By the next time, the filth would look ancient. Ancient like cooking smoke and grease in a caveman’s cave. The walls held a horrible history like the walls in an abattoir or the walls in a murder house. They kept the smells. The smell of cowhide. The close heady smell of cattle, of cattle sleeping and breathing and eating and shitting. The smell of cattle feed. The smell of chickens, of chicken feathers, of chicken excrement. The hot smell of a nesting hen. The smell of pigs. Pig excrement has a seductively sweet tone at the bottom and a sour tone over the top. Wet goat, nervous sheep, fretful ducks, complaining pigeons. And hay. Hay left to sit for a long time can spontaneously combust. It ferments and moulds and, from the inside, creates a surprising amount of heat. And, from the silo, corn feed, which also heats and ferments and causes a sharp vinegar and altogether toxic smell.

On the walls which once were white, the bruises and scrapes of the animals. A smear of excrement. A blossom of blood. The splayed hair of leftover hay. Rings, as in a tub, of levels of animal excrement. Dust, too. Cobwebs. The walls are not nearly white anymore. At best, a charcoal grey.

Once a year, men would come. And the process was always miraculous and I always insisted on watching. First, the men would open the doors and the windows. And the wind that would blow through was like the wind that saved Frosty. Pressurized water hoses would uncover the walls and find them again. A years worth of dust and webs and the smell of a thousand frightened animals. And then the best part: a mixture of calcimine and lime and chalk called whitewash. It would be pushed through the same pressurized hoses and it was over in a flash: the walls were white again. For the time being.

SS