Chapter 8

Jud

"Right" Laurey stood next to him, no trace of a smile on her lips. "I guess you oughta copy this page down. Help practice your letters." She placed one of her books, A Winter's Tale on the desk next to his chalkboard. "I'll check when you've filled it up. And try to write small, so I don't have to keep checkin' it and cleanin' every few minutes. Besides, it looks childish the way you still write so big."

"Yeah. I'll try."

She sat on the sofa with a book of her own, pointedly angling her body away from him so he couldn't see her face or even what page she was looking at.

He laboriously began copying the words from the play, trying to be as fast as possible while still figuring out what was going on. He'd liked reading with Laurey before, enjoyed the plots and the romances they reenacted as they read aloud as different characters. But the stories that had come to life seemed only cold and confusing on the page with nothing to guide him, nothing to tell him what was supposed to be funny or romantic or exciting or maybe even all three at the same time. He missed their fits of laughter at Laurey's deep voice when there weren't enough girl parts and she had to play Horatio or Apemantus, the way she'd get cold and sleepy as the sun began to set, cuddling closer and closer to him until the light became too dim to read and he'd carry her upstairs, her arms around his neck.

"Hey, um, Laurey, what's "'royally attorneyed'* mean?"

"It don't matter, Jud, just copy it down."

He turned back to his desk, remembering how she used to help him with words, how they used to laugh over the ones neither of them knew, taking increasingly ludicrous guesses as to their meaning. Remembered how when he practiced his writing, she used to guide his hand, watched with constant affirmations as he grew more confident.

He'd thought having her would be all he needed, never figured on how miserable he could feel with her in the room, never thought that his memories of happiness could somehow be worse than never having been happy with her at all. He scribbled faster as he wondered how it should have been. He should have let Curly have her, that was how it was supposed to be, and everyone knew it. Should have left the farm if it had been too painful, moved out somewhere else and started over. He was good at starting over, had done it often enough. Finding another girl would have been too much to hope for, but at least he wouldn't have known well enough to miss Laurey as much as he did now. Anyone could get over a girl who'd been nothing but pretty and a little bit sweet, but it was near impossible to get over a girl you really knew.

"'M done"

She rose and looked over his shoulder. "Told you a hundred times, Jud, the 'R' don't look like that. Do those again."

"Okay" he wiped off the slate and started writing again, somehow hoping a chalkboard of 'trained', 'rooted', 'branch', 'their', and 'mature' would make him worthy of her approval again.

*Act 1, Scene 1, line 28-29