AFTER WORDS FAILED

Letitia liked action. Whenever action was needed, there she was, ready for it, her chin stuck out as she hammered or sawed or plunged the old unreliable toilet. When she went bungey jumping from a bridge in New Zealand, she leaped before she was told to, and when she was told she couldn’t do something, she did it. Immediately.

Larry liked words. He liked to feel them in his mouth and mind before he said them. He liked to sit back while others talked, and then fill a tiny silence with the perfect phrase, one that guaranteed a good laugh and a new perspective on the situation for all around him. He resisted hastiness in all its forms, and tended to wait for things to percolate so long that sometimes others had forgotten what he was talking about, having moved on to other things.

Sometimes he would think of the perfect words in the middle of the night, when no-one was there to listen.

Letitia wasn’t a listener at any time of day or night. She would make plans and then carry them out. Larry also liked plans, but he rarely agreed with Letitia about the details.

When they first met, Larry was ten and Letitia eight, but she was always the leader. She’d been sent away to stay for the summer with old family friends, Larry’s grandparents. Her parents were exhausted by the prospect of a whole season of Letitia whirling around their tiny apartment creating havoc and demanding activity every minute of every long, hot, day.

Larry’s Pop was a wise man, and immediately saw that the best way to handle Letitia was to keep her moving. She was keen to help with the milking of the cow, the feeding of three not-so-little pigs, picking up sticks for kindling the ever-hungry wood stove in the old farmhouse, lugging an adult sized bag of ice through the cherry orchard to pick the very best fruit, the fastest.

Larry followed along, trying to keep up. His best suggestion got them in the most trouble. “Why don’t we do hay sliding?” he asked, slowly.

“Where? How?” Letitia was off towards the old hay barn instantly. Larry showed her how to tilt a few square bales into a slide where some had been taken out of the total, making a series of ledges.

“Let’s make it bigger!” Letitia was racing up to the highest bales, touching the dusty rafters where the sunlight slanted in through gaps in the shingled roof. Soon she had Larry rearranging bales to make the longest slide ever, right out into the dusty doorway to the main yard.

They whooped as they slid, straw sliding into every seam of their clothes, dust into their noses, bales breaking apart or tilting sideways.

“Again!”

Hours of joy were suddenly interrupted by the appearance of Pop in the doorway. “What the heck do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s really fun!” shouted Letitia, but Larry could see that Pop was not happy.

He landed at Pop’s feet with a thump and a scatter of straw and looked up at the old man. Pop was looking up at the roof, way up where Letitia was ready for the next ride. His face was square and hard in a way Larry barely recognized.

“Get down off of there, you little minx. You could be killed!”

“I’m coming” Letitia called happily and set off, but as if Pop’s anger had set off some new reaction, her slide hit a hidden snag, a stick caught in the baling twine and stabbed her in the leg, sending her twisting sideways with an “Argh. Ow.”

Pop moved faster than Larry had ever seen before, leaping forward, and caught the falling girl before her head cracked open in the hard-packed dirt.

Pop looked at Larry. “You knew better than this”

Larry stammered “I…I…But…”

Pop pushed them out. “Never go in there again. It’s not a play space.” He slammed the heavy barn doors and bolted them shut.

Years later, Larry was studying to be a teacher in the city, and Letitia lasted two weeks in the first year course before taking herself off to be a soccer coach. She cannoned into him in a student bar, looked up at his giant shoulders and slow smile, and was hooked back into the friend zone.

When he said he was thinking of setting up a holiday program at the old farm, she was there with boots on. “I’ll run the sports program” she said.

While the city had grown toward the farm, Larry had managed to lease the hay barn, one orchard and a field from his relatives.

The building work to convert the hay barn into a set of bunk rooms, a kitchen, and a meeting space was going slowly, though. A carpenter put a staple through his foot. The highest, most expensive window in the front wall smashed for no clear reason. The concrete truck got bogged and the partial floor had to be dug out and relaid.

“What’s going on? Is there a curse on this place?” Letitia asked.

Larry shook his head. “No such thing as curses.”

At that moment a chunk of framing fell from the upper level and landed at his feet.

“Well, I nailed that damn thing in, and it looks to me like its un-nailed itself. That’s cursey behavior in a plank of wood.”

Larry scuffed his feet.

“You can’t run a camp here if it’s going to hurt people.”

Larry nodded. “You’re right. This was a bad idea.”

“Wait! Just like that. You’re going to give up?”

Larry took a deep breath. “My Dad died here. I thought if we changed it enough, it wouldn’t matter any more.”

Letitia jumped. “Right here? In this barn. How? What happened?”

Larry wouldn’t answer, just walked away, too many words bottled up in his head to allow any single one to come out and explain.

But Letitia didn’t let it rest. She asked around and finally found out what she needed to know.

Larry’s father didn’t just die in the barn. He hanged himself from the rafters and his Pop found him the morning after.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What good would it do?”

“But why did he kill himself?”

“I don’t know. I was only a baby. Pop said he couldn’t ask the only woman he loved to be with him, so he settled for my Mom. He gave up hope of happiness. He thought he wasn’t good enough to live. He didn’t think I was enough of a reason, that I would have wanted a Dad.”

Letitia hugged him hard. She had no words for this. And no action to take.

Larry looked down at her. “I wanted to tell you I love you, here, where he gave up. But I couldn’t do it. You don’t want that sort of history in your life. You need someone who can do joy, and radiance, and all the things you deserve.”

“I’ll tell you what I deserve. I deserve to be told when someone’s in love with me. Look what happened to your Dad when he was too cowardly to say it. You’re too humble.”

“For real?”

"For real. I was waiting and waiting for you to say it."

Larry swung her around and the sunlight came streaming through the newly-repaired high window, the last of the hay dust wafted away on the cool breeze, the whole building sighed into a new position, one where happiness could conquer a curse.