Mr McBain’s barn and fields

Mr McBain’s barn and fields are the setting for Klara’s second appeal to the Sun on Josie’s behalf, a scene in which a familiar rural route leads into a barn transformed by fragments of the past. The place matters not only as a destination but as a threshold: Klara enters it alone, asks for the special nourishment she believes could save Josie, and confronts a landscape of scattered remnants in which memory and present danger converge.

Setting and Return

After hesitating over whether the hoped-for help would arrive without her intervention, Klara decides that she must go back to the barn and explain herself. She has failed to carry out the service she promised the Sun in the city, but now believes the only right course is to make a special plea. She needs Rick to trust her again and hopes to return to the barn; if he cannot take her, she says she will try on her own.

Rick carries her through the fields. More accustomed to riding on his back, Klara parts the grass with a free hand as they travel. The grass is yellower and softer than on their previous journey, and evening insects break against her face. This time the fields do not become partitioned: after they pass the third picture-frame gate, the barn remains clearly visible ahead beneath a wide orange sky, with the Sun near the peak of its roof.

At the low-cut grass, Klara asks Rick to stop and let her down. They watch the Sun sink while the barn’s shadow stretches across the woven-looking grass as it did before. Once the Sun passes behind the roof, Klara asks Rick to leave her, mindful not to take more privacy than necessary. Rick asks what happens inside, but does not press her; he touches her shoulder kindly and promises to wait where he waited last time. His restraint allows Klara to enter the place alone, while his presence outside gives the return a human point of reassurance.

The Barn as a Changing Interior

Klara waits for the Sun’s last rays to reach her through the barn. She fears that it may be angry because she failed in the city, and recognizes that this could be her final chance to ask for its special help. Thinking of what failure would mean for Josie, she nevertheless recalls the Sun’s kindness and walks in without further hesitation.

The barn is again filled with orange light, but its contents have changed. The blocks of hay on the left form a wall that has become lower; particles caught in the light now move agitatedly, as though a block had recently fallen and broken apart. Klara’s fingers cast long shadows toward the entrance when she reaches into the drifting particles. The room retains traces of its earlier arrangement, yet appears less stable: the Red Shelves from her old store remain attached to the barn wall, now slanting crookedly toward the rear, and orderly ceramic coffee cups sit near Melania Housekeeper’s food blender.

Klara looks for the metal foldaway chair where she sat on her previous visit, and hopes to see the old store’s front alcove and an Artificial Friend standing in it. Instead, the Sun’s rays travel almost horizontally from the rear entrance to the front, like traffic passing along a busy street. The opposite side has been divided into uneven boxes; the chair is no longer whole but appears as separate parts in several of them. The expected return of a recognizable scene gives way to a dislocated arrangement, where familiar objects persist but no longer occupy their old, useful places.

Memory and the Plea for Josie

The Sun’s rays are too intense to face directly, and Klara turns toward the shifting forms. She hopes to glimpse Rosa in the lonely diner booth, but the Sun’s pattern falls instead across the front alcove. There, rather than an Artificial Friend, she sees an oval photograph of a sunny green field with sheep. She recognizes the four sheep she glimpsed from the Mother’s car on the return from Morgan’s Falls, the animals whose gentleness had helped erase the memory of the terrible bull. In the photograph they are lined up with their heads lowered to graze, but they seem suspended above the ground; unable to reach the grass, they appear sad. The image preserves a remembered happiness while making its incompleteness visible.

Klara asks the Sun to stay for one more brief moment. She admits that she failed to perform the promised service in the city and has no right to ask for more. Yet she recalls the Sun’s delight when Coffee Cup Lady and Raincoat Man found one another again, and reasons that it wishes well to people who love each other, even after many years. She asks it to consider Josie and Rick: if Josie dies, they will be parted forever, although they are still young and hope to enter adult life together. Klara offers her own observations of their lasting love and asks the Sun to give Josie the special nourishment it gave Beggar Man and his dog.

The barn’s scattered remnants make the plea feel bound to the material world Klara has moved through. Near the alcove she notices a small triangle, first mistaking it for a slice of pie like those in the Diner Manager’s display. It is actually the exposed corner of Josie’s paperback, which Josie dropped from the sofa in the Friend’s Apartment while waiting for the Father. Around the alcove, drifting boxes hold bright bottles from a store window and fragments of a sign for Recessed Lighting. Klara recognizes that her time is running out and renews her argument: although special treatment may be favoritism, she believes young people who will love one another throughout their lives are deserving of the Sun’s exception. She asks it to visit Josie the next day, or the day after, while acknowledging again that she failed in her mission.

The Sun’s Reflection and the Place’s Significance

As evening fades, Klara becomes aware of a separate light behind her right shoulder. She initially takes it for another appearance of the colored bottles, but turns when the Sun’s own light diminishes. The Sun seems to have entered the barn at floor level, dazzling her between the alcove and the front opening. The apparent arrival is a momentary misreading: as her vision adjusts, she understands that a reflective object is catching the Sun’s image, much as the windows of the RPO and other buildings do.

The object is a stack of seven rectangular sheets of glass leaning against the wall. Klara supposes that Mr McBain, or one of his friends, may be planning to replace the barn’s missing walls with windows. For now, the panes serve as a mirror, holding the Sun’s orange evening face among the surrounding shadows. The reflected light does not establish that the Sun has answered her request; the evidence presents it as a reflection. Its appearance nevertheless gives the scene a concentrated image of Klara’s hope: at the moment when daylight is receding and her appeal is nearly over, the Sun seems close enough to see inside the barn.

The fields and barn thus connect two journeys while resisting simple repetition. The same roof, shadow, route, and waiting place return, but the grass, hay, shelves, chair, and objects are altered or broken apart. That mixture of recognition and change makes the barn a setting in which Klara can measure both what she remembers and what may be lost. It holds the memories behind her appeal, the trace of Josie’s ordinary life in a dropped book, and the uncertain possibility that the Sun might still help.