The Barn

The barn, yes, you want to see the barn." The old man rested his hoe on the upturned soil and pointed to the distance. "You can see yourself. Out there. Big and white in the middle of field. Is quiet there, all alone in the field. Is very peaceful."

I nodded. The barn was old and wanted fresh paint, but maybe for that very reason it seemed to blend into the rough Texas landscape. "Maybe now I plant some trees or some flowers there," the old man added. He looked at me with clear, black eyes. "For my wife," he said.

I looked out at the barn again.

"You can go closer and see if you want--just please no move anything. I not go with you now, maybe later. My wife is upstairs, she no feeling good. I stay here."

Something in the old Guatemalan's demeanor--his strength--surprised me. I had expected someone very different.

But then, everything in Texas surprised me.

I made my way across the dark, tilled earth, then through the adjacent field of fescue grass studded with fans of fleshy palmetto, to the barn. The door was closed, but unlocked. I turned back to look at the man. He was still standing there, hoe in his hand, looking toward me.

I had come to Texas determined to make a life for myself raising cattle. An absurd proposition, maybe, for a guy who'd gone to college at UMass-Amherst and worked six years at a publishing firm. "Just because you think you can run a farm doesn't mean you can," my father said when I approached him about investing in the venture. My friends hooted, but I felt that secretly they admired my guts. I had been a business major, so I knew the basics. And, most important, having a ranch was my life's dream. I spent several weeks reading up on the livestock industry and made plans to go slowly. Buy some land, ask around, get a feel for the business, and start buying cattle.

"Inside the barn is only hay," the old man said, motioning me to sit down in his tiny kitchen. He put some water to boil in a battered pot. "I make some hay," he said. "In winter I sell it to the americanos up that road. They have too many cows. Maybe I put in a cow now too, so the barn no be so cold. And maybe a horse too, to keep company the cow. So she no be so lonely."

"You mean you've decided not to sell?" I asked.

I'd come to see, not just the barn but a piece of the land as well. Two years after it started, my cattle business was hanging in the balance. I'd thought to find a competitive advantage raising natural beef, selling direct to the supermarkets. The quantities would be small, but the prices high. Why compete with the big ranchers? To succeed in business, you have to find your own niche.

The niche was hard carving.

First, I couldn't sell direct to the supermarkets. "That's not the way it works," I was told by one of the neighboring ranchers. "Down here you buy at auctions, you sell at auctions."

"What about natural beef?" I asked. He shrugged.

"You buy at auctions, you sell at auctions."

So the way to compete, I figured, was to buy the calves just before winter. That's the only time they were cheap. Then keep them warm through the winter, nourish them well. And when spring came around, and everyone else was paying high prices for their calves, I would just turn mine out to pasture and watch them get fat.

But none of that was possible without the barn. I'd lost a lot of calves to pneumonia and ice storms the past year, and the idea of another nightmare winter was appalling. Besides, my herd was just too small to be profitable. I needed to invest in more cattle--soon--if my business was to keep afloat. The old Guatemalan's parcel was undersized, but it was adjacent to mine. Furthermore, it was cheap--so I'd been told. And it had a huge barn.

"It's a nice, big barn," I said.

"And it have plenty of light," the old man added, raising his eyebrows to look outside. He reached up on tiptoe to a cabinet and pulled out a brown tin can. "See the windows? You can see almost inside from all the way here. All the time. You no lose it from sight." He measured two spoons of ground coffee into the pot and stirred with his metal spoon. Then, lifting it carefully with a ragged kitchen towel, he poured the coffee into the tin cups through a long cloth strainer hanging from a ring. "And it does not fall down, either. Is a good, strong barn. Even in a storm, even in rain or lightning, no matter how hard you hit it, is not gonna fall. Is a strong barn. Is gonna be there always." His chin quivered, and he raised his cup quickly with both hands and gulped deeply of the hot, black coffee. I drank my coffee in silence, then thanked him and left, promising to return.

Three weeks went by before I saw the old man again. In the interim, I combed the area for another parcel of land, but none was available, much less with a barn. I also asked several neighbors about the old man. Juan Guadalupe had come here with his wife in the mid-eighties, fleeing a beautiful country torn by senseless wars, unutterable violence. "His village was razed," someone told me. "Family, gone. He never talks about it, except to say that Guatemala doesn't exist any more."

Juan Guadalupe and his wife, Francina, had a son in their middle age--Juan Jose, a good boy, according to all who knew him. He'd been born in Texas and raised on his parents' little farm, but after he finished high school last summer, a restlessness came over him. He was looking for something, the way kids will, and so he decided he'd go to Guatemala. "To see for himself what this nonexistent country was," a neighbor said. "His parents pleaded with him, said he'd come to grief. But he said he'd be back by summer's end, and they shouldn't worry. He could take care of himself."

News of Juan Jose was slow in arriving. His parents learned that he was staying with a family in a tiny village with no electricity or running water, near Ixtipán. But the family had small children of their own and couldn't afford to support another one. Then they learned that Juan Jose was looking for work. Three weeks later, news arrived that he'd been shot, but the police had no further information. His body was found at the bottom of a gully. His wallet and his American passport were gone. So were his brand new Nikes.

On my second visit to Juan Guadalupe, I found him hammering a wooden chair under the shade of a live oak. "Hello, mister," he said. Then, straightening up with his rickety chair, "I thought you no gonna come back."

"I said I would."

"Yes, that is right." He nodded: "You gringos always do what you say you gonna do."

I grinned, not sure what he meant, and followed him out to the field. September had been unseasonably dry and hot, even for this part of Texas. The lakes were low and the fields took on a drab olive color.

"This is potato I plant around here," he told me, sweeping his arm over the rows of thin green plants.

"It's coming along," I said, observing the scraggly growth.

"Yes, but is not growing well. I need some more better seed and some more different crops." He was silent for a moment. "That is why I think to maybe tear down the barn. Maybe plant some more piece of land. Situation not so good, you know?"

"It is difficult," I agreed. I was getting very stressed, myself. It was a bad time for crops and too dry for cattle, but that also meant it was time to buy. Despite the hot spell, winter would be here in two months, and breeders were starting to get the young calves off their hands. If I didn't buy those calves now, I'd have nothing to fatten for next year. "You don't wait for your cows to have calves," someone had taught me. "You buy young, you fatten up, you sell." My visions of rolling green pastures, of contented cows calving in the spring and the calves growing up to produce more calves, and me buying more rolling green pastures to hold them all--that whole idea vanished like a childhood memory. You buy, you fatten, you sell. This was my rule now.

"So you're thinking of tearing down the barn?" I asked. That meant he didn't need it, and it was up for grabs.

"No, not now. My wife, she don't want me to. I ask her, 'Por qué, mijita?' But she not say why. She just say, 'I like the barn, Juan, don't break it down. I no like for things to break down.' So I keep it."

"If you sell it to me," I ventured, "I wouldn't tear it down. I would use it."

"Yes, use it," he said. "I wasn't too sure, you know? But now, I guess we keep it. We use it. I guess you are right."

We stared at the barn for a long time. The sun blazed hot and still, making the white walls seem to shimmer in the motionless air. I shaded my eyes with my hand. Drops of sweat rolled down my temples. I looked at Juan Guadalupe. His face was brown and wrinkled, but dry under his straw hat. His arms were outstretched, as if embracing the whole space between us and the barn.

"Would you maybe sell just a piece of the land?" I asked him. "With the barn? I will pay you cash. You can buy your seeds, and some equipment. Fix up your house real nice," I added, eying a broken window pane and the sagging door.

"You have good idea," he said, "but I have to ask the wife. She upstairs now. She not feeling too good, you know. When she know you coming, she say to me. 'Juan, I no want you sell the barn. I no want you break it down.' 'Don't worry, mijita,' I say, 'I no gonna do nothing to that barn.' 'You promise me?' she say like she no believe I will do it. I say, 'Si, mijita, the barn gonna stay. I not gonna break nothing.'"

"I wouldn't break it," I said again. "I just want to put in some cattle."

"I think maybe to put in some cows there, too. Make it more warmer, you know?"

"It looks warm enough to me," I answered rather impatiently. "I thought you planned to sell it."

"Oh, maybe I do."

"Well, do you need money, or not?"

"Yes, mister, I need money."

"So when do you think you can ask your wife?"

"Oh, tomorrow, I think. Come inside, mister, I give you coffee to drink."

"No, thank you, Juan Guadalupe," I said. "I have to go now. But think about it, and I'll be back."

Juan Guadalupe's son was a shy, quiet boy, but a hard worker. So I was told by Mike, the commercial flower grower four miles down on Highway 35. He used to pick up the old plants that Mike was going to throw out and take them home to his mother. His coworkers at the huge facility--mostly Mexicans--liked Juan Jose and were shocked at the news of his death. "It was like losing someone in the family," the owner said. "The women cried for days, the men went about their work in silence. Everyone chipped in to help them bring the body back and bury it here."

"Oh, they brought it back?"

"They couldn't."

"Why not?"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Too complicated, I guess. The kid was buried before they even began to get the paperwork done."

We walked down the rows of shrubs and he pointed them out to me. "The tall orange ones are day lilies; those white ones are peonies." I told him I was having trouble finding a piece of land: "Someone told me Jose Guadalupe needed to sell, but he doesn't seem so sure he wants to."

"Doesn't surprise me," he said.

"Do you know him?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I don't get involved with my employees--or their families."

"I see."

"But you can ask around, if you want. That lady there should know something." He pointed out a round-faced woman several rows down. "Her name is Graciela. The kid next to her is her son. He speaks English."

Graciela wore baggy long pants and a slip of kerchief over her knot of black hair. She and her son, a thin boy in jeans and a baseball cap, were bent over, pinching the dry leaves and flowers off a long row of impatiens. I spoke to her briefly, through the boy. Yes, she knew Juan Guadalupe and his wife, Francina. Their children had grown up together--she gestured toward the boy. Did I know about Juan Jose?

I told her I did.

"Muy triste," she said.

"Very sad," the boy repeated.

"Yes," I agreed.

Juan Jose was a good boy, she told me. He was young, but tall and strong as a tree trunk. People thought his parents were actually his grandparents. His mother, Francina, didn't like him out of her sight. She was always afraid he would go off to the city or marry a gringa, or go someplace and not come back. And now you see, it happened...

"You seem to know them quite well," I said.

"Oh yes, mister," the boy answered for her. "Juan Jose was my friend."

"What would it take for Juan Guadalupe to sell me some of that land?" I asked.

"I don't know, mister."

"Ask your mother."

He asked her. She asked him something in return, a puzzled look on her face.

"Why do he want to sell the land?" the boy asked me.

"He doesn't. That's the problem."

Another puzzled exchange with his mother.

"Then why you say you going to buy it?"

"You know what? I'm not," I shook my head. "Thank you for your time, Señora. Gracias."

She smiled. "De nada."

I heard her say something else to the boy, and as I turned to leave, he called after me:

"Mister, she says Juan Jose's father and mother could not go to his funeral. Did you know that?"

"Yes," I said.

"She says they could not even put any flowers on his grave."

September gave way to October and still no barn. The price of calves was coming down, and I had the money to buy but nowhere to put them. I'd seen several pastures that were much too large, much too expensive, much too far away. One was a smaller grassy site with a small barn, but located two hours from my ranch, and the price was steep--$90,000. I had proposed a lease with an option to buy once my business became more stable, but the owner wouldn't hear of it. Buy or nothing, he had said.

So one evening in mid-October, I went back to Juan Guadalupe, determined this time to make a deal. In my truck I carried several dozen sacks of seed potatoes and a bottle of Caribbean rum; in my pocket, a thick wad of bills--$5,000 in hundreds--and my checkbook.

I found him finishing supper with his wife. Francina was even tinier than her husband. Her face was not so brown or so wrinkled, but her eyes made me think of some lost, melancholy music. Juan Guadalupe offered me a chair. I sat down with a smile, determined to win them over, and offered my bottle of rum. Jose Guadalupe said something to his wife, and she poured two tin cups of steaming coffee and set them on the table. He opened the bottle and measured out a tablespoon of rum into each cup. "She no like drink," he explained. "Is too strong for her."

Cup in hand, I settled back for a long chat. The old man seemed in no hurry for me to leave, and I had no intention of giving up until something was decided. So we sat there, Juan Guadalupe and I, and drank our coffee and talked about the dry spell, and about my cattle and how they needed water, and about his potato crop and how it wasn't making much progress, and about my family and how as a kid I'd dreamed of living on a ranch, and we talked a little bit about his life--very little, just how he'd worked as a child planting corn in the milpas with his father--and for some reason, I said that he and I were really very much alike and that I had brought him the seeds as a gift. Actually, they were supposed to be one of my bargaining chips, and no one was more surprised than I was to see them handed over just like that, without a struggle. "From one neighbor to another," I had said, raising my tin cup.

The sun was big and low in a pink and orange sky, as we sat there a while longer and had some more coffee and listened to the croaking of the frogs and the buzz of the cicadas and chatted and swatted a mosquito now and then.

But I had a deal to close. I patted my pocket for reassurance and searched for an opening in the conversation.

"The fall auctions will be coming up soon," I said.

"You are going to buy many cattles?" he asked.

"Not too many--just enough to fill up that big barn of yours," I answered jokingly.

"Qué dice?" his wife asked. She had sat quietly next to her husband, listening with a far-away look as he stopped now and then to translate bits of the conversation for her.

"She want to know what you say about the barn," he explained. "But I don't tell her. Maybe she no like it."

"Why not?" I asked.

"Well, the barn, you say you fill her up with cattles. And the barn, it have lots of room inside, like someone can live there, you know? My wife, she used to say, 'Juan, you can make a house there. You put in a little kitchen and little bathroom, you have a little house.' 'What for?' I say. 'So person can live there,' she say. I say, 'What you want to make a house there for? Who gonna live there?'"

We were quiet. Outside, dusk had fallen. I thought of home--but only a blurry image came to mind. "Home" and "Massachusetts" no longer matched. I thought of my ranch--the pickup truck I used for herding the cattle instead of the stock horse I'd envisioned, a limp calf dying in the icy muck with its tongue hanging out, the parched fields against a deep green backdrop of piney forest--and wanted desperately to call this home.

"And now she want me to paint the barn," Juan Guadalupe was saying. "And she tell me to plant flowers in the front. You know, women is funny like that." He took a swallow of coffee. "So you see, I cannot sell the barn now."

"I need that barn, Juan Guadalupe. You don't understand."

"My wife--"

"Lease it," I said, suddenly, though the proposition wasn't in my plan.

"Lease?"

"Yes. I'll give you $400 every month." I fingered four bills out of their rubber band, pulled them from my pocket, and slapped them on the table. He looked at them doubtfully. "Do you understand? Every month I'll come by and say, 'Juan Guadalupe, my friend, here is $400 for you for this month. Next month, I bring you $400 more.'"

"But my wife, she want me to paint--"

"Damn it," I yelled, banging my tin cup down on the table. "If she wants the barn painted, I'll paint it myself." Juan Guadalupe flinched. Francina blotted into his arm, looking half her former size. I felt like a jerk, but I'd started the deal and wasn't going to end until I got it. "Tell her that, Juan Guadalupe. Tell her I'll paint it myself."

"I will tell her, mister." He drew himself up slowly. "A little bit later. Right now, you have a little bit more coffee." He didn't nod for Francina to pour, but got up himself. I wondered if he was going to add any rum. All of a sudden, the bottle looked huge and much too bright on their little table. I wished it would disappear. Juan Guadalupe poured me a cup of coffee and sat down again. It was very hot. I drank in silence, burning my tongue, and watched the dusk turn quickly to dark. I wanted to break the silence, but everything I thought of sounded awkward to my mind. Finally, I leaned over toward Juan Guadalupe.

"Will you tell her?" I asked.

He turned and said something to her. She looked at me and shook her head.

"My wife, she no want to lease."

"And I'll plant her flowers. Tell her that, Juan Guadalupe. Tell her I'll plant the flowers, too."

Juan Guadalupe looked at me reluctantly. She was waiting.

Finally, he turned and spoke to her slowly. To my surprise, she looked at me as if astonished. Juan Guadalupe said something else to her, and she answered him, haltingly but firmly. I hoped they were discussing the price. I was willing to go quite a bit higher than 400. And what the hell, I was willing to plant all the flowers she wanted, just so long as I got my barn and my land.

Juan Guadalupe turned to me. "Mister," he said.

"Yes, my friend."

"You say you paint the barn."

"I sure will."

"You plant the flowers, too."

"That's right."

"My wife, she say gracias to you."

I slumped back in relief.

His eyes fell on the $400. "But she say you no give us that. You paint the barn, you plant the flowers. You no do for free. Americanos never work for free. We give you some hay in the winter. And we give you potatoes. That way, everything fair." He picked up the tin cups and took them to the sink.

"What about the barn?" I asked.

"No barn." He was rinsing the cups.

"No lease?"

"No lease."

I stood up, folded the bills, and put them back in my pocket. "Damn it," I said, under my breath. Then out loud, "Why didn't you tell me so in the first place? Why did you lead me on all this time? You knew I wanted the barn."

Juan Guadalupe wiped his hands on the dishtowel.

"Mister," he said, "I no lead you. I tell you no the first time."

I stood there like a man lost in his little kitchen, thinking back on the past few months--the anxiety, the determination, the dream of my childhood now a harsh, uncertain reality.

The old man walked with me past the potato field to my truck. As I drove away, I turned once and saw him still standing there. Behind him, the barn rose up, a ghostly white in the darkness, and ahead of me the black Texas sky was sprinkled with 100 million stars.

Copyright © 2002 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
All rights reserved. Comments. Last modified Wed, Dec 18, 2002.