Benjamin Lockhart’S Animal Farm: A Visionary Tale of the End of Days

By Shand Stringham

FANTASY

Benjamin Lockhart worked in the aerospace industry in Florida for almost four decades. But all of the years being tossed around in a high-stress, industry environment had taken its toll. Lockhart was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, and ready for something a little less stressful. And so he and his wife, Martha, picked up stakes and moved to South-Central Pennsylvania, where they purchased a small farm property and prepared to live out the remainder of their days in the peaceful Pennsylvania countryside.

It didnt turn out exactly as planned. Following a motorcycle accident and near-death experience, Lockhart found that he could now hear animals talking in his mind. And he was astounded to discover they had a great deal to say.

Benjamin Lockharts Animal Farm is a visionary tale of the End of Days when animals which have historically been natural enemies predator and prey unexplainably come together in idyllic harmony alongside man, on a Pennsylvania farmstead. The paradigm shift presents a formidable challenge for Benjamin Lockhart and his neighbors. It isnt an easy transition and Lockhart struggles on a daily basis protecting the animals he befriends and ensuring their safety. For Lockhart and his wife, its just one amazing surprise after another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532055126

Shand Stringham

Shand Stringham served twenty-six years in the US Army and retired as a colonel. His final assignment on active duty was on the faculty of the US Army War College, where he taught national security and strategy. He lives with his family in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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Benjamin

Lockhart’s

Animal Farm

A Visionary Tale of the

End of Days

Shand Stringham

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Benjamin Lockhart’s Animal Farm

A Visionary Tale of the End of Days

Copyright © 2018 Shand Stringham.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Original water color on the cover by Rebecca Hartvigsen, used by permission.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5511-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5513-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-5512-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018909203

iUniverse rev. date: 08/28/2018

CONTENTS

In Appreciation

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

IN APPRECIATION

This story was suggested by a conversation with a colleague of mine on the faculty of Shippensburg University, who asked me whether I believed our pets would be with us in Heaven. As I considered the possibilities, I began writing what I believed would be a short story, which would help me gather and order my thoughts on the question. As I wrote, the narrative quickly took on a life of its own, grew to novella length, and then morphed into a short novel. Such is what happens when you really get excited about exploring new ideas that you hadn’t thought much about before. Although billed as a work of fiction, I believe there is a powerful message of reality and truth woven into the fabric of the novel’s narrative.

I had the assistance and technical support of several people in the preparation of this novel whom I want to acknowledge and thank: Allison Watts, Karen Westergard Gill, Janine Weyers, Shellie Stringham Harris, Jason Liller, Tom Lock, Mark Mateya, Jeff and Ruthie Schmutz, Don and Nancy Schoeps, Carson Stringham, Caryn Stringham, Joseph and Isabel Stringham, and Marsha Lund Forsberg. I am likewise grateful for the artistic contribution of Rebecca Hartvigsen, who painted the watercolor of the farmstead for the front cover.

Finally, I express my continuing gratitude to my wife, Quin, who spent long hours discussing with me various ideas and concepts that emerged in my research and writing. Thank you for your loving support and understanding. There is much of you that comes out in this novel.

Shand Stringham

Carlisle Pennsylvania

August 2018

PROLOGUE

Benjamin Lockhart had worked for an engineering firm in Florida, since the week he graduated from MIT. It was satisfying work and he enjoyed it very much. However, on the day he came home from the research lab with his newly-awarded, 40-year pin affixed to his lapel, he realized the time had come to move on to something new and different to live out the remainder of his days. All of the years working in the high-stress, aerospace industry had taken its toll. He was physically tired and emotionally exhausted, and entirely ready for something a little less demanding.

After much discussion over the dinner table, Benjamin and his wife, Martha, decided that since he had reached his Social Security retirement window, they ought to retire sometime during the next year and move back up north to where their family roots lay. Once the decision was made, Lockhart had approached the challenge in much the same way he approached engineering problems at the lab. He created a decision matrix grid listing all of the potential places for them to retire to along the x axis, with their associated advantages and disadvantages listed along the y axis. As they discussed their options, Benjamin and Martha ultimately narrowed their search down to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, near where he was raised.

Lockhart laid out a travel schedule for their upcoming summer vacation, and he and Martha embarked on a 2500 mile road trip in their old SUV to upstate New York. They didn’t get any farther than the middle of Pennsylvania. They had just crossed over the Mason-Dixon line on Interstate 81 at Hagerstown, Maryland, when Lockhart realized they were going to have to make a fuel stop soon. After driving a little farther northeast past Chambersburg and Shippensburg, the low-fuel indicator light finally flicked on. Lockhart dutifully turned the car off the highway at the Newville exit, and pulled into a Sheetz gas station and convenience store.

While he refueled the car, Martha went in to purchase some subs and sodas. After Lockhart inserted the pump nozzle into the SUV’s gas tank and started pumping, he walked around the vehicle, methodically cleaning the windshield and side windows with a wet squeegee. The windows weren’t really all that dirty but he felt he needed the exercise just to loosen up. After hours of sitting in the car, his back and knees ached. Lockhart stood well over six feet tall and he really felt the pain from being cramped up in the confining space of the SUV’s cab.

Lockhartstopped to check out his reflection in the side window as he squeegeed it clean. With the passage of years, his once-dark brown hair was now streaked with gray and he wasn’t quite sure if he was ready for the salt-and-pepper look yet. He kept his beard short and well-trimmed, but it too had started to show the gray in a faint stripe right down the center of his chin. He contorted his facial muscles in various directions but the lines on his forehead didn’t go away. The years were now clearly etched on his face. Lockhart scowled as he remembered how much younger he had looked just a few short years ago. This growing old stuff, he mused, clearly wasn’t for sissies.

As Lockhart finished gassing up the car, Martha emerged from the convenience store and walked briskly back across the parking lot toward him. Lockhart marveled at how youthful Martha appeared. They had been married now for just over four decades, but she still had a lithe spring in her step that belied her years. Her blonde hair showed only a few wisps of silver and she looked decades younger than her age. Even after loosening up and doing a couple of stretches, Lockhart didn’t feel nearly as young at that moment.

Instead of eating there at the Sheetz, they decided to drive down PA Route 11, back in the direction of Shippensburg, to take in the sights of rural Pennsylvania farm country before continuing the journey on to New York. As they drove, Lockhart looked for a shady spot where they could pull over and rest to eat their lunch. They had driven about a mile down the highway when a white-tailed doe and her fawn broke out of a grove of trees alongside the road and bounded out in front of them across the highway. Lockhart locked the brakes and steered the car off to the left to avoid hitting the animals. The SUV fishtailed as it skidded off the roadway and hit the end of an old, ornate, wrought iron fence that ran the length of the front of a farm property. Lockhart just missed hitting the fawn, as it continued across the highway, bounding after its mother on wobbly legs into a corn field on the other side.

Lockhart took a deep breath, still shaking slightly from the near miss with the deer. He backed up away from the damaged fence, and pulled the vehicle off the shoulder of the road into the farmstead’s driveway to assess the damage. The car had escaped with only a few minor scratches along the front left bumper. However, the last two sections of the wrought iron fence were bent up and would require some major welding repair work.

Lockhart looked over at his wife with a pained expression. We didn’t need that, Martha!

Maybe we did, Benjamin, Martha responded smiling as she came around the side of the SUV. Look over there.

Lockhart’s looked in the direction where Martha was pointing and saw a large FOR SALE sign posted in front of a rustic farmhouse shaded by a row of lofty elm trees. Because of the trees, the sign wasn’t easily seen from the roadway. Had it not been for the encounter with the deer and the wrought iron fence, they would have driven right by and never would have seen the FOR SALE sign.

Well, perhaps you’re right, Martha. Maybe Providence has intervened here today, Lockhart acknowledged. Let’s take a look around.

Walking around to the other side of the front porch, Lockhart gave the old farmhouse a quick once over. It reminded him of the family farm where he was raised in upstate New York. It was a vintage, two-story structure, built in the same traditional German farmhouse design, with shuttered windows, and a steep gabled roof. It was just the kind of farmhouse they were looking for.

Lockhart squinted as he read the details printed in small letters on the FOR SALE sign. He liked what he saw. The farmstead was just over ten acres. The property included the farmhouse, a large two-story barn, and several outbuildings. The house appeared vacant, so they decided to walk around the property to get a better look at the place.

The farmstead property included a broad expanse of manicured lawn, a fenced pasture with grazing sheep and goats, a large vegetable garden, a small, tidy orchard, a grape arbor, and an extensive wooded area. The back of the property abutted a huge cornfield, separated by an ancient, fieldstone wall. All in all, the place had a comfortable, inviting feel to it.

The realtor’s number was listed on the sign. At Martha’s urging, Lockhart called to find out if it would be possible to see the interior of the house, barn, and outbuildings. It turned out that the realtor was already showing another house nearby, and said that she would be right there. While the Lockharts waited for her to arrive, they munched on their sandwiches, sitting at a wooden picnic table in the shade of a stately old elm tree in the side yard next to the driveway. They had just finished their subs when the realtor arrived a few minutes later.

She stepped down from her Suburban and rushed forward to greet the Lockharts. Thank you for waiting, folks, she gushed. I’m Gladys Gladtree.

We’re the Lockharts. This is Martha and I’m Benjam…

Well, I certainly am glad to meet you today, Mrs. Gladtree interrupted before Benjamin could complete his introduction. She reached out and thrust Lockhart her business card in his direction. Without pausing to give Benjamin and Martha opportunity to say much, she launched immediately into a sales pitch and detailed description of the property.

The house and barn are over a hundred and fifty years old, Mrs. Gladtree explained, but they have been extremely, well-cared for by the former owners. Let me give you a tour of the inside of the house.

As Martha toured the old farmhouse, she was enchanted with the building’s interior. It had the look of a well-kept antique, with hardwood floors and immaculate, built-in, hand-crafted cabinetry in the kitchen and parlor. On the second-story of the house, she explored three spacious bedrooms and a large bathroom which had been updated with new, antique-looking fixtures, traditional wallpaper, and fresh paint. Martha liked what she saw, and began to calculate in her imagination how to apportion out the rooms for the master bedroom, guest bedroom, and sewing room.

As Lockhart walked through the house with Martha and the realtor, he was puzzled about the whole thing. Glancing down at the realtor’s business card in his hand, he asked, Mrs. Gladtree, why would the owners want to sell such a beautiful house and property anyway?

Mrs. Gladtree cheerfully responded, Please, just call me Gladys. The owners, the Kleinfelters, are an elderly couple who have lived here for over thirty years. But with their advancing age, it had become too much for them to keep up. They moved into an assisted-living facility in Carlisle two weeks ago, and the house and farmstead property were just listed yesterday.

Lockhart and Martha looked at each other in surprise at the realtor’s comment. Just listed yesterday…. they both were thinking that perhaps it was more than just a coincidence that brought them there that afternoon.

When they finished the tour of the house, they moved back outside and looked around the rest of the farmstead property. The barn had two major entrances. A ground-level barn door faced away from the highway, which led into a stable area where the property owners kept horses and cows. The upper-level entrance to the barn faced the highway. It had a banked entrance so that you could drive farm equipment and hay wagons directly up onto the second floor.

To the side of the barn was a large storage shed made of native stone, faced with heavy timbers painted red like the barn. The door to the building hung open, and Lockhart could see that the walls were extremely thick, perhaps as much as two to three feet. He stuck his head through the doorway and realized that the temperature inside the building was at least twenty degrees cooler than it was outside. He guessed that the building was used as a root cellar to keep produce fresh over the winter. On the other side of the barn, they encountered a large chicken coop with a dozen hens pecking around the fenced yard. In a separate enclosure adjacent to the hen house, two large turkeys strutted around their pen, pecking at insects and feed on the ground.

As they finished up their tour around the farm property, Lockhart inquired about the asking price. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that the property was being offered for a reasonable amount that was well within their budget. Mrs. Gladtree even sweetened the deal by declaring that all of the farm animals on the premises were included in the asking price.

Excusing themselves momentarily, Lockhart and Martha stepped off to the side on the other side of the driveway where they could discuss the matter privately. They didn’t notice that they had been joined by a pair of unseen beings, tall, elderly men, with long, white beards, and dressed in flowing white robes. The beings, invisible to Benjamin and Martha, stood on either side of the couple, monitoring their conversation, as they discussed the property.

This place is so beautiful, Benjamin, Martha said. It’s just what we were looking for.

Yes, I know, Martha, but we’re still quite a ways from upstate New York, Benjamin countered.

"I know, the being standing to the right side of Martha said softly. But upstate New York isn’t that far away, and we’ll still be able to visit friends and family whenever we want."

I know, Benjamin, responded Martha. But upstate New York isn’t that far away and we’ll still be able to visit friends and family whenever we want.

Taking care of a small farm like this could end up being a lot of work, Martha, Lockhart countered.

The being at Martha’s left leaned forward and whispered, "Yes, but think how much fun that would be. We’ve always wanted to live on a farm just like this."

Again, Martha responded to the prompt, Yes, Benjamin, but think how much fun that would be. We’ve always wanted to live on a farm just like this.

The being to Martha’s right leaned over to Lockhart. "What do you think, Martha? Could you be happy living here?"

What do you think, Martha? Lockhart asked. Could you be happy living here?

Another prompt. "Oh yes. I really could. Couldn’t you?"

Oh yes, Benjamin, Martha responded exuberantly, her cheeks flushed. I really could. Couldn’t you?

"Well, yes, the being to Martha’s right again prompted I just wanted to hear you say it. I think we would later regret it if we passed up this opportunity. I think that we should tell Mrs. Gladtree that we want to buy the place."

Well, yes, Martha. I just wanted to hear you say it, Lockhart said agreeably. I think we would later regret it if we passed up this opportunity. I think that we should tell Mrs. Gladtree that we want to buy the place.

Lockhart took Martha by the hand and drew her close to him and gave her a big hug. Then the two walked back over to where Mrs. Gladtree was standing expectantly to discuss a few more details about the potential sale.

As the Lockharts pulled their car out of the driveway to follow Mrs. Gladtree into Carlisle to her office to close the deal, the two unseen beings nodded to each other with smiles of satisfaction stretching across their faces. "That worked out well, Joseph. I don’t think we had to sway Benjamin and Martha much to make the decision to buy the farm and move here. They seemed very receptive to our promptings."

"You are right, Noah, said the other. They seemed most eager to drive into town to close the deal."

Well, you have set the wheels in motion, Joseph. Do you think your plan is going to work out the way you anticipate?

"Oh, most things never work out precisely the way we plan them, Noah, but I think that this one will work out just fine. We will just have to let things unfold and happen. By the way, how are the Kleinfelters doing since we suggested to them they move into town to the assisted-living facility. I hope that they are okay and making the transition well after living here on the farm for so many years."

"Oh, I checked in on them earlier this morning. They seem to be doing just fine. Of course, they miss the farm, but I think that they are also enjoying not having the responsibility for doing all the chores that go with it."

Two squirrels chased across the yard and came up abruptly to where the two beings stood conversing. The squirrels stopped directly in front of them and looked up curiously.

"Well, hello there little guys," Noah said. "It looks like we’ve got a great couple to come and replace the Kleinfelters to take care of the farmstead here. I think you’re really going to like them."

Noah squatted down and the two squirrels approached without fear, climbing into his outstretched hands. An opossum, two groundhogs, a pair of doves, and a flock of chickens approached cautiously and gathered around them. Noah held the squirrels up close in front of his face and nodded to the other animals as well. "I think you’re all going to like the Lockharts. They are very good people, much like the Kleinfelters in many ways. You be sure to take good care of them. They have quite a job ahead of them here."

* * * * * * * * * * * *

In the realtor’s office, Lockhart made out a check for earnest money on the purchase, and they signed the necessary paperwork. Hurrying back to their car, they drove out to the freeway entrance to Interstate 81 and turned south in the direction of their Florida home, anxious to get back to begin preparing for the move to Pennsylvania to begin a new life on the farm.

Lockhart turned in his retirement papers as soon as they arrived back in Florida. They sold most of their modern and contemporary-style furniture and household goods, and brought the few things they retained back with them to Pennsylvania in a small, rental trailer. They finished the final paperwork with the realtor and moved in a few days later.

The Lockharts were excited to settle down now and embark on their restful retirement adventure. Becoming a gentleman farmer sounded most inviting to Lockhart, and Martha was excited about becoming a country farm wife.

Over the next few years, Martha visited estate auction sales around Cumberland County, furnishing the house with antique furniture and period pieces, which accentuated the beauty of the old home. Lockhart set up a woodworking shop in a side room on the second-story of the barn and established his man-cave down below on the first floor in a large room adjacent to the stable area. True to their intent, they drove north to upstate New York frequently to visit family, but over time, the trips became less frequent as aged family members passed on, until finally, there wasn’t anyone left to visit.

After they moved in, Lockhart was always just one step away from having the damaged wrought iron fence repaired, but he never quite got around to it. Fifteen years later, the fence remained in a state of disrepair, a crumpled, palpable reminder of the vicissitudes of life that brought them to retire in the Cumberland Valley in South-Central Pennsylvania.

CHAPTER 1

Benjamin Lockhart sat back on his kneeling seat. He had been weeding in his vegetable garden for almost an hour now, working his way down a row of tomatoes and bell peppers that had become choked with grass and invasive weeds. The sun shone brightly and the humidity was oppressive – a typical, hot Pennsylvania summer day. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead and into his eyes. His back ached and he stood up to stretch and loosen up. Off to his side in the barnyard, Spike, the family dog, chased after the two barn cats, Priscilla and Elvis. Spike barked and raced back and forth frantically, and the cats meowed plaintively as they tried to evade the big mutt. Lockhart was never quite sure whether they were friends just playing around, or mortal enemies in deadly earnest. It was sometimes hard to tell.

Lockhart wiped the sweat from his brow with his shirt sleeve. Out of the corner of his eye, he detected a blurred motion at the far end of the row. He stepped back to get a better view and saw a large groundhog waddling towards a hole in the side of the rock retaining wall, carrying a fat, red tomato in its jaws. Angry that a groundhog was loose in his garden and destroying his vegetables after all the work he put into it, Lockhart picked up a stone and threw it as hard as he could in the direction of the