The Lie Behind the Postcard - The Postcard Memoirs
Twenty-three years ago, there was a man with blue eyes, pale skin and dark brown hair, any woman that looked at him could fell immediately for him due the fact that he was in fact very good looking, he was anxious and scared he didn’t knew what to expect, he was writing postcard to a person he met years before.
This was a very special person for him, this person mean to him more than his just married wife. He had being thinking in sending this postcard for so long, but every time he tried to write it for any weird reason his hand started shaking and he was unable to finish it.
Plus the feeling of not knowing if there would be an answer. “If I send this postcard would Ennis answer it? Did Ennis still remember me?” he said, but it have being four years now and he was anxious he wanted to see Ennis on more time. He needed to feel his skin, his lips and his body next to his. So he sent the postcard telling him that he was going to be there on June 24, and was asking to confirm their encounter. He later received a postcard with Ennis answer “You Bet”. After that they had a 20 years “friendship” in which they went on fishing and hunting trips.
There was something that made their friendship different. They worked together on 1963 for a Ranch man call Joe Aguirre, herding his sheep to Brokeback Mountain; they used to sleep on different tents, one that was few miles away from the allotments and the other was next to them. During that summer they discovered something about them; they managed to make their friendship evolve to something else. They shared feelings to each other, Ennis and he became in Brokeback Mountain.
But it ended when Aguirre, who once saw them in “that”, told them to come down. When they went down from the mountain he thought that they will never saw each other again, the only thing that he got to remember Ennis was a shirt with blood stained caused buy a gushing nosebleed on their last afternoon up on the mountain, when he in a contortionistic and grappling wrestling slammed Ennis nose with his knee. He stole this shirt and kept it with him with his own shirt that was also with dried blood when he tried to clean Ennis’ nose and he upset hit him back. But now in 1990 he didn’t had this shirt, he lost it and with it he lost the last thing of his deceased love.
Jack Twist his name, he’s 46 years old, and he had being in a constant pain after he found a postcard, from Ennis, in his bureau one day. That postcard was the last Ennis sent him to confirm their meeting in May of 1982. He looked at the postcard and tears fell on it. It was the last thing he was willing to find. He now was sorry for everything that he did to Ennis. That time after their last trip in which Ennis told him he couldn’t see him before November he decided to let him go. He went to his parent house and this time he didn’t talked about Ennis he talked about that man he meet on Texas, his neighbor, with whom had an affair for almost five years, and after giving up Ennis he was willing to go on with him. But Love is a force of nature and a bond that can hardly be broken and when he went to his room and saw those shirts he realized that he couldn’t say good bye to Ennis it was impossible for him. He went back to Texas, and broke with the man telling him that he was not going to be able to leave Lureen.
And then he waited, he waited for his postcard the only method of communication that Ennis and him used. He thought that if Ennis send him a postcard it was going to confirm that Ennis wasn’t angry with him after their last meeting.
But three weeks passed and nothing, one month passed and no post card was received, he spent most of his days trying to keep his son Bobby focus with his new teacher, that he paid when they discovered he was dyslexic and Lureen pretended that nothing was happening, and going day by day to the post office until that horrible day.
On those days he was used to pick up the Newspaper on the office when it was delivered, but that day things changed it was Lureen the one that did it. And when he entered the office she was there with her eyes all teary and immediately ran towards him and hugged him.
“Oh, my Jack, I’m sorry! I’m so sad for you!” she said but he didn’t understand why she would be sad of him?
“Whoa! Lureen, why you’re sorry?” he said looking at her, since most of the time she was used to act cold with him, not because she doesn’t love him it was because it was her way of acting.
“It is on the new, it is horrible, and a very horrible way of dying I know that you knew him very well!” her wife said he could note a tone of sarcasm on her voice but he didn’t paid attention to that.
“What’ya talkin’ about? Who is dead?” he said now worried he want to know who died.
“Your hunting friend, your fishing friend that Ennis Del Mar” She said and gave him the newspaper. But as soon she put Ennis name and the word death in the same sentence his heart was in pieces and his soul broke in half. That couldn’t be true.
“What? You gotta’ be kidding” he said and started reading the newspaper and read:
“Ennis Del Mar, a 39 years old cowboy, was yesterday killed by a horse after trying to ride him; the horse threw him and kicked his face. He died instantly. From the information we gathered the horse was wild and Mr. Del Mar was not aware of this….” He couldn’t continue reading he was hesitant to believe this, this should be a joke Ennis was not death it couldn’t be true.
“This ain’t right, can be my Ennis! Can’t be!” he yelled throwing the newspaper and starting to cry.
“Your Ennis?” said Lureen looking at him surprised but there was something in her eyes that didn’t convinced Jack that she was being honest.
“You don’t really understand! Ennis!” he yelled and went rapidly and picks the phone he wasn’t thinking he had to confirm if that was true and since Ennis didn’t have a phone there was only one person to call.
“Hello?” a female voice answered on the other side
“I -I -I would like to know about what happened to Ennis” he said but he could hardly talk. He heard a screech and the woman started crying she told him the same that was on the newspaper like she knew it by heart. She told him that he was going to be buried on the graveyard where his parents were buried and if he wanted to go he’ll be welcome.
And without thinking twice he took his car without saying goodbye to Lureen. He was going to the graveyard were he was going to be buried; he was going to see Ennis for the last time. As he was driving he thought on all the things they said each other on their last encounter, he was ashamed of the way he acted. He never told Ennis that he loved him.
Then in the road he saw a car a man making signs for help, it seemed to be that the man was in a hurry. He stopped the car and went to see what the problem was.
“Is there any problem?” he said
“Oh yes my friend went to piss and was bitten by a snake, he is over there and I need help to move him and take him to the hospital” the young man said, there was something weird on that men but that day Jack neither noticed nor paid attention to that.
“Well let’s go there and help him! Snake’s bites are dangerous” he said and as he was going to help the other man he got this weird feeling and he turned back and saw three men, one of them with a tire iron.
“You know, you look like a queer to us! What you guys think if we give him special treatment” the man said.
‘Gawd if I’m goin’ to die please let me be with Ennis’ he thought and he closed his eyes.
Jack couldn’t remember what happened next, he only remembers the pain he was feeling while they were beating him. But that day for him it didn’t mattered. He thought that he didn’t defended himself because he wanted to be killed he wanted to be with.
He woke up later in Californian hospital, with his legs, arm and ribs broken. Lureen told him that he was going to need a lot of therapy and that he was not going to walk for at least year that his body was so injured that they were surprised he survived. He noticed that Lureen was acting weird, she was extremely worried for him and he got a feeling that she was feeling guilty of what happened.
“Jack, I wanna’ tell ya’ that I’m sorry” said with her eyes all teary.
“Daddy don’t worry everythin’ would be alright” Bobby said.
But Jack was not thinking or hearing to anyone, he didn’t even listened that he was in coma for almost six months and that his father died of pneumonia.
During the next 10 months he felt the pain of the therapy it was hard to see that his body wasn’t reacting as the Doctors wanted. But finally his body was healed but not his heart, when he was able to walk. When Lureen told him that his mother died and that all the things in the house were given to charity Jack felt that he loosing all the persons that cared about him.
“All the things?” he said to her with a with his eyes lost in the space
“Jack ya’ don’t live longer there and the only reason we are keeping that property is because we can fix it and use it fer vacations, however, when I went there I didn’t found nothing important or valuable there except from some pictures” she said.
“Whatever” he answered and with his cane went to the only person that make him feel happy now, his son, Bobby.
“What’ya doing Bobby?” he asked.
“Well daddy when we move up here we packed everything so fast that I never knew what he pack and I just found this box! It is contains a lot of postcards and I’m reading them, ya’ know to pass the time! Need to tell ya’ I found some of that old friend of yours Ennis Del Mar, the dead man! They are over there” Bobby answered pointing to the bureau
Bobby didn’t noticed how the tears on his father eyes where like flowing streams, Jack went to picked those postcards and sat on the coach he read them over and over again thinking in Ennis Del Mar, his Ennis Del Mar.
They never found those who assaulted him and never discovered who they were; they disappeared leaving no marks of where they could have gone. And Jack never thought about that again, he buried it with all his memories of Ennis. When he was totally healed they moved back to Texas, Lureen and him went to the post office to clear the fact that he was not death. By some weird reason somebody said that he was death and the post office was returning all Jack mail to the senders with the stamp “Deceased”. He always wondered how many people were thinking now that he was death.
But in a certain way he was dead, he died the day he read on the news that the Ennis, the only person he ever loved left this world without knowing he loved him.
“Ennis, ya’ don’t know how I wish that all of this was just a dream” he used to say every night sometimes burying his head on his pillow, sometimes in his dreams.
One day he decided that it was time to be honest with Lureen and told her everything about Ennis. She slapped him, but then kissed him after telling him that he was going to stay with her, she promised to make him love her and that she was going to erase Ennis Del Mar from his mind.
But that never happened, every year that passed it was another year that his love for Ennis was bigger and that Lureen anger was greater. She just one day stop trying and continued her life with the numbers and became again “Madame Calculator”.
Once again Jack was left with the postcards that he has received from Ennis once again he was filled with all the Memoirs of them.