All Your Pretty Dreams by Lise McClendon

barn. He supposed they wouldn’t mind his
wandering around. Nora had inherited the farm from her parents who
inherited it from her grandfather. Maybe that was why she never
sold it. Ozzie expressed zero interest in farming. Jonny paused by
the vegetables, admiring their vigor.
    Behind the barn, an old
milking shed listed to the south, advertising its desire to fall
down. A corn crib, its wire sides rusted and bent but the round
metal roof intact, sat empty. The days of cornfields were long
gone, replaced by blueberry bushes and alfalfa. Nora had put in
blueberries thirty years ago and was known as a local blueberry
guru. Farmers pumped her for information about cultivation,
varieties, and cultivars. She still managed her berries on the far
end of the apple orchard, next to the woods to keep poachers away.
Maybe the blueberries kept her from selling out.
    The square metal door of
the corncrib hung on one hinge. He pushed it open and stepped into
the round wire structure with the cement floor. Dry kernels wedged
in cracks, surviving all these years. A moldy hay bale sat on one
side with brown leaves around it. Jonny and Wendy had played in
here when they were children, pretending it was their house. Artie
laughed at them, he had a literal mind. A round house? It looked
more like a tea kettle.
    He was glad he wasn’t a kid
anymore. But sometimes he felt like he’d skipped an important step
by marrying so young. He jumped straight into adulthood and
responsibility. He had no one to blame but himself. He turned in a
circle inside the corn crib. What was the point of continually
beating yourself up? He just needed to move on.
    He sighed and sat down on
the bale. Instantly a loud squeal came from below. He jumped to his
feet and was face to face with an enormous raccoon, standing on its
hind legs, snarling.
    “ Hey, fat bastard. Wanna
dance?” The animal came around the bale toward him, hissing, his
enormous belly swinging.
    Jonny backed out the door
and watched the raccoon go down on all fours and give him a last
baring of teeth. “All yours, chubby.”
     
    In the Owl hours later,
Jonny put his feet up on the table. The afternoon had run away with
him and here he was, chair pushed back, leafing through the
afternoon’s sketches while he drank a beer. After a walk through
the apple orchards kicking leaves and feeling stupid, he dug the
sketch pad out of his trunk. He used to carry it everywhere,
doodling constantly, but he couldn’t remember when he’d sketched
last. Making a living drawing office parks made sketching old barns
seem childish. But today he’d gotten a cramp in his hand, drawing
so fast and furiously.
    He’d drawn twelve different
angles on the old corn crib. Even tried to capture the snarl in the
raccoon’s muzzle but that didn’t turn out very well. Straight
lines, perspective, capturing the depth and breadth of a building
in two dimensions, that was what he did best. Something about that
corn crib. Its roundness, and that funny funnel-like roof. It
intrigued him.
    What if it had solid walls,
not mesh wire? Like a— what did they call those short, squatty
silos? Grain bins. Could you live in a grain bin, a sort of metal
yurt? He ripped out a clean sheet of paper and drew the corn crib
with solid sides this time, added a door, a couple windows, the
vent at the top now a chimney. He squinted at it. Just precious, a
first-grader’s version of a house. He tore it up, started over,
spreading out his drawings over the table and scribbling so
feverishly he knocked his empty bottle off.
    “ Another, Jonny?” A
waitress in a red tank top picked up the bottle. He’d already
forgotten her name. When she came back with the beer she looked at
his sketches. “Whatcha doing?”
    The answer was in there
somewhere. A grain bin. A door. He drew a lay-out angle as new
arrivals let a blast of warm moist air. Jonny sat by the only
window that let in light, lost in his sketches. The summer evenings
stretched long; he