Yuratuhl wrote:
Cryptic response.
I'll tell it. It's not my deal, anyway.
Everything is black and white and gray. I see two boys standing outside a long-abandoned, single-room schoolhouse in a wide flat rural countryside...like Kansas maybe. The little structure is entirely one color of dark graying old wood with a little empty steeple where a school bell once hung. The earth is sending up dead vegetation all around the building like hands grabbing and pulling, as if attacking an intruder. But the schoolhouse is holding its own, amazingly, considering its builders are long-since dead and anyone who ever attended a class here have either joined them, or will shortly. The roof looks solidly intact, and none of the 12-paned windows is broken. There are three steps up to the small porch... the door is closed, but there is little doubt that it is unlocked.
A road outside is white, chalky... likely crushed limestone...dry. Perfectly straight, it runs off to the horizon in both directions. Winds pick it up easily, swirling it around in little eddies. Fence posts line the edges of the fields. They are also white limestone, grooves chiseled into opposite faces. Any wire they ever supported is long since gone. They seem foreboding, like gravemarkers. Almost glowing, they remind me of the crosses in that Ansel Adams photograph...I think it's called
Moonrise. Whatever.
Endless fields have a late winter look to them... ragged and dead and ignored. The two boys are a few years apart... one maybe 12, the other 8. The older kid is anxious to get inside the school to get away from some threat that he perceives. I don't see what he's afraid of. Maybe he's just anxious to get started. He keeps looking all around, up, and pulling at the younger boy. For some reason, he needs to get into that building but will not go without the other boy.
The younger one is not convinced. He is more averse to going into the building. He is not afraid of whatever is outside; in fact, he is contemptuous of whatever the older one sees. Impasse. The older one is certain he is right, but needs the younger one with him to summon the courage to walk up those steps, to open that door. The younger one knows what he knows and would rather scoff at what he sees than face what he can't.
