The farm supply store in Marshall opened early.
I arrived shortly after the doors were unlocked, still wearing the same coat I had put on to leave the house.
My purse was on the passenger seat.
Inside it were my driver's license, a packet of tissues, and a folded hospital bill I hadn't had the energy to examine.
I carried none of those things into the store except my purse.
I went straight to the paint section.
The young employee behind the counter asked what I was looking for.
"Barn paint," I said.
He pointed me toward the exterior coatings.
I walked past several shelves before stopping in front of the red.
There were different shades.
Some were brighter than I remembered.
Others looked too dark or too brown.
I studied the labels longer than I needed to.
I wanted the color the barn had always been.
Not a new interpretation of it.
Not a fashionable version.
The color that belonged there.
I asked the employee to help me choose.
He brought down a sample and held it beside the picture on the bucket.
I nodded.
"That one."
He asked how much I needed.
"Forty gallons."
He looked at me to see whether I was joking.
I wasn't.
He explained that the paint came in five-gallon containers.
Eight buckets, then.
He brought out a cart, and we began loading them.
The buckets were heavier than they looked.
I watched him stack them carefully, making sure the lids were secure.
Eight white buckets with red labels.
I had never felt so relieved to see a color.
The total was $1,416.
I paid without asking for a discount.
The receipt came out of the register in a long, narrow strip.
I folded it twice and placed it in my purse.
The employee asked whether I had someone to help me unload everything.
"I'll manage," I said.
He offered to load the buckets into my truck, and I accepted.
As he lifted the last one, he glanced toward the store's parking lot.
"Big project?"
"An old one," I told him.
He smiled politely, but I could tell he didn't understand.
I didn't expect him to.
When I drove away, the paint shifted slightly in the truck bed.
I slowed at the first turn.
I wasn't going to spill forty gallons of paint before I even reached the farm.
The receipt lay beside my purse.
Every few minutes, I glanced at it.
Fourteen hundred and sixteen dollars was a considerable amount of money for us.
I knew what it represented.
It could have paid for groceries, fuel, or part of Arlo's rehabilitation expenses.
It could have remained in the bank for a day when we needed something unexpected.
But I knew what the barn meant, too.
I had watched it stand through years when money was tight.
I had watched Arlo repair its doors with his own hands.
I had watched him save usable boards rather than throw them away.
He never called the barn an investment.
He called it part of the farm.
That was enough for me.
I reached home and backed the truck near the barn.
The gray paint was still drying in a few places along the shaded side.
I stood beside the buckets and counted them.
One through eight.
Then I took out my phone.
There was a person I needed to call before I could begin.
Our Methodist church had a youth group that met regularly.
The children helped with community projects, and their pastor, Nate, was good at organizing people without making a fuss.
I had known him long enough to trust him with a simple request.
When he answered, I explained what had happened.
I didn't tell him every detail about Brad.
I didn't want to spend the morning complaining about our son.
I told him about the barn, the paint, and the old initials above the haymow door.
Then I asked whether he could spare a few young people on Saturday.
Nate went quiet for a moment.
"How many do you need?"
"As many as you can reasonably bring."
He asked how much of the barn needed painting.
I looked at the gray walls.
"All of it."
He let out a small laugh.
Not because he thought the job was funny.
Because he understood what I was asking.
"I'll call around," he said.
I thanked him and put the phone away.
For the first time since I had driven into the yard the night before, I felt that I could breathe properly.
I had paint.
I had a plan.
And I had two days to make it happen.
Nate called back about an hour later.
He had found twenty-two young people willing to help.
Four fathers had also volunteered.
They could bring ladders and help supervise.
I wrote the number on the back of an envelope.
Twenty-two children.
Four adults.
One old barn.
It wasn't a complicated plan, but there were practical matters to settle.
We needed ladders for the lower and middle sections.
We needed someone to reach the highest boards safely.
We needed brushes, rollers, trays, and enough time to finish before dark.
I called Merle, our neighbor.
He had farm equipment and knew where to rent things locally.
When I told him what I needed, he asked whether I meant to repaint the barn myself.
"No," I said. "I'm going to have help."
He didn't ask who had painted it gray.
He didn't ask why I was buying the red paint.
He said he would arrange for a lift and make sure the equipment was available.
Only adults would operate it.
The younger children would stay on the ground.
The older teenagers could work from ladders with Nate supervising them.
I wrote everything down on the same envelope.
I had spent eleven days in a hospital learning to keep track of small tasks because the large ones frightened me.
Now I was doing the same thing in my kitchen.
Paint.
Ladders.
Rollers.
Water.
Something for lunch.
A safe way to reach the upper boards.
I worked through the list one item at a time.
At noon, I called the hospital.
Arlo had finished his morning therapy.
The nurse said he was tired but comfortable.
I asked whether he had eaten.
She told me he had managed most of his lunch with help.
I sat down at the kitchen table and closed my eyes.
That was good news.
It was the kind of news I had learned to accept gratefully.
I wanted to tell Arlo about the barn.
I wanted to explain that I had bought the paint and arranged for help.
But I didn't know how much he would understand over the phone.
His speech was still limited, and I didn't want him struggling to answer while he was exhausted.
So I told him I loved him.
He made a small sound in response.
Then the line went quiet.
I held the phone against my ear for another few seconds.
After we disconnected, I looked at the envelope.
The list was longer now.
I added the time I planned to leave for the hospital on Saturday afternoon.
Then I stopped.
There was no reason I couldn't finish the barn before going back to Sioux Falls.
The work would take the day.
I could be there when the children arrived.
I could make sure the paint went where it belonged.
And when I returned to Arlo, I could tell him the barn was red again.
I imagined his face.
I imagined him trying to smile, even if he couldn't find the words.
That thought carried me through the rest of the afternoon.
I moved the buckets into a dry place where they would be easy to reach.
I checked the weather forecast on the television.
I gathered the brushes I already owned and set them on a shelf in the garage.
I found an old pair of work gloves.
They were stiff at the fingers, but they would do.
Then I went back to the barn.
The gray covered everything.
It covered the old boards.
It covered the places where Arlo had patched a hole after a storm.
It covered the rough grain near the doors where generations of hands had worn the wood smooth.
Most of all, it covered the initials.
I stood beneath the haymow door and looked up.
For a moment, I thought about calling Brad again.
I could have asked him to come over.
I could have demanded an explanation in person.
I could have told him that no amount of sales experience gave him the right to decide what his parents should do with their home.
Those were reasonable things to say.
But I had already heard his reasoning.
He thought he was helping.
He thought gray would make the property easier to sell.
He had acted before asking because he believed the outcome mattered more than our permission.
I couldn't fix that by repeating myself.
I could, however, restore what he had covered.
I went inside, washed my hands, and called Nate to confirm Saturday morning.
He said they would be there early.
I thanked him again.
Then I placed the folded receipt in the kitchen drawer beside the other household papers.
It seemed a small thing to keep.
But I wanted to remember exactly what the decision had cost.
Not because I planned to regret spending the money.
Because I wanted to remember the moment I stopped waiting for someone else to give me permission to protect something that mattered.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: Saturday Morning Brought Twenty-Two Young People to Our Lane, and the First Red Streak Changed the Whole Yard
The Evening I Came Home to Find a Century of Family History Covered in a Color I Had Never Chosen
Part 2 of 8
