BEFORE WE WERE FOREVER

The Fence and a rival, Properly Considered

It took Davou the better part of two weeks to properly engineer a legitimate reason to visit the Rwang family compound, a delay that tested his patience considerably before he finally learned, through the same reliable network of extended family gossip that connected every household in that stretch of Jos, that Talatu's father had been complaining, at a recent gathering, about a section of fence along the compound's eastern edge that had fallen into disrepair.

He arrived on a Saturday morning, tools borrowed from his own father's modest collection, and presented himself at the Rwang gate with a directness he hoped would read as helpful rather than presumptuous.

“I understand your fence requires attention,” he told Talatu's father, a serious, deliberate man named Bulus Rwang whose reputation for careful, considered judgment of character exceeded even his daughter's own. “I am reasonably competent with such repairs, and I have the morning free. I would consider it a genuine favor if you would allow me to help.”

Bulus Rwang studied the young man before him with the same unhurried scrutiny his daughter had displayed at the wedding, though considerably more skeptical in its initial assessment. “You are the young man who proposed to my daughter after a single afternoon's acquaintance,” he said, not quite a question.

“I am,” Davou admitted, seeing no advantage in denying it. “She informed me, quite correctly, that the proposal was premature. I have come today with no expectation beyond fixing your fence, sir. I am not attempting to circumvent her answer through some alternate route.”

“And yet you are here,” Bulus observed, “at my gate, on a Saturday morning, offering free labor to a family you have no established connection to, for reasons I suspect have everything to do with my daughter and nothing whatsoever to do with genuine concern for my fence.”

“The concern for your fence is genuine,” Davou said, “even if I will not pretend the underlying motivation is anything other than what you have already correctly guessed. I am hoping, sir, that you will judge me by what I actually do, over whatever time you find reasonable, rather than by the admittedly foolish way I introduced myself.”

Bulus considered this for a long moment, something in the young man's plain, unhurried honesty evidently satisfying some private test the older man had been quietly conducting throughout the entire exchange. “The fence is along the eastern wall,” he said finally, gesturing toward the section in question. “I make no promises about anything beyond today's labor. But I will not turn away a genuine offer of help simply because I suspect its underlying motivation.”

Davou spent the following four hours repairing the fence with a thoroughness that exceeded what the task strictly required, aware, throughout the labor, of Talatu's occasional presence at the compound's edge, ostensibly engaged in her own household chores but watching, he suspected, with rather more attention than she would have readily admitted.

“You did not need to fix the entire section,” she observed, finding a moment to speak with him directly once her father had retreated inside for a midday rest, studying his considerable, unnecessary thoroughness with an expression that mixed skepticism and something else Davou could not quite properly identify. “The worst of the damage was only in one corner.”

“I wanted to do the job properly,” Davou said, wiping sweat from his brow with the particular satisfaction of honest, completed labor. “I find half-measures generally unsatisfying, in fences and in most other matters.”

“Is that meant to be a comment about my own recent decision?” Talatu asked, with the directness Davou was beginning to recognize as entirely characteristic of her.

“It was meant as an observation about fences,” Davou said, “though I confess I would not object if you chose to apply it more broadly.”

She had not smiled, exactly, at that response, but something in her expression had softened marginally, and Davou walked home that evening with the particular satisfaction of a man who understood he had not won anything definitive, but had, at minimum, avoided losing further ground.

It was nearly six months into Davou's patient, deliberate campaign — fence repairs given way to occasional escort duties for Talatu's two younger sisters to and from church functions, escort duties given way to the kind of ordinary, unremarkable familiarity that comes from a young man simply being present, reliably and without complaint, in a household's daily orbit — that Davou learned of Yakubu Choji, a schoolteacher from a neighboring town whose own considerably more direct courtship of Talatu had been proceeding, apparently, for nearly as long as Davou's own quieter campaign.

“He teaches mathematics,” Talatu's younger sister Comfort informed him, with the transparent delight of a fourteen-year-old who had correctly identified an opportunity to provoke a reaction. “He is considerably more directly complimentary than you are, Davou. He brought Talatu an actual book of poetry last week.”

“I am pleased Talatu has an admirer with such refined literary taste,” Davou said, with more composure than he actually felt, understanding, even as he said it, exactly how thin that composure had suddenly become.

He met Yakubu Choji properly the following month, at a church harvest celebration where both young men found themselves, with the particular awkwardness of open competitors forced into polite proximity, standing near the same refreshment table while Talatu conversed animatedly with a cluster of her own friends some distance away.

“You are the clerk,” Yakubu said, offering his hand with a directness that Davou found, somewhat unwillingly, difficult to dislike. “The one who fixed the Rwang family's fence. I understand you have been rather thoroughly useful to that household these past months.”

“And you are the schoolteacher with the poetry,” Davou said, shaking the offered hand. “I understand you have been rather more directly persuasive than my own approach has managed.”

Yakubu laughed, genuinely, at the observation. “I confess I do not entirely understand your approach. You have spent six months fixing fences and escorting her sisters, and as far as I am aware, you have not once repeated the proposal she originally refused.”

“She asked me not to,” Davou said, simply. “I intend to respect that request until she herself indicates otherwise. I would rather demonstrate my seriousness through patience than undermine it by pressing a point she has already asked me to set aside.”

Something in Yakubu's expression shifted at that answer, a flicker of genuine consideration replacing his earlier easy confidence. “That is,” he said slowly, “a more disciplined approach than I would have credited you with, based on the story of your original proposal.”

“The original proposal was foolish,” Davou admitted. “I have been attempting, in the months since, to correct the foolishness rather than compound it.”

They did not become friends, exactly, in the months that followed, but they developed something closer to a wary, honest respect — two young men competing openly and decently for the same woman's genuine regard, neither resorting to the kind of undermining gossip or manufactured rivalry that might have made the whole situation considerably uglier than it actually became.

“I will tell you honestly,” Yakubu said to him once, nearly a year into their parallel courtships, the two of them sharing an unexpectedly candid conversation at another church function, “I do not know which of us she will eventually choose. I find that uncertainty considerably more difficult to sit with than I expected, given how confident I felt at the beginning of all this.”

“I find it difficult too,” Davou admitted. “Though I have decided the difficulty is itself a useful test. If I cannot survive genuine uncertainty about her answer, I am not entirely certain I deserve the answer I am hoping for.”

It was Talatu herself, nearly eighteen months into the two young men's parallel campaigns, who finally, gently, resolved the competition — not through any dramatic declaration, but through the accumulated, unglamorous evidence of eighteen months' patient observation, evidence that had told her, gradually and thoroughly, exactly which of her two suitors' character she trusted more completely.

“I have decided,” she told Yakubu, in a conversation she conducted with the same careful, deliberate honesty she brought to everything important, “that I do not believe we are suited for a lifetime together, however genuinely I have valued your attention these past months. I wanted to tell you plainly, rather than allow you to continue hoping for an answer I do not believe I will ever be able to give you.”

Yakubu received the news with a grace that Davou, hearing of it secondhand through the same reliable gossip network that had informed him of the rivalry in the first place, found himself genuinely admiring. The schoolteacher would go on, within two years, to marry a young woman from his own hometown, a match that appeared, by every subsequent report, to have suited him considerably better than his patient, ultimately unsuccessful pursuit of Talatu ever could have.

Davou did not learn of Talatu's decision immediately, nor did he properly understand, for several more weeks, exactly what it meant for his own considerably longer campaign. He only knew, arriving at the Rwang compound one ordinary Tuesday evening to escort her sisters to a church function as had become his settled habit, that Talatu herself met him at the gate rather than sending word through a sibling, and that something in her expression carried a warmth he had not previously been permitted to properly witness.

“Walk with me,” she said, “before you collect my sisters. I believe we have a conversation that has been considerably overdue.”