From chapter 38. This is beautiful
Ennis put the knife down, carefully, and sank into the kitchen chair, hands over his face, suddenly trembling as though with some long-delayed shock. “Jack – Jesus Jack.... “ He felt in his shirt pocket for his talisman, the journal, and wiping his hands carefully on his denims he flipped through the pages, past the entry he had read, so long ago, in Ellery’s bed.
“July 22: Ennis stayed up on the allotmint through breakfast an I about died without him. Went into the tent and just laid there smellin the blankets. This boy is not sane if he can’t be without it every six seven hours, and summer is wearing on too fast. Crazy about that boy. Wonder if he’s crazy about me.
Ennis put his head down in his hands, tears leaking through them, dry sobs making his shoulders heave, but only small sounds emerged. He was crazy about Jack... mad crazy, and didn’t know it, didn’t know it...he had stayed up on the mountain one morning, just so that he could think without Jack there, because whenever he was in camp, his eyes would follow that restless step, watching his body move, wanting him to come over and say something, to get within grabbing distance so he could knock off his hat, rile him, pull him down and over and get him under him... his breath came hard, like fire in his chest, a wave of grief fully as powerful as the wave of pleasure that had washed over him on the sofa, like the other shoe dropping from a world of shadowy pain.
“Jack... jes let me live,” he said softly. “Let me live, let me have this, don’t make me grieve you forever an ever...”
He heard a sound in the doorway. “Ennis?”
He looked up. He didn’t have his hat to conceal the coursing tears that were staining his cheeks, and he choked down the heavy lump that blocked his throat, a powerful cry of frustration and despair wanted to well up – to tighten itself into an angry shout, but he forced it back down.
“Nothin... nothin... jes... shit Ellery.” Ellery came across the room, arm raised to stroke his head, to offer some condolence, and Ennis held the journal out. “Read that, read that. Who am I ta make that boy want me so bad? What is it about me that he wanted me like that?”
Ellery looked at the scribbled pencilled passage. “You’re the one who loved em, Ennis,” Ellery said, his voice soft, pitched like the voice Ennis used to settle Gene down that morning. “Love is a powerful thing.” He stroked the short hairs over Ennis’s temple, smoothing them back.
“Well it fuckin scares the piss outta me, now ya know.” Ennis said, wiping his eyes and rising abruptly, stuffing the journal, now tightly clenched in his hand, back into his pocket. Somehow, he had to get through this. And somehow, Ellery’s simple reply had seemed to be the right answer to his question.
Ellery sat down at the table, looking at his hands for a while, silent. “I don’t spect you to stop grievin for yer man, Ennis. You might need ta take things a whole lot more slow...”
“No. I like this. I like bein with you. I like – fuckin you, makin dinner, watchin movies.” He bunched up his fists as if to strike out at whatever it was that was causing the pain in his guts. “I want this. I don’t want to take no slow nothin. I sat in a chair in Junior’s spare room for two years askin myself why I was such a fuckin goddamn cripple that I couldn’t jes do what I wanted and be with em like he wanted. Have a sweet life somewheres. Be queer. Well why couldn’t I? I don’t even know anymore, but I lost. I lost somethin I thought I was never gonna lose... and it pisses me off ta think about all this an how bad it all went and now I got somethin I like an I’m thinkin maybe I can’t have it, neither. Does that make any sense to you at all?”
He nodded. “Yeah it does. Ya might want ta turn down that water before it boils over.”
Ennis blinked then adjusted the fire on the range. “I don’ wanna go, but I think... I gotta think, and I can’t think around you. Don’ wanna go just yet but I just need ta ... go an sit under a tree an think about it. Do you understand Ellery?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“All I want ta do when you’re here is ta be with you, talk to you... all of it... but I got ta think. Will ya still be here if I do that?”
“Yeah, as long as ya need.”
Topic: Taking Chances, by E. L. Van Hine and L.H. Nicoll (Read 3167086 times)