An univited guest
My father first encountered Sybil in the 1990s on a Sunday afternoon upon returning home after a trip to Tahlequah. He arrived at the farmhouse and saw an unfamiliar car in the yard. He didn’t think a whole lot of that. Maybe someone ran out of gas or broke down.
However, when he opened the farmhouse door he was met by an unfamiliar dog. That was a bit more intriguing than the car.
As he walked through the house he found an unfamiliar woman napping on the bed.
“Someone’s been sleeping in my bed,” he said in a Goldilocks and The Three Bears voice, “and she’s still here!”
The woman awoke, introduced herself as Sybil, said she used to live on the place when she was little, and was there to reminisce. Clearly, she felt at home.
She told him of the barn being raised, and said she’d bring a photo. She knew of the old house that used to sit just to the south of the farmhouse.
Years later, I had returned to Oklahoma after living away for a couple of years, renters had recently moved out of the farmhouse, and I was taking advantage of the empty house to tile the floor. It was a gray November afternoon, and I was having a great time doing what would be my first, but definitely not last, major home project at the farmhouse. I didn’t know it then, but that work was my process of coming back home and making it mine.
Then the door opened and a woman stepped in.
“Let me guess…” I said, “you’re Sybil.”
She came in, sat down on the floor because there weren’t any chairs, and told me she had driven the back road on the far side of the creek, tried to cross the creek, and got stuck. She didn’t seem too concerned about her predicament.
As the short day began to wane I thought maybe we should get the car out of the creek. I only had one cot, and I wanted it that night.
My farm rehabilitation work had not yet extended to Big Red, the International Harvester tractor, so I didn’t even try to start it. Instead, I got a chain and drove my Saab 900 Turbo down to the creek. “This is not going to work,” I thought to myself as I hooked the chain to both cars, hers being a tiny Geo Metro that never had a chance of getting across the creek. But it did, and Sybil went on her way.
More years passed, and Denise and I were out working in the yard when the Geo Metro came down the lane. “You’re about to meet Sybil,” I told Denise.
She got out and handed me a rolled up paper that contained a print of the barn in its early years. She said she was working on building her casket, and would like a piece of wood from the barn for it. We walked over, found a loose piece, and she held it to her chest and then drove away, never to return.