Silence Lay Waiting

Silence Lay Waiting

It was a little after two-thirty in the morning when I pulled into the driveway in front of the big old house downtown where my best friend and I rented the upstairs apartment. Jimmy and I had grown up in this little town and used to ride our bikes past this house on our way to the little five-and-dime to buy candy when we were only eight. Jimmy's car was in his usual spot and I parked my truck next to it and turned off the engine. My work boots crunched softly in the pea gravel. I closed the door gently and leaned into it until the latch caught.

The house was dark and deserted-looking and I didn't feel like going in so I reached into the brown grocery bag in the back of the truck and pulled out a cold beer. I twisted the cap off, tossed it into the bag, and walked back down the drive.

All up and down the cobble-stone street it was the same: here and there a lamp glowed dimly in a curtained window, but nothing moved or made a sound. No one drove past the end of the street. No dog barked. Not even a breeze disturbed the ancient trees that stood silent guard over the neighborhood. The tick, tick, ticking of my engine cooling off in the night grew slower and fainter until it, too, was quiet.  Walking down the middle of the street with the trees blotting out the light from the moon overhead, darkness and silence settled down over me like a soft blanket.

When I reached the bottom of my beer I went back and lifted the grocery bag out of the bed of the truck and walked around to the wooden stairs that ran up the back of the house. As I walked softly up to the second story, the creaking of the staircase and the rustling of the paper bag and the jingling of my keys all seemed out-sized and violent in the stillness of the night. But when I stood still the silence enveloped the sounds and mended itself seamlessly back over them.

Inside the kitchen, I slipped my shoes off and left them by the door. I put the beer in the fridge and left the empty bag on the counter. The silence that had pervaded the world outside seemed to have slipped in and lay waiting. Or maybe it had begun here, and was seeping out and had only begun to fill the rest of the world.

I padded in my stocking feet through the living room and down the hall, staying close to the wall where the floorboards were nice and tight and didn't groan so much under my weight. Jimmy's door stood open,and at a passing glance his room seemed empty. I stopped and looked in, squinting into the darkness. He wasn't there. Maybe he fell asleep on the couch.

I went back to the living room, but it was too dark to see anything so I reached around the corner into the kitchen and flipped the light on. The couch was empty. Jimmy wasn't laying on the floor or sleeping in the old worn recliner his parents had given him when we moved in. But I'd known he wasn't there even before I turned the light on; I would have heard him moving in his sleep, would've even heard the sound of his breathing in the stillness.

I reached back into the kitchen to turn the light off and there on a chair pushed halfway under the table was another grocery bag. I picked it up and set it on the table. It was full of something soft, and it smelled like Sara. Jimmy's Sara. Or she had been until last weekend.

In the top of the bag were a few of her favorite cds and some hair scrunchies. The necklace Jimmy had bought her when we were like sixteen. His favorite sweatshirt she had always loved to wear. I replaced the bag and slid the chair back under the table and headed down the hall again. Between Jimmy's room and mine was the bathroom. The door was closed. I stopped and listened.

"Jimmy?" I tapped lightly on the door jamb with the back of a knuckle and cleared my throat. "You in there?" I heard my words after I said them, as if I were somehow detached from myself, watching me.

I opened the door a little and leaned in, then turned the light on. My feet tangled underneath me as I tried to back out of the bathroom and I thudded dully against the wall. Stumbling woodenly toward the kitchen light I heard over the silence pounding in my ears a distant voice. "No Jimmy no. Oh Jesus, Jimmy. No."