Free Opening Moves by Steven James Page B

another sound in addition to the mice, but he wasn’t sure. He was old enough to know that barns, even when they’re empty, always seem to whisper, as if the animals that have lived and died inside them have never left. Animal ghosts, he thought to himself, that never sleep.
    Sunlight crept through the narrow cracks between the boards on the sides of the barn. Shafts of light, cutting through the darkness. The streaks of sunlight were filled with dust motes and wandering flecks of hay disturbed by their movement as the two of them passed through the barn.
    “Even the sun?” Joshua asked.
    “The sun?”
    “Will God kill the sun?”
    “Yes. Someday far in the future. Even the sun. There will only be darkness at the end of all things.”
    Joshua thought about that. “But what matters then? I mean, if everything just dies? What we build or make or learn, if it’s all just gone?”
    His father didn’t answer right away. “This moment matters.”
    “And I guess it’s okay, though, if we go to heaven, right? To be with Mom?”
    His father didn’t reply and Joshua took it as some sort of rebuke, that mentioning his mom or heaven was somehow something bad and he did not bring them up again.
    He stood beside his father, half in the sunlight that would one day die, half in the shadows that would not.
    “Son,” his father said, “I’ve never shown you the place beneath the barn. The cellar. You can keep a secret, can’t you?”
    Another secret.
    “Yes, sir.”
    His father paced across the stale, dry hay. Tiny slivers of straw dusted up in small clouds around his feet as he walked.
    Joshua followed him to the corner of the barn.
    It lay mostly in shadows. Joshua watched as his father swept his boot across the straw and, instead of simply hearing the crinkle of it brushing aside, he also heard the rough clatter of a wooden plank.
    And then he heard something else. A muffled sound, somewhere beneath the boards.
    “This is a very special place, Joshua. No one knows it’s here.”
    Joshua wondered if his mother had known about it before she died three years ago. Wondered, but said nothing.
    “But,” his father went on, “I want you to know about it. You’re the only one.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And you’re big enough to keep a secret?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Joshua’s father brushed some more of the straw away, revealing a wooden trapdoor about three feet wide and three feet long. He uncovered a latch that had been padlocked shut, then removed a key from his pocket and slipped it into the lock. “I’m bringing you here because it’s time you learned about the special things. You’re old enough now.” His father clicked open the lock and set it aside. “Aren’t you, Son?”
    He looked at Joshua expectantly.
    “Yes, sir.”
    His father slid the last bits of straw aside, revealing a large metal ring attached to one of the boards. Then he grasped it firmly, yanked open the trapdoor, and stepped to the side.
    A black square gaped open in the ground before Joshua. Wooden steps descended and then disappeared into the cool darkness.
    The sounds Joshua heard were coming from somewhere far below. They were louder now. At first Joshua thought they might be coming from some kind of hurt animal. He took a step back. “What’s down there, Daddy?”
    “I’m going to show you. This is where we’re going to have the lessons.”
    “Is it an animal?”
    “Death is natural,” he replied, and Joshua knew that was not an answer, but he said nothing. “You understand this, right?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Everything dies.”
    “Yes, sir. Everything dies.”
    “We have to kill to stay alive, Joshua. That’s the way it is in the world. We kill cows and pigs and chickens to have meat, we kill plants to have fruits and vegetables. Just to stay alive. The life of one being depends on the death of another. This is natural. This is the way of the world.”
    Joshua had never thought of it like that before. It seemed to make sense,