horsebarn

My throat and eyes were sore as sandpaper from crying, and Mama gave me exactly five minutes to wash up and dress before dragging me out to the horsebarn.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

She'd moved the cooker into the horsebarn after a week of wrestling with the gadgets we had in our 1975 kitchen, and when Pa had warned her that the smoke was going to raise questions in New Jerusalem, she explained that she was going to run some flexible exhaust hose through the door into 75 and into our apt's air-scrubber.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

I stood on our porch for a long time, staring at the horsebarn.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

So imagine my surprise when I stood up and found us right in our very own horsebarn, having made a circle around town and back to where we'd started from!

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

Well, when we packed our bags and Pa went into the horsebarn to hitch up our team, I figured we'd be taking a short trip out to the train station.

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We'd gotten a new load of hay in for our team, and Mama added stacking it in the horsebarn to my chores.

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I looked over my shoulder, at the closed door of our house, then walked slowly to the horsebarn.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

My eyes were telling me that we were hundreds of yards off the ground, and while I'd jumped from the rafters of the horsebarn into the hay countless times, I suddenly discovered that I was afraid of heights.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow

When he disappeared, Mama and I came back through the triple-bolted door that led from our apt in 1975 to our horsebarn in 1898.

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I'd been consciously avoiding the horsebarn since Pa had disappeared.

A Place so Foreign Cory Doctorow