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[Nov. 24th, 2009|07:45 pm] |
Do you fancy being on TV?
Will you be in Los Angeles on 12th December?
How about lending a helping hand to Heath's last film,
and have a great time into the bargain.
Find out more
HERE
Or if you can't be in L.A.,
how about New York City, Las Vegas,
San Francisco, Maine
or Princeton or Orange County?
Read about that
HERE
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[Sep. 4th, 2009|10:06 am] |
UP A LAZY RIVER
This is just a bit of nonsense, more a writing exercise than anything. Enjoy.
***
Sinuous and dreamy, like a languid river flowing from the tributaries of his arms to the wide delta of his legs, Ennis stretched across the bed. Jack decided to swim upstream, sampling the littoral delights on the way. On the left-hand shore some toes tempted.
"This little piggy went to market--"
"Whuh?"
"And this little piggy stayed home--"
"What the fuck...?"
"This little piggy had roast beef--"
"Quit suckin my toes!"
"And this little piggy had none--"
"I'll give you some if you don't stop that!"
"But the last little piggy went -- Ow! Fuck! That hurt!"
"I warned you, Jack," - and the river resumed its somnolent state.
Jack swam on, through reedy shallows, round the rocky outcrop of the knee and between the luscious, narrowing banks. He paused for several minutes to ascertain whether the salt taste reached that far, found with gushing, satisfying suddenness that it did, then continued, hauling an anchor with him. He slipped and slithered along the river's main channel, discovered a friendly naval base to enjoy a quiet rest - Yo ho ho! - and passed on, amidst hazy, golden meadows.
At the junction of the tributaries came decision time: left or right? Both were inviting. He roamed the land in between, tasting the sweet fruit on offer again and again, then chose left once more, up, up, towards the distant springs.
At last, in the bubbling rivulets, he felt his body being sucked down – quicksand! - until there was nothing for him to do but to surrender to this greater force. The river rose up and swallowed him whole; the afternoon passed into gentle evening; they slept.
***
Thank you to everyone who left comments for my previous effort. I've been rather tangled up in other work but I greatly appreciated your support.
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[Aug. 18th, 2009|12:46 pm] |
WRINGING IT OUT
A BBM canon one-shot set in 1964.
The characters and original story
shamelessly ripped off here are
the creations of Annie Proulx,
to whom I am eternally grateful.
"Ennis? .... Ennis? What's takin so long?"
"--minute--"
Biting down on his hand, he shuddered out his vision of Jack against the cold porcelain, sagged, leaned his forehead against the cistern, and couldn't suppress a quiet sobbing moan.
"You okay, honey?"
He made the correct noises, tore off some paper, flushed the toilet, watched the evidence of his dark shame wash away, rinsed the scent of twisted lust from his hand. Then he flicked open the lock and walked quickly past Alma, head down.
"Gut ache is all."
Alma blinked in the bright bathroom light, dragged herself inside and sat down to pee for what felt like the hundredth time that night. Nothing happened yet again. The dull weight deep in her loins stirred and swirled and passed. By the time she crawled back into bed, Ennis had settled, his spine to her as usual, his breathing deep and slow. She wanted comfort, a soft curve to rest within, but nothing yielded in that straight back so at last she struggled over to her own side and fell again into fitful sleep.
Ennis waited, eyes squeezed shut against the darkness, until Alma's soft bubbly snores told him it was safe. Then he slowly rolled into her, hard belly against soft rounded buttocks, laid his arm across the hot swell, felt the child move against his big gentle hand.
Every night the same, every single goddamn night the same.
--I'm a man and men need release, and I can't do it with Alma, her bein so big and awkward, and it don't seem right anyway. Use my hand, I'm doing us both a favor--
--Use my hand and think of him, the long white back, the hard muscles of his ass, the place I had to come to, time and again--
--He was just a friend, we was just havin fun, hell, nineteen year olds gotta have fun, don't they? Don't mean nothin--
--But it felt so good, better'n Alma ever feels, better'n I could've imagined--
--But this is your wife, this is your child, these are the ones you care for, you love. Love your wife, love the child she carries, this is what men do--
Alma had liked his quiet ways, liked the way he didn't push her into things she didn't want to do, liked the friendly warmth of his arm around her, the uncertain bashful kisses. And later, in their marriage bed, he'd been clumsy and awkward but full of enthusiasm, almost manic in his desperate efforts until she had to tell him to slow down, stop shaking her about so much. It took but a few weeks for her to conceive and his face had lit up with happiness and something like relief when she shyly told him. He was so solicitous, so gentle with her, loving to feel the baby move, loving to lie with his ear against her belly, listening to the gurgles and muffled thumps, like a great shifting ocean in which his child swam.
And he stopped the frantic sex too, once they knew the child was on the way. He said he was concerned about hurting her, about maybe causing her to miscarry. It was so sweet of him but she missed the closeness. As the months drifted by he became less like what she thought a husband should be and more like a friend.
Until the night when she woke and found a tacky cold mess of wetness between her thighs, and squealed her disgust, and after that it seemed he carefully slept with just enough distance between them so that they didn't touch.
He was a restless sleeper, and got up at least once a night to go to the bathroom, sometimes two or three times. She worried about his kidneys. Maybe he worked out in the cold too much. She knew he often lay awake, pretending to sleep. She sensed the stiffness of his body. But the coming baby made her so tired and she always drifted off before he relaxed into real sleep. Night after night, there was always the shifting of the bed, the bathroom door, the flush, the dipping of the mattress once again, and sometimes a low, heavy sighing as he settled.
Tomorrow he would drive her over to her sister's place in Worland. The baby had been due three days ago but first babies were always late, so everyone said, and she didn't want to be over there all by herself. She wanted her man to be there at her side as they wheeled her in, to pace the floor and talk in that silly, comical way the fathers always did on the TV comedies. Not that Ennis was ever like those men but maybe he would be when the time came. And she wanted him to come shyly into the room, hiding behind a bunch of flowers, and peering around to look at her and their baby, and tell her what a clever girl she'd been and how the kid looked like ... well, it didn't matter really.
And mostly she wanted him to take her into his arms when her six weeks was up, and gently make love to her. Because this time he would be gentle, and attentive, and strong...
Her guts twinged again, her back ached in sympathy. It passed: she slept.
She dreamed of swimming in a warm sea, just as her baby swam inside her body; she dreamed the waves tugged her this way and that, bore her up, dropped her down; she dreamed of things she had never experienced, the mystic swell of the ocean, the salt wind, no, not that, it was the heady scent of spring, heavy air and the smell of sex.
Her alarmed cry woke Ennis even as the drenching wetness soaked his pyjamas.
"Ennis! Ennis! Ohhh! I've wet the bed! I've wet the bed!"
He was up in a flash, pulling back the blankets, ducking his head and sniffing the pool of moisture that lapped at them both.
"Ain't piss, it's yer waters broke." Three lines appeared between his brows, as if furrowed by a fork. In the dim light from the bedside lamp he could see Alma's eyes, wide and childlike. "You got any other signs?"
"No, I...oh, just some..." She waved her hand across her belly. "And my back aches. I guess---"
Her words disappeared under a rising wail and his arms were around her in an instant, his soothing voice easing her through. No matter that they were the words he'd use to a birthing cow, Come on there, you good girl, easy does it. Fluid gushed again between her legs.
The alarm, clock read 2.17. Everyone on the ranch would be asleep after a week's work or passed out after a night's drinking. It was but a quarter-mile sprint to the ranch-house, use the office phone, was the office locked of a night? He didn't know, figured maybe he'd have to wake the boss, call old Doc Henry. Could stitch up a busted cowboy, probably stitch up a torn woman if she needed it.
“I'll go get the doc, you be okay for a while, yeah?”
“No! No! Don't leave me!” And her fingers tore at his arm as the rippling cramps spread upwards and her belly tightened under his cautious touch.
“Okay, okay. Look, gotta wash my hands. Don't you go nowhere.” He ruffled her hair and forced a goofy smile.
Hot water, plain soap and a good, long scrubbing soon had his hands acceptable; strong, hands, capable hands, hands ready to bring his baby into the world, straight hands. He didn't glance towards the toilet on his way out.
Alma had rolled herself over, found some comfort in being crouched on all fours, head on the pile of pillows, not caring a fig if her backside caught the night breezes, if her husband saw that bit of her which she'd rather keep private, the dirty part, the bit that was no-one's business but hers.
Ennis grunted approval. That was the angle he viewed all his other birthing girls from, and no tail to move out of the way either. His fingers probed gently and met hard resistance.
“Be here soon. You feel like pushin?”
She did. She pushed and groaned and yelled and rested and started again for a good fifteen minutes, and all the while her man soothed and petted and murmured, good girl, you good girl, nearly there, my good girl, and watched the circle of flesh widen and swell out, the tiny dark head surge and recede, until with one last mighty grunt Alma pushed the baby, hot, wet and slippery, into its daddy's waiting hands. A little girl. Right that moment he wouldn't have cared either way, just so long as he could hold his baby, his own kid, his family.
“Hello, Junior,” he cooed softly.
* * * *
An ice circle ringed the low moon, and each star sparkled like diamond in the chill air. Just like the nights on Brokeback, way above the world. From the darkness of his kitchen, he could look out across the open range to the unseen mountains beyond, mountains he'd tried not to think about, memories he'd tried to bury deep inside, where no-one was ever going to find them. Just kids letting off steam, just guys fooling around, making the long, dull days more bearable. That's all it had been, all it had ever been.
Tucked beneath his chin, his firstborn child rubbed her warm, peachfuzz head against his stubble. Only a handful of days old and already little Alma Junior was her own person with her own favorite moments. So what if he had to be up at dawn; he didn't mind the last ritual of the night, just him and this tiny scrap of life, quiet and peaceful together.
He patted her back, bounced a little on the balls of his bare feet, until his baby erupted forth a gurgling burp and spat up some milk onto his undershirt.
“There you go, that's my girl. Now we better get you back to your bed.”
Yet he made no move to go, just stayed looking out at the moonlit ranch and those distant mountains. His daughter mewled, stretched and wriggled, and found her perfect place against her daddy's chest, his steady heartbeat soothing her like a lullaby. Ennis rocked back and forth, willing the baby's eyes to close, half-hummed half-whispered a song from long ago, hush, little baby, don't say a word, papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird, his raspy voice soft and tender, rising and falling and going around the verses one more time and one more time and one more time, until the feather weight over his heart told him his child was fast asleep.
“Time to hit the hay, little darlin.”
His breath puffed up the silky hair as he returned the little bundle to her cane cradle in the corner of their bedroom, gently tucked her in, lingered a while to watch her in the moonglow. In the days since her birth, each separation of a few yards, a few minutes, had tugged at his guts as if a ghostly cord connected father and daughter, one to the other, over time and space. Won't never let you down, won't never leave you, always be here for you..... But there was work to be done in the morning if he wanted to keep on making a home for his new little family; couldn't be spending the night this way, lost in love. He straightened up and the cane creaked against his hip.
“Sssleep?” Alma mumbled through her pillow. Her new-mother scent hung in the air, filled Ennis's nostrils, wrapped him in its righteousness.
“Just takin out this diaper,” he whispered back, although his wife's breathing was already slipping into the heaviness of sleep. In the bathroom he rinsed off the sharp-smelling baby shit and dunked the diaper in a bucket, next to the one which held Alma's soaking rags. Blood and shit, the story of his life.
The room was cold, too cold to be hanging around in for no good reason when a man had a warm bed to climb into, too cold to explain the sudden heat which flared in his loins. He eased the door lock across, switched off the light, then slowly, reluctantly, took himself in hand as forbidden images rose up once again in his mind.
But this time it wasn't the familiar curve of a pale body in the firelight's glow, or the memory of two kids snorting and laughing and rolling and wrestling, their horseplay which, by silent agreement, always ended up the same way. No, this time it was that face, the face he'd tried not to look at on that last day, marked and branded by his own fist; this time it wasn't laughter but his own stilted words, See you around, I guess; and the great hollowness growing inside him, even though they'd shared a silent, uncomfortable meal just a few hours before; and the final wrenching gut pains that had him kneeling and retching and shivering and shaking, and lost and lonely and helpless and abandoned, long after the physical pain had passed and the innards had settled.
Jesus H., Jack, he whispered towards those distant mountains, I should a never let you outta my sights.
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[May. 28th, 2009|09:24 am] |
This short piece was originally posted as part of a challenge. The idea was to write something which could fit in the space available for a single comment. I have been going through all my unfinished stories and decided to post a few bits and pieces. It's a post-canon story.
SMOKE DREAMS
The kid was limping, an ungainly jerk of the left hip with each painful step, a tiny clench of the hand which extended out, more in hope than expectation of a ride. Ennis pulled over, hated to see an animal in pain, soon regretted his decision.
"Thanks, man." The voice was soft and dreamy, a lingering scent of dope clinging to it, but that wasn't what caused the prickle across Ennis's neck. The gathering gloom had hidden the kid's identity from him until it was too late. It was him, the one who'd been pointed out to Ennis by another ranch-hand a month or so ago, the one who hung around the fringes of the Laramie cattle market, the one who looked for men.
As a city, Laramie didn't amount to much but was more city than Ennis cared to be surrounded by. He disliked the weekly run, hours of driving to dump a bunch of wailing calves, and always a list of other things to do around the saleyard. And when he'd spotted this louche kid with his way of sidling quietly up to the truckers and wranglers, something had squirmed deep in his guts.
His passenger spoke again. "You from around here?"
"Nope."
"You know Twisted Creek Road? You can drop me there."
"Nothin there."
"I'm there."
A biting wind scudded snow across the windscreen as the truck moved beyond the town fringe. At Twisted Creek Road, Ennis brought it to a none-too-careful halt and waited, pointedly staring straight ahead. The kid paused, sighed, clambered down, and began the awkward limp down a road already deep in slushy snow. Despite the darkness, Ennis could see it was a long walk to anywhere.
"Fuck it."
Black ice on a blind curve, a bit too much speed, and they found themselves wedged hard against a tree, back wheel over a ditch. The youth opened his languid green eyes, snickered, said, "Perfect. That's my place up yonder. Wanna coffee? Won't be moving this rig tonight." And Ennis, knowing he was right, knowing that he'd half-freeze to death in the truck cab, reluctantly hauled this unwanted companion over rough ground to the dingy apology for a shack which stood forlorn on a muddy hillside. His skin crawled as they touched.
Jay, his name was, and the coffee he brewed while Ennis built up a life-restoring fire, was good. So was the dope, sweet, fat, oily heads whose scent, as Jay pressed them between his fingers, set off a sudden rush of memory for Ennis; a memory and a killing ache to be back with Jack in that last good night. He sucked hard on the joint, snorted a bit out, exhaled, pushed down the memory, gestured to Jay's hip.
"What happened?"
"Rough client is what happened. Can't afford to pick and choose." Cat's eyes, wary, ready to run. "Seen you around, cowboy. Seen you ... looking."
"Weren't lookin," Ennis muttered, a flush warming his ears. He quickly drew in another lungful of smoke and felt the top of his skull dissolve and, as the room swam and lurched, his mind flew back over twenty desolate years to his last moments of true happiness; firelight, whiskey, a shared joint, and Jack, sad eyes, truths and lies, sometimes I miss you so much, so much, a cold hand slipping between his thighs and Jack's sweet taste in his mouth. So much...
"I miss you too, bud." He watched his words roll and tumble like smoke across the firelit room, wished them back through time to the place where they would have made the difference. Jack, Jack, I'm sorry, I miss you too.
He blinked through tears at sea-green eyes, felt a tender hand on his face, fingertips tracing his mouth, a deep, deep kiss. The hand between his thighs was warm, undoing buttons, drawing him out, but as the hot, wet mouth enclosed him it was Jack's face he saw, Jack's eyes bright and warm as sunshine, Jack's whisper, it's all right, it's all right, Jack's beloved body into which his passion spilled, and Jack's arms that held him tight as he slipped into sleep.
After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Jay wiped a hand across his mouth, got up from his knees, and fetched a blanket to tuck with care around the sleeping figure.
"We're square, cowboy."
***
By the time Jay woke up, his guest had winched out the truck and headed north into the haze of a lifting fog, but mingled with Jay's half-forgotten dreams was a memory, sweet and unexpected - a gentle kiss left on the corner of his mouth and a soft, whispered "Thank you."
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[Apr. 24th, 2009|10:48 am] |
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DOCTOR PARNASSUS
is to be shown at Cannes in May.
The film will screen in the "Out Of Competition" section
and will be the first time Heath's last film will be accessible to the public.
This is exciting news since it seemed as if this film
might struggle to get wide distribution worldwide.
It will still be an uphill struggle to get it released widely
and to get bums on seats, but at least
a Cannes showing will stir up more interest.
All the news plus plenty of chat can be found at
THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR PARNASSUS SUPPORT SITE
so come along and lend your support.
This is Heath's last film and we need to make sure
it gets the very best chance at success.
It will be described as
"A film by Heath Ledger and friends"
rather than "A film by Terry Gilliam",
so great was Heath's influence on the whole production.
Let's do it for Heath in grateful thanks for everything he did for us.
-- Marian/Ministering angel/wildcolumbine |
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[Sep. 20th, 2008|04:13 pm] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster. And I have no intention of sending her a copy :)
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support, inspiration and help. In this chapter I also shamelessly borrowed a few of her ideas.
( THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 15 ) |
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[Aug. 24th, 2008|08:22 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support, inspiration and help.
If the last part of this chapter is puzzling, read the article at http://brokebackkiss.livejournal.com.
( CHAPTER 14 ) |
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[Jul. 28th, 2008|08:50 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support, inspiration and help.
This is a short chapter. Originally, chapters 11, 12 & 13 were all one but I split them up to preserve my sanity.
( CHAPTER 13 ) |
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[Jul. 9th, 2008|06:55 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support and help.
( CHAPTER 12 ) |
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[Jun. 23rd, 2008|09:29 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support and help.
( THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 11 ) |
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[Jun. 2nd, 2008|09:27 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for sex scenes and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support and help.
This particular chapter has caused me many difficulties, and I apologise for its lateness. In addition (and more importantly) I had a resurgence of grief over Heath's death and just couldn't concentrate properly. I hope the result doesn't disappoint too much.
( CHAPTER 10 ) |
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[May. 5th, 2008|09:00 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with thanks for her ongoing support and help.
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 9
Gerry Gerdsen: God, what I wouldn't give to be back on the land fulltime, instead a bein cooped up in an office half the day! Never thought I'd be workin for the old bastard though, not even for a few days. I can see why my daddy hated him so. Man musta been born mean. Cale don't look too bad up against that city kid. Strange, never saw Jack Twist ever becomin a father. Life's full a surprises. Hit paydirt too, what I hear. Wonder why he wants to come back to a godforsaken hole like this after strikin it lucky? Gimme Texas any day. Maybe that knock on the head scrambled his brains a little. Funny little guy. That Ennis knows his stuff. Good worker. Have to wonder about him nursin Jack though. Still, seems a decent enough feller.
John Twist: This is more like it. All the goddamn years I struggled on my own while that no-good lived the high life down there in Texas with his fancypants wife. About time he did some honest work after sayin how he was goin a come up. Took his time. But I gotta confess, that Ennis ain't too bad a worker, fact he's a goodun, as good as a friend a Jack's could be. Now, if he'd been my son ...:
Jack Twist: Look at him! Just look at him! Beautiful. Every movement like a dance. Bet Daddy never thought he'd turn out to be such a good hand. Didn't know it myself, if the truth be told. Wonder if the old man's figured it out yet. Nah, he'd never be able to keep his trap shut if he knew for sure. Can't see further than his damn ranch anyway. S'pose he'd hire Liberace if he knew how to pull a calf.
Ennis del Mar: Stretch slit pull twist throw squirt clip release, stretch slit pull twist throw squirt clip release, str--- Goddammit, Rob, it's a heifer! --- slice clip release, slice clip release, stretch slit pull twist throw squirt clip release, slice ...
Cale Gerdsen: Wish Dad would let me rope. I could be the roper. Ain't that hard, no different to doin it at the rodeo. Wonder when we'll break for lunch, better be soon, better be good. Come on, city boy, get it right. Can't you tell balls when you see em? Bet he doesn't know one end of a horse from the other. Should be fun when we go get the next mob down.
Rob Twist: Oh God, please make it a heifer! Make it a heifer! If another set of nuts flies into that bucket I'm gonna barf, I swear!--- Bull! No! Shit! Sorry, Ennis, sorry, Granpa ---Now I feel like a real dick.
Sybil Twist: Corned beef, mustard, pickle, cheese, cherry cake, coffee, sodas - waste of money, in my opinion but Bobby has been indulged. He'll be here in a while to pick it all up. I wonder if that other boy will come, what's his name, something like a vegetable. I don't know. Why don't parents call their children something sensible these days? Real names, nice names. This is so good, having people here again, just like the old times.
On one side of the fence the cows milled around, waiting for their calves to join them again; on the other side the calves did their best to avoid any contact with these men who were determined to catch them and treat them rough. Gerry Gerdsen's nimble little roping horse would cut a calf out from the crowd, his rope would fly and next thing the calf knew, it was being dragged by a back leg over to where Cale and Rob could grab it and immobilise it. Cale took the head; a knee on the neck, one in the back, and a firm grip on a foreleg ensured the front end of a calf wasn't going anywhere. Meanwhile, Rob got the back legs in a hold a pro wrestler would be proud of.
If Rob yelled "Bull!" and yelled correctly, his grandpa would scorch a JT conjoined into its skin, and Ennis, a razor-sharp knife in his bare hand, would have the scrotum and membranes slit, and the testicles down, out, and into a bucket of ice before the calf had time to register his disapproval. Brain surgery, he'd heard it called, changing a calf's mind from ass to grass. A squirt of antiseptic, a growth implant clipped into the ear, and the now-steer was on his way. If Rob yelled "Heifer!" the brand read (JC), and Ennis just clipped in the implant and slit the ear for easy recognition. Bull or heifer, Jack's job was to get three vaccinations in as fast as he could.
They all kept up a steady pace through the morning until John Twist called lunch and sent the boys off in the truck to take the bucket of prairie oysters down to the house and to bring back the food. Rob and Cale eyed each other but it was no contest: Twist truck, Twist driver. Cale contented himself by stirring a finger through the ice slurry and remarking loudly about the delicious taste of deep-fried balls.
By the time they returned with the lunch, fresh, cool well water, and a new bucket of ice, the men were more than ready. The hot morning had slithered into a hotter afternoon, high summer sun biting fiercely through the thin air, and nary a speck of shade in sight. Sandwich in one hand, coffee cup in the other, Gerry sauntered over to where the boys were sitting perched on a fence.
"How're you likin it so far, son?" His kid nodded approval around a mouthful of cake. "This your first brandin, Rob?"
"Yeah." And last too, if I fuck up any more. "Agribusiness is our field but we're not on the land. My family sells farm equipment, big rigs, combines, that sorta stuff. My other grandad founded the business down in Texas. We're very successful." We don't need to get our hands dirty, we're a cut above you and your thinks-he's-so-special-because-he knows-how-to-hold-down-a-calf son.
Gerry just grinned at this little display of strutting. Nothing much to be proud of on this flea-bite ranch, except the foolhardy determination of its residents to make a go of it where most had already failed, or had the sense to move out. After a much too short break, Ennis got up from where he'd been eating and moved back into position, eager to get on with the work.
"He's handy, that Ennis," Gerry remarked to no-one in particular.
"Guess you knew him from school?" Rob had the family knack of making conversation when he needed to. Gerry shook his head. "Rodeo, then? Was he on the circuit with you and Dad?"
"Never met him before today, son." But I heard about him. Him and Jack were the talk of the town for all a five minutes, Jack the local boy made good then shipped home to die, and that feller comin outta nowhere to nurse him. "Come on, finish up, boys. Looks like we're kickin off again."
For the first summer in a while, Rob had escaped summer school. His grades since Christmas hadn't been great but somehow he'd managed to scrape through, determined to get back to Lightning Flat as soon as possible. Jack had bought him a horse of his own, well, not his exactly, but a spare horse for around the ranch, a black gelding with a white blaze, called Jupiter. The old man had grizzled about the cost, just as he had about the new hayfield and the growth implants that Ennis was clipping into each calf's ear, but the extras had all come out of Jack's pocket. And Rob and his horse had proved helpful enough when it came to bringing in the first of the herd ready for branding, not so helpful in the branding yard itself. Ennis had run through the basics beforehand, showing Rob what was required of a calf wrestler but the first morning was an exhausting lesson in embarrassment. Come evening, however, he had started to feel like one of the team. Even Cale had eased up on throwing contemptuous sneers his way. And at the end of the day, this was still the Twist ranch; the Gerdsens could go back to their neat suburban house and its quarter acre of grass, and only dream of rolling plains and sleek cattle, while Rob could stay on the real thing.
Over supper, he drooped across the table, grumbling about his aching back and shoulders, and legs that were black and blue from calf kicks, but secretly pleased with himself.
"Rob did all right," Jack told his mother, giving his son a friendly shake.
"Did good," mumbled Ennis. Rob just moaned. "Hot shower, good night's sleep, up early tomorrow. Somethin new to learn."
"Yeah, Daddy," Jack went on, "we'll be introducin Rob to the mysteries a irrigation."
The boy picked his head out of his plate long enough to say through a groan, "And I could have been going to visit the Alamo with Doug and his folks."
"The Halliwells? You'll have more fun castratin calves than bein with them. Sour bastard. She's all right, I guess." He winked at Ennis in plain view of his father. "Anyway, you see Doug ever day at college. Ain't that enough?"
"Yeah." Rob shoveled another forkful of pie into his mouth and stared off into space for a few seconds, then gestured at Jack and Ennis. His grandmother's eyebrows knit together; pointing forks at people was not good manners in her book. "You know, I always thought you two knew each other from school."
"Why'd you say that?" Jack asked, frowning just a little.
"Just something Cale's dad said," Rob said innocently.
"No, Ennis comes from way over near the Utah line. He's a Rocky Mountains boy, ain't ya, friend. Come on, Rob, eat up, busy day tomorrow."
"Utah? That's a million miles from here! So?"
"Can't hardly remember now. Can you, Ennis? Seems like we just knowd each other for ever."
"Ro---" began Ennis.
"---Then I thought, must have been on the rodeo circuit but Mr Gerdsen said no. You rodeoed with him, didn't you." Rob wasn't to be detoured. "So, wasn't school, wasn't rodeoing, what was it?"
Ennis mumbled something at the plastic tablecloth, pushed his chair back and stood up ready to go, throwing Jack a furtive glance. Suddenly, Sybil looked up, as if startled by the sound of the chair.
"They worked together one year," she said crisply. "Now finish up, Bobby, so I can get the dishes cleared away." And she too stood up and began reaching for plates. As Ennis helped, their hands and eyes met briefly and the corners of her mouth curled up just a tiny bit.
For Ennis the day of reckoning came on Rob's fourth morning, before the Gerdsens arrived and the branding began again. Sheets of rain had dumped every few days but Rob had brought blue Texas skies with him and the irrigation had to begin. The three of them drove in a quiet dawn out to the new hayfield. All that stood between the waters of Little Battle Creek and the new irrigation channels were two fresh headgates, knocked together and installed after the bobcat driver had done his bit. They'd dug away the remaining dirt and now came the test. As the first gate was slowly lifted a rapidly increasing trickle of water started flowing, the creek still high this early in the season. Then they walked to a point downstream where the first dam would go. Jack told Rob to watch although he barely knew the theory himself.
"See?" he said, as Ennis straddled the ditch with his long legs and jammed a pole across the width. Jack handed him three short poles which he jabbed upright into the ditch, leaning them against the first one. "Okay, fetch that dam, no, don't unroll it," as the boy passed over a sheet of canvas strengthened by a pole through a top seam.
"Now, this gets held in place by the water, but you don't want a just open it up all at once or your dam pole'll break," said Ennis, carefully pushing the canvas down into the stream with a shovel. "Okay, Jack, weigh it down now."
"Pass me them rocks, Rob." And Jack weighed down the bottom of the canvas in the shallow flow. The waters built up behind the dam, breached the top of the channel and slowly, thrillingly, crept like mercury between the alfalfa shoots until a sheen of silver coated the land. Only when they'd set a matching dam on the second channel and proved it to be okay did Ennis relax.
"We can leave that till tomorrow," Jack explained to his boy, "but then the water'll have to be shifted mornin and night. Crop don't like wet feet longer'n a day. While you're here, you'll have your own water to move. Show you how it's done tomorrow." And he smiled over at Ennis and hoped that he would show Jack before then.
They allowed themselves the luxury of a few minutes gazing at their flooded piece of land before moving off to set dams in the old fields, then it was back to the trailer for a quick cup of coffee before another day of branding began.
A backwash of moonlight revealed Ennis's face, half-squashed into his pillow, eyes closed, mouth open, a picture of peace, but Jack's salute to the morning demanded attention. Jack tickled his fingers down Ennis's spine, over the tailbone, into the crevice, brushed the hair with his fingertips and got a jerk and a grunt in response. He stroked those fine, sinewy buttocks - nothing showy, just hidden strength in their dips and swells - and felt the tension grow as real sleep shifted into feigned sleep. He kissed and nibbled a little circle around the object of his desires then began a slow licking, soft moans rising in his throat as he did. Feigned sleep disappeared. Ennis jerked again, more violently this time, shaking Jack away.
"I need a crap."
Jack sighed, "Who said romance is dead. Get a move on then," and delivered a couple of gentle pinches to emphasise his words.
Ennis lay still again, for so long that Jack thought he might have dozed off, then with much grumbling he levered himself out of bed and shuffled out. He stayed in the toilet for a ridiculously long time and on his return was wearing his I'm Only Doing This Because YOU Want It expression. It was almost enough to take the starch out of Jack's resolve. Almost. With Ennis flopped ungraciously back down into his former position, Jack recommenced his tender attentions, using every wile he could muster to fire his man up, a little pressure here, a firm stroke there. At last Ennis rolled over and revealed that his interest was well and truly piqued, although his face remained a mask of studied indifference. Just let loose and give into it, thought Jack, pressing on, and in due course he had Ennis's ankles where he'd like them more often, nestled behind a pair of Twist ears. By and by, Ennis surrendered his resigned grumpiness, at least for a while, but the thought of Rob up there in Jack's old bedroom niggled away at him, kept him tense and anxious.
Curlews dotted the wet land, waters shimmering a silvered apricot pink in the new dawn. A handful of stars clung to the western horizon, like sequined fringes on cloud-silk scarves. There was already a hint of the warm south carried on the breeze; a morning to inspire poets and artists and lovers dreaming on perfumed beds.
"What's up Ennis's ass?" Rob asked, as he walked to his first dam, Jack beside him.
Jack's head snapped around. "What d'ya mean by that?"
"Well, look at him," Rob waved an arm at Ennis, striding across the next field, hunched and angular, a little grey cartoon cloud almost visible above his head. "He just seems real pissed about something this morning. You two had a fight or what?"
Despite himself, Jack's face flushed and what was meant as a joking deflection came out as a rebuke. "Hey, Junior, none a your business!"
"Okay, okay," muttered Rob, "keep your shirt on. Like livin with you and Mom again."
Jack shot him a killer look but sensibly kept his mouth shut. They marched in silence to the first set of dams on one of the old hayfields, both of them glancing surreptitiously over to where the lanky figure was already setting his own dams.
"Okay, do it like I showed you last night," said Jack, mentally crossing his fingers, "remember, you pull up a corner first, yeah? Don't want the lot washin away."
Rob freed a submerged corner from its rock anchor and let the flowing water slowly ease past until the pressure lessened enough on the canvas to allow him to disassemble the whole arangement. Jack nodded approval and left him to it, moving away to shift his own water. On Rob's last dam, getting a little cocksure, he moved too quickly and for a second or two the dam billowed and strained under the weight of water, but instead of breaking, the dam pole shifted sideways and headed south, sticks, canvas and all, in the freed-up stream. As he chased after it, yelling loudly, laughter came floating in stereo across the fields from both his father and Ennis.
All that Rob could see out of his rearview mirror was a cloud of dust. Somewhere in that cloud stood two grandparents and a friend, each with a slightly worried expression, and a father chuckling, "Like father, like son," as he turned on his heel and walked away, with complete confidence in his offspring's ability to return his truck in one piece. With the branding completed, so long as he shifted his dams morning and night and there was nothing else urgently needing to be done around the ranch, Rob had Jack's blessing to go exploring. He'd studied some maps before leaving Texas, and thought the Black Hills to the east looked interesting, thought too of maybe heading north into Montana and experiencing more of the great Northern Plains, to whose edge Lightning Flat clung. But instinct told him to go west first, back to the Big Horns.
In Buffalo, in the lee of the mountains, he bought a decent map of the area and spent some time examining it carefully until he figured out where he was going. After a couple of false starts he found himself roughly at the point where half a year earlier he had wandered in the patchy snow while his dad and Ennis stayed behind. Here he spread the map on the truck's hood, oriented himself and continued his searching.
And there it was, way off the beaten track, way the hell out the back of nowhere, just a speck on a map. Why? he thought to himself as he followed first the highway, then smaller and smaller roads, driving as close as he could, Why? Why this one?
That evening, before the three of them went out to move the water, Rob casually dropped the name into conversation, as Jack knocked back a beer and Ennis cleaned up their supper things.
"So, Dad, what's so special about Brokeback Mountain?"
Jack choked, Ennis dropped the frying pan on his foot. When Jack could again suck air through his closed-up windpipe, he croaked, "What the fuck you talkin about?" Behind Rob, he could see Ennis's face, a study in panic.
"Well," said Rob, with apparent artlessness, "you used to say you wanted your ashes scattered there. I figured it must be some place that you'd maybe been to as a kid."
"Yeah, yeah, pretty place." Jack coughed some more and made a great show of getting ready to go outside. "C'mon, slackers, water's waitin."
They stripped off in silence, clothes tossed in a single heap on a chair, climbed into bed and contemplated the ceiling, waiting to see who would speak first. It was Ennis.
"Ashes?"
"Just the whiskey talkin, pay no mind." In the twilight bedroom, Jack felt Ennis's eyes upon him. He pressed his lips together, determined not to succumb to tears yet again, but the memory of all those evenings shared with just a bottle and a breaking heart proved too much for him. "There were times, thought I'd die before you ... before we ..." He felt Ennis reaching out and rolled into the offered comfort of an encircling arm, laid his curly head on Ennis's shoulder.
For his part, Ennis could barely marshal his thought. Rob's words buzzed in his head. He wanted to say it was all right now, it would be all right, but when he weighed such platitudes against Jack's years alone in Texas, imagining himself dying without Ennis, his ashes scattered to the wind on an isolated mountainside, the words were rendered utterly inadequate. He should never have let Jack out of his sights. Never. So they simply held on tight until the storm surge of sadness passed on, leaving a melancholy calm.
"Rob knows."
"He don't know nothin. But he suspects. Yeah, he's fishin. Just about choked to death when he said that, damn kid. I didn't even know he'd ever heard. Still, can't keep it hid from the whole world."
"You see how he knocks and waits before comin in here?"
Jack had seen. Most mornings it was they who picked up Rob at the house but on a few occasions he'd ambled down to the trailer first. Not that there had ever been anything for the boy to discover; Ennis always shifted rooms before sun-up, just in case.
Silence settled again as they mulled over what was happening, then Jack slid his head down from Ennis's shoulder. "Your heart's gallopin."
Ennis said nothing, just sighed a tiny, fretful sigh. As ever, Jack tried to lighten the mood but his voice belied his words.
"You ain't thinkin a runnin out on me, cause if you do, I'll lasso your balls and tie m'self to the other end a the rope. You go anywhere, you be draggin me with you."
"Ain't goin nowhere."
Jack rolled up over Ennis's bony hip, made himself comfortable along his lanky length, belly to belly, nose to nose, and murmured against the tight mouth.
"Good to hear it. Don't you worry none. It'll all work itself out. I figure if Rob sees how it's, you know, okay, not dirty or nothin, maybe he'll understand in his own time." But he saw the pinch in Ennis's face, and the unwelcome thought arose in his mind, It's still dirty to you, ain't it. "Anyway, he'll be gone in a week. We can relax again, get back to normal."
Their mouths came together; no sense in waiting a week. Gently they began to move against each other, flint and tinderbox striking sparks, lighting fires in their loins, for whatever might cause them grief or anger or dismay, their bodies always clung and cleaved and made them whole.
Afterwards, they fell asleep where they lay, Jack breathing into Ennis's neck, sucking gently on his skin, and when in the night they rolled apart, their bodies still glistened with the traces of their passion.
They were all seated for supper, shepherd's pie - "Cept Jack used a say it should be called cowherd's pie since there's no sheep in it," said Sybil for maybe the fourth time that Ennis could recall - when the phone rang. John grumbled and complained but no-one else made a move. It was his phone and his right to answer it.
"Twist!' Hard voice. "Who wants him?" A pause. "Goddamn." He stomped back to the table.
"Who was that, Daddy? Someone for me?"
"After you," nodding at Ennis. "Didn't say who. He hung up."
Ennis's food turned to cardboard in his mouth. "Who the fuck would ring me?" he asked Jack later. "Only my girls know this number."
"Someone in town, prob'ly. You got a overdue library book?"
"It ain't no joke. No-one knows this number, 'cept my girls. Maybe somethin's wrong."
"If there is, they'll ring back. You could ring them."
"What if I get Alma?"
"Christ, Ennis, I don't know! And half the friggin town knows you're here! Maybe you run over someone's cat. Maybe some guy wants a date. Do somethin about it or put it outta your mind."
Ennis glanced at their phone on and off through the rest of the evening but it remained stubbornly silent. Meanwhile, in Riverton, Alma went to bed contented; at least she knew. To her surprise she realised there was a curious solace to be gained from the knowledge that, whatever his sins of the flesh - and they were mighty in her eyes - her ex was at least constant, faithful unto one man. Even Bill's rebuke - Don't ever ask me to do that again, you hear? - didn't spoil this odd tranquility.
Next day was Ennis's turn to do the weekly run to pick up supplies. He had sacks of this and that loaded up, mineral supplements, oats for the horses from the Hay & Grain, timber and nails from the hardware store, and Sybil's shopping list filled at the supermarket, plus some beer, and smokes for himself - not as many as before, at Jack's request - and was on his way back to the truck when the array of African violets on a stand outside a little gift shop caught his eye. His mama had liked flowers in her kitchen, he recalled, couldn't see why Sybil shouldn't have something to brighten the sombre house. He selected the healthiest looking specimen, ducked inside to pay for it, and nearly crashed into Gerry Gerdsen on his way out. They exchanged pleasantries, and he mumbled "For Mrs Twist", indicating the pot of flowers and feeling not a little foolish. Back at his truck he carefully wedged the plant in the footwell then looked back up the street. Down near the Post Office Gerry was talking to someone, a heavy guy, something like the bobcat driver who'd dug their new ditches. Gerry's arm waved, both men glanced in Ennis's general direction then resumed their conversation. His guts clenched. After than he found excuses not to go into town.
The wind was blowing strong and steady from the south-west, scudding fluffy patches of clouds before it, like scattered sheep running before a predator. Down on the ground their little shadows rode the swells of the low hills, sweeping up to Ennis and away behind him, on and on across the northern plains. He straightened up, feeling the pinch in his lower back. His eyes followed a single shadow until it passed beyond him, then a second shadow, then another and another, hypnotic, unsettling. A small panic began deep in his guts; these bare hills, so wide and open, that he had thought so secure and enfolding, now offered him no hiding place. If they came for him, there was nowhere to run.
In the corner of his eye came a flash of movement and he jumped, whirled, saw the cow skitter back from a snake in the rough grass. His heart smashed against his ribs, air caught in his tightened throat. Snake and cow took off in different directions as Ennis attempted to gather up his scattered nerves. Get a grip, you fool! Just a friggin snake. On weakened legs, he walked to Angel, dragged himself into the saddle and galloped away, mindless of gopher holes and rocks and fissures, of any danger save that which had settled within him.
"That boy near ate us outta house and home," said Jack, standing hands on hips in the fat pen. Three steers stood at a distance, suddenly wary, as if realising the high life was about to come to an abrupt end for one of them. Ennis picked out one of the nervous boys and with a few light taps from the sticks they held, they persuaded him out of the gate, down a short track and into the slaughter yard. This was the bit Ennis really hated. He loved to raise animals, breed them, birth them, send them on their way. He didn't think too hard on what happened next, and preferred that the supply of meat be another person's duty. But sometimes it couldn't be avoided so he'd learned to kill as efficiently as he could.
The bullet went in clean, and he had the throat slit before the steer even stopped staggering. Between them, they got the hind legs chained, and hoisted up the carcass to bleed out. It was messier this way but Ennis wanted to make sure an animal was good and dead before any further indignities were perpetrated on its body. After lunch they set to work skinning and slaughtering the beast. Knives flashed in the streaks of sunlight piercing down through the old shed roof; the carcass glinted too, raw flesh dully crimson beneath their hands. A conversation idled along between them; a stretch of fence down in a small landslip, Sybil's sciatica, rotting floorboards beneath the bath, the minutiae of their daily lives.
After a while Jack realised he was holding the talk up all by himself. He glanced across. Ennis was ashen-faced, his hands trembling as he tried to butcher the animal. Then he dropped the knife and shot outside, to spew up his guts on the dusty ground. Jack was there in a flash.
"You okay?" A hand on his shoulder, eyes full of concern.
"Get off me! Don't need you! I--" Ennis turned, dropped to his knees, then all fours, stomach heaving again and again. Sweating and panting, he spat out the last of the bile then wiped a sleeve across his face, but the blood stink set him retching again, until there was nothing but deep, hurting groans left. This time he didn't resist Jack's touch, the hand wet with cool water wiped over his face.
"Come on, bud, you get out of the sun, drink some water, rinse your mouth out." Jack was hauling him up, handing him the water bottle, taking his weight as they staggered into the shade of the shed. A huge shudder took Ennis from head to toe at the sight of the steer but he gritted his teeth, rested a while, and then they continued, with Jack cracking jokes about his mother's cooking, until the job was finished and the meat stowed in the freezer.
And the dream when it came was like knives across his skin, slicing the flesh back layer by layer, exposing the rottenness below. Through lidless eyes he stared up at the heavens, tainted with the red of his own lifeblood. Crows wheeled above, ripping holes in the bright noon sky, black emptiness seeping through. Their harsh caws serrated him, laughter hit like acid on his wounds. Between his legs lay bloody pulp, and the stench of burning flesh filled his nostril, choked his lungs, until he flung himself awake, sweat pouring. He thought his pounding heart must wake Jack, but his mate slept on, open and exposed to the night, a hand cupping his cock which lay with deceptive innocence across his thigh. Ennis pulled the sheet over him then stole away to the other bedroom, to lie wide-eyed until dawn, hearing in the nightwind the sounds of approaching footsteps.
The landslip had taken a hundred feet of fence with it; wire and posts hung out at an angle from the rubble, maybe twenty feet below the track. John Twist screeched the truck to a halt perilously close to the loosened earth.
"Careful, Daddy. Don't want a lose the truck over the edge."
"Don't need your goddamn advice on how to drive! You think I don't know how to handle a goddamn truck on my own land?"
Jack took it with equanimity; somehow his father was easier to tolerate now that he had Ennis to turn to. The Twist men got out and inspected the damage. It was clear that an underground soak had weakened the land; a steady trickle of water now ran into the shallow valley below. Without any geological justification, the old man insinuated that the new hayfield and its channels were somehow to blame, diverting the course of hidden springs. The bases of a couple of fenceposts were plainly well rotted through and had been rotting long before the new ditches were dug. Jack just raised and dropped his shoulders; no point in arguing, no matter how much the smart retorts circled in his brain.
As he stepped behind the truck and began unloading the tray, the softened ground gave way under the back near wheel, and the truck lurched and settled onto its back axle in the dirt. Jack eventually settled too, fetching up violently and painfully against the fallen fence after a tumbling, slithering fall down the short slope. He lay white-faced and gasping for a several seconds as the two new posts he'd been holding bounced down to the valley floor.
"Goddamn fool boy! Whyn't you look where you're goin!" his father bellowed. "Bring them posts up and give me a hand!"
Jack slid the rest of the way down and hauled the posts back up, shot through with pain. Blood ran warm from his left thigh. By the time he got them back, his father had thrown a rope around a rocky outcrop and begun winching the truck out.
The repair job turned out to be a bastard, dog-legging well away from the slip, a grim-faced Jack digging out post-holes in the dry, hard ground while curious flies buzzed around his leg. Once they'd finished, John remarked, "You and him can grab those old posts later. Don't suppose you're fit to get em now." It was his only reference to the fall.
Over the rim of her coffee mug, Sybil regarded her second son warmly as he stretched his length out opposite her. They both turned slightly at the sound of the truck and she noticed how his face lit up as it almost always did whenever Jack was near.
"Here they come now," he smiled, "must a smelled the coffee. No, you sit still. I'll---Jesus H, Jack! Beg your pardon, Sybil. What you done to yourself, bud?" He was on his feet and across the kitchen, staring at the bloody jeans.
"I'm okay," Jack mumbled but he was glad of Ennis's strong arm around him. "I'll just clean it up, be all right."
They got upstairs and into the bathroom, still redolent of freshly cut timber. Ennis carefully peeled Jack's jeans down and sucked air through his teeth. A bruise the size of a dinnerplate covered Jack's left hip, punctuated below by a short, ragged tear, still oozing blood.
"Fencin staple. Slipped down that fuckin slope." He gave a wry smile. "Lucky a post broke my fall."
"You had a tetanus jab lately?" Ennis was on his knees, prodding the wound. It was deep.
"Maybe when I had my accident. Wasn't payin much attention."
"Come on, this needs seein to. Don't want you gettin lockjaw."
"That'd kill a lot a fun," Jack tried to joke.
"Kill you," The humor was lost on Ennis. He'd seen what tetanus could do. They were halfway to Gillette before the panic started rising but he shoved it down in favor of more important matters.
While Jack was being cleaned, stitched and injected in the Gillette Emergency Room, Ennis sat in the waiting area, head down, catching no-one's eye, but he'd been in and out of the hospital too often not to be recognised and greeted. Each hello set his nerves jangling. It seemed like forever before Jack emerged, hobbling and wincing.
"Nothin serious. Pulled a few muscles, half a dozen stitches, a tetanus jab, stay off it a day or two cause of it bein my---" His voice dropped. He hated even mentioning such a thing. "---my weak side."
Inwardly, Ennis sagged with relief, but he hustled Jack out as fast as was decent, and he didn't start to settle back down until they were safely back at the ranch.
Jack's deep bruise worked its way through a rainbow whose edges were shifting between purple and green by the time his stitches were removed. He had said nothing about the nagging ache of strained muscles, just kept pushing himself as much as possible, but Ennis saw the sudden tightening of his face now and then.
It was fading to yellow by late July, when they shifted a few head of cattle up onto fresh pasture. The herd was jumpy, cows, dogs, men and horses all beset and bothered by mosquitoes and flies, and more than once Jack had to work hard at bringing his mare under control as she pranced and fidgeted. By the time the cattle had been resettled he was already tired and aching but he agreed with Ennis that they should move the water before heading back for supper. Ennis bit back a remark as he saw the weariness with which Jack slipped from the saddle, but raced through his own work so he could get over to help Jack finish. When he did, he found Jack struggling.
"Hey, bud, lemme give you a hand."
"I'm okay."
"Sooner we finish, the sooner we can get back home and put our feet up."
"Said I'm okay! How long you goin a keep motherin me? I get hurt, I get over it, same as you." In irritated fashion, he pulled up a corner too fast and the canvas begain billowing under the water pressure. In a trice Ennis jumped into the ditch to stop the poles giving way and breaking. The dam got saved but Jack's temper got well and truly lost.
"Goddammit, I told you I was okay! You wanta get back home then get outta my face and let me do my work!"
Water filled Ennis's boots as he stood open-mouthed, clutching canvas and poles. Jack snatched them away and stomped downstream, Ennis sploshing after him.
"I was just tryin a help!"
"I don't need your goddamn help."
"Then what the fuck do you need, huh? I come here to help you, to look after you. Now you say you don't need that? So what do you want me to do?"
"I want ... I want ..." I want you to treat me as an equal, to love me as an equal, to stop thinking of me as your little queer, to stop keeping yourself apart from me, always that last goddamn fence you won't cut. I want you to be mine, to give yourself to me one hundred per cent. And I want my own father to look up to me like he does to you. "I want a be taken seriously around here."
"You are," Ennis said flatly but there was a queasiness in his guts.
"You know that ain't true. The old man thinks the sun shines outta your ass. He wouldn't piss on me if ...."
"Jack, don't." He tried to get an arm around Jack but Jack was having none of it, wriggled away instead, his welling tears fueling the anger rather than easing it.
"Stop treatin me like some stupid girl. So I only reach your chin and I got a fat ass. That don't make me any less of a man than you. I was a bull-rider, remember? That takes balls. I ain't no sissy, Ennis. You think what you want, whatever fits in that stubborn head a yours. But I ain't. I worked my ass off for the Newsomes, fathered a son---"
"What---" It was a dirty blow, and Jack saw Ennis reel, but he couldn't stop now.
"---then you lay in that motel bed and told me how you liked doin it with women, like that somehow proved you was okay, but it was your marriage fell apart, not mine. Why was that, huh? And them women you claimed you put the blocks to, was that all lies? Did you really fuck em? Did you enjoy it? Why won't you never admit that it's cause I'm a man that you like it so much?"
"It's you, Jack, just---"
"---and if doin it with a woman makes you a man then I reckon I must be more of a man than you. Think on that a while. But somehow I'm the queer and you ain't, just cause I needed it more'n you. And why is it ever time you let me fuck you, you walk around next day like I shoved a red hot poker up your ass? Why'd you have to pretend you only do it to keep me happy, hey? Cause you think it ain't manly to like it? Cause you can pretend somehow you're not really queer cause you don't like it? How d'you think that makes me feel? First time we fucked, you didn't stop to think whether that was what I wanted, did you!"
"I thought you damn well liked it!"
"I did like it, and I ain't ashamed to say I like it, but right from the start you always felt I was less than you, less of a goddamn man because of it. Told you before, it's what you want that matters, not what you do. And you want a man, not a friggin woman. Get it through your thick skull, Ennis fuckin del Mar, you're a fuckin queer!"
"I ain't ... I ..."
Ennis's chest was heaving, his hands balled into fists again and again, his mouth soundlessly worked as he stared at Jack. Visions of blood, of anger and violence, passed between them. It could never be like that again, surely not. Jack held his ground, no backing down this time. Then Ennis broke, ran to his mare and took off, leaving Jack to finish work in a cold, wordless fury. When he made it back to the home paddock, the turquoise truck had gone and so had Ennis's little rucksack from inside their trailer. Defiant and angry, Jack allowed himself to fume and bluster a while longer, but with darkness came the first pangs of despair, panic breaking through his barriers. He stayed up long into the night, half-regretting the lack of whiskey, and when finally he admitted defeat and went to bed he slept badly. In his mind were a thousand terrible scenarios, yet the worst was already a reality; Ennis was gone.
With dawn came the familiar engine sound and every bone in his body dissolved into a mush of distracted relief, but when he got outside Ennis was already saddling up in the stables and he rode away without so much as a look in Jack's direction. He looked rough; he'd slept in the truck. All that day he didn't stop for a meal, just carried a water bottle, and if he ate anything, Jack didn't know. Come evening he drove away again with not a word having been spoken beyond those needed to carry out the ranch work. The next day was the same. He smelled bad, looked worse. The third day he didn't catch Jack's eye once.
The fourth morning he appeared freshly washed, and when Jack got close enough to tell, there was a scent of lavender soap about his hair. It appeared as though his shirt might even have come in contact with a washing machine. On the fifth evening after their fight, however, he didn't climb into his truck and drive away. Instead he stood beside it, scuffing the ground with his boot until Jack had passed him, heading to the trailer, then in a voice so soft it barely rose above the sighing wind, he said, "Jack."
tbc |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 10th, 2008|10:23 pm] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 (for entire story)
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, and this chapter maybe should be subtitled "Ranch Life".
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 8
Around the time Jack found himself on his backside in the straw, his good leg planted on a cow's nether end, hauling on a handle attached to a chain attached to a calf, he decided to rescind his proposal of a little cow and calf operation.
"Too late now," grunted Ennis, similarly employed, "so shut up and pull. And you, little mama, push!"
After another few minutes' sweaty effort, the calf fell out with a satisfying sploosh. "Hey there," said Ennis, "bull," and swung it in a quick half-circle by its back legs while Jack scrambled to his feet and carefully recorded "489, bull, pullers" in a stained notebook. Once the calf had decided breathing was the best option, Jack tagged it, Ennis injected it with Vitamin A and swabbed iodine on the umbilical cord, then they left mother and baby to get to know each other. The lights were already on in the shed. In the next jug a cow let out a low, unhappy bellow.
"What d'you reckon?" asked Jack, bone-weary and looking forward to supper. Ennis slipped a washed, greased arm into the cow, felt around, pursed his lips.
"She might be right, just takin her time. Check the drop afore it's too dark, then we'll see." He washed up yet again and the two of them headed out to the small corral where the first-time mothers were gathered. Jack's criterion for imminent birth was a pair of hooves sticking out; he couldn't figure how Ennis could eye a cow acting moody in a corner and know that she was ready while the one elsewhere acting equally strangely wasn't. They brought three in, and while they were cleaning out a couple of jugs and laying in fresh straw, hay and water, the worrisome cow obligingly dropped her calf without any trouble.
"That's it. Call John down."
For his own reasons, John Twist had claimed the night shift. Jack had his suspicions; he'd heard a sound like a footfall outside their trailer one night while Ennis slept, but nothing followed it. They both snored sometimes - Jack loved to lie awake and listen to his dear one snuffling away beside him - and he worried about the old man creeping around loose at night. On the other hand, when they had returned home it had given Jack great pleasure to see his father looking puzzled, and maybe even a bit relieved, when he spotted a lovebite the size of Texas peeping out from Jack's shirt collar. Suck on that, you bastard, Jack had thought.
Several times the old man had called Ennis at night on the new intercom to get over and help, sometimes justified, sometimes plainly not, but Ennis, fond of the smells and sounds of calving sheds, hadn't complained. Usually Jack got up and went with him, just for the pleasure of watching him work. It moved him to see the way his man could be gentle and hard, tender and strong in turn. Most of what Jack had known about birthing calves had disappeared long ago but under Ennis's careful tutelage he was picking up unlikely skills and losing, bit by bit, the sense of being an outsider in his own home.
And so the calving progressed. The small herd of heifers was soon delivered; they had been put to the bulls early in the piece. It hadn't been a big job as Mr Twist had allowed the herd size to slide down to a level he could cope with. Unbeknownst to him, Jack and Ennis had closely studied the previous years' records, such as they were, noting several dry cows who hadn't produced in a couple of years and the slow decline in numbers. Ennis had a suspicion there had been trichomoniasis around; the old man hadn't been paying attention. Meanwhile the second-time mamas and the old girls mostly fended for themselves, dropping calves in the fields, although every day their progress was checked on and the odd problem lady brought into the shed for special attention. Ennis fretted that the records weren't clear enough for him to identify the ones who'd had difficulties before, and if Mr Twist knew who they were, he kept the knowledge to himself. It was, Ennis felt, a bit like running an obstacle race blindfolded, where he was being set up for a fall. But he had no intention of letting the perverse old bugger best him. This year he would do the best he could, and keep the best records he could, and next year there would be a whole new group of girls that he himself had helped choose. It was a good feeling.
At supper one evening, Sybil handed Jack a letter, which he grimaced at, then shoved into his pocket. There was no need for Ennis to wonder who it was from; he'd seen one just like it several months back. All the way back to the trailer Jack tapped it again and again on his hand, then propped it up and stared at it while he worked his way through three quarters of a beer.
"Fercrissakes, will you just open the damn thing? Ain't goin a get any better if you wait."
Jack nodded, breathed deep, and ripped the envelope open. "Dear Jack..."
"Good enough start."
"Yeah. Okay, sending divorce papers, truck papers, Rob's trust fund, blah blah, lawyer forwarding, sign and return, money transfer - she's no fool, no signature, no money. Hah! Here's the stinger. Let me put you straight on one point. I have our son's financial future in mind here. Please ensure that you bequeath to him a viable business when the time comes. Got a surprise for you, sweetcheeks," - the last murmured under his breath. "I sincerely hope---what the fuck?"
"What?"
"I sincerely hope you and Ennis are able to make a go of it. What the fuck does she mean by that?" He glanced up and caught the quick creasing of Ennis's brow. "Course we're goin a make a go a the ranch. Yeah, course we are." Ennis's face relaxed. "Well, could be worse. Believe me, with Lureen it could be worse."
For much of March a deceptive calm lay over the fields of Lightning Flat. A patchwork quilt of dun-colored grass tufts and dappled patches of snow stretched unchanging in all directions; the old house stood stark against a milky-smoke sky, everything held in suspension in a spare, enclosed world. Then a mean stretch of arctic weather dumped feet of snow, the derelict bunkhouse collapsed under its weight, drifts piled against fences, walls, anything that stood still for too long, calves disappeared, and outdoor work turned into a feat of endurance day after day. One calf in ten didn't make it; Ennis knew there was little he could do but felt guilty anyway.
A freezing wind howled on a morning like any other, blowing Ennis into Jack as he clung to the truck, trying to hook off the bales. Chill faces pressed together, warm laughter gurgled up from within, despite the horizontal snow needles blasting into them.
"This what you wanted?" bawled Ennis into Jack's ear.
"You bet!"
The words were ripped from their mouths and flung over the fence in an instant. They let go of their support and were wind-driven to where a cow was lowing at a mass of white. A bit of digging revealed her calf, cold to the touch. Ennis removed a glove and slipped a finger into the calf's mouth, feeling the chill that reached deep into the little one's innards.
"Okay, baby, you're comin with us. Don't fret, mama, your girl will be back." Between them, they got the calf back to the truck and shoved it, too weak to protest, onto the bench seat. Ennis nursed it as Jack drove to the next field where another calf joined it and a carcass got thrown on the tray, next to the remaining hay.
"Be a few more found when this melts," Ennis remarked as they headed back to the calving shed. The carcass was dumped on the rubbish trailer, atop a growing pile of old straw from the jugs, a fetid mass of blood, shit, amniotic fluid and cow piss; the two babies shared a little hot box until returning body warmth and TLC made them too frisky.
And so the days ground on, feeding, breaking ice on water troughs, rescuing calves and cows from unlikely places and predicaments, delivering the living, disposing of the dead. On April Fools Day a warm chinook wind blew enough to melt snow in time for the next freeze to turn it half to ice, but gradually winter released its grip on the starved landscape. The two men shovelled shit and soggy mud from around the mangers, repaired the snow-damaged fences, and did the thousand and one other tasks at hand, and now and then their eyes met and their faces creased into smiles.
A line of cows and young calves stretched its way along the track, the dull thud of their hooves overlaid with their lowing, with men's whistling and an occasional sharp order, and with the barks of the border collies. Once in a while a calf would lose sight of its mother and blunder back through the herd, bellowing and frantic. It was Jack's job, riding the drag, to catch such wanderers and guide them back until they mothered up again. Ennis rode swing, keeping the middle from bunching up and losing momentum. John took the head; even he was not immune to the traditions of the Old West. It was hardly a Texas-to-Montana cattle drive, just a few dozen head being trailed to where they could graze on the first shoots of spring grass, yet for men whose blood sang the old songs it was a deeply satisfying activity.
Jack rode easy, revelling in his returning strength, rocking in the saddle, slipping back into old dreams, old memories. If he held his hand just so, he found he could block out his father's figure way up ahead and imagine that the cattle were a thousand ewes and their lambs, that the collies were blue heelers, that Ennis was in charge of pack mules, that the whole procession was flowing like a stream out above the treeline and across great flowery meadows, that the world was in the morning of its life, crystal pure and waiting to embrace them. Lost in his dream, he barely noticed that Ennis was falling back.
"What you doin there, bud?"
Jack sighed. "Just thinkin."
"Bout what?"
"Brokeback." The name had not passed between them since the dreadful day nearly a year back when Jack had screamed it like a curse at the man he loved. Even on the day with Rob up in the Big Horns, in sight of the very mountains which had contained their little Eden, when Jack had cried fit to burst but couldn't explain why, their mouths had been unable to form the word. "I want to go back one day, get it right."
Ennis glanced ahead where John's hat was disappearing over a crest. He leaned in and quickly kissed Jack's cheek. "Yeah. Yeah, one day, bud. For sure." Then he urged Angel back up the line.
Once the herd was secured, the three men rode on further to a field up near the north-east boundary, an awkward little acre or so on the far side of the creek that hadn't seen real use since Jack had left home. A bigger herd would need more hay, and this looked like a good spot to establish a new hayfield. John was skeptical.
"Easier to buy in hay if'n it's needed. Too much work gettin this good. Cost too much anyway."
"Bad economics," chipped in Jack, knowing as he did that his father would barely register his words. "Don't you worry yourself none. We'll pay for it outta our money. You won't lose a thing."
"Jack's right, John. And most a the cost'll be in labor. We can do it between us, Jack and me. Won't interfere with our other work, promise you that."
John just grunted, pointed out that the creek was low, should find out why, and departed, leaving them in the field. Ennis spent some time studying the lay of the land, the state of the ground. They traced a path back up to the creek then followed it upstream to where a huge tumble of debris from the snowmelt had built up behind a smashed-down fence, good as any beaver dam. Next day they returned with the tractor and cleared the blockage, wader-clad Ennis up to his chest in freezing water, Jack chainsawing logs. They repaired the broken fence and began the task of picking rocks that would occupy all their spare time for the next few days. When that was done and the land cleared ready to take the plow, they left it be.
Later that month Jack was called down to Gillette, examined from head to toe and declared to be mended to the limits of medical science. Any residual afflictions he would either have to stand or fix himself. True to her word, Lureen forked out the cash, and Jack found himself the owner of a slightly used but much loved - and loved-in - trailer. From then on, nothing much was ever said about Jack's health, although Ennis was still inclined to hover a little, and Jack didn't always keep the groans inside when the broken shoulder or the crushed vertebrae or the busted leg or the rest of his lifetime of injuries played up in the cold weather. Ennis made sure there was always a less stressful job to be done of an afternoon, like repairing the old canvas dams and making new ones ready for the crop of hay, and if Jack nodded off over his work now and then, his father didn't need to know. The only time Jack pleaded weakness was on occasional nights when he flung himself spreadeagle on their bed, declared he was far too feeble and helpless to do anything, and requested that Ennis have his wicked way with him.
"Take this to your mama, darlin," said Ennis, handing the envelope of cash to his youngest. He watched her bounce across the road and up the porch steps, heard the sweet, high voices as she disappeared inside for a few seconds, and smiled broadly as she came running back to the truck.
"So, Daddy, can I drive? Got my licence now." She pulled it out of her big shoulderbag and proudly held it for him to see.
"You have? Look at that! That's great. But no, darlin. If it was my rig you could."
"Oh come on. Your boss won't mind."
"I said no, Francie."
"Spoilsport," Francie said without conviction, snuggling up to her beloved daddy. She kept up a steady stream of instructions - change up! you didn't indicate! Stop sign ahead! not so fast! - until he growled like a bear at her and they subsided into laughter. At Bill's store, Junior was waiting, after her Saturday morning shift. Her eyes widened as the cream and bronze crew cab pickup rolled to a halt, a far cry from the rusted-up vehicle she'd been expecting.
"Great wheels, Daddy! How'd you afford it?"
"It's not his. It belongs to his boss and he won't let me drive it, the meanie," Francie pouted.
"Aw Daddy! Francie's a good driver. Your boss wouldn't mind if---"
"No! Jack---" Damn! "I said no, girls, okay?"
"Yeah, okay, Daddy. We were just teasing you."
"I know, darlin." He smiled at them, his beautiful, gleaming girls, and for the first time in their lives he felt a pang of guilt about keeping secrets from them. A little of the desire which Jack had expressed, to say a name out loud, to tell them the reason for his happiness, had crept into his heart. But he could never do that, never, could never destroy the love his daughters had for him.
"So is Jack your boss?"
"Sort of. It's Jack's dad's ranch."
"Where is it? You didn't say."
"Uhh," he drew it out, finding the light traffic needed his full attention right at that moment, "uh, over beyond the Big Horns. Long way. Damn drivers these days. You better be careful, young Miss, you get out there by yourself."
"Are they nice to work for? Must be okay if they let you take the truck."
"Yeah, nice. Now, who's goin in to buy the ice creams?"
"You are!" the girls chorused. That's the way it had been since they were little; Daddy always fetched the ice creams.
They drove out to the banks of the Wind River, up near the Boysen Park Reservoir and spent a lazy afternoon in the late spring sun, surrounded by kids and dogs and parents, just like any other divorced, straight father and his daughters. A rough baseball game was happening along the river flats. Father and girls all gained a certain pleasure out of watching the college boys playing, but only two of them recognised the pleasure for what it was.
"So how's Troy?"
"Troy? She's not with him any longer. The new guy is Kurt and she's sooooo in love with him, Daddy!"
Junior blushed and swatted at her sister who was enjoying the embarassment caused. And so the afternoon drifted away, in gentle banter and chatter and the enjoyment of just being together.
"Is that your dad's truck?" asked Alma when her daughters returned.
"No, it belongs to his boss."
"Jack," chimed in Francie. "Daddy works for him and his father."
Alma asked nothing more but later that night as she lay in bed, sleep didn't come. She elbowed her husband. He grunted. "Bill. Bill, when Ennis came to see you last year, did he say where he was goin?"
"Nope, just gave me the cards and said he'd pay up when he could. I told you. Why?"
"I dunno. All this money, fancy new truck." Jack. "Somethin don't feel right. He could never even scrape together enough to pay the bills." Surely not that Jack? Common enough name. But still...
"Not your problem, sweetheart. Now go to sleep."
Next morning, after Francie and the boys had left for school, she tackled Junior running late for work. "You got a phone number for your dad?" The slight pause before her daughter answered told her everything.
"We just send him mail care of Signal Post Office, you know that, Mama."
"Thought he might a given you a number. What if you want a get hold of him real quick?" Junior's eyes looked floorwards. She chewed her lips. Just like her dad! "What if somethin bad happened and you wanted him to know in a hurry? Remember when your sister had that bad asthma attack?"
"That was years ago!"
"Still." Alma waited. She could wait all day if she had to.
"Daddy said it was just for us, Mama."
They both knew that in the end Junior would cave it and hand over the phone number, and so it was. Alma pinned it up on the kitchen pinboard, hidden behind a piece of artwork that her youngest son had done. She didn't use it for a long time; just having it was enough for the moment.
Jesus H., what a difference a year makes. Last May, fit to die, this May, seventh heaven. If L.D. could see me now he'd prob'ly think I was where I deserved to be, plowin a miserable little field with a useless little tractor that's older'n me, livin in a trailer and countin ever cent we got. Up at dawn, slave my guts out all day, stagger into bed at night, half the time too tired to do nothin but sleep. Well, I got news for you, you old prick, I ain't never been this happy my entire life, not even the glorious day you dropped dead.
Even my old man gotta admit I know about trimmin expenses and gettin good deals. Hell, talked down that bobcat driver what dug the channels for us. The old man, now, he'd a got the guy's back up with his whinin and complainin. Never did understand people like to be spoken nice to.
The beefy, red-faced driver had been a bit of a worry, Jack had to admit. There was something about him which had instantly turned Ennis edgy and grouchy. Ennis had shown him the two new irrigation channels he'd marked out with stones and the man had done a good job excavating them and then smoothing out the old creek ford, but Ennis had insisted Jack stay well away until it came time for money to change hands. These were minor worries, however, compared to the quiet delights of driving up and back, hour after hour, working the soil until it was ready to sow the alfalfa. The sun beat down, the old Ferguson chugged steadily on, Jack let his mind wander. It was all coming good, it really was. It was some sweet life.
"Reckon that'll take a crop now. Better get it in while the ground's still damp. Jesus, my shoulders ache!"
"C'mere," said Ennis, pulling Jack down to sit on the floor between his knees. "You gotta look after that shoulder." He started a firm massage, rhythmic and soothing, that had them both dreamy and relaxed after a few minutes.
"How's that, baby?" Ennis murmured, bending down to Jack's ear.
"Mmmmmm---what? What did you say?" Jack whispered back.
"I asked how you felt."
"You called me baby."
"No, I didn't."
"Swear to god, you did."
"Well, so what if I did," Ennis blushed.
"You just keep goin, darlin, won't hear no complaint from me."
Old Man Twist ran maybe half a dozen bulls, freeloaders for most of the year, whose moment in the spotlight came with the lengthening of the days. But before they got their chance to perform, there was one indignity awaiting them. Driven from their winter pasture, corraled in a holding pen, funneled down a chute and jammed in a head catch, each big boy was first vaccinated and then subjected to a dose of disinfectant to ward off the dreaded "trick". John sensibly chose to wield the needle and left the rest to his ranch hands.
Despite his short stature, Jack had never truly feared the prospect of perching atop two thousand pounds of enraged, heaving bull, with nothing but what skill he possessed, his luck on the day, plus a bunch of rodeo clowns to protect him from being trampled or gored to death. However, persuading a bull, even a little black baldie, to submit to having his privates washed out was another matter entirely. He manned the pump and left it to Ennis to manouever the business end of a hose between sheath and penis, a task he did with grim efficiency, his exhortations ranging from Good boy, you go and have fun now, to Hey, you fucker, you do that again you'll be dogmeat!
Once the bulls had been sent off for their first round of duty, amongst Ennis's heifers, attention turned to the next big occasion, branding. Somewhere in this sparsely populated region, they had to find someone to come and help out, someone whom John hadn't already off-sided with his sharp tongue. Jack had a solicitor's appointment later that week and figured his own silver tongue might persuade a local or two. And there was always Rob.
When he returned from Gillette he had good news. "Ran into an old school friend, Gerry. Insurance assessor or somethin these days. Said he'd be happy to give us a hand brandin. Use ta rope in the rodeo, pretty good roper, I recall. He's got a kid he'll bring up too. What with Rob, we should have enough hands."
"When's Rob comin?" said Ennis keen to see the boy again.
"Said he'd ring on the weekend, give his flight details. And I told him, this time he sleeps in the house."
Sunday morning the phone rang. And rang. The Twists Senior were at church. Jack shouted from the toilet, "Answer that, will ya? Won't bite. Likely be Rob."
But when Ennis picked it up, cleared his throat and said "Hello?", there was no reply, just a quiet click as the caller hung up.
tbc
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[Mar. 23rd, 2008|11:31 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for m/m sex and language
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit, with endless thanks for her ongoing support and help.
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 7
There was too much bed and too few bodies. When Jack stretched his arms out he encountered nothing but cold sheet. He kept his eyes shut. Too early to get up and too late to go back to sleep. Thinking time. He hated this time; it was like being comatose again, helpless in the darkness, although that had been nothing new. Jack had spent his whole life feeling helpless. Nothing had ever come to his hand the right way, and no matter how hard he had tried, he had felt like flotsam on a wild, wide sea. Even now, when soothed by calm waters, the old uncertainties would catch him unawares. If only he could be sure of his safe haven. Think a the good bits, Jack, the way he'd try and wrap himself up in your arms some nights, the way he'd cry and whisper those things, beautiful things he never said before ... 'cept he ain't ever repeated some a them since you woke up. And how do you know he wrapped your arms around him? How do you know he really whispered "baby" through his tears? Maybe the whole lot was just a dream. Goddammit, sleepin alone's a bad idea.
Ennis awoke, hard and needy, frustration fuelling his fires. He could hear the Twist parents snoring the countdown to the new day, his last day of waking up alone. If Jack was here, warm and snug beside him, he could just roll into the curve of that spine, slip between those lovely thighs, bit of gentle rocking, his hand on Jack, Jack's hand on him, dreamy and slow, and ....
Old man Twist stopped snoring, ten, twenty, thirty, forty seconds, then an explosion of snorts and snuffles. Ennis sighed, clamped his thighs together, squeezed away the desire, figured he'd save it all up for later, got up, got dressed, left the house.
As always, he checked the sky, noted how the great swathe of stars was melting into a thin cloud; Rob would have a good day for flying. The crisp air cleared his sleepy head but brought the weight of memory into sharper focus. He could count; he knew what grade Francie had been in then, how many years had passed since Alma had given him the heave-ho, since that day Jack had come to him, face alight with hope - what sort of a heartless blind prick had he been all those years? Why hadn't he ever seen Jack dying by inches in front of his very eyes?
Jack was already up and dressed when Ennis reached the trailer, making coffee quietly so as not to disturb Bobby. Ennis checked that the boy's door was closed then took Jack in his arms, a silent embrace that spoke volumes although Jack didn't quite understand all the words. Ennis nuzzled his neck, kissed his way from shoulder to temple, rubbed his cheek against the curls, held on tight. His little man, his darling, such a lot of making up to do.
Cloud swallowed the tiny plane but their eyes followed Bobby's imagined path a while longer, then they made their wordless way back to the truck, and wordlessly they took to the highway. Then --
"Come back in summer? Jesus, Ennis, you want a kill me dead a frustration?"
"Always Sundays."
"Sundays, yeah. Thank god for Sundays. Never thought I'd go down on my knees and say thank you Jesus."
"Way I remember it, you didn't say nothin after you got down on your knees, nothin that made any sense anyways." Ennis's eyes crinkled up. "Though I do believe you took the Lord's name in vain once or twice."
"Hallellujah. You think we got away with it? With Bobby?"
"Sure." Ennis peered through the windscreen at the horizon, casually threw out the comment, "He thinks you was havin an affair."
"Well, I ---"
"With a woman."
"He said that?"
"Come on, Jack."
"Guess not. Kind of a given, ain't it."
A pause; Ennis wasn't too good at this stuff. "He's hopin maybe you'll go home again."
"Didn't think he even liked me." Jack's remark was addressed to the inside of his coat collar, and Ennis felt a surge of pity. He patted Jack's thigh.
"He likes you well enough. Hell, didn't he just hug the breath outta you? You just gotta ease up on him a little. He's a good kid. Be good to see him again."
"Speakin of which," said Jack, glad to have an opening to steer the conversation into, "might be sooner than you expect. Didn't want a say anythin while he was here but I been thinkin. Lureen and me, we need to do some serious talkin. Think we better spend a few days down south."
"Who's we?"
"You and me."
Ennis grumbled his way into the expected excuses. "Truck won't make it. Barely made it back from Riverton, Christmas."
"You ever hear of planes?"
"Shit, Jack, I ain't gettin on one a them things. Besides, what d'you want me to go for?"
"To drive me, dumbass. Anyway, you're my nursemaid. It'll all add to the Sad Jack look. Gotta use all the weapons in the gun cabinet against that woman," he smirked.
"Calves'll start droppin in six weeks."
"So we go before then."
"But yer dad ---"
"Has worked the ranch himself long enough. Do him good to get up early again. Anyway, only be a couple a days, three tops."
Ennis's guts were telling him this was a bad idea. He could count the steps he'd taken outside of Wyoming. Texas may as well have been the dark side of the moon. A side where Lureen lived. And someone else. He shivered. "Hafta think on it."
"Don't think too long or we'll be out of that trailer and back in a single bed, and you don't want that now, do ya?"
"Nope, guess not."
Jack glanced across. He knew the look; Ennis was mulling it over. He practically had the "Do Not Disturb" sign up. The miles ticked by.
"You don't need a driver, Rob can drive you, don't need me down there."
"Maybe not. Maybe I just don't wanta let you out a my sights. Truth is, I need you to be with me, okay? More I'm with you, more I need to be with you. Makin up for lost time, maybe."
"I dunno, Jack. You really need to go? Can't you do it over the phone?"
"Thought I could. Shit, I never wanted a go there again but now .... Don't seem right to send Bobby back home then ring up and pull the plug. I owe it to him, Lureen too, I guess. Feel like I need to do it face to face, look them in the eye for once."
"Thought you was happy to never go back home."
"It ain't home. Never was. But I guess you don't just bail outta your life that easy. Never felt real to me, now it's hangin round my neck like a fuckin noose. Just feels unfinished." Jack shoved a knuckle into his mouth and the world blurred slightly. Ennis let it ride. When he was able, he shifted the conversation to mundane matters, ranch work, the weather, falling beef prices, until the turnoff. Once past the single house along this first stretch, Ennis pulled over, took a quick check fore and aft, planted a big kiss on Jack's mouth, then nodded with a satisfied look on his face and drove on.
Teeth scrubbed, body clean and ready for bed, Jack peered into the small bedroom where Ennis sat, the contents of his little bag strewn over the bed.
"Hey, thought you'd be racin me for pole position tonight. What you got there?" He leaned over to look: shaving gear, toothbrush, some spare clothing, and, wrapped carefully in a clean one, the two old shirts. "Wondered where they got to," he breathed into Ennis's ear.
"Took em, in case Rob ..."
"Yeah, smart thinkin. So come on, there's a body gettin cold here."
But Ennis didn't get up, just stroked the shirts, stroked Jack's shirt. "I'm sorry, Jack."
"Shit, don't tell me Little Ennis ain't up to it!"
"Sorry I didn't take good care a you."
"Bullshit, you heard what Margie said."
"Not then. Before that."
Jack's smile headed south. "Oh, I get it. Shouldn't a let you talk to Bobby. Kid probably beefed it up anyway. Wasn't that bad. Come on, cowboy, don't take on so." He slipped an arm around Ennis's shaking shoulders.
"Told me about the drinkin, the accident. Jesus, Jack, it's all my fault. Twenty years I couldn't even give you a hug once in a while without wantin somethin else."
"It's gone now. Nothin we can do about it now."
"All the time on that fuckin mountain, couldn't even hold you face on. Why the fuck did you bother with me? Why'd you stick with me?"
Jack cradled Ennis's face in his hands but Ennis wouldn't meet his eyes. "Cause ... couldn't do nothin else ... you was the one good thing I had ... and you always will be."
"I'm sorry." He buried his face in Jack's shoulder and let the tears come for a while.
"You're makin me all wet again," Jack murmured. "You think I don't know how hard it's been for you? Don't you never apologise for nothin, darlin. Just do it right here and now." His face brightened. "Tell you what, that's how you feel, whyn't you get ready for bed then make it up to me a bit, show me just how sorry you are." And he pulled Ennis to his feet and sent him in the direction of the bathroom with an encouraging pat on the backside.
The bedroom was nicely warmed when Ennis slipped in beside Jack, determined to do something right. Almost shyly he took Jack in his arms and kissed him, slow and careful, as if tasting him for the first time.
"You taste so good."
"Could taste better. If you're feelin so bad about things, how about you give me somethin I like, hey?"
And Ennis obliged, slithering down the bed, kissing the well-loved trail, pausing just long enough twixt thighs to feel Jack's hand flap at his head and to hear the impatient whimpers, before he wriggled his legs back up, kicking away bedding and pillows to give himself room.
Oh, how well they knew each other's joys, the perfect rhythm, the sweet spots that responded so satisfyingly to just the right pressure, the well-placed touch. In synchrony they gave and received as one, the pleasure of one being the pleasure of the other. Ennis pressed the spot behind Jack's balls that always elicited a rapturous cry; Jack delicately brushed his fingertips along Ennis's crack, felt the fluttering and tensing, slipped a spitted-up thumb in deep, and heard the long low groan in response. His already busy mouth spread wider in a grin. Oh yeah, you like it all right, and you'd like it a whole lot better if you'd just admit it to yourself, come on, darlin, you moan and squirm, all works for me. He felt Ennis adjust his position a little, knew he was looking, made sure he got a clear view down the length of their bodies to his own cock, that slow thrust in and out, slick with spit and the flow of his own lust.
At last, with half-comical, muffled moans they came, briefly lay mute and spent then, lips clamped shut, Ennis righted himself, leaned over Jack and the kissing and sharing began.
"You know what I like best about that?" said Jack when he had finally stopped smacking his lips together and sending his tongue scurrying around his own and Ennis's mouth searching for any leftovers.
"What?"
"It's like suckin your own dick. Kinda like, it's so good you lose track a what you're doin. It's all the same, your dick, your mouth. You feel that?"
"Wouldn't know. Never sucked my own dick."
Jack kissed him one more time for good measure, and chuckled. "Can't have everthin, I guess."
~~~
The gods of aviation were kind to Ennis, giving him blue-sky perfection for his first ascent. He'd put on his Sunday best for the occasion, which meant his least worn jeans fresh from the washing line, his summer jacket brushed off, and even a bit of a shine applied to his worn boots. Jack suspected his mother of collusion in all that. The shirt that peeped out was white with clusters of tiny blue flowers, a pretty sort of shirt that a wife might buy, or a girlfriend, nothing that a man like Ennis would waste his paltry wage on. The thought had too many sharp edges for Jack to hold it long. Instead, he concentrated on Ennis's enjoyment - or otherwise - of the flight.
They were seated starboard, Ennis in the window seat at Jack's insistence, and his stiff stoicism at take-off was rapidly replaced with growing amazement as first the Big Horns and then the Rockies rolled out before them like a giant's map. All the way to the border Ennis pointed out this range, that peak, a valley they'd headed up, a river they'd forded. Half the time Jack didn't know if he was wrong or right but it didn't matter. It was all he could do to stop himself hugging Ennis in pure delight. Ennis fell silent as they left Wyoming behind, entranced by the new land laid out below him. Just once, as the plane danced in turbulence, his hand reached out towards the sickbag, then he grinned sheepishly and swallowed hard; under cover of the tray table Jack gave his wrist an encouraging squeeze. They white-knuckled into Denver, where a stiff little cross-wind had sprung up, and changed planes for Childress.
"Welcome to Texas," muttered Jack when they finally touched down, but by then two more serious faces weren't to be found on the whole plane. Ennis had insisted on the complete wheelchair routine right from landing, and noted every head that bobbed in Jack's direction as they crossed the concourse. They caught a cab to the Twist house - and did that cabbie give Jack a look? - where Jack let himself in using the key hidden around in the back shed.
"Want the guided tour?" Ennis shrugged but followed him as Jack proceeded down the hallway. "Family room, kitchen, living room, dining through there, master bedroom---" Jack stopped and Ennis bumped into him, peered over his shoulder, and found himself picturing what had gone on here with an unexpected distaste. "Office, bathroom, toilet there, Bobby's room. By the end I was sleepin here in the spare room." They looked in at the twin beds, each with towels and face washer. "Seems we both are. Not all that fancy---" He shut up; it was better than Ennis had ever had. "Dunno how much equity I got in it. Maybe I own a cupboard or two. Toilet, bet the toilet's mine. Damn ensuite's Lureen's, that's for sure. This is my den--- Oh!" Instead of the expected sight of leather and wood, of sentimental framed prints of mountain scenes, and overflowing ashtrays, there was a stack of cardboard boxes. "Guess that answers one a my questions." He picked up the phone on the desk and dialed the familiar business number. "Jeanette? It's Jack. Yeah, Jack. Good, good. Thanks." A pause. "Lureen? We're here. I see you saved me the bother a packin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Guess so. Bye."
They drank coffee, talked of nothing, waited in limbo until a squeal of tires and a revving engine signalled Bobby's arrival. Jack raised his eyebrows as if to say See? You want him to drive me around? but the boy brought an unforeseen tension into the house with him. Bobby in Wyoming was a different proposition to Bobby in Texas, on his home turf, his dad back in the old surroundings. Father and son gave each other a half-hug, embarrassed by the memory of recent closeness. Ennis got a friendlier greeting since even Bobby could see how uncomfortable he was, but they were not the three who had hugged goodbye a few weeks earlier. The holiday was over, this was business. And Bobby knew what was coming.
"Just about to tell Ennis here how my nerves can't take your drivin." Jack's voice sounded forced. "So how's the new term going?"
"Okay. There anything to eat?" And the boy grabbed some cold pizza from the fridge and slumped down in front of the TV.
"Guess you know why we're here," Jack tried again but a grunt and an increase in the TV's volume was the only response. The men went back to their coffee.
When the door from the garage opened and closed some time later, all three turned at the sound of Lureen's heels clicking down the hall.
"Hello, boys," she said to the kitchen bench where she dumped a number of bags on her way past. "Hi, Bobby, good day at school?" She touched his shoulder, leaned down to kiss his cheek, and got a bump to the nose as he started at the unfamiliar familiarity. Spinning around, the spotlight of her gaze landed first on Ennis. "You must be Ennis. Hello, I'm Lureen, pleased to meet you---"
"Ma'am." Ennis reached for the proffered hand, barely touched it as Lureen's sweep continued.
"---and Jack." She hadn't missed a beat but as her eyes landed on his face there was the faintest hitch in her level voice. "You look good." They leaned in, cheeks brushed, air was kissed, she gazed at the wall behind his head. "Dinner, hope you like Chinese, Ennis. Bobby, get the plates. Hope you haven't spoiled your appetite. We'll eat it while it's hot. Got a busy evening ahead. Excuse me a moment." And she headed for the bedroom.
"That was Lureen," said Jack, winking at Bobby, but there was no response from the boy.
They munched in silence, Ennis poking suspiciously at his Mongolian Beef, wondering what all the white wormy bits were.
"Jack!" Lureen's voice was like a small explosion. "Why'd you shave off the mustache?"
Jack's mouth opened and closed a couple of times, he glanced at Ennis, said, "Got sick of it." Bobby's eyes flicked from his father to Ennis to Lureen but he kept eating.
"And how do you like Texas, Ennis? Have you been here before?" Husband and son knew she was just making conversation, keeping up her chosen appearance of socially accomplished businesswoman, but Ennis didn't. He fumbled around, trying to find the right words, explained he had never been out of Wyoming his entire life except just a little bit sometimes when horse-packing through some ranges, blushed, stopped, looked despairingly at Jack.
"Ennis don't travel much," Jack said quietly and the look which he sent to his wife made it plain: Leave him alone. She got the message and began talking shop to her son.
As soon as the dishes were cleared away, she raised an eyebrow at Bobby who mumbled at Ennis, "Wanna watch some TV?" He didn't need a second excuse to get out of there. The soon to be ex-couple viewed their departing backs, Jack for a little longer than he should, and when he turned Lureen was watching him closely.
"Bobby likes that Ennis."
"Ennis, he's just Ennis, not that Ennis." He felt twitchy and discomforted, this man who had met old lovers at barbeques and never batted an eyelid as he was introduced to them. A thick folder of documents was thumped down on the dining table in front of him, and Jack knew his financial future was about to be signed, sealed and delivered.
In the family room the left-over pair stared at the TV, some show Ennis didn't recognise. Both knew their futures were being discussed just a couple of rooms away and neither of them had been invited to play a part.
"This is it, isn't it." Ennis's heart lurched at the sadness in the boy's tone. He wanted to pull him close, tell him it would be all right, that at least his folks were still alive, but he didn't have the words, so he just nodded and squeezed Bobby's shoulder.
After several bags of Doritos and chips and half a dozen cans of cola had disappeared, mostly into Bobby, neither could stand the ebb and flow of voices any longer. They mumbled their excuses and headed for bed. Despite his strange surroundings, the unfamiliar smells, and a day like no other in his life, Ennis dropped easily into sleep. Sometime later, he awoke to find Jack snuggling in beside him.
"Not here. There's no lock."
"Just a goodnight kiss."
"How'd it go?"
"Fifteen rounds with Larry Holmes. We're okay. Tell you in the morning."
"You gotta talk more to Rob, poor kid. Now, scoot."
Jack climbed into his own bed, lasted five minutes, went back to Ennis, tense and shivery. "Hate sleepin alone."
"Sleep with Lureen then." But Ennis held him close, patting him as if he were a windy baby until Jack relaxed and drifted off, whereupon Ennis extricated himself and tiptoed over to the other abandoned bed.
He kept out of sight until the morning rush was over then ventured out to find a subdued Jack drinking coffee, looking ragged around the edges.
"You talk to him?"
"Yeah, no. I tried, honest. Not mornin people, neither of us. Said we'd catch a game tonight." He dropped his head and hauled in a shaky breath. "Shit, Ennis, he's got my damn buckle on display in his room, you know, on a shelf with his sports trophies? Times like these I wish I still smoked. Anyway, we're drivin home. Cash in the plane tickets, take the truck."
"And how long will that take? John's expectin us back."
"Fouteen hours," Jack said softly, "it takes fourteen hours, fourteen hours there, fourteen hours back." The circumference of the world is twenty-four thousand miles -- Ennis stepped across and held Jack tight. "Trailer's ours," he continued from the midst of the embrace, "once the insurance runs out, plus a cash advance on the final divorce settlement. Other stuff, medical insurance, I dunno what else. No point in arguin with her, she always wins when it comes to money. Reckon she'd calculated the cost of Bobby goin a college down to the last shoelace, took my half out a what she figured I was worth. Look, we ain't millionaires but it gives us breathin space, not hand to mouth on the ranch."
"If John accepts it."
"John can stick his head up his ass. Won't be gettin his grubby fingers on it, no way. Now, what say we sort out my belongings and head home first thing tomorrow?"
When it came down to brass tacks, the boxes in the den proved not to contain a great deal that Jack actually treasured. He rescued a few yellowed newspaper clippings from his rodeo days, a tantalus with carved pine trees, which had rarely held a whiskey decanter safe for long, a few other odds and ends, and an old cigar box held shut with a leather thong. "Yeah, I kept em all," he murmured as he opened it -- and gasped. There on the top was Ennis's last card, 7th November at Pine Creek. "I wasn't sure you'd even come," then abruptly, "Let's dump the rest a this shit in the garage."
"Maybe you should let Rob go through it. When my folks died, we didn't end up with nothin much. Sis took the photos and Mama's little things, my brother musta taken Dad's." His shoulders rose and fell. "Would a liked somethin, a keepsake, you know?"
Jack didn't know, couldn't understand, how Ennis would want a keepsake of the man who had shown him such horror, but he promised to ask Bobby before they left.
His den had been clean, of that he was sure, but his truck had been another matter. In amongst the maps and gum wrappers, receipts, pens, sports programs and rubbish in the glovebox had been a tube or two of lube - the sort that could double as a handcream if you needed an excuse in a hurry - and in the door pocket, a few condoms. But the truck was now spotless, the maps, driver's manual, spare fuses, all neatly arranged. He said nothing, just proceeded to check oil and water and tire pressure - I'll do that, bud, said Ennis - in readiness for the drive home. He even noted the mileage in the fuel logbook so Lureen could work things out to the last penny. Then they headed uptown where Jack had an appointment with a lawyer. While he waited, Ennis sat outside, across the road from the truck, and couldn't help but note which men paid attention to it as they passed. On the way back they deviated past Newsome's Farm Machinery so Jack could show him "the place where I spent the most friggin miserable time a my life. The day the old bastard dropped dead I couldn't stop grinnin - then Lureen took over."
The first baseball game of the season was a local disaster, Childress slaughtered by Wichita Falls, but the three of them enjoyed it well enough, and afterwards they smuggled some beers home, holed up in the now-tidy den, locking the door against unexpected female intrusion, and tried to rekindle the warmth of a few weeks earlier. Maybe it was the beer or the closeness or just the passing of time, but Bobby managed more than a couple of offhand comments this time.
"So you're really going home tomorrow?"
"Yeah, we are. I'm sorry, but that's the way it has to be."
"And you're not coming back?"
"Not if I can help it. Not to stay. You're the only thing tyin me to this place, Bobby. My life's in Wyomin now, that's where I'm happy."
"But what's so special? It's not like you get on with Granpa. Anyone can see that. And there's no fun there, no parties or barbeques or anything, I bet. Not like here where you were out every second night." Jack caught the look that passed between the other two.
"No need to go out up there. And there's always Ennis to beat at cards if I need some entertainment. You're right, it's dull and borin and hard work, and there ain't much fun to be had, but that's what I want. I hope you'll come to understand why one day."
"And you know," Ennis interrupted softly, "you can come any time you want, stay as long as you need. Place'll be yours one day, don't forget, Rob. And soon enough you'll be out in the world. No more schoolin."
"Mom wants me to take over the business one day. I dunno."
"You do what you want, son. Follow your heart. Never be happy if you don't." And Jack smiled, such a smile that the boy knew he'd been right when he first saw his father again: whatever it was in Lightning Flat, it was everything his dad had ever wanted. When they finally unlocked the door and sneaked off to their beds, the beer fumes were mingled with a hint of sweet northern air.
They should have hit the road early but Saturday morning slipped away. Lureen bade them farewell with little enthusiasm and went to see her mother, and Bobby just wanted to hang out, talk, shoot hoops in the backyard, anything. He took Ennis for a spin in his shiny red Z28 Camaro - only marginally less terrifying than the flight down - and spun out the time together as long as possible, until Jack finally patted him on the shoulder and gently said, "Gotta go, Bobby.".
From his pocket Bobby pulled a couple of small packages and shyly handed them one each. "Late birthday present, Dad. Very late birthday present, Ennis." Under their names they both carried the same message: With love from Rob. Inside were hatbands, Ennis's woven and beaded in the softly glowing colors of the desert, Jack's an elegant arrangement of jet beads and white porcupine quills. "They're Indian," he explained, "hope you like them."
Ennis grabbed him and hugged him hard; it was easier than finding the right words, and anyway, it's hard to talk when you're choking up. Jack didn't move, just hung his head and let the tears fall freely. "Thank you, thank you ... Rob. It's beautiful," he whispered, and this time it was Rob's turn to cry as father and son embraced.
They'd cleared Childress's tiny heart and were nearly in open country heading north-west before Jack plucked up the courage to speak. "Pull over a second. There's one more thing I gotta do before we leave here for good." His deep breath raised him up an inch or so in his seat and he stuck out his chin. "I want a see Randall. I want you to come too."
"Don't want a meet him."
"Suit yourself. I'm still goin. Drop me back at a phone box, I can take a cab. But I would like you to come. Come on, I owe it to him and I don't want your imagination runnin riot while---"
"When d'you arrange this?"
"He knew we was flyin down, then I rang him while you was havin kittens on the road with Bobby."
"Rob. And you didn't think to tell me?"
"No, cause I knew this'd happen, that you'd have a friggin shittin fit, okay? Now, are you drivin me or do I walk?"
Ennis drove, with all the grace of an overworked cabbie, sullen and silent. His silence filled the truck to overflowing, near-smothering the quick, quiet directions Jack gave - take US-83, keep goin, yeah, over the highway, left here, right at the bend, second gate. Jack barely looked at the countryside south of Childress, painfully aware that he knew the way by heart. Finally, they turned in under a fancy wrought-iron archway with a name that Ennis deigned not to read. The house that sprawled in front of them at the end of a long, immaculate driveway wasn't Dallas but it wasn't Lightning Flat either.
"To the right, round the back," Jack muttered, feeling the heat of shame rising up out of his collar and through his hair roots until he thought his hat would slide off in the sweat. When they reached the long low building behind the main house, he slid out and limped quickly to one door, not waiting for Ennis, and entered without knocking. Ennis heard voices then saw Jack turn to beckon him. With lead feet he trudged the few steps towards his might-have-been nemesis.
The room was long, cool, spare and simple, an efficient office space. Down one end was a large leather couch, big enough to sleep on; Ennis's throat tightened. Randall Malone stood front and center, feet apart, matching Ennis's inches and giving some change. He held out his hand even before Jack had mumbled his way through a head-down introduction. "Ennis," he said equably. A curt nod in return. They sat.
He gestured to the half empty glass on his desk. "It's early, I know, but--"
"No, I--" began Jack.
"I'll have one!"
If Randall was taken aback by Ennis's brusque tone he didn't show, just caught Jack's eye for a split-second as he turned to get the bottle and glass. The whiskey didn't touch the sides as Ennis threw it back and thumped the glass down.
They each floated in their own bubble of discomfort for a while, Jack struck dumb with embarrassment, Randall unsure of what to say, Ennis failing miserably in not imagining this man and his Jack, together, doing ... things. He was bigger than Ennis; was he bigger than Ennis? So this was what a Texas queer looked like.
"So, Jack, Ennis." Randall made the names sound as if they belonged together. " How's it going way up there in Wyoming?"
"Gettin there, getting there, yeah."
"You're looking - well, you look better than I expected."
"Yeah?"
Randall shrugged. "Well, you look okay."
"All due to Ennis here, so the doctors say."
"Weren't nothin," Ennis muttered, as ungraciously as he could.
"Then I'm mighty grateful to you. Jack means a lot to me."
"Didn't do it for you." Their eyes met, anger and challenge losing momentum against calm amusement. Jack sat in the middle like some melodrama heroine, waiting for the glove to be thrown down, and thinking maybe this had all been a very bad idea. Relief washed over him when Ennis suddenly nodded his head towards the distant fields and asked, "What d'you run here?"
"Beef cattle, few hogs."
"Angus?"
"Some. Charolais, Hereford. You?"
"Black baldies."
"Yeah, good little cattle. Good choice for a small spread like Ja-- like yours."
Sensing that Ennis may have exhausted his available conversation skills, Jack took over, describing their herd, their plans, the negotiations with Lureen, and the trailer, "... where me and Ennis live. Gotta tell you, Randall, sometimes I think I died and went to heaven, havin him with me at last, makes livin near my old man bearable, don't want nothin else in life but to wake up next to this man here ever mornin," and firmly and deliberately he took Ennis's hand in his and squeezed it hard. Although he blushed, Ennis didn't resist. When they stood to leave at last, his own big left hand settled on the back of Jack's neck as the right reached to shake Randall's.
"Wasn't too bad, was it?"
"It was goddamn awful, Jack, worse than meetin your wife. Don't you never pull a stunt like that again, you hear?"
"If you hadn't a laid eyes on him, he would a stuck in your mind till you turned him into somethin he ain't. He's a decent man, good friend, he helped me, that's all. Was he what you expected?"
"I never give him no mind."
"Bullshit. I know you did. So was he what you expected?"
"Don't look like a queer."
"For fuck's sake, what does a damn queer look like? Me? Do I look like a queer? What the fuck's a queer anyway? Someone who takes it up the ass? Cause let me tell you about Randall---"
"Shut up about him. Don't want a know what he did to you---"
"With me! With me! No, guess you don't."
They exchanged a few wordless grumbles and settled back into a quiet truce as the highway disappeared beneath the truck. Clipping the corner of New Mexico caused their desultory talking to cease for a while but then they both picked it up again; the past had been put behind them, where it belonged. Somewhere in southern Colorado, bored with scenery he'd passed through far too many times, Jack began to doze off, sliding and lurching back again a couple of times until Ennis's arm snaked out and gently pulled him down, to rest his head on a warm if bony blue denim pillow. It was dark when he woke up again, stomach growling, and the lights of a town glowing up ahead. Ennis was singing softly, a good sign.
He was just a lonely cowboy with a heart so brave and true,
And he learned to love a maiden with eyes of heaven's own blue.
They learned to love each other and had named their wedding day,
When a quarrel came between them and Jack he rode away.
"Great choice," mumbled the voice from near his crotch.
"Feelin better?"
"Feelin good." Jack sat upright, stretching and yawning. "Where are we?"
"Passed Castle Rock or somethin just a while back."
"Makes that Denver up ahead. You okay drivin?"
"Fine. Jack, why'd you say that stuff about us to him? To Randall?"
"Makin conversation. No, I wanted a make it clear who I belong with." He slid in close and laid his head on Ennis's shoulder. "No, I tell you what it really was. I wanted someone else to know about us. Wanted someone to know just how goddamn happy I am. Wanted to say your name out loud and know that someone else understood."
Ennis made no reply but his face quirked into a dopey grin and he drove one-handed for a while. Jack settled in his lap again and seemed to doze off but as they got closer to the city his voice drifted up, lazy and suggestive.
"There's a cheap and nasty motel just the other side a town. Reckon we should stop off, get somethin to eat, grab a few hours sleep."
"You already got some sleep. I'm okay. We push on, we'll be home by four."
"And daddy'll be expectin us up and doin the feedin if we do. You ain't use ta this long-distance drivin. If you won't stop then I'll insist on drivin the rest a the way."
"You ain't up to it. And a room's a waste a money."
"Be a waste a two great bodies if we run off the road and die. Come on, two motels in a lifetime ain't overdoin it. Besides, better'n me jumpin you in the truck if I start feelin frisky." In the dash lights, Ennis's face was unmoving. Jack persisted, shifted tack. "Hey, I been thinkin. With this cash we can maybe diversify a bit. Could try coloured sheep. I hear there's crazy women goin nuts buyin fancy wools to knit. You know anythin about herdin sheep?" The corners of Ennis's mouth curled up just a tiny bit. "Or maybe semen. Sell semen. A.I.'s big business in Texas." Come on, Ennis, can't let that one go through to the catcher.
"You think anyone's goin a want it once they found out where it's been?" They dissolved into snorts of laughter. "Okay, a motel. But I ain't registerin. And maybe you should use the crutches rather than the stick when you do."
"Oh for fuck's sake, cripples fuck too." But he did use his crutches, anything to make Ennis happy.
They picked up burgers and beer and took them back to the motel to eat, then Ennis thoroughly messed up one double bed and pushed a head-shaped dent in one pillow before they turned towards the other.
And waited.
The tremor started at Jack's head and worked down to his toes as he held his gaze on Ennis's face, trying to read the animal light in his eyes. When Ennis finally made his move, Jack wasn't prepared for the ferocity, the mouth that hit his own so hard their teeth clashed, the fevered working of tongue and lips, stubble dragged down Jack's neck, the biting and sucking at his throat, nails digging and clawing at his back, and Jack helpless in his lover's grip.
He freed himself at last, chest heaving, shoved Ennis back down onto the bed and fell between his thighs. You don't need to brand me, you already done that a thousand years ago, day you first shook my hand, left your mark on me plain as day. Told you, them men were nothin to me, not even him. It was only ever you, always you.
He gave full measure to his beloved and asked for nothing in return, poured all his devotion and gratitude into this act of love. "Jack! Jack!" he heard Ennis gasp, his hands clutching Jack's ears, fingers threading through his hair. As the pulsing began against his hand he slowly pulled back, let Ennis spill out onto his face, marking, possessing. The shuddering slowly ceased, and in the stillness which followed, they beheld each other, two halves of a single soul. Jack tried to say it all with his eyes: I'm yours.
tbc |
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[Mar. 2nd, 2008|01:28 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit.
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 6
In 1916, Henry Charles Twist, five feet four and twenty years old, drygoods store assistant full of patriotic fervor, left his fiancee and his home in Sundance, Wyoming, and enlisted in the War To End All Wars. Seven years later, when his son, John Charles, was three years old and his daughter a mere four weeks away from seeing the light of day, he limped on his wooden stump into the middle of his barren fields, placed his old service revolver in his mouth and blew out the back of his head. Unlike the King Stag, his blood did not bring fecundity to the land, just a dry, bitter season which killed the prospects of his wife and children just as surely as the bullet had killed him. Mrs Henry Twist eventually became Mrs Jacob Burdon, and the one good thing this violent new husband did for his stepson was to leave him, by default more than anything, the small acreage in the settlement of Lightning Flat, which he had acquired cheaply by the simple method of wooing the grieving and financially straitened widow.
On the morning the undertakers took the old man away, John Twist carefully painted out the name "Burdon" on the mailbox and replaced it with "John C. Twist". By that time, John had two reputations, as a pretty decent bull-rider on the small local rodeo circuit of his day, and as a bit of a ladies' man. Both activities went west the evening in April 1943 when he seduced quiet, churchgoing Sybil Venn and begat on her their only child, John Charles Twist Jr. Once married and trapped in a life he hadn't asked for, John Sr cursed the fate which had brought him to this stultifying existence, cursed the mother - long since drowned in a flash flood one spring - and the stepfather who had combined to make his childhood a misery, but mostly he cursed the weak father who hadn't had the balls to make a go of it. He, John Twist, would never be that weak.
The son, called Jack to distinguish him from his father, grew up small and wiful, with the curly hair and bright eyes of his grandfather, memorialised in a faded enlistment portrait. He had the eagerness of a young puppy, a seemingly endless bounce and optimism, yet, with just a few words or an all-too-frequent backhand, his old man could cause him to scuttle away with his tail between his legs. In 1964, leaving two dirty shirts behind but taking a broken heart with him, he lit out for Texas where he too begat a son on a girl at the rodeo, although this seduction was not quite as traditional as that of his parents.
The scion of this chain of disasters, Robert Lawrence Twist, did not set foot on his ancestral lands until the afternoon of December 27th, 1983.
~~~
I'm carrying an extra suitcase. It feels as though Mom is getting rid of Dad a bag at a time. She said it was filled with his warm winter clothes and it probably is, but all the same the balance is slowly shifting north. It's going to be strange to see him again. Last time, he was pale and still, like a puppet whose strings had all been severed. Mom told me to say goodbye before he was shipped up to Wyoming, but what she really meant was for me to say Goodbye. And then she packed a couple of trunks with his clothes and shipped them off too. Okay, so she was being realistic but it was too much like sealing the coffin before the corpse was properly dead.
But can I blame her? I don't know. The life she and Dad have been acting out these past few years is a long way from the TV sitcoms. There have been times when I just wanted to bang their heads together and tell them to grow up, to stop bitching at each other like kids. I don't recall huge, knock-em-down, drag-em-out fights, just endless needling and sarcasm. There's an old photo at home, a black and white shot of the two of them, must have been about when they met, and they look happy and relaxed. If I hadn't seen that photo I'd never have thought they could ever be like that. I have vague memories of Mom before she started getting brittle and sharp, but Dad? I know he used to be fun to play with but I just can't remember it for real. There are little snapshots of memory and nothing else. I see the pictures but I can't recall the feelings.
So coming in to Gillette I'm feeling pretty uncomfortable about everything. Part of me wants to hug him and make sure he's really alive and part of me wants to punch him for turning into the polyester man he's become, all fancy suits and big hats, shiny teeth grimacing out from under his porn star mustache. Fancied himself as some sort of riverboat gambler; more like the sleazy owner of a cheap whorehouse in one of those awful old Westerns he'd sit and watch in his den, knocking back whiskey until he'd emerge late in the evening and start burbling the same maudlin shit at Mom.
So I'm thinking these thoughts as the little gnat that's bringing me the last leg, Cheyenne to Bumfuck, Wyoming, dips below the cloud layer, skims over a couple of roads and comes in to land, bouncing along the runway and shuddering in the wind. Least I hope it's the wind and not the plane breaking up. There's a cluster of buildings, and the flag on top of the biggest is sticking straight out sideways to match the direction of the snow flurries that are plowing into my face. I'm hanging onto my cap and thanking Mom for making me take this Eskimo jacket with me, as I race the half-dozen or so passengers across the tarmac.
And then I see him. He's standing there, just inside the gate, leaning on a stick and surrounded by his own little oasis of calm and warmth, and suddenly I'm a little kid again, and me and my daddy are up in a big tractor and we're laughing and he's saying it's all yours, Bobby, it's all yours. Punch him or hug him, it's no contest. I grab him and feel the prickles starting under my eyelids. Bobby, he says into my hair, Bobby, he says again, and the passengers go by, heading for the shelter of the terminal, and we just stand there together in the wind.
I pull back to get a good look at him, and he stumbles a bit, and there's a quick flash of movement from someone standing a way behind, but I'm too busy taking in his appearance to pay any attention. He's thinner and paler and there might even be more grey in his hair, and the awful mustache has gone! And he's kind of hunched and frail-looking, but there's something else I can't put my finger on, something else that's different.
Come on, he says, let's git before we freeze our asses off, and he sways as we turn, and this time that other person moves fast to get to Dad's side, four or five long strides and his hand is under Dad's elbow, and I'm guessing that this is the famous Ennis del Mar.
It's funny how you form pictures of people in your mind. Dad didn't ever say too much about his old friend, just a few words here and there, but the bedtime stories he told were almost always about cowboys, about golden heroes on fine proud horses, riding the prairie, and that's how Ennis ended up looking for me, a real life Marlboro Man, narrowing his eyes against a blazing sunset.
Bobby, says Dad, this is my friend, Ennis, Ennis, this is my son, Bobby, and we shake hands, how do you do, sir, pleased to meet you, son, heard a lot about you. He's rangy and scruffy, and his expression is a bit quizzical as if he's not sure what to make of me. There's a lump on his right eyelid that makes it droop, and it feels like he's sharing some private joke with me, giving me an eternal wink. I don't like to look at it because I'm looking at it and not at his tobacco eyes. But the thing that really grabs me is - he towers over Dad. I've already got a few inches on Dad. I know he's short but I always pictured this Ennis as being just about average, my Marlboro Man in a neat package, but no, he could fit Dad under his chin nearly.
We collect my baggage. I'll fetch the truck, Ennis says in his low voice, but Dad's having none of that so he hauls the case full of Dad's things and I shoulder my bag and between us we get Dad out across the parking lot. By the time we get to the truck Dad's sweating and shaking in this icy wind and I start to realise that he's doing this all for me. I'm so busy worrying about him that I barely notice the truck until we get there. It's an old Ford, rusty and dented and painted this really gay pale turquoise, and I'm thankful the guys back home aren't going to see me riding in it. Dad says since I'm the visitor I can have the window seat which suits me fine as I don't want to be too close to Ennis. He's got a smell about him, not dirty, just earthy and animally, makes me wonder if he's wearing his work clothes. He throws the bags in the back, Dad squeezes in between us - I guess he's used to Ennis's smell - and we take off.
Dad usually drives like a bat out of hell, Ennis drives like he's scared his engine will fall out on the road. He swings left out of the airfield and we head north, into the wind and snow. Evening is already coming on but the twilight just keeps going as we turn onto a washboard road and judder the miles to Lightning Flat. Dad points out a few things as we go along but mostly it's a pretty silent ride. As we turn at the mailbox with "JOHN C. TWIST" in faded lettering, Dad announces, this is it, but his voice is small and odd, and as I look at the old farmhouse with its peeling paint and its ramshackled outbuildings a sick feeling hits me: he's embarrassed.
The old people are waiting, Granny with a nervously expectant look, Grandpa with an expression I can't quite read. It feels very strange to call them Granny and Grandpa to their faces. I don't know their faces. I only know them through awkward phone calls. If there's a cord joining us together, I don't feel it. I wonder how Dad can be related to them, let alone me. But we muddle along, talking in that unnatural, bright way that people have when they can't think of a thing to say. I've heard Dad and Mom talking that way often enough when we've been out in public. Granny says she' s fixed up Dad's old room for me. The thought doesn't thrill me.
After supper Dad and I crunch down the path to his trailer, with Ennis bringing up the rear. I've heard all about it from Mom, all about the insurance deal that's paying for it at any rate. We talk for a while. Dad asks me about how things are going. Sometimes he asks about stuff I've already told him. There are things he knows which he shouldn't and thinks he doesn't know which he should. It leaves me feeling a bit adrift. It doesn't seem long before everyone's yawning but I don't want to go back to the house. Dad, can I stay here with you? Sleep on the couch maybe? Dad looks doubtful. Boy can have my room, murmurs Ennis but Dad wants none of that, you shouldn't have to be turned out of your room. Don't matter, he answers, boy should be with his dad after all that's happened, I'll sleep up at the house. And he goes into the small bedroom and bumps around for a while then comes out with some things in a bag. It's all yours, Bobby, he says, nods at Dad and heads back up the path.
Dad shrugs, think I'll turn in too. We say goodnight kind of awkwardly, not used to being together like this. I'm expecting Ennis's room to carry some of that smell of his but oddly enough it doesn't, except just faintly in the closet where a few of his clothes still are. I'm so tired it could have stunk like a pigpen and I wouldn't have cared. I'm asleep in minutes. Halfway through the night I hear the outside door rattle a bit and then open. Can't be burglars all the way out here, I figure, then Ennis quietly clears his throat so I get up to see what the hell he's doing back here.
Morning, Junior, he says, breakfast, as he holds up a basket of goodies like Little Red Riding Hood. Breakfast? Oh, you are kidding me, man, but he's not. There's cereal and stuff, and he starts making coffee before banging on Dad's door. Get your a--, get up, there's animals need feeding, and after a minute or so's muffled swearing, Dad emerges, scratching and farting. It seems a bang on the head doesn't change some things. Ennis fishes out a jar from the basket. You want peaches? he asks in a weird voice and Dad mouths something back at him that has the word "fuck" in it.
Soon we're fed and dressed and ready to start the day, and there's barely the faintest trace of light in the sky. You got better gloves than them, asks Ennis, and I say no, so he hands me the new-looking pair sticking out of his pocket then goes into his room and finds an old pair. Dad glares at him then says to me, as Ennis heads out of the trailer, you look after them, they were a present from his girls a month back. His girls? His daughters, Junior - that's Alma - and Francie, for his fortieth, fuck, Ennis is forty, and by now we're outside and Dad and Ennis start trading insults about how old and decrepit the other one is.
And it hits me, the thing that's so different about Dad. He's happy. Not tipsy and amiable happy, not sweet-talking the customers happy, not excruciatingly painful father-and-son happy. Just warm-from-within happy. I gaze around this rundown little ranch and wonder if, when I'm old like him, thoughts of poky old Childress will make me happy too.
There's another awful truck awaiting. This one is a big old flatbed GMC, probably half of the breeding pair off the ark. I get the window seat again, except there's no window, just a sheet of plywood that does a lousy job of keeping out the wind. We bounce up a track a few hundred yards to a hayshed where Ennis gets the truck up neat as a pin against a loading bay. He gets out and starts hooking bales down, not the huge rolls I see at home but the blocks that they always use at square dances, and slinging them over to where Dad and I can drag them onto the flatbed. Stack em neat, says Dad, where you going to stand, hey? Stand? I'm not planning on standing here for long.
To my surprise Dad takes the wheel as we head further out to the fields. The truck lurches and he crunches the gears a bit but he's not too bad. When we reach a gate I'm told off to open it, so I unlatch it and swing across, riding it all the way back. Get your ass off a that gate, bawls Dad from the truck, what do you think I spend my time fixin them for, so you can wreck em? damn kid. I shut the gate and get back in the truck, feeling just a bit pissed and Ennis gives me a wink. He doesn't smell so funny this morning or maybe my nose has died with all the cold air.
Once in the middle of the field Dad sets the truck in a tight circle while Ennis and I get up on the back, break open bales and throw the hay out to all the cows that come running. Flake it thin, he says, not too much, more over there, okay, that's enough, hang on, and he stamps his heel a couple of times and Dad takes off for the next field, with me doing gate duty very carefully this time. Field after field, the delivery system seems a bit haphazard but by the time we feed the three bulls, the last of the herd, there's just enough and no more. We drive back and I'm about ready to head back to bed, blood like ice, but Ennis is running through a list of jobs that need doing. It seems that while he's been chucking hay, with that grumpy look of his, he's spotted a bunch of stuff, leaning fenceposts, broken wire, sulky cows, I don't know what else. A quick cup of coffee and he's off again, this time with Grandpa who's emerged from his cave.
Later on Dad takes me down to the machine shop that could double as a museum, most of the equipment is so old. I've spent my whole life hanging around Newsome Farm Machinery and I barely recognise any of this crap. Plus it looks like Grandpa must have kept every scrap of metal and every wrecked piece of machinery since the Flood. Some of it's probably useful but you'd never know where to find it when you needed it. There's an ancient Ferguson TO20 - a TO20! - which Dad assures me is the best of a bad bunch of old tractors. How come Grandpa drives such crappy equipment, I want to know. Because your grandpa's a -- Because he wouldn't take up the offer I made. And he won't say anything more about it.
Dad reckons he's been working through this mess, sorting, fixing, cleaning, ditching, since he could move around more easily. He mostly gets around on crutches - it turns out the stick at the airfield was just for my benefit so I wouldn't be too shocked straight away - but now and then he still needs a wheelchair if he gets too tired. His left hand is coming good, however, and between us we get quite a bit of work done. While we're stripping down a big old chainsaw Grandpa comes by, on the hunt for something or other, and he watches Dad work for a while. What you want to waste time doing that for? he asks, more important work to be done. Like what? replies Dad in a level voice, like standing around watching someone else work? I start to join in the joke then realise neither of them is smiling. Grandpa turns to leave, and I see he hasn't found what he was looking for. When your daddy takes his little afternoon siesta you can come with me, Bobby, do something useful. Dad spits, doesn't say anything, but his hands are shaking.
After lunch I go out with Grandpa and Ennis to knock together some fencing panels, nothing I've done before but they both seem pleased enough with my efforts. Then I hang around the kitchen with Granny and help her - she's quite surprised to find I can actually cook but I've always enjoyed it. Someone had to know at our place. Mom is only good for the big occasions and the less said about Dad's barbequing abilities the better. Granny talks really slow and solemn, asks me about church and school and stuff like that. Sometimes she hums hymns, doesn't smile much, but she's nice enough. Everyone comes in for supper - not much table conversation - and after that it's back to the trailer and in no time my eyes are closing.
And that's the default pattern for most of the two weeks. Work, eat, sleep. Not the sort of holiday I usually enjoy. Sometimes we eat in the trailer - Dad cooks, which is to say he opens some tins and burns a few lumps of beef. On the third night he spends some time unpacking the case Mom sent up. He keeps pulling things out and showing them to Ennis and laughing quite a bit. Ennis pulls some faces and makes plenty of rude comments. I guess Dad didn't used to wear his worst clothes on their fishing trips. When he fishes out some work gloves he gives them to me and makes me return Ennis's new ones. I can tell he's looking for something, digging deep and making sure he's not missed anything. I start feeling guilty.
Next day we finally get to do some horse-riding. Ennis gives me his mare, Angel, and he rides Grandpa's old gelding. Dad's on a bay mare called Thunder. I find out why after I've ridden behind her for a while. Heels down, toes out! yells Ennis at me, don't want to look like a greenhorn! The air is cold but there's blue sky clear to Canada. Want to ride to Montana? asks Dad, and when I say yes he steps Thunder through a gap in a fence. He used to tell me he lived on the state line but I never thought the ranch boundary fence was it. I can almost hear Ennis adding the break to his list of things to do. We take our time. Dad can only go at a walk. His left leg still doesn't have enough strength to grip with. I notice how Ennis stays close, just in case. He's kind of funny that way, like a mother hen fussing over her chicks.
We have lunch right over in the north-east corner near where Little Battle Creek cuts across. Dad can't dismount properly so he just slides off into Ennis's arms. Dad then says, get off me, be giving Bobby the wrong idea, and he laughs a lot. It's a good sound. There aren't any cattle this far out, thank goodness, or the morning feeding would take all day. Dad reckons they've got plans of expanding, leasing land nearby since the adjoining ranches are unused. I've learned to keep my ears shut when he talks his big plans. Mom always says he's a dreamer and I guess she's right. The here and now never seemed to fire him up much. After we've eaten I find out why this spot was chosen - there's a rocky outcrop that Dad uses to mount Thunder again. Quite a business. I hold the horse, Ennis hauls Dad up on the rock then bodily lifts him into the saddle. I guess he's had a bit of practice. It's a long day and by the time we get back home I'm thinking I'll never jerk off again, everything from the waist down hurts so much.
The following day, Saturday, is New Year's Eve. If I have any thoughts of us all heading out to paint the town red they quickly get squashed. Only need a cupful of red paint anyway. No, it's another exciting evening in the trailer but Dad lets me have a couple of beers. I notice he doesn't knock back the whiskey like he used to, and he's given up smoking too, although a faint tobacco smell still clings to him as though it's imprinted in his skin. We hang around until midnight then I head to bed. Happy New Year, Bumfuck, Wyoming. Later on, I hear the trailer door open and close and when I get up to have a pee I hear low voices outside. The moon's just rising and I spot Dad and Ennis over near the orchard, then they walk away into the trees, Dad leaning on Ennis's arm. A wonder they don't freeze their asses off out there.
They do the morning feeding without me, then I go to church with the oldies and on to have lunch down in Gillette with Great Uncle Harold and Great Aunt Milly. Be still, my beating heart. Is it possible to die of acute boredom? When we get back Dad is asleep as usual and Ennis is whistling up a storm in the stables. I haven't seen him this perky since I arrived. I help him muck out the stalls. There's things I want to talk about, and working at the same time makes it less embarassing.
I start with the easy stuff. What made Dad get rid of that godawful mustache? Ennis chuckles and his eyes crinkle up. Didn't have no choice, he says, I done it when he was asleep, always hated it. Yeah, me too, although I can hardly picture him without it. I have to stop talking for a minute because a shiver runs down my spine, and I must look strange because Ennis asks, you okay, Junior? Yeah, I'm okay, hey, don't you call your daughter Junior? because I'd rather not get called that. He looks sheepish, mumbles, sorry, Bobby, didn't mean no offence. My friends call me Rob, I say. He waits. He looks at me. He cocks his head like a bird. Please call me Rob, I say, and he smiles. Guess that makes us friends. He starts whistling again.
Dad sure sleeps a lot, I continue, as a shovelful of horse shit and straw flies onto a barrow. Yep, says Ennis, breaking off his whistling for a second. Is that okay? I mean, is it normal? Yer dad's just tired today, Ju-- Bob-- Rob. Yeah but he sleeps nearly every afternoon. Ennis leans on his rake, says the doctors figure he needs lots more healing before he's right, was a real bad accident he had, lucky it didn't kill him. Probably drunk, I say, and he gives me a really sharp look. Why d'you say that? Well, I say, you know Dad, and Ennis waits, doesn't say anything. I begin to feel uncomfortable. Surely Ennis knows how much Dad used to knock back before the accident? But it seems he doesn't and he frowns a lot when I tell him. I just figured he'd had a few while he was out on the truck. The last few weeks he'd been getting really bad, I mean, Dad always told me never ever to get in front of those split rim wheels when someone was pumping them up. I couldn't figure why he'd been so careless. Too shickered to notice, I suppose.
Ennis has stopped working. He's standing really still and staring off like he's not listening to me. After a while he shakes himself and starts shovelling again. You like yer dad? His voice has gone quiet. Yeah, I guess, when he's not mad at me, I say, think he gets frustrated because I don't do so well at school, keep having to do summer school. School ain't everything, says Ennis, 'though I wanted --- And he breaks off and shrugs. Yer dad said you --- And he stops again. I think he's too embarassed to say what Dad said. Either that or he can't remember the word. Dyslexia, I tell him. He nods, seem all right to me, Rob, always wanted a boy for a kid, and he smiles and ruffles my hair and we go back to shoveling shit.
There's not so much work needs doing this time of year and when the weather's fine we get in a bit of sightseeing. One day Ennis, Dad and I drive out to the Big Horn Mountains, down into canyons full of huge chunks of rock, and up as far as the roads and the truck will carry us, to places where we can look out over the main ridge of the mountains. They point out this peak and that, and I don't remember half the names, and then for a while they don't say anything. At one point I go for a walk, scrambling over hillsides where the snow is just patchy, and the sage bushes send up waves of scent as I crunch them under my boots. It's a clean, fabulous smell, and the air is so sweet and still that I can hear birds calling across the valleys and streams murmuring over rocks, and somewhere a dog is barking, and I feel as though I'm the only person for miles, and I begin to understand why Dad comes back here year after year. When I get back, the two of them are leaning against the truck, heads close, deep in conversation. Dad looks a bit red-eyed, Ennis says for us to get in the truck because the cold is getting to Dad but I reckon he's been crying. I'd been warned about his moods before I came, and I guess this is one of them.
Another day we head south a way to Devils Tower, Close Encounters and all that. It's pretty impressive if you get off on big lumps of rock sticking straight up out of the ground. Dad took me and Mom to see the film when it came out. I recall he said something about how it's a pity the aliens didn't land further north and do some abductions there, and Mom shushed him. I didn't get what he meant at the time. Dad plays tour guide while Ennis drives. Dad reckons Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid used to hang around these parts. I always figured they had that Etta girl as the love interest in that film so that no-one got the wrong idea about two pretty cowboys keeping each other company, but I never told Dad that because I didn't want to ruin one of his favorite movies.
My last Friday is Dad's rehab day down in Gillette. I leave them at the hospital and go find some junk food to remind me of home and real life. Ages later when I get back, they're having a coffee with some woman. She's introduced to me as Margie and after the pleasantries are dispensed with, she tells me about how Dad's doing. You know, she says, we are so proud of how your dad has recovered so far, we really didn't expect it, was your grandmother and Ennis here, maintaining him in such good condition that helped him, I reckon, plus Ennis learning all about the physiotherapy. And she squeezes Ennis's wrist and he drops his head and mumbles and his face flushes a bit. Yep, she says, Ennis is a true friend, one of the best, couldn't have done a better job myself. Dad grins and nods agreement. It dawns on me there's a lot about Ennis I don't get.
The day before I'm due to leave, Ennis takes me for one last ride. I get Thunder this time. I've ridden her a few times now, and I'm beginning to feel like I was born in the saddle, as Ennis puts it. Dad's having his usual afternoon doze but I don't mind not being with him. We've had some good time together, better than I had expected, and anyway I'm really enjoying Ennis's company. He doesn't say much but he doesn't snap at me like Dad does (although I have to admit it's nowhere near as much as before) and when he gets me to help him he has good things to say about what I do, even if it takes me forever and the end result isn't perfect. At my age, he's told me, he'd been working three years already. No wonder he looks so old, out in all weathers all these years. We go for a canter down a track. He won't let me ride hard across the fields for fear of gopher holes. No way will he risk his two horses. I never hear him use their names unless he's talking about them. When he talks to them it's always little darling. It's a bit soppy coming from a weatherbeaten old cowboy.
There's something I've been holding back all this time but I finally have to get it off my chest. I catch up with him, clear my throat, take a deep breath and say it. I think Dad was having an affair before the accident. I think that's why Mom got rid of him. Ennis doesn't say anything but I see his hands tighten on the reins. Did he tell you about it, Ennis? Maybe - shit! I'm starting to get teary! - maybe if it's over he could come home again. I glance over. Ennis is biting down on his lips, his face all scrunched up like he's got a real bad headache. I figure he knows something. After a while he speaks very softly, don't think yer Dad's planning on coming home again to stay, Rob, I'm sorry. And he turns his head away from me.
Down along the south boundary there are breaks in the fencing where twisted old trees have toppled in storms. As we measure off wire and work the fence stretcher and splice and staple and make it all good again, Ennis tells me about how these lower fields haven't been used much but him and Dad have those plans. He's talking but sounds like his mind is elsewhere. After a while I realise he's not working any more. Rob, he says, I see my girls maybe a weekend every month or so. Don't mean I don't love em to pieces. I don't know if Dad really loves me, the way he's always at me for getting things wrong, I tell him, and he looks very solemn, don't think that, Rob, I remember when he first told me about you, about you being born, and how when you was eight months old you used to smile a lot. And he smiles off into the distance and I know the memory is a good one.
I wish I could remember Dad before he changed, wish I could put the feelings into those snapshots I've got in my head. We both stand, staring into space, and suddenly it sneaks up on me out of the blue, the day, the very day, and my guts clench and I feel like I'm gonna barf, and I have to hang onto a fencepost to stop falling over. You okay, boy? Ennis is over to me, holding my shoulder, peering into my face, and I can't stop myself, I spill out the memory, the day my daddy started to disappear.
Third Grade, must have been about Third Grade maybe Second, it all gets a bit hazy back then, he took off and Mom was mad as hell for a few days, and he came back late one night and I heard them arguing, and he crashed down the hall to his den and I don't think he even saw me peering out of my bedroom, waiting for him. He smelled bad, his face was awful and splotchy, and he locked the door and didn't come out until next day. And I kept waking up during the night because I was dreaming my dog must be trapped somewhere and howling real low and sorrowful. But it wasn't the dog, it wasn't Tuffy ....
And I'm bawling all this out and choking over the words and Ennis grabs me and somehow gets his coat around me and holds me tight and he's shaking as much as me, so we stay that way until it gets to be embarassing then go back to fixing the fence and don't say anything more about it.
That evening I go into my room to pack, and fish out a couple of items from the bottom of my bag. Here, Dad, I say, feeling slightly sheepish, and I hand him his two rodeo buckles. I kinda souvenired them, sorry. There's an uncomfortable silence then Dad smiles, really smiles, a great wide grin, and hands me back the big one, the one he always used to wear. I point out to him and Ennis how it's bent a bit out of shape, tell them how when I first saw Dad in the hospital, tubes everywhere, so still under the sheet, there'd been a big bruise on his stomach, just half covered up, the same shape as the buckle. Guess I must a hit something, says Dad, you keep it, Bobby, I want you to keep it, I'll keep the old one, and he holds it up to Ennis, remember this? Ennis smiles and nods but he's been very quiet all evening and after a while he pats Dad on the shoulder and bids us goodnight. That night before I drop off to sleep, I spend a long time staring up at the ceiling, trying to work out what the past two weeks have been all about.
Next day, after I get to sleep in one last time, I farewell the oldies - at least the names and voices have faces now - and soon it's time to board my plane back at Gillette. Dad and I hug, a good, long hug that means what it says, then I turn to Ennis. Funny, I didn't expect him to be anything more than Dad's friend when I came but now I realise he's become my friend too. He tells me, you come back in summer, hey? lots of work for you then, we hug each other hard and I breathe in one last lungful of horse sweat and stale tobacco and something that reminds me of Dad, and then I have to go. I reckon all three of us are blinking back tears.
I watch them until the plane turns away and speeds off down the runway. As we leave the ground I look one more time for that turquoise truck but just as I catch a glimpse of it the cloud closes over and it's gone.
tbc |
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[Feb. 14th, 2008|12:52 am] |
Just a quick response to recent events. It's not especially original but it made me feel better to write it.
THE WATCHER AND THE WAKER
He sat on a fallen log, a small bundle of nervous energy, booted foot tapping impatiently. A cigarette dangled from the fingers of his right hand, whiskey bottle from the left; both were little more than props. As always, the campfire burned bright, its woodsmoke mingling with the scent of mountain sage and an indefinable grassy sweetness. Below him the hill sloped away to distant, hazy meadows, fading blue-grey at the horizon and up into an endless sky.
The sleeper on the grass stirred and sighed, resettled his pale, elegant limbs, thoroughbred lean. The man on the log watched a while, checked the coffeepot with the back of his hand, peered inside. Hot and full. It was always hot and full. A couple of handfuls of years separated the two men, a few years and a quarter of a century, yet they were bound together in a timeless embrace that would last as long as people had hearts and feelings and love and remembrance.
At last the sleeping man stretched and yawned, rolled over and struggled to sit up. The springy turf which had been his bed left patterns over face and body, like ritual tattoos. He rubbed his eyes with two fists, like a little kid, scratched the wild mop of dark hair, and breathed deep. Salt tang and ozone; bound to be a good surf beach nearby.
-- You okay, friend?
-- Yeah, yeah, feel great. Best sleep I've had in ages. Fucking weird dreams though.
-- You want a drink? holding out the bottle.
-- No, I've given up the booze. That coffee I can smell? I'm dying for a coffee.
They drank coffee together in amicable silence. Somewhere a mourning dove called, somewhere a wave crashed on a sandy beach. The breeze which curled around them was warm and comforting.
-- I know you, don't I know you? I'm sure I know you from somewhere.
The watcher flicked his cigarette butt into the fire.
-- You know me. Know my friend even better, even though you never met us. There's clothing there, you feel the need.
-- Thanks. Brushing grass from his pale skin, slipping on tight jeans, a silky, striped jumper, nothing else. You're Jack, right? Real Jack. And I'm still asleep and this is just a dream.
-- No dream, friend. Sit down. Don't want you gettin dizzy way up here.
The waker sat, back against the log, as a slow trickle of memory seeped through his being.
-- No, wait! Something's gone wrong. Shekhar's gonna call me, wake me up---
-- He tried.
-- And I've got things planned for today---
-- All the time in the world now.
-- And my girl, I've gotta be there for my girl! Shit! What the fuck have I done? His body began shaking with the shock of understanding. Jack slid along the log, straddled the waker's body with his sturdy legs, started a gentle massage of shoulders and back.
-- You took the world on your shoulders, that's all. You took everyone's pain and tried to carry it all by yourself. A man can't do that for too long. We start losing track, making mistakes. It ain't your fault. Ain't nobody's fault. Hey, that's right, let it out, let it all out. Come on, darlin, it's all right.
-- Don't want the fucking world, just want my little girl on my shoulders. What have I done to her? Oh god, help me, help me, please ...
They clung together and cried, both of them, for wrong moves and lost opportunities, and futures never to be, and loved ones left behind to grieve. They cried for themselves and for each other, for all the lost souls they had saved and the ones who never heard their message. And much later, when they'd done crying, Jack stroked the other's upturned face and smiled.
-- You'll get used to it, the waiting and the watching. You be surprised what can be done from here. You can get into a writer's head, spin her tales she never heard before, you can come to someone you love in their dreams, leave em with enough pleasure to stoke their day. You'll find ways. Maybe when that little one a yours is whisperin to trees, you'll figure out how to whisper back. Tell you what, she'll hear.
He leaned down and kissed away the tears, buried his face in the soft hair, the delicate cluster of curls upon the temple, and murmured softly.
-- Not as good-looking as him, but then no-one ever was. But you done him proud, done us both proud, and folks won't forget that. You sure earned those stars in your crown. |
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[Feb. 9th, 2008|12:06 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 if you wait long enough
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: In this chapter, the fact that Jack is short and stocky becomes more important, so any fantasies about Jake might have to be rearranged a little.
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 5
John C. Twist had an old man's prostate. He called it waterworks troubles and refused to see a doctor about it, figuring that interrupted sleep and frustrating dribbles at the toilet were acceptable prices to pay in order to avoid having a pair of gloved fingers shoved up his backside. As a consequence, this midwinter night he found himself once again standing in his pyjamas in a freezing cold bathroom, uncooperative dick in hand. He leaned sideways a little and peered through the window; across the back yard, the new trailer's roof was just visible beyond a double row of stunted fruit trees. He hadn't been inside, hadn't been invited, but had worked out which windows went with which rooms. The big window at the south end was the main bedroom, and on many evenings it spilled light over the adjacent field long after the Twists had retired to bed.
One morning, with malice aforethought, he'd hammered on the trailer door and even thought of trying the handle, but had heard the sound of a lock being released and there had been Ennis, tucking shirt into jeans then scratching his head and yawning. Ennis had artlessly shifted to one side as Twist delivered his inconsequential message, so the old bastard got a clear view down the short hallway into the single bedroom where a rumpled-sheet bed stood empty. If he'd left his bathroom observation point and gone down there this very minute, the bed would still be as he had seen it, unoccupied since Day One.
~~~
Two figures made a single curve in the bed. They had lain, tall curled around short, for a quarter hour or more, one dropping sated and content into sleep, the other tormented by a whirl of unresolved doubts.
"Jack?"
"Mmmmm?"
"You awake?"
"Uh-huh."
"Tell me ... tell me about them, about the others, the other men."
A slight stiffening in the bed. "You don't want a know."
"No, but I need to know."
"Do we have ta do it now? Like this?"
"Yes, like this."
Jack sighed. "You won't like it." No response. "Okay, what d'ya want a know?"
"All of it. From Brokeback."
"Not before?" Jack's voice softened; he didn't want to cause any more pain than he knew he was bound to. 'You wasn't my first."
Ennis's low grumble reverberated in the back of Jack's head. He tried to squirm around but Ennis held him tight. "Talk."
So Jack began, trying not to feel any guilt as he recounted a string of episodes that might have appeared pathetically meagre if they had not been set beside those of the man who held him captive. He told of the high school fumblings, the locker-room uncertainties, the girls who were willing to try a few things down by the creek, the time he got over-heated when Dave Henshaw fucked that Ostler slut in front of his very eyes, how he couldn't tear his gaze from that slick, shiny cock, and knew in his guts it was that he wanted and not the dark place into which it was thrust.
He recalled the rodeos fading into velvet evening, when occasional out-of-towners would be happy enough to share their whiskey and smokes, and maybe even a little cash, for the pleasure of having a cute local boy stick his hand in their flies and jerk them off. And how one or two of them went down on their knees for him, and he told himself, as their heads bobbed at his crotch, that it was okay, that this was just what boys did, that he'd grow up and get married and the fun would be finished.
Then the first year on Brokeback, with the hungry-looking man who said how his wife had left him, and called Jack a good boy as they lay in the tent, and petted and caressed him, and got on all fours one night, begging to be fucked. And Jack had obliged him.
"You mean you ---?" A tightened throat pushed Ennis's voice high.
"Yeah, that's right. Me. I fucked him." Jack stroked the arm that lay snug across his chest. "And the next year, well, I knew it was all over for me. But when I didn't see you again ... fuck, Ennis, if you'd a come back that next year, no Alma, no kids, I'd a never touched another man my whole life. Yeah, but you didn't and I did. Fucked my way through a whole year and more in Texas, anyone that would have me. You're goin a be starvin and broke and lonely, may as well enjoy yourself whatever way you can." He sniggered a little but it was a humorless sound. "Not just men, neither. If they think you're a winner, girls are round you like flies round shit. Happened once or twice but not enough to stop me bein known, you know what I'm sayin? Got beaten up a coupla times. Met Lureen, got married ---"
"Why? Why her?"
"She was safe, she was loaded." Jack sucked in air, felt his bottom lip quiver, his jaw tighten. "She wanted me." He sensed more than heard the tiny gasp that escaped Ennis's mouth. That had been a low blow, but he'd only spoken the truth. "Tried to be good, tried to be a proper husband and father, tried to be faithful, but I couldn't do it for Lureen. Did it for you though. Believe me, I swore off men from the moment we got back together. Until ... until ... you got divorced. Got that phone call, I thought, hell, you know what I thought. Drove a thousand miles to tell you. After that ..."
He stopped talking, praying Ennis would let him off the hook, but instead got a nudge and a rough, "Go on."
"Okay, but hold on tight, darlin, this is goin a hurt."
So finally it came out, the trips to Mexico, the narrow-hipped boys whose raven hair never felt like Ennis's when he clutched it in his fingers, whose bodies never moved in perfect rhythm with his own as Ennis's did, whose scent didn't fill his head with dizzying desire. And later the business trips where strangers would look at each other a certain way and end up in a motel somewhere, or if that failed, Jack'd take a stroll down some recommended street, or to some recommended bar, or just sit around some recommended hotel lobby; the end was always the same. And the friends he gathered around Childress, just a handful of local men whose addresses he kept in his head.
And some of these tales he actually told, and others were as phantasms in his mind, and maybe Ennis heard the words and maybe he missed some, and maybe he already knew them heart to heart, the things he'd always known and hadn't wanted to know.
With a slow inevitability Jack's confession reached the final painful detail. "Then I met him."
"You can say his name." Ennis's voice was soft, level, unreadable.
"Nothin to say, really, only that the more I was with him, the more I knew I couldn't go on with you the way we were. He was givin me what you were, a few days' fuckin and friendship here and there, 'cept with him it was just down the road whenever I needed it and it didn't tear me up to say goodbye each time, and I didn't spend ever wakin hour in between feelin like total shit for not bein with him." Jack let out a long sigh. "And that's it, the story of my nuts in a nutshell."
He waited for a response but all he heard was the pounding of his own blood in his ears and the soughing of the wind around the trailer. After an eternity of waiting, Ennis broke the silence.
"You still awake?"
"Nope, I'm talkin in my sleep."
"This ... this Randall feller, was he good to you?"
"Yeah, I guess so. He kept me goin."
"And was he ... did he have a wife?"
"Yep. Lively little gal. Don't think she knew a thing."
"Mmmmm." Ennis grumbled, stirred the words around in his chest, then had another go at the question he was hedging around. "So was he, uh, like you?"
"Yes, Ennis," said Jack in the patient voice of a father explaining something to a child, "he was a queer. He is a queer, just like me, although he'd probably say he was gay, big city boy and all that." Jack smiled to himself; Ennis thought Casper was too big.
"So it wasn't just you ... he had others? Before you?"
"Ah, darlin, it's what you want that matters, not what you do."
"It ain't right, Jack. Ain't supposed to be that way."
Abruptly he released Jack, leaned over and turned on a light, its gas igniting with a gentle pop. Pulling back the bedding, he crouched over Jack. The chill air hit Jack's skin like ice water; he lay unmoving, afraid of where this was all headed. Ennis eased Jack over onto his belly then slowly began touching him. Jack couldn't see his face but knew from his hands that this wasn't about sex. Those rough hands smoothed over his shoulders, down his flanks to the girlish waist, followed the flare of his hips and flowed across his sturdy thighs. They cupped and stroked his buttocks, thumbs sliding down the crack, parting it, pausing. Jack felt a finger trace the circle of his hole again and again, move away then return, wet with spit, to dip just a little inside, to stroke, and to sense each ridge, the flicker of muscle, the familiar heat.
Then he felt himself rolled carefully onto his back. He raised his head and watch fascinated as Ennis, kneeling between his thighs, continued the slow examination, stubbled chin, Adam's apple, the strong line of thick, dark hair that flowed like a river down chest and belly and on to join the wild foam between his legs. Ennis cupped Jack's balls, held them as if weighing them, caressed the delicate folds, the perfect little seam that sealed off for ever the unfathomable emptiness of women. He lifted and cradled the quiescent cock, ran his hand up and back, over every part, his expression studied and awed.
"Beautiful." The word was no more than a faint rearrangement of air.
Jack couldn't hold out any longer; a violent shudder hit him.
"I'm fuckin freezin, Ennis!"
Ennis glanced up at him, bent forward and placed a solemn and sacred kiss on Jack's cock, then lay back down, pulled up the duvet and rubbed Jack's cold flesh until his shivering ceased.
"I don't understand it," he murmured into Jack's hair.
"What is there to understand? Most men love women. Some men love men. That's all there is. It ain't wrong, it ain't right, it just is." Jack's lips brushed gently against Ennis's. "Ennis, I ---"
"Jack."
"Yeah?"
"I ... I ... shit, I dunno."
"It's alright, darlin, it's alright. That's enough talkin for one night, hey?" Jack reached up, switched off the light and snuggled back down into Ennis's arms. Enough talking for one night. Yes, this man of his was never any good with words. He didn't need to be.
~~~
The sliver of pale light had caught old Twist's eye as he returned to the bathroom once more. No time to be awake if you didn't need to be. No wonder that useless son of his took so many naps during the day. Never got anything right. Didn't know the meaning of hard work. Thank God this Ennis had turned out to be a halfway decent hand.
Goddamn waterworks! Oh for the days when he could just pull it out and let forth a hot, hosing stream! As if in response, urine began to flow. His face slid into a smirk but a flash of memory suddenly froze his thoughts and dried up his piss; not an old memory, just from a month or two back, when he'd walked out of the bathroom, still buttoning up, and had nearly collided with Ennis carrying a jug of Jack's urine. Ennis had looked at Twist's hands, at the jug, then into his eyes with an expression of such murderous intent that Twist would have fired him on the spot if he hadn't been such a good, cheap worker. Never-the-less, his card was marked; no friend of Jack's could ever really be trusted.
Frustrated and unrelieved, he stomped back to bed, not caring if his grumbling woke up his wife. Within minutes he was asleep, snoring loudly, then a little while later the light blinked out in the trailer, and the dark night claimed Lightning Flat once more.
tbc |
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[Jan. 30th, 2008|12:29 am] |
I wrote this two days after Heath died. It summed up my mood then, and it still does. I originally posted it on the Dave Cullen Forum.
TO HEATH
I wanted you to accept that you are one of the greats. I wanted you to be honoured as you deserve.
I wanted you to do a musical and a goofy comedy and a modern drama - yes, another one - and anything else that your mercurial mind lighted upon. I wanted to enjoy the fruits of your artistry, and know that many others were doing the same thing.
I wanted you to direct and write and paint and sing and produce works of art in all the fields you might have conquered.
I wanted you to play Luther Fox.
I wanted to see your body slowly mature and age, until it caught up with the ancient wisdom of your soul.
I wanted to see the battle with your hairline - not that you seemed to care about such trivialities - and the changes in that beautiful, craggy face, the creeping collection of tattoos, the ins and outs of your waistline. I wanted another million photos of you beaming that killer smile. I wanted to hear that incredible voice rumble and roll and drown me in honey and brandy, and set the cinema sound systems shaking again and again.
I wanted to laugh at your crazy stripes, the baggy hats, the mismatch of styles and colours, the boots and shoes and socks, the whole marvelous collection of eccentricities that made you stand out from the crowd even when you were losing yourself within it. I wanted to see you striding out with those impossibly long legs of yours, wearing the clothes that we all knew as well as our own.
I wanted to see you carrying your little girl until she was too big for "that sort of thing", if she ever would be. I wanted to watch you watch her change into her own little person, not just mini-Heath for our enjoyment. I wanted to see you grow old and mellow, surrounded by your progeny, the kids, the grandkids, the flesh-and-blood legacy of your loving heart.
I wanted to believe I might meet you some day, some place, and that if I did you might even recall that odd woman from Australia who talked to trees. And if you didn't, it wouldn't matter because you would still be as gracious and concerned as everyone says you are.
I wanted your future as well as your past. I wanted your present, vibrant and alive, brimming over with your extraordinary gifts.
I wanted you to be happy.
I wanted so much for you, and for me too, and for all the people whose lives you touched and changed. You weren't just a movie star; you were a wise old sage in a beautiful young body, an old soul who looked out at the world through compassionate, warm, all-seeing eyes.
But in the end, in those last few hours, all you wanted was a good sleep.
Sweet dreams, Heath.
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[Jan. 20th, 2008|11:05 am] |
THE OUTLAND
Genre: AU
Rating: NC-17 for the whole story
Feedback: Any and all is welcome
Disclaimer: These are Annie Proulx's brilliant original characters and her story, and I have treated it and them (and her) with as much respect as I can muster.
This story is for Canstandit
AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not especially happy with this chapter. It covers ground that I needed to cover but I'm not happy with the result.
There is mention of Ennis's child support payments. I used the amount given in the film, and I assume that it would have been indexed to the cost of living but I left it at the 1975 amount. Incidentally, I recently read of a ranch hand who worked for fifteen days during a pay period in the late 1990s for the princely sum of $390.00. Annie Proulx stated that Ennis never made top hand, due no doubt to his habit of quitting jobs to be with Jack. Forking out $250 a month would have left a sizable dent in his wages.
Mrs Twist acquires a first name in this chapter. It's one I used for her in an earlier story, and I based it on the fact that Annie Proulx incorporated quite a bit of the story of Dido and Aeneas into Brokeback Mountain. In The Aeneid, Aeneas is guided to the underworld by "an aged sybil".
THE OUTLAND, CHAPTER 4
A loose bargeboard was rattling in the wind; it was on Ennis's mental list of things to do by the time he had come fully awake. Only then did he notice the chill spreading across his chest. From beneath their pillow he pulled out a towel, still damp and fragrant from the night before, folded it one-handed and slipped it under Jack's face. Jack, snuffling and mouth-breathing, didn't stir. The wind moaned around the eaves, a sound from those too-distant days in Sage when the world outside his window was reborn shiny and new every dawn for his discovery. Now, so far in time and space from that childhood innocence, he couldn't stop the smile of anticipation which crept across his face. Jack's laughter from the night was before still in his ears; it had been a long time since he'd heard Jack laugh like that, a very long time.
Soon the voices came. He knew they would. So you've been lucky this far but don't think it will last. We'll get you one day when you least expect it, boy, you and that little faggot you fuck. Remember Earl. You won't escape. And that other voice whose tongue spoke of ancient taboos, rooted in hatred of the unknown, the different. Filth! Perversion! The Bible says thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is abomination. You will surely burn in Hell for eternity! Yet this morning was like no other, this morning he pushed the voices aside, gave them second place to his newfound joy.
He pulled the blankets around Jack's shoulders and squeezed him closer. "Wassup?" came the sleepy murmur.
"Shhhh. Nothin, darlin. Everthin's fine. It's goin a be okay. I'll take care a you."
That first morning Ennis slunk into the kitchen, half-expecting to find the parents waiting for him with shotgun and axe, but Jack's mother just smiled her usual tight, sad-eyed smile as she handed him the breakfast tray, and his father was already whining his way out the door. As the days followed each other without any lightning bolts striking him, without any suspicious glances being exchanged over supper, without the people of Gillette pointing him out when he took Jack to Physio, Ennis began to relax, and to slowly lose the feeling that a bullseye was pinned to his back.
And goddammit, the sex was so good! The boyish thrill of keeping quiet, the challenge of finding ways to do it which Jack could manage - because Jack Twist wasn't one to just lie there and let it happen, not if he could help it - and the sheer pleasure of moving softly and slowly for a change steadily built within Ennis until he wondered how he had ever kept his hands off Jack for those two uncertain weeks. Each morning was a new beginning, each evening a revelation. So this was what all the songs were about, this was how it felt to look into someone's eyes and know you wanted him as much as he wanted you. Him and Jack, together, always, as close as two old shirts hung together, one inside the other. And yet ...
And yet, while they laughed and joked and horsed around like kids, while they loved and whispered and melted into each other, while they planned and dreamed their future together, a darkness still lurked in the far corners of Ennis's mind, biding its time, a flickering shadow at the periphery of sight that he had yet to face head-on.
After a week or so, it occurred to Ennis that they'd abandoned their last book with a chapter to go, having found better things to do with their time. Remembering the delight he had discovered in doing such a simple thing as reading to Jack, he retrieved "Down The Long Hills" one evening and remedied the situation ...
"' ... Hardy hunched his small shoulders under the buffalo coat, warm and snug. Somewhere ahead was Fort Bridger, and pa was riding right behind him. The End.' And that's that. Margie can have it back come Monday," said Ennis, throwing the book onto the bed. "Your turn to read next time."
"I'd like that," said Jack, taking the joke seriously, "but maybe somethin a bit stronger than Mr L'Amour. What you lookin at?"
Ennis was leaning in, studying Jack's face intently. "Didn't never used to see you sharp close up. These glasses are good."
"And what do you see, cowboy?"
"Hmm, crows' feet, five o'clock shadow, bags under them baby blues, scar there and there. You ain't no oil paintin, bud," but his hands belied the joking in his voice. His fingertips traced the lines of Jack's face as though he had just discovered some fine, rare specimen. Strange; that was what Alma used to do back in the days when they seemed happy enough together. She'd stroked him and kissed him and gazed at him as if he were her dream come true, and he'd never understood why. Until now. Now he wanted to do the same to Jack, to just witness and record his beauty. Beauty, yeah, this man was beautiful.
Beauty. No, that wasn't right, men weren't supposed to be beautiful. That wasn't what he should be thinking, that soft, romantic girl stuff. The glasses landed on the bed too, and Ennis commenced to kiss Jack hard, his mouth, his neck, the base of his throat, sliding down his body to kneel before him. Buttons and belt came undone, jeans were worked down to ankles, and Ennis plunged in. Jack eased forward on the chair, breathing hard. A del Mar blowjob was great but it wasn't mind-blowing. Its greatness came from the simple fact that it was Ennis's mouth and hands doing it. Frankly, he wasn't all that good, gave head like a girl doing a favor, never quite committed to the act, but Jack wasn't about to argue. He closed his eyes and gently moved his hips in time ...
Those eyes flew open, wide, amazed, and he gaped down. What the fuck? Rough and unrefined it might be, interrupted by frequent bouts of gagging, but for once Ennis was putting his heart and soul into it, as if, for the first time in his life he truly wanted to have Jack's cock deep in his throat and his face buried in that sweaty dark thatch. Jack twined his fingers through the ash-and-sand hair and bit back a moan. Oh Ennis! Oh Ennis, you are goin a get such a reward for this, my darlin, my sweet, sweet man! Just you wait and see!
~~~
"Fuck it, feel like I been attacked with a pile-driver."
"Whatya expect, you won't let me shove no more suppositories up you. Eat your peaches. Drink more water. And keep moving that hand. Come on, push. Keep it up, you'll be wringin it out left-handed in no time."
A disconsolate Jack shoved his breakfast around the tray and dutifully strained his left hand against Ennis's strong right one, squeezing his fingers, imagining one or two sets of testicles he'd like to be crushing right then.
"Sick a fruit and water."
"You're sick a bein backed up to last Christmas too. Don't you forget, I got a stake in this." Ennis dropped a wink and Jack couldn't help but smile a little.
"Wish you did, big juicy two-pound steak."
"There ain't no room, now finish them peaches. Worse than a two-year-old, you are."
Jack swallowed down some more of his mother's preserves, liberally sprinkled with bran - horses eat better'n this shit - and finished his glass of warm water.
"These child support payments. How much d'you owe?" He waited for the tetchy reply that was bound to come, and Ennis obliged.
"I don't need your money, Jack. I'll find a way."
"Ennis, ferchrissakes, it isn't my money any more. It's our money. Anyway, I don't have as much as you might think. Most a what I own ain't really mine. All a them trucks, they belonged to the business. Even my house, prob'ly not mine. Lureen, she knows all the tricks."
"You sayin she cheated you?"
"Nah, she's just got ways a not spendin her own money. You think she's footin the bill for all a my treatment? Stroke a luck I was drivin the big truck on business that day. It's all on the firm's insurance, and we're --- Lureen's --- a 'valued client'," - he said it in a singsong voice, lip curled in a sneer - "high capital investment, low risk. Yeah, she runs the business tight as a drum. Look, I didn't earn a half-decent wage for years. When I did .... well, I spent a lot on foolish things. But I saved up a little. Shouldn't be hard to pay Alma off. So? How much?"
"Well, last payment I made was in August, but ---"
"And how soon until the little one turns eighteen? Must be comin up soon, I reckon."
"September. I have ta pay through to next September, but I don't ---"
"And how much per month?"
"One twenty-five. But I don't want ---"
"And that's just for one? Jesus, Ennis!" It had never crossed Jack's mind how much Ennis might have been paying out all those years. Come to that, he'd never thought about how often Ennis had quit jobs just to be with him. He did have a vague idea of the pitiful wage a ranch hand made, however, and felt a pang of guilt about a few things he'd said in anger. At least now there was a chance to make up for them, despite Ennis's reluctance to accept any help.
"Lessee, thirteen times one twenty-five, that's twelve, fifteen, sixteen twenty-five. We can cover that easy. When d'you last see your girls?"
"Not since I come back here. Didn't seem right, with not paying."
"But that's two months! Goddamn it, Ennis, you got a right to see them! You're their daddy! You don't have to pay to see them!"
"Two months ain't much. I've gone longer." Ennis dropped his head and a couple of rosy spots brightened his cheeks. "Anyway, didn't want a leave you by yourself. Not when you was ... well, when you needed me."
The breath caught in Jack's throat but he covered his surge of delight under a brisk tone. "I can write a check for that amount ---"
"No! No, cash'd be better. And maybe in a couple a payments, three, four."
Jack understood. "Sure. Tell her your new boss advanced you a loan, somethin. Yeah, next time we're in town, we'll get it sorted. Hey, sad sack, this ain't charity. You've damn well earned ever penny you're gettin ten times over. It's just the wages you're due, only I'm payin em instead a him."
"Been thinkin about that, bud. This place, your dad's barely holdin it together. If we're goin a make a go of it, we'd better learn to live on air."
"We? Like in 'you and me'?" Jack's delight at this small word was unconcealed.
"Yeah, and 'we' is who's goin a be doin the work. Sooner you're outta that chair and up to your ass in shit the better. It's goin a be hard. Herd's too small but there ain't enough pasture to expand, damn spurge takin over what land there is, more cows means more costs, more work. It's goin a be hard," he repeated, looking intently at Jack. Jack pursed his lips.
"Guess I have to bite the bullet, talk to Lureen. She owes me."
The inside of Ennis's cheek got a good chewing. Newsome money again; he didn't want to be beholden to anyone, ever, not even Jack. "You and Lureen, you ever talk about divorce? Your dad said ---"
"Said too much. But, yeah, it's been on the cards for years. Reckon she's sadder to lose a salesman than a husband."
"So she's not expectin you back?" Jack snorted and widened his eyes in a look of dumb innocence. "D'you think she ... you know?"
"Ennis, give me credit. I'm no fool, covered my tracks, kept everthin in here," he pointed at his head, remembered all those evenings he'd been four sheets to the wind, and decided to say nothing more.
"It's just ---" Ennis got up and fished out Lureen's letter from his summer jacket where it had been since he arrived. As he read the cold, clinical details, Jack's face slowly sagged. He reached out and grabbed Ennis's hand.
"Jesus! Like bein told I was dead! 'It may help him if you visit.' Oh, Lureen, someone musta been guidin your hand."
The herd was down in the winter pastures, and the calves had been weaned and consigned to their fates. Ennis wasn't a sentimental man but each year the first few pairs he split - cow one way, calf the other, never to meet again - always left him feeling empty and melancholy as mother and child bawled miserably for each other. The old man and Ennis had kept back a few steers for fattening, and a larger than usual number of heifers; deals had been done with the cattle buyers and now all that was left to do was to ship the babies out and count the profit. It wouldn't amount to much; although he was no pushover, John Twist had bargained with the fatalistic tones of a man who knew he'd never be on the bubble. Next year, Ennis thought, next year they might do better with the silver-tongued tractor salesman arguing their case. If Jack's father would let him, that is. The stud duck wasn't about to relinquish control of the pond any time soon, although he had taken up Ennis's suggestions about which replacement heifers to keep and the need to build up the herd, without acknowledging in any way that the advice given had been sound.
Next year, then; a bigger herd, Jack working at his side, strong and healthy again. Slowly and embarrassingly, a proprietary sense was beginning to grow within Ennis. He wanted to make a go of this, not just because the cowboy ethic ran strong in his veins, not even because it was Jack's dream, nourished against the odds for so long. No, it was far more than that; this desperate little patch of north-eastern Wyoming was beginning to feel like home.
Most evenings, if they'd been working together, Ennis came in for supper a minute or two before John. It was a point of pride for the old man never to knock off before his younger ranch hand. This evening, however, Ennis stayed behind, tending to a cow. One of their good breeders but with no brains to speak of, she'd tangled herself up in a fence and cut her foreleg badly. He took his time, knowing his supper would be kept warm, then rode down, stabled, rubbed down and fed Angel, and stepped out into the yard.
The raised, angry voices carried clearly in the frosty air, Jack and his father going hammer and tongs at each other, nothing Ennis could make out properly. He sprinted across to the house but by the time he'd made it inside, the old man had slammed out of the kitchen and up the stairs, leaving Jack leaning against the table, quivering and tense, his face screwed up in helpless rage.
"Hey, hey! Take it easy, bud! It ain't good for you ---"
"Get me outta here! The barn, now! Can smell that old bastard's stink all through here!"
Ennis manhandled Jack into the wheelchair, fetched his warmest jacket, his old black hat, and a rug to tuck around his legs, then they crunched over the icy ground to the barn, Jack cursing and shaking the whole time.
"Gimme a smoke."
"No."
"Fuckin asshole!"
Ennis wasn't sure if this was aimed at himself or the old man so he ignored it. He sat on a haybale and patiently waited until Jack could bring himself to speak. These moody turns were a worry to him; he didn't know if it was the brain damage or the frustration of helplessness or life with the parents or months without cigarettes or everything combined. Sometimes it was just like living with Alma on her rags.
"He just ... he just ... Jesus! He makes me feel like a three year old. Why the fuck do I let him do it? Nothin I do, nothin I ever do ---"
"What's it about?" Ennis spoke softly, trying to bring Jack back down.
"I just told him how he could improve things, get a better grip on finances. I was givin him advice, for god's sake! I'm the businessman, not him!"
"You was tellin him how to do somethin he's done all his life, teachin him to suck eggs."
Jack shot him a poisoned look. He was coming to hate the way Ennis and his father talked, those laconic, quiet conversations about stock and weather and such that left him feeling on the outer; he hated that Ennis now called his father "John" and his mother "Syb", that all three were at home in a world that Jack had turned his back on a long time ago.
"Trust you to take his fuckin side! You let him work you like a dog, everthin done the old way, inefficient, all muscle and no brains ---"
"Come on, bud ---" reaching out to comfort him.
"Get the fuck off me!" Jack shouted, shoving Ennis away hard, "I ain't some helpless kid and I ain't some fool who don't know nothin about nothin! Okay, so the last twenty years weren't spent gettin my hands dirty, but I've talked with people, listened to ranchers," - a catch in his voice lent an unwanted emphasis to the word - "and I know how it works, goddammit. I know how to handle money, I know how to cut costs. I know that shit, Ennis, I know it."
Father and son both had valid arguments. Ennis could see that. He'd worked the big ranches where you hardly needed to pull on your cowboy boots because you hardly ever went ahorseback, where the machine shop was filled with trucks and bikes and specialised equipment, and he knew he preferred the smell of horse shit over deisel fumes. But a little outfit like the Twist ranch was doomed to slow death unless some modern thinking was introduced. Dammit, why did he have to be in the middle of this? Nothing for it but to ride out Jack's temper. Fortunately, it didn't take long.
"Ah shit, I'm sorry. Come here, help me up. Yeah, just hold me, just hold me." Shaky, tearful breaths melted into Ennis's chest and slowly subsided in his comforting arms. "Fuck, Ennis, I'm so sick of all this. Sick a bein helpless. Fuckin sick a pissin in a bottle and hangin on to everthin else till you get in. Tried gettin up the stairs on my backside this afternoon, nearly broke my neck ---"
"Jack!"
"Don't worry. Just slid and felt even more useless than before. Mama helped me up. Told her not to say anythin."
"She's nice, your mama." It was something to say.
"You reckon? Yeah, guess she seems that way." They just stood for a while, Jack tucking his weak hand down the back of Ennis's jeans, Ennis resting his cheek on the pillow of Jack's hair.
"It's hard, darlin, I know, but you'll come good," Ennis murmured. "I don't like your dad any more than you do, but we're stuck with him. We just have to stick it out. I've worked for bigger bastards, y'know."
Jack sighed, said nothing, but then a gurgling little laugh bubbled its way to the surface. "You know the worst thing? I'm so goddamn sick a fuckin quietly. Jesus Christ, want a scream to bring the neighbors runnin!"
"Well, maybe I could fix up that old bunkhouse ---"
"That ruin? No way! Half the rattlesnakes in Wyomin live under that thing, and it stinks worse than any shitter I been in. No, I got a better idea I'm workin on. Mean some extra work for you though." He refused to say any more, just grinned at Ennis's mock frustration - Jack Twist, you are so full a shit - Not any more, I ain't! - and with good humor restored, ordered Ennis to take him to bed and fuck him sideways.
Three days before Thanksgiving it arrived, brought up from Casper and carefully manoevered into the place that Ennis had prepared a couple of hundred yards behind the main house; the biggest, flashest trailer he had ever encountered, which wasn't saying much. By mid-afternoon it was hooked up to power and water, and even had a jerry-rigged phone line through to the house, but most things ran on gas. Ennis had checked the ranch's elderly generator and decided it was too risky to overburden in with winter fast bearing down on them. By dusk, everything they wanted had been ferried down and put away, Jack's clothes in the main bedroom, Ennis's in the single bedroom next to it. Like kids at Christmas they opened a pile of packages that Jack had obtained with a credit card, a phone and a catalogue or two; kitchen equipment, a ridiculous number of pillows, two double sheet sets in autumn tonings, two single sheet sets in autumn tonings, one double duvet, one single duvet, one thick, warm, double overblanket in deep, earthy colors, one single overblanket in earthy colors, and so on and so forth, like a bride's glory box.
Long after dark, Ennis carried a potful of supper down the new, wheelchair-friendly path, Jack cracked open a couple of long-necks, and they both let out the breaths they'd been holding for the past month. Jack wanted to say something meaningful like Welcome home, or This is for you, but settled for a satisfied grin and a cheerful "Well? What d'you think?"
"Are you goin a tell me how we can afford this when we're so goddamn poor?"
"I'm the salesman, Lureen's the deal-maker. I told her my rehab would come on better if I could move around easier and I left the arguin up to her. Lureen against an insurance company? I'd back her any day."
"And afterwards?"
"I'll think a somethin."
Ennis took a swig of beer, looked thoughtful. "You still like her, don't you."
"Yeah, in some ways I do. You live with someone that long ..." He shrugged his shoulders. There was still a lot of open space between them, so many words needing to be said, but for the moment they could wait. One thing at a time.
The unspoken agreement was for an early night but at the last second Ennis baulked. This was just the third time they'd had a real bed and the freedom to enjoy it. There was a dragging in his guts, a sudden inability to breathe, but Jack was clutching his arm and pulling him forward, so he took a deep breath, flung them both on the bed and started in to some seriously playful wrestling.
Jack didn't stand much of a chance. "Bastard! You got the advantage!" But he used every dirty trick he could to even the odds; pubic hair and appendages were fair game, knees and elbows and teeth put to bad use. Finally, Ennis got him pinned down, spread-eagle and helpless with laughter, every limb trapped. He leaned over Jack's face, swishing spit, building up a mouthful to drip and suck back over and again as Jack squirmed and hurled abuse.
"Never had a big brother, didya," laughed Ennis, spraying spit. "Come on, Jack, you yell and scream to bring the neighbors runnin, hey?" then abruptly he swallowed, kissed Jack, swept down his body, and with an ease born of wrestling cantakerous calves, hooked Jack's legs up, tucked them over his shoulders, raised up those nicely rounded hips and breached him without further ado.
Jack's shouted "Ah, fuck yeah!" were his last intelligible words for quite some time.
If their love-making took them to all four corners of the bed, in sleep they needed only the narrowest of spaces, lying so tight together that they breathed as one. A bright little moonbeam escaped from behind cloud and sneaked across the bed. "Hunter's moon," mumbled Jack as he gently nibbled on Ennis's chin. Ennis licked his nose in return.
"November, dumbass. That's a beaver moon. Was last night anyway."
"Ah well, we ain't plannin on huntin no more beaver, are we?"
"Maybe not. Now, you hush up. Some of us have ta work tomorrow."
There might have been a liberal helping of bulldust in Jack's pitch to Lureen about the trailer but most of it proved to be true enough. It was good for him, the small, flat spaces suiting his uncertain baby steps. Every day he felt himself improving as he moved around his little domain or stepped outside to find some small task to do. When his father wasn't around, he'd struggle down to the house - first by wheelchair, later on crutches - and rummmage through the ancient roll-top desk which served as the ranch office, then get on the phone to gather information. One way or another he was going to show his daddy he wasn't some lightweight to be brushed aside.
Mostly, however, the trailer was good for Ennis and him together, a safe little shelter where they could learn to be themselves. After twenty years of loneliness there was a lot of catching up to do. As winter deepened so they fell more deeply into each other, just as a chrysalid dissolves and reforms into a new and intensely beautiful creature. Such luxury to lie in bed after making love and talk without fear of being overheard, and if they didn't make love every night that was okay because there'd be another night and another and another, always enough time.
One miserably cold evening a week or two before Christmas, Ennis came through the door and into the embrace he was gradually learning to accept as his due.
"You stink."
"City boy."
They hugged. Ennis winced.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
"Cow and me did a quick two-step into a fence. Ain't nothin."
But Jack insisted Ennis get under a hot shower then lie in the warmed-up bedroom and take his treatment like a man. Up and down the tensed and tender back went Jack's hands, Ennis noting with satisfaction that their strength was all but equal now. They sought out the little pockets of pain, gentled them away, left him drifting and dreamy. Jack slipped the question in without a break in rhythm.
"How would you feel if Bobby came up after Christmas?" He waited for a tightening up but Ennis only mumbled into the crook of his arm, "Boy needs to be with his dad after all that's happened," and was soon sinking down into sleep. Jack ate his supper sitting on the bedroom floor, watching Ennis sleeping just as Ennis had watched over him for all those weeks. If they died right there and then, thought Jack, it would all have been worth it in the end. Sometimes he'd worried if it was too good to be true, sometimes he'd wondered if he was perhaps still unconscious and just having the most wonderful dream, or maybe he really had died and this was his own personal heaven. Just enjoy it, Jack, just enjoy it for what it is. The worst is over. How did that song go? "It's gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day."
~~~
I'm not one for laughter - the good Lord knows there's been very little laughter in this house over the years - but I can't help the occasional smile when I watch my husband struggling with what is plain before him. Perhaps it's not so plain to him. He approves of Ennis in his own stubborn way. He says nothing to me about the two of them but I see his eyes following them, searching for some sign that will tell him what he wants to know.
I myself try not to watch them too much. I know it embarasses Ennis although if Jack notices me he sometimes gives me a sly wink and the corners of his mouth curve up, one side a bit more than the other but he's getting there slowly. Just the other day they decided - at least, Jack decided - he was ready to get on a horse again, so he can ride when Bobby comes. So Ennis constructed a makeshift mounting block, solid as a house, and saddled up his two horses, and what a comedy of errors it was as he hauled and pushed and balanced Jack, laughing and sweating and swearing, and apologising to me as I held the horse's head and offered what little advice I could. But he got Jack there at last, feet in the stirrups, hands clutching the reins, leaning on the saddle horn, but rock-steady with Ennis's big paw on the back of his neck, sensing his every slight movement. And as I watched them ride slowly away, Ennis leaned over and rested his head for just a moment on my boy's shoulder. Did Jack respond? I'm sure he did but I couldn't see through the tears that welled up.
I don't like to think of what it is they do in their private moments. I was brought up to believe that it is a sin, that it is disgusting and perverted, and try as I might I can't rid myself of those beliefs. There are sheets and towels which don't come down to me for washing, and I'm grateful not to have to witness the signs of their reality. And there's a single sheet which I rinse and hang out to dry each week for John's benefit, although I know the only times Ennis touches it is when he gives it to me and when he takes it back. But I will never condemn them for what they do even if I do not understand why God has made them this way.
Sometimes I wonder if I am to blame for the way Jack turned out. I tried not to mollycoddle him, knowing as I did that his life would never be easy with John as his father. Maybe I should have defended him more. Maybe he would have been happy in his own marriage if he had known a better example. So many thoughts weigh heavy on my mind, but it's all too late now. The die has been cast and we must live with the consequences.
Three things I know, that Jack was right in waiting for his man, that Ennis truly loves my boy, and that if anyone, anyone, ever threatens their happiness, I promise I will stand with our old gun to my shoulder and defend them to the death, and God may strike me down for saying it, I won't care.
tbc |
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