A Place in Time

Nick closed the back door and slipped into the dim morning light. This was his first morning on the farm and he was unsure of what was expected of him. Slowly, he walked to the first barn he could see in the dim light and stepped inside the open door. It was dark inside and smelled of fresh hay, ripe from the summer sun. He walked further into the barn trying to make out the shapes before him. A faint smell of manure mingled with the hay. He took a step forward and felt his boot land on a hard object. He knelt down and felt for it under the sole of his boot. His fingers touched a cold lump of steel. He picked it up and stepped back to the door where it was lighter to see what he had found. But, before he could open his hand, he started to feel light-headed and nauseous. His legs were turning to jelly and he crumpled to the dirt floor. Suddenly, he saw a boy, about thirteen years old, standing by the side of a dirt road. He was dressed in homespun brown pants and wore a pair of black suspenders over a cotton beige shirt. The boy had been busy peeling an apple with a pocketknife. The knife had slipped and the boy had nicked his fingers on his right hand. Nick watched as the boy dropped the apple to suck the wound. The vision faded as Nick rapidly blinked his eyes and shook his head. Nick opened his fingers exposing the object lying on his palm. It was a pocketknife and his hand was sticky with blood. Nick dropped the knife and stared at his hand. He wiped the blood off onto his jeans. He didn’t see any wound, nor did he feel any pain. He reached down for the knife and examined it carefully. He tried pulling out the blade, but it was rusted shut. It looked like a piece of junk and he was about to throw it back into the darkness, when his fingers slid over a raised letter. He looked closer and saw that the knife was stamped with a large raised C. He slipped it into a front pocket of his jeans. He would ask Uncle Joe about it. Nick remembered Aunt Sara had said that the cows were waiting. Feeling better, he hurried to his feet and walked down to the next barn where he saw a light shinning through a flyspecked window. He entered the milk house and saw a large stainless-steel tank sitting in the middle of the room. Two silver wash vats and a hand sink dominated the far wall. The compressor, cooling the bulk tank, was making quite a racket. He put his hands over his ears, and hurried over, across the room, to the door that opened into the parlor. Eight Holstein cows were being milked. They stood on two raised cement platforms; one on each side of a parlor. Four cows could be milked on each side simultaneously. Uncle Joe stood below the cows in a cement pit. He was waist level with the platform, the perfect height for milking the cows. He was busy attaching the milking claws to the swollen udders of the cows who had just entered. The claw automatically pulled the milk from the udders. The milk then flowed into a stainless steel pipe, which carried the milk to the bulk tank for cooling. “Come on down here, Nick. You’re late.” Uncle Joe turned his attention to the other side of the parlor where the cows were just finishing up. He gently took one claw off a collapsed udder. “These cows are done. Take that milker off.” Nick gingerly stepped down into the parlor being careful not to slip on the steep, damp cement steps. Once down in the pit, he looked up at the milking cows. The Holsteins looked huge from this perspective. Trying to please his uncle, Nick stepped close to a cow’s hind leg, and gingerly grabbed the metal claw. He turned off the plastic valve like he saw his uncle do, and the milking claw fell off, and onto his hand. He hung it up on a metal hook. “What did you do to your hand? Are you bleeding?” His uncle took off two more milkers then opened the front gate to release the cows. “Nah. I found this knife up in the first barn. It had blood on it.” Nick dug into his front pocket and pulled out the rusty knife for him to see. “That knife doesn’t have blood on it. You cut yourself on the blade, didn’t you? You best be more careful around the farm.” Uncle Joe slammed the gate closed behind the exiting cows. The clanging metal echoed in the parlor. “Do you know whose knife this is? I found it in the barn on top of the hill.” Nick handed his uncle the knife. “That’s the hay barn ya talking about, and no, I’ve never seen this knife before. But look, see this raised C? The Confederate Calvary used to mark all their goods with a C. This could be a real find. Clean it up and you’ve got yourself a treasure.” Uncle Joe handed Nick back the knife. When Nick's fingers came in contact with the rusty steel, he once again saw an image of the boy who had cut himself. His hand was wrapped in a dirty rag and he was walking down a dirt road leading a strawberry-roan mare; his head was bowed under the hot sun. A silver sword hung down by his side. Nick blinked; then coughed. The vision disappeared, but he noticed that his hand was sticky with blood again.