A Way With Words - Chapter 41(a) - Part 1
Late September 1988
When he pulled open his top desk drawer at work, the first thing Ennis saw was the list of fourteen things he'd thought he'd known about Jack Twist, a long time ago. Had he only begun it seven months earlier? It felt like years had passed. By contrast, he could swear he'd been sitting in Leo's Diner just seconds before. Time seemed like a ball of Silly Putty, endlessly elastic.
He couldn't recall a thing about his journey from Harvard Square to the East West office in Brookline, but guessed he'd taken the T -- if he'd left on his bike, he wouldn't have made it to work in one piece. From the moment he'd walked out of the diner, a mental slideshow had been running on a continuous loop, featuring variations on two images: Jack walking past the diner window and then disappearing around a corner, and Kaj's face above the subway stairs followed by a view of his own back disappearing down them into the dark. He'd been such an asshole, walking away like that without a word of goodbye. He and Jack. In his mind's eye those images shuffled faster and faster until his own receding back and Jack's became one, and he felt shock and dismay for both himself and Kaj.
He'd never imagined Jack would freak out like that. What expression had crossed his face when Ennis had uttered those two words? If only he'd been brave enough to look Jack in the eye! On the other hand, the guy had been a prickly bastard from the start and right then it was hard to remember how they'd even become friends. He guessed he could add one more fact to the list. Number 15: Jack Twist hates… what, fags? Queers? What was the default slur these days, anyway?
Ennis didn't write that down, but crumpled the list and flung it in the wastebasket next to his desk, thankful that Don wasn't in yet. He slumped back in his chair and tried to decide whether he felt different for having said aloud to another person that he was… well, that he was beyond bisexual.
Yeah, he felt different. Like a fucking imposter, because the word hadn't sounded right as it was leaving his lips in the diner. It was such a stupid term - he'd never felt gay in any sense of the word. But it was clear he wasn't entirely straight. He needed to figure this out before he spilled it all to Jay. He wished he could go forward in time and watch himself tell her, see how she'd react, then come back and adjust accordingly.
Perversely, he felt a flash of anger at her: if she had only come home before this he could’ve told her first, and not driven Jack away. What if he just - just! - said he wanted to break up. She'd been acting strangely all summer. Maybe she wanted out, too. Maybe he didn't have to talk about the other thing right away.
And yet… and yet… he was going to miss her. That second summer on the Cape, that had been really good, and fun. Now he wished he could go back in time, lie in bed and talk like they used to, tell her about his future self's problems.
He heard the front door open and high heels click across the wood floor - Lureen. Another reminder of asshole Jack. He'd never felt so alone. Kaj was alone, too, in the suffocating embrace of his people, and he had a much heavier weight bearing down on him. Ennis reflexively pressed his palm to his breastbone, aching to think of him.
Don arrived then and launched immediately into a detailed account of the plans he and Randy had for the weekend in his tiny lakeside cabin in New Hampshire, seemingly oblivious to Ennis' uncharacteristically intense absorption in his paperwork. For the rest of the morning Ennis struggled to concentrate on his tasks, but by 11:30 he was exhausted from the effort of forgetting Kaj and Jack. Relief came just before midday with some errands for the afternoon; he took the van keys and left for lunch, though he had no appetite.
It was when he was driving on Commonwealth Avenue toward Kenmore Square with his last delivery that he saw the giant red letters in the window of Eastern Mountain Sports: TENT SALE! Somehow those two words triggered a moebius strip of associations: TENT -> CAMPING -> CANADA -> KAJ -> TENT -> VAN -> I-90 -> TORONTO -> KAJ -> ALONE -> TOGETHER -> TENT. Alone in the woods, or beside a lake, crawling into a little canvas shelter, twining together on top of their sleeping bags… no one to disturb them… Nearly rear-ending a car at a stop light finally jerked him out of his reverie.
As soon as he'd finished in Kenmore Square he drove straight back to EMS. He bought a two-man tent, a big, thick sleeping bag like his own, a double air mattress, a small gas burner and a few other items that the salesman persuaded him that he'd need for a camping trip, then drove to Cambridge. Mrs Ono was outside the three-decker with her broom, waiting for the first leaves of autumn to dare to drift onto the pavement. He nodded to her as he bounded up the porch stairs and didn't stop to talk.
Mentally he was already on the road. As he moved through the apartment, his eyes scanned each room and homed in on only the objects essential for the trip: his old sleeping bag in the bedroom closet, a duplicate set of the clothes he was wearing, towels, razor and a toothbrush in the bathroom, and from the kitchen a thermos, a cooler, and only food that required no cooking. Finally he swept through the living room to the front door, snatching up on the way a shoebox of cassette tapes to listen to on the long drive. In those ten minutes between opening the door and closing it behind him, he saw Jay's clothes in the closet, her toothbrush next to his, her albums under the shoebox, the red light blinking on the answering machine - and didn't think of her once.
Outside, Mrs Ono gaped at him as he flung everything into the back of the van. "You go away for weekend?" she called to him.
"Yes…uh, going fishing!" he yelled through the window as he started the engine. He didn't have a map for beyond Boston in the van but it didn't matter - the Mass Turnpike became the New York Thruway and went right to the border. It would take about ten hours to reach Toronto, he reckoned.
Half a mile from the house he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and filled the thermos with coffee. At the payphone outside he called Lenny and said he'd finished for the day but was feeling feverish. Since he was just a few blocks from home, he'd keep the van until Monday morning instead of going all the way back to Brookline. After he hung up, it occurred to him that lying was a skill like any other, improving with practice to the point where you didn’t even need to lie outright but simply skirt around the truth.
All the way into New York state he didn't think ahead to his destination, didn't dwell on the what and the why, or about the risk he was running by taking the van. Or on the fortune in gas the big vehicle was sucking up. He drove like a salmon journeying to its spawning ground, unquestioning.
A rising half moon lit up one corner of the sky as he approached Syracuse. He'd finished the last of the cheeseburgers he'd bought before crossing into New York state. Without taking his eyes from the road, he ejected the Talking Heads tape, pulled another one at random from the shoebox and slid it into the van's cassette player, which had a nice feature: the tape automatically reversed direction when it reached the end of a side.
He was surprised to hear the tape start in the middle of an ancient James Taylor song, one that he considered to be before his time, though he could remember when it was a hit, when he was a little kid. But now it seemed he'd grown into the lyrics. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend / But I always thought that I'd see you again. The next track was by another singer he never listened to voluntarily, Joni Mitchell, who'd lost the best baby she'd ever had and now wanted to skate away on a frozen river. He ejected the tape, switched on the interior light and peered at the label, but both sides were blank except for a smudge of ink. He was positive he'd never heard this tape before. After a moment's hesitation, he slipped the tape back in the player, wondering if the rest of the songs were also about love and loss.
They were, along with regret and longing, and while some of the voices were familiar, like Paul Simon and that guy he used to sing with, he couldn't put a name to most of them. They'd been in the background of his boyhood, but his escape during those years had been through books, not music.
When the tape reversed, the acoustic guitar chords that opened the first track sounded exactly right for driving alone at night with only the moon for company. The lyrics, just four lines sung by a plaintive, male voice with a soft English accent that he thought he might have heard before, made him uneasy, as though they'd been written about him on this night.
You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
I can see the moon and it seems so clear
You can take a road that takes you to the stars
I can take a road that will see me through
He wanted to think that he was making a big, romantic gesture, but was he just being a coward? He should be preparing himself to come out to Jay, not stealing his boss' van so he could whisk his man off into the woods somewhere (did he just think "his man"?) so they could be all alone and… Shit, did he really think this was going to resolve anything?
The next track was by the same artist, as was every one after that. And while the songs weren't explicitly about love, nor loss, there was a somberness underlying even the more cheerful lyrics. And then all at once he knew where the tape had come from.
The trees on the hill had nothing to say
They would keep their dreams till another day
So they stood and thought and wondered why
For this was the time of no reply.
Three years earlier he'd discovered the cassette in a Walkman that had been left behind on the old battered couch where Jay's friend had once lain dying of pneumonia. Ennis had listened to this song while looking down through the front window of Elliot's apartment while his friends carried that couch out to the curb. He'd watched as they circled round it, patting back in place the bolsters and cushions, and had felt very much like a lone tree high on a hill, mutely observing the humans revolving through their rite of mourning.
He'd only listened to the one song, and had no memory of what he'd done with the tape afterwards. Now he was sure that this music had been the last that Elliot had heard and that he had chosen the songs carefully.
He pulled into the next rest stop, unable to concentrate on the road. Why had Elliot spent his last days at home huddled on his couch, lungs clogged, burning with fever, filling his ears with this melancholy music while his many friends called and wrote and rang his doorbell? Why did he hide from their love and support?
As he listened to the rest of the side, Ennis couldn't help feeling a spark of kinship with the singer, whose quiet voice and bleak songs suggested the young man dwelled uneasily among humanity.
As the tape reversed he started the van and turned back onto the dark highway, letting his thoughts turn to Kaj. The second to last time Ennis had seen Elliot, the man had been waiting outside his building for his lover to arrive. If he stopped and called Kaj, would he be waiting eagerly for him? Or did he hate him now? The thought made him tremble.
More guitar chords, but now a woman's confident voice filled the van, flowing and rippling like warm water. The first lines seized his attention.
This is a strange affair.
The time has come to travel but the road is filled with fear.
A strange affair, alright. Should he be afraid? No, he didn't fear the journey. He could almost say that he didn't want the journey to end, if it delayed making hard decisions. Maybe what he feared was ending up alone. For most of his life he'd warded off loneliness with one single friend at a time. Look what happened when he lost that person; he would have to learn to make space for more people in his life.
Where are my companions?
They're prisoners of death now and taken far from me
He wondered how many friends Elliot would have eventually lost to AIDS. In Jay's circle of friends he had been the first. Despite himself - for his natural impulse would be to eject this depressing music - he rewound the tape many times in order to try to make out all the words to the song. The final two lines at once mystified and stirred him.
Turn your back on yourself, and if you follow
You'll win the lover's prize.
He sensed spaces between the words and struggled to fill them in. Jack's back returned to his mind's eye. A startling notion darted through his brain (or was it through his heart?): had Jack had been turning his back on himself when he fled?
No, couldn't be that. I’m supposed to be able to tell, right? If only he had Elliot's reputed powers of perception.
Elliot had bequeathed his important possessions to his friends, and according to Jay each item had had deep personal meaning for the recipients, ones that they'd never imagined he'd divined. He'd even left something to Ennis, who had hardly known him. In the kitchen he had found an expensive fountain pen with his own name on it, and near it had been an envelope containing mementos - poems, letters, a photograph. Ennis had kept them as well; now they were somewhere in his personal files and he hadn't looked at them since the summer of '85. He hadn't told Jay about the pen (much less the stolen mementos) which lay in his desk drawer at work. He never used it, and no longer even thought of Elliot when he saw it.
What do sleepers need to make them listen?
Why do they need more proof?
He let the tape play through and reverse, then listened again to the English man's songs. Reverse and repeat, again and again.
Just after one a.m., when he was on the edge of Buffalo a mile before the Peace Bridge over the Niagara River, he saw signs on I-190 for an exit to a waterfront park and realized the black expanse off to the left was Lake Erie. Exhaustion engulfed him at the sight of the word PARK and he swerved onto the off ramp. Five minutes later he was pulling into the first parking area he saw. Twelve hours earlier he'd been tossing and turning - now he fell unconscious as soon as his cheek pressed against the sleeping bag on the floor of the van.
At the border crossing, he walked up to the booth and handed over his passport to the guard, who flipped through its blank pages and eyed him appraisingly. He had a gap between his front teeth and his blond ringlets sprang out from under his cap like a clown wig.
"Sooo… this is your first trip over, eh?” The young man arched one eyebrow and smirked at him. “Are you just curious? Or do you intend to stay?"
Stay? "I've… I have been here before. I'm just coming for the weekend."
"Uh-huuuhh." The guard fanned his cheek with the passport. "Why should we let you in if you don’t even like us, hmmm?"
What? Just then he felt a warm presence at his side. He turned his head; it was Elliot, the younger version from a photograph he'd found in the man's belongings. For some reason he felt no surprise at seeing Jay’s dead friend there.
"He's fine. Stamp it," Elliot said quietly. He looked into Ennis' eyes and smiled.
The young guard huffed, reached for a rubber stamp, pounded it once and thrust the passport at him without closing it. In the middle of the first page was a pink triangle.
Elliot slipped an arm companionably through his and steered him gently away, onto the bridge. He could see a few other people ahead, some shuffling hesitantly and others strolling confidently across it toward the opposite shore. He felt lighter with each step, as though without Elliot holding him he would float away..
Elliot stopped, squeezed his arm. “You can go the rest of the way on your own.” When he looked at the man with alarm, Elliot murmured, "I promise you, it's all connected." Then Elliot let go of him and threw an arm over his shoulder, pulling him close. He felt warm lips plant a kiss on his temple and then whisper in his ear, "Good luck."
Fuck, where was the van? He'd be in deep shit if he didn't bring it back.
His shoulder ached from the hard bed when he opened his eyes. He rolled onto his back and savored for a few seconds the warmth of a whisper on his skin and the remembered pressure of a hug. When he realized where he was he groaned with disappointment, craving that feeling of acceptance and belonging; he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a dream from which he'd been so sorry to awaken.
It was light in the van… yes, the van, thank god. When he sat up and saw the lake through the rear window, the pleasure of the dream evaporated as he remembered the previous day and night. He pressed his palms against his eyes, which felt gritty with fatigue, and then rubbed his cheeks and his sandpapery jaw. When had he last shaved? No sense asking himself what in the world he'd been thinking when he'd driven away from Boston - thought had not gone into it. He wasn't sure what would happen next; he would just take one thing at a time. His only plan was to find a quiet place to pitch the tent with Kaj.
He fumbled around for the thermos and swallowed the last cold dregs of coffee, then crawled out of the van. The early morning breeze coming off the lake had a crisp edge that made him reach back for his jacket before he headed to the rest rooms at the far corner of the deserted parking lot. In the men's room he splashed water on his face at the sink. He squinted at himself in the cracked mirror, tried to tame his tousled locks with wet fingers, and rubbed his scratchy chin. Would Kaj care that he looked like shit? Would he be happy to see him?
All at once he was overcome with a longing to hold his scarred, damaged lover. He stared into the mirror and imagined Kaj standing in front of him right there, in his arms, eyes closed so that Ennis could simply gaze at his handsome face in the reflection. Immediately he recalled a photo he'd found in Elliot's kitchen, of him holding another man exactly that way when he was younger. At the time the image had reminded him powerfully of his college years with Joe, when his craving for physical intimacy with his best friend had been a continual torment.
He blinked once, frowned, and the vision vanished as a thought came to him. Who had photographed Elliot and his friend?
There were no paper towels in the bathroom, only a hot air blower attached to the wall. As he rubbed his hands together under the fan, adjusting to the idea that Elliot's relationship must not have been a secret, his gaze rested on a colorful leaflet someone had left on top of the dryer. Presqu'île Provincial Park on Lake Ontario. Eight campgrounds, 394 campsites, two hours from Toronto. He snatched it up and read it all the way through.
After he'd seen the name of Elliot's hometown in his obituary, Ennis had searched for Presque Isle, Maine in an atlas. The town had turned out to be near the northern edge of the state and nowhere near the coast, not nearly an island at all. Tucking the brochure in his pocket, he wondered if it was a common place name in the regions the French had explored and settled.
He crossed the parking lot but walked past the van and over the big expanse of grass to the walkway that edged the lake. The Canadian shore was visible from where he stood, but to his left it could have been the ocean stretching to the horizon. The rising sun peeked through the city skyline to his right, sending long shadows streaking ahead of the jogger on the footpath some distance away, running towards him. He stood and looked out over the water, fingering the leaflet in his jacket pocket.
Unlike Elliot, Ennis wasn't a believer. If there was a God, He didn't appear to him to have any more power, and was far less useful, than a microwave oven. Yet there seemed to be a perpetual battle among humans over what this god loved and hated, and the goal was to have the most people sharing your opinion so you could justify what you yourself loved or hated. He thought the Hindus were more sensible, having several gods with different job descriptions.
No, he didn't believe there was a God, but could a man have a force of will so strong that it outlived him?
He turned and walked back to the van. It was time to cross the border.
This is a strange affair
The time has come to travel but the road is filled with fear
This is a strange affair
My youth has all been wasted and I'm bent and grey with years
And all my companions are taken away
And who will provide for me against my dying day?
I took my own provisions, but they fooled me and wasted away
Oh where are my companions?
My father, mother, lover, friend, and enemy
Where are my companions?
They're prisoners of death now, and taken far from me
And where are the dreams I dreamed in the days of my youth?
They took me to illusion when they promised me the truth
What do sleepers need to make them listen?
Why do they need more proof?
This is a strange, this is a strange affair
Won't you give me an answer?
Why is your heart so hard towards the one who loves you best?
When the man with the answer
Has wakened you, and warned you, and called you to the test
Wake up from your sleep that builds like clouds upon your eyes
And win back the life you had that's now a dream of lies
Turn your back on yourself, and if you follow
You'll win the lover's prize
This is a strange, a strange affair
PART 2 >>
When he pulled open his top desk drawer at work, the first thing Ennis saw was the list of fourteen things he'd thought he'd known about Jack Twist, a long time ago. Had he only begun it seven months earlier? It felt like years had passed. By contrast, he could swear he'd been sitting in Leo's Diner just seconds before. Time seemed like a ball of Silly Putty, endlessly elastic.
He couldn't recall a thing about his journey from Harvard Square to the East West office in Brookline, but guessed he'd taken the T -- if he'd left on his bike, he wouldn't have made it to work in one piece. From the moment he'd walked out of the diner, a mental slideshow had been running on a continuous loop, featuring variations on two images: Jack walking past the diner window and then disappearing around a corner, and Kaj's face above the subway stairs followed by a view of his own back disappearing down them into the dark. He'd been such an asshole, walking away like that without a word of goodbye. He and Jack. In his mind's eye those images shuffled faster and faster until his own receding back and Jack's became one, and he felt shock and dismay for both himself and Kaj.
He'd never imagined Jack would freak out like that. What expression had crossed his face when Ennis had uttered those two words? If only he'd been brave enough to look Jack in the eye! On the other hand, the guy had been a prickly bastard from the start and right then it was hard to remember how they'd even become friends. He guessed he could add one more fact to the list. Number 15: Jack Twist hates… what, fags? Queers? What was the default slur these days, anyway?
Ennis didn't write that down, but crumpled the list and flung it in the wastebasket next to his desk, thankful that Don wasn't in yet. He slumped back in his chair and tried to decide whether he felt different for having said aloud to another person that he was… well, that he was beyond bisexual.
Yeah, he felt different. Like a fucking imposter, because the word hadn't sounded right as it was leaving his lips in the diner. It was such a stupid term - he'd never felt gay in any sense of the word. But it was clear he wasn't entirely straight. He needed to figure this out before he spilled it all to Jay. He wished he could go forward in time and watch himself tell her, see how she'd react, then come back and adjust accordingly.
Perversely, he felt a flash of anger at her: if she had only come home before this he could’ve told her first, and not driven Jack away. What if he just - just! - said he wanted to break up. She'd been acting strangely all summer. Maybe she wanted out, too. Maybe he didn't have to talk about the other thing right away.
And yet… and yet… he was going to miss her. That second summer on the Cape, that had been really good, and fun. Now he wished he could go back in time, lie in bed and talk like they used to, tell her about his future self's problems.
He heard the front door open and high heels click across the wood floor - Lureen. Another reminder of asshole Jack. He'd never felt so alone. Kaj was alone, too, in the suffocating embrace of his people, and he had a much heavier weight bearing down on him. Ennis reflexively pressed his palm to his breastbone, aching to think of him.
Don arrived then and launched immediately into a detailed account of the plans he and Randy had for the weekend in his tiny lakeside cabin in New Hampshire, seemingly oblivious to Ennis' uncharacteristically intense absorption in his paperwork. For the rest of the morning Ennis struggled to concentrate on his tasks, but by 11:30 he was exhausted from the effort of forgetting Kaj and Jack. Relief came just before midday with some errands for the afternoon; he took the van keys and left for lunch, though he had no appetite.
It was when he was driving on Commonwealth Avenue toward Kenmore Square with his last delivery that he saw the giant red letters in the window of Eastern Mountain Sports: TENT SALE! Somehow those two words triggered a moebius strip of associations: TENT -> CAMPING -> CANADA -> KAJ -> TENT -> VAN -> I-90 -> TORONTO -> KAJ -> ALONE -> TOGETHER -> TENT. Alone in the woods, or beside a lake, crawling into a little canvas shelter, twining together on top of their sleeping bags… no one to disturb them… Nearly rear-ending a car at a stop light finally jerked him out of his reverie.
As soon as he'd finished in Kenmore Square he drove straight back to EMS. He bought a two-man tent, a big, thick sleeping bag like his own, a double air mattress, a small gas burner and a few other items that the salesman persuaded him that he'd need for a camping trip, then drove to Cambridge. Mrs Ono was outside the three-decker with her broom, waiting for the first leaves of autumn to dare to drift onto the pavement. He nodded to her as he bounded up the porch stairs and didn't stop to talk.
Mentally he was already on the road. As he moved through the apartment, his eyes scanned each room and homed in on only the objects essential for the trip: his old sleeping bag in the bedroom closet, a duplicate set of the clothes he was wearing, towels, razor and a toothbrush in the bathroom, and from the kitchen a thermos, a cooler, and only food that required no cooking. Finally he swept through the living room to the front door, snatching up on the way a shoebox of cassette tapes to listen to on the long drive. In those ten minutes between opening the door and closing it behind him, he saw Jay's clothes in the closet, her toothbrush next to his, her albums under the shoebox, the red light blinking on the answering machine - and didn't think of her once.
Outside, Mrs Ono gaped at him as he flung everything into the back of the van. "You go away for weekend?" she called to him.
"Yes…uh, going fishing!" he yelled through the window as he started the engine. He didn't have a map for beyond Boston in the van but it didn't matter - the Mass Turnpike became the New York Thruway and went right to the border. It would take about ten hours to reach Toronto, he reckoned.
Half a mile from the house he stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and filled the thermos with coffee. At the payphone outside he called Lenny and said he'd finished for the day but was feeling feverish. Since he was just a few blocks from home, he'd keep the van until Monday morning instead of going all the way back to Brookline. After he hung up, it occurred to him that lying was a skill like any other, improving with practice to the point where you didn’t even need to lie outright but simply skirt around the truth.
All the way into New York state he didn't think ahead to his destination, didn't dwell on the what and the why, or about the risk he was running by taking the van. Or on the fortune in gas the big vehicle was sucking up. He drove like a salmon journeying to its spawning ground, unquestioning.
A rising half moon lit up one corner of the sky as he approached Syracuse. He'd finished the last of the cheeseburgers he'd bought before crossing into New York state. Without taking his eyes from the road, he ejected the Talking Heads tape, pulled another one at random from the shoebox and slid it into the van's cassette player, which had a nice feature: the tape automatically reversed direction when it reached the end of a side.
He was surprised to hear the tape start in the middle of an ancient James Taylor song, one that he considered to be before his time, though he could remember when it was a hit, when he was a little kid. But now it seemed he'd grown into the lyrics. I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend / But I always thought that I'd see you again. The next track was by another singer he never listened to voluntarily, Joni Mitchell, who'd lost the best baby she'd ever had and now wanted to skate away on a frozen river. He ejected the tape, switched on the interior light and peered at the label, but both sides were blank except for a smudge of ink. He was positive he'd never heard this tape before. After a moment's hesitation, he slipped the tape back in the player, wondering if the rest of the songs were also about love and loss.
They were, along with regret and longing, and while some of the voices were familiar, like Paul Simon and that guy he used to sing with, he couldn't put a name to most of them. They'd been in the background of his boyhood, but his escape during those years had been through books, not music.
When the tape reversed, the acoustic guitar chords that opened the first track sounded exactly right for driving alone at night with only the moon for company. The lyrics, just four lines sung by a plaintive, male voice with a soft English accent that he thought he might have heard before, made him uneasy, as though they'd been written about him on this night.
You can say the sun is shining if you really want to
I can see the moon and it seems so clear
You can take a road that takes you to the stars
I can take a road that will see me through
He wanted to think that he was making a big, romantic gesture, but was he just being a coward? He should be preparing himself to come out to Jay, not stealing his boss' van so he could whisk his man off into the woods somewhere (did he just think "his man"?) so they could be all alone and… Shit, did he really think this was going to resolve anything?
The next track was by the same artist, as was every one after that. And while the songs weren't explicitly about love, nor loss, there was a somberness underlying even the more cheerful lyrics. And then all at once he knew where the tape had come from.
The trees on the hill had nothing to say
They would keep their dreams till another day
So they stood and thought and wondered why
For this was the time of no reply.
Three years earlier he'd discovered the cassette in a Walkman that had been left behind on the old battered couch where Jay's friend had once lain dying of pneumonia. Ennis had listened to this song while looking down through the front window of Elliot's apartment while his friends carried that couch out to the curb. He'd watched as they circled round it, patting back in place the bolsters and cushions, and had felt very much like a lone tree high on a hill, mutely observing the humans revolving through their rite of mourning.
He'd only listened to the one song, and had no memory of what he'd done with the tape afterwards. Now he was sure that this music had been the last that Elliot had heard and that he had chosen the songs carefully.
He pulled into the next rest stop, unable to concentrate on the road. Why had Elliot spent his last days at home huddled on his couch, lungs clogged, burning with fever, filling his ears with this melancholy music while his many friends called and wrote and rang his doorbell? Why did he hide from their love and support?
As he listened to the rest of the side, Ennis couldn't help feeling a spark of kinship with the singer, whose quiet voice and bleak songs suggested the young man dwelled uneasily among humanity.
As the tape reversed he started the van and turned back onto the dark highway, letting his thoughts turn to Kaj. The second to last time Ennis had seen Elliot, the man had been waiting outside his building for his lover to arrive. If he stopped and called Kaj, would he be waiting eagerly for him? Or did he hate him now? The thought made him tremble.
More guitar chords, but now a woman's confident voice filled the van, flowing and rippling like warm water. The first lines seized his attention.
This is a strange affair.
The time has come to travel but the road is filled with fear.
A strange affair, alright. Should he be afraid? No, he didn't fear the journey. He could almost say that he didn't want the journey to end, if it delayed making hard decisions. Maybe what he feared was ending up alone. For most of his life he'd warded off loneliness with one single friend at a time. Look what happened when he lost that person; he would have to learn to make space for more people in his life.
Where are my companions?
They're prisoners of death now and taken far from me
He wondered how many friends Elliot would have eventually lost to AIDS. In Jay's circle of friends he had been the first. Despite himself - for his natural impulse would be to eject this depressing music - he rewound the tape many times in order to try to make out all the words to the song. The final two lines at once mystified and stirred him.
Turn your back on yourself, and if you follow
You'll win the lover's prize.
He sensed spaces between the words and struggled to fill them in. Jack's back returned to his mind's eye. A startling notion darted through his brain (or was it through his heart?): had Jack had been turning his back on himself when he fled?
No, couldn't be that. I’m supposed to be able to tell, right? If only he had Elliot's reputed powers of perception.
Elliot had bequeathed his important possessions to his friends, and according to Jay each item had had deep personal meaning for the recipients, ones that they'd never imagined he'd divined. He'd even left something to Ennis, who had hardly known him. In the kitchen he had found an expensive fountain pen with his own name on it, and near it had been an envelope containing mementos - poems, letters, a photograph. Ennis had kept them as well; now they were somewhere in his personal files and he hadn't looked at them since the summer of '85. He hadn't told Jay about the pen (much less the stolen mementos) which lay in his desk drawer at work. He never used it, and no longer even thought of Elliot when he saw it.
What do sleepers need to make them listen?
Why do they need more proof?
He let the tape play through and reverse, then listened again to the English man's songs. Reverse and repeat, again and again.
Just after one a.m., when he was on the edge of Buffalo a mile before the Peace Bridge over the Niagara River, he saw signs on I-190 for an exit to a waterfront park and realized the black expanse off to the left was Lake Erie. Exhaustion engulfed him at the sight of the word PARK and he swerved onto the off ramp. Five minutes later he was pulling into the first parking area he saw. Twelve hours earlier he'd been tossing and turning - now he fell unconscious as soon as his cheek pressed against the sleeping bag on the floor of the van.
At the border crossing, he walked up to the booth and handed over his passport to the guard, who flipped through its blank pages and eyed him appraisingly. He had a gap between his front teeth and his blond ringlets sprang out from under his cap like a clown wig.
"Sooo… this is your first trip over, eh?” The young man arched one eyebrow and smirked at him. “Are you just curious? Or do you intend to stay?"
Stay? "I've… I have been here before. I'm just coming for the weekend."
"Uh-huuuhh." The guard fanned his cheek with the passport. "Why should we let you in if you don’t even like us, hmmm?"
What? Just then he felt a warm presence at his side. He turned his head; it was Elliot, the younger version from a photograph he'd found in the man's belongings. For some reason he felt no surprise at seeing Jay’s dead friend there.
"He's fine. Stamp it," Elliot said quietly. He looked into Ennis' eyes and smiled.
The young guard huffed, reached for a rubber stamp, pounded it once and thrust the passport at him without closing it. In the middle of the first page was a pink triangle.
Elliot slipped an arm companionably through his and steered him gently away, onto the bridge. He could see a few other people ahead, some shuffling hesitantly and others strolling confidently across it toward the opposite shore. He felt lighter with each step, as though without Elliot holding him he would float away..
Elliot stopped, squeezed his arm. “You can go the rest of the way on your own.” When he looked at the man with alarm, Elliot murmured, "I promise you, it's all connected." Then Elliot let go of him and threw an arm over his shoulder, pulling him close. He felt warm lips plant a kiss on his temple and then whisper in his ear, "Good luck."
Fuck, where was the van? He'd be in deep shit if he didn't bring it back.
His shoulder ached from the hard bed when he opened his eyes. He rolled onto his back and savored for a few seconds the warmth of a whisper on his skin and the remembered pressure of a hug. When he realized where he was he groaned with disappointment, craving that feeling of acceptance and belonging; he couldn't remember the last time he'd had a dream from which he'd been so sorry to awaken.
It was light in the van… yes, the van, thank god. When he sat up and saw the lake through the rear window, the pleasure of the dream evaporated as he remembered the previous day and night. He pressed his palms against his eyes, which felt gritty with fatigue, and then rubbed his cheeks and his sandpapery jaw. When had he last shaved? No sense asking himself what in the world he'd been thinking when he'd driven away from Boston - thought had not gone into it. He wasn't sure what would happen next; he would just take one thing at a time. His only plan was to find a quiet place to pitch the tent with Kaj.
He fumbled around for the thermos and swallowed the last cold dregs of coffee, then crawled out of the van. The early morning breeze coming off the lake had a crisp edge that made him reach back for his jacket before he headed to the rest rooms at the far corner of the deserted parking lot. In the men's room he splashed water on his face at the sink. He squinted at himself in the cracked mirror, tried to tame his tousled locks with wet fingers, and rubbed his scratchy chin. Would Kaj care that he looked like shit? Would he be happy to see him?
All at once he was overcome with a longing to hold his scarred, damaged lover. He stared into the mirror and imagined Kaj standing in front of him right there, in his arms, eyes closed so that Ennis could simply gaze at his handsome face in the reflection. Immediately he recalled a photo he'd found in Elliot's kitchen, of him holding another man exactly that way when he was younger. At the time the image had reminded him powerfully of his college years with Joe, when his craving for physical intimacy with his best friend had been a continual torment.
He blinked once, frowned, and the vision vanished as a thought came to him. Who had photographed Elliot and his friend?
There were no paper towels in the bathroom, only a hot air blower attached to the wall. As he rubbed his hands together under the fan, adjusting to the idea that Elliot's relationship must not have been a secret, his gaze rested on a colorful leaflet someone had left on top of the dryer. Presqu'île Provincial Park on Lake Ontario. Eight campgrounds, 394 campsites, two hours from Toronto. He snatched it up and read it all the way through.
After he'd seen the name of Elliot's hometown in his obituary, Ennis had searched for Presque Isle, Maine in an atlas. The town had turned out to be near the northern edge of the state and nowhere near the coast, not nearly an island at all. Tucking the brochure in his pocket, he wondered if it was a common place name in the regions the French had explored and settled.
He crossed the parking lot but walked past the van and over the big expanse of grass to the walkway that edged the lake. The Canadian shore was visible from where he stood, but to his left it could have been the ocean stretching to the horizon. The rising sun peeked through the city skyline to his right, sending long shadows streaking ahead of the jogger on the footpath some distance away, running towards him. He stood and looked out over the water, fingering the leaflet in his jacket pocket.
Unlike Elliot, Ennis wasn't a believer. If there was a God, He didn't appear to him to have any more power, and was far less useful, than a microwave oven. Yet there seemed to be a perpetual battle among humans over what this god loved and hated, and the goal was to have the most people sharing your opinion so you could justify what you yourself loved or hated. He thought the Hindus were more sensible, having several gods with different job descriptions.
No, he didn't believe there was a God, but could a man have a force of will so strong that it outlived him?
He turned and walked back to the van. It was time to cross the border.
This is a strange affair
The time has come to travel but the road is filled with fear
This is a strange affair
My youth has all been wasted and I'm bent and grey with years
And all my companions are taken away
And who will provide for me against my dying day?
I took my own provisions, but they fooled me and wasted away
Oh where are my companions?
My father, mother, lover, friend, and enemy
Where are my companions?
They're prisoners of death now, and taken far from me
And where are the dreams I dreamed in the days of my youth?
They took me to illusion when they promised me the truth
What do sleepers need to make them listen?
Why do they need more proof?
This is a strange, this is a strange affair
Won't you give me an answer?
Why is your heart so hard towards the one who loves you best?
When the man with the answer
Has wakened you, and warned you, and called you to the test
Wake up from your sleep that builds like clouds upon your eyes
And win back the life you had that's now a dream of lies
Turn your back on yourself, and if you follow
You'll win the lover's prize
This is a strange, a strange affair
PART 2 >>