The First

“Is this it?”

He asked a question that his wife answered by almost jumping out of the jeep and scrambling up the hill. She was pounding on the dashboard as they stopped in front of a slight hillock.

“Of course it is! You remember…”

“I what? Remember?” He stepped out of the vehicle and looked around. There were no other houses nearby and it looked as though no one else had passed by the place in quite some time. The dust rose in the dying sunlight and he felt the heat of it burn his neck. “What is this place?”

She really could not take him at these moments.

“Don’t pull that on me now, all right? This is it. The barn. Our play area. Our place.”

“Our?”

“Yes, 'our'.”

“Maybe your…”

It was no good trying to explain this to him. “Come on. I’ll race you to it.” She was already at the doors before he decided to join in.

It was still standing. That was what she could not believe as they stepped inside. No one would be there to take over it. The town decided to just let it rot under its own weight and age and she could see how that might happen any day now. Warm smells of hay and manure mingled in the air and she stare up at the rafters and rotten planks in the roof.

“Perfect.”

“Yeah, really perfect. A perfect dump.”

“You really… You don’t remember this place at all?”

“My dear, I may have grown up in this town, but there were certain types of…entertainment that I managed to avoid.”

She spun around the empty space, taking in the scents and sights and then glared at him.

“This was a very special place for all of the neighborhood kids. We would all plan to come here on weekends when the weather wasn’t too bad, which meant at the end of school (only time the rain and snow seemed to disappear). I climbed up into one of these places to just get away from all the crap in my life.”

“Your dad…”

She almost flinched before he finished his sentence.

“Among other things. He was one thing, the neighbours were another. My mom was sometimes one of those things, too.”

“I just got on my bike and rode the trails.”

“Yeah, you keep talking about it every time we talk about our childhoods.”

“Because, my love, it is something I remember. This place? Not really sure I…”

“You are going to make me recall too many things that you should already know.”

He sat on a bale of hay that surprised him with its firmness.

“Please do.”

“Okay.” She sat down beside him. “I would come here and try to forget what was going on in my life and one day, when I thought I was all alone, you showed up.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I had not seen you in school, so that meant you must have been going to that private school across the river. You were dressed better than most of the kids I knew. Only thing that surprised me was that I thought you guys got out at a different time of the year.”

“Go on.”

“When we talked, I said that this was a special place for the neighborhood kids, not strangers, so if you are from out of town, just visiting, you should stay out. And you laughed.”

“Hmm… I should remember that.”

“I will continue with the plot.”

“Okay.”

“So, we kept meeting for a few summers after that. Then there was high school and college. A big trauma because you were going to some place out of town and I was staying right here. And you promised…we promised to stay in touch. And then we kissed.”

There was a moment there where he could think of nothing to say.

She had to speak.

“Not all we did.”

She stood up, stared at his surprised face, placed his hand in hers, and pulled him deeper into the hay.

*

A very interesting afternoon, he thought. But he still had some questions.

“So, every summer, we’re gonna do this?”

“Yeah, but remember to be more surprised when I tell the story next time.”

“But I thought it was my turn next?”

“Yes, yes, you’re right. But we should make sure we rehearse it all before we come back.”

“And you drive.”

“Yes, I will.”

All these years together and she still found ways to surprise him. Or maybe he was still surprising her. Whatever kept their marriage going, he would do it. They had decided to try this only last year and, if the barn still stood there next year, they would be back. He could keep that memory intact.