when we need her, but she misses you the most. We all have felt lost without your presence, but it has been five years since you left us and we are losing hope. I am writing this letter to you to tell you that we forgive you for leaving, all the pain we have caused each other is nothing compared to the love of family, so come home soon. Love, Ma.”
I take a deep breath and take it all in. Then, I hear the incessant chopping of wood outside. As I walk through the white house to the backyard, I see my sister beginning to rebuild the wooden shed that has been in our family for generations.
Austin Smith is a courageous young writer and a student-athlete who is interested in the world around him. He is the Managing Co-Editor here at The Fishbowl Review who is graduating next summer from Virginia Wesleyan University with a BA in Media Communications and a minor in English in hopes of one day becoming an author. He has written a few short stories and is in the process of getting them published to gain some healthy experience.