Questions
(August 1985)
There was another knock on the door. Ennis went to the door slowly this time. But when he opened it, once again no one was there. He looked all around. No one was to be seen except for Tom, sitting on the steps of his trailer, smoking a cigarette. Ennis walked over. “Did ya see anyone around?”
“No, why?”
“Someone keeps knocking on my door, but no one’s there.”
Tom looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Haven’t seen anybody, been right here.”
Ennis sat down. Tom put his hand on Ennis’s arm. “How did ya get this?” he asked. Ennis looked at his arm. There was a huge black and blue bruise right on his forearm.
“I have no idea, I just don’t know.”
“Didn’t you feel anythin’? With such a bad bruise? Now I really am worried about ya.” Tom placed his hand right on the ugly bruise. “Hey, did you eat anything at all? Maybe ya just need some food.”
Ennis just shook his head. Tom went inside and came back out with a box of Ritz crackers and a plastic bowl of onion dip. Ennis took a few and realized it was a long time since he ate, but he wasn’t hungry at all. “Why did ya go all the way out there?” he asked.
“Wanted you to meet my friend, that was his son.” Tom replied.
“Why, why did ya want me to meet him?” Ennis asked with real fatigue in his voice.
But Tom didn’t answer that. “Are you goin’ to tell me about that picture?” he asked instead. Ennis looked at the ground and dug the dirt with his feet.
“I know, probably somethin’ about your friend. Ya know, you ought to talk about him, sometimes, ya know?”
“Why?” Ennis said, “ya never talk about your friend.” Ennis threw a sideways glance at Tom. “Besides ya never told me how you knew it in the first place, ya don’t tell me anythin'” Ennis said with a strange unfamiliar tone in his voice, as he continued to furiously dig at the ground with his feet.
Tom stared at him. Ennis rubbed at the bruise on his arm where it suddenly started to hurt. They sat there in silence. Ennis started to get up, he wanted to walk away, but he sat back down. The silence pushed him back. The silence was deafening. The silence blocked out all the other sounds, the crickets, the far away owls in the trees and the passing trucks in the distance. It blocked out the wind that was rushing between them.
But suddenly the silence was broken, by the wild rustling and the swaying of the lilac bush just beyond them. “What the hell was that?” Tom yelled.