| Where Bluebirds Sing |
[Jun. 7th, 2008|10:40 pm] |
Where Bluebirds Sing
Part One
NC-17
With gratitude to Annie, Heath and Jake, and the miracle they created.
Brokeback Mountain, summer 1963
He’d never thought about the sky being the color of someone’s eyes.
--Well, they weren’t always blue. No, true enough. When the day faded, and the two of them were close by the fire, or in the tent of golden shadows, the sky faded too, and the great eyes seemed to have no color but black. It was the same in the gray light before dawn. It bothered him a little that he was here, lying close with Jack, rather than there, sleeping with the damn sheep, but it had stopped bothering him enough for him to pay any real attention to what was rapidly becoming gross dereliction of duty. Rules were lifeless things. Jack was anything but lifeless. And Aguirre was nowhere near.
He lay on his side, watching Jack sleep. Not something he had set out to do, not at all, but finding himself awake, and Jack not, he found the long, luminous figure beside him drawing his eyes back again and again. It was a really warm night, likely a thunderstorm before dawn, probably the reason he had awakened. Jack must finally have been comfortable, for he hadn’t made any effort to cover his nakedness after that last wrestling match. Ennis wondered idly how many times it had been today, but the answer eluded him. Several, certainly. Several was a good number.
Ennis didn’t know how hungrily he studied the sleeping man for whom he had no other word than friend. He didn’t realize either that it was the first time he had ever really dared to look at Jack for more than a handful of seconds at a time. Looking into Jack's face did strange things inside him, things that made him uneasy, even angry sometimes. He had made do with a lot of short looks, stealing a few longer ones when Jack turned away, especially when Jack hadn’t a stitch on and was pissing, or washing, or just wandering around in the altogether and his hat and boots, which he had a damned annoying way of doing just when Ennis needed to stop getting hard and playing around and get back up to the sheep. His mouth quirked up ruefully. He’d tried to embarrass Jack once, stop him doing it, saying in the direction of Jack's rather distracting backside “One a these times, you go prancin around like that, gone a get cold and dick’s gone a shrink right on up and disappear.” Jack had straightened up, slowly, and turned, and Ennis had known right away he’d said too much, shouldn’t have called attention to it. Jack had pulled at his hat brim, looked down. “Don’t worry, Ennis. Don’t matter how small it gets. It’ll get bigger again.” And then, those eyes meeting his, that slow grin, and there the damn thing went, stretching out, standing, getting stiff, shameless fuckin son bitch… Ennis frowned at the way his belly fluttered, and pushed the distraction away.
The first thing he noticed was how different Jack looked with his eyes closed. It was like someone had turned the lights out in a room just as it was going dusk. Ennis had never noticed eyes, particularly; but then, he didn’t really notice people at all much. Just for a moment, an image very different from the one before him flashed into his mind, an image at once half-forgotten and unforgettable, and Ennis flinched. No, he didn’t tend to notice people. It was safer that way. You might find yourself looking at the wrong one the wrong way. And Ennis had never been told what kind of look was a queer look. He only knew, as he had known for ten years, that you couldn’t go wrong if you didn’t look at all.
But it was impossible not to see, not to notice Jack Twist. He remembered when Jack had introduced himself, standing one step above him outside Aguirre’s trailer. Ennis had already sneaked a glance at him in the trailer, just one, noticing not so much the man as the colors--denims many washes newer than his own, black hat, blue shirt, black hair. Simple, strong, quiet colors, and not many of them. That was good, though Ennis never knew he found the composition pleasing; reassuring even. And then had come the moment, outside, the moment when Ennis could no longer avoid meeting the other man’s eyes, when they had to exchange names and acknowledge each other’s existence; the moment when Jack, having lit his cigarette while Ennis messed with the watch, turned to him abruptly, stuck out his hand, and said “Jack Twist.” And the frank, friendly eyes were blue, too, blue like the shirt and the jeans, under black brows—black like the hair, and the hat. It was inevitable, and it was right, and it was pleasing, and something like a little shock from a short wire zipped through his belly. He had been so unprepared for that giving regard that he had said only “Ennis,” like he was five years old, and that made him feel so stupid he just clammed up. And then the man with the blue shirt and blue eyes and black hat and black brows had teased him for the rest, grinned as though it were the biggest fun in the world, nothing mean in it at all, and the best he could do was mutter “Del Mar,” not looking into that face again in case he felt another funny tingle in his belly, as Jack stood there grinning down at him like…like…unaccustomed to the exercise of his imagination, Ennis failed to find words, but he had a sudden image of a male bluebird, his deep blue plumage an outrageous excess of pure color, singing his heart out on a weatherbeaten fence post separating a dusty tan road from a dusty brown field. Yeah. A bluebird. Jack was a bluebird. Unnoticed, one corner of Ennis' mouth twitched upward momentarily. Bluebirds were big showoffs, so it worked that way, too.
“Nice to know you, Ennis Del Mar.” It was funny how often the words came back to him, those first days, the words and his first memory of those strange wide eyes that really had looked glad to meet him as he had turned away in confusion. Jack looked at him a lot, not shy, making no secret of it, and Ennis liked to see his friend laughing back at him. He liked it too, even if he pretended not to notice, when Jack looked at him in another way, usually when Ennis didn’t have much on, or he wanted Ennis not to have much on. And when the world shrank down in darkness to the fire and the tent and two friends who had found a deeper kind of pleasure in each other, the great eyes could sear with their kindness, and their understanding, and the silent promise that what Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist did here was secret, and private, and nobody’s business but theirs. Sometimes when the dark brows pinched together, and the eyes went gentle, Ennis felt like he was suffocating, every breath his last, and he didn’t even mind. It just grabbed hold of him, this thing Jack did with his eyes, and shook him to his bones, and he surrendered, lost and found.
But sometimes it wasn’t desire but fury that shook him, a shudder of pure rage at the weakness that brought him to Jack again and again, a rage that turned his eyes black and flat, that turned his need into an explosive release of male power that shamed him when he was spent and Jack lay gasping beneath him. Though Jack laughed off the bruises. As for the rest, well, Jack wasn’t so meek or helpless as all that, and Ennis collected a few bruises and wrenches of his own. But Jack never minded how rough Ennis got, and sometimes that made Ennis shake, too, not knowing if anger, or wanting, was uppermost.
Jack sighed a little, making Ennis flush, thinking he’d been caught. He quickly looked away, but as surely as a hooked fish, his gaze was drawn back, and he was struck afresh at just how exotic was the face still relaxed in sleep. Ennis had never seen anyone like Jack Twist before. Men just didn’t look like this. Boys were either tall and skinny—like him--or short and skinny, a few kind of handsome, but always raw and unfinished-looking, while grown men had the heavy lines and dull skin and wary eyes that come with a lifetime of smoking and drinking and spending all their days outside in raw weather one step ahead of unemployment. He studied the face of his bedmate with something like wonder. Not a square face, not a bony face, all angles and squint, but a long, smoothly oval face that could turn in a moment from arresting to ridiculous, or the reverse--Ennis had seen both. And where in the hell did a man get eyebrows like that, dark and masculine to be sure, but so perfect they seemed unreal? Only now did Ennis notice, too, really notice, the almost feminine delicacy of Jack's coloring. It seemed to go with the eyelashes, nearly as long as a woman’s, and with the eyes, and with what they showed sometimes.
That was another thing. Jack showed everything. You never had to guess what was going on with him. Ennis wasn’t used to a man who talked, either. At first, he had almost revolted from all the chatter, all the questions. Funny, though, how quickly he’d gotten to miss the sound of Jack's voice when they were apart. The thing was, Jack seemed to mind about him. Ennis hadn’t forgotten the quick sympathy Jack had offered that first morning, nor the simple question, two weeks later--“Your brother and sister do right by you?”--that for some reason had made Ennis tell Jack more about his life than he had ever told anyone else. He didn’t know why it was so easy to talk to Jack. It just happened.
Thinking about Jack talking brought Ennis' gaze naturally to Jack's mouth. His breathing quickened a bit. Even when Jack wasn’t talking, his mouth was eloquent. Ennis licked his lips, studying the perfectly drawn curves, made for kissing and…and things. He flushed. The damn mole, placed just so on the left side of Jack's upper lip, didn’t help. It seemed to draw attention, irresistibly, to a mouth that needed no help attracting notice. Like the other mole, the one high on Jack's left cheek. As though anyone could fail to notice those eyes. No, Ennis had never seen anyone, man or woman, who looked like this, and all at once, a word he had never had any occasion ever to use before drifted into his mind: beautiful. Jack Twist was beautiful.
In a world of dust and shit and mud, every tiny spot of color leaps out. In a life where color cannot be afforded, where clothes and gear and towels and sheets are worn until they are all gray, the only color comes from the skies and the wild things and what grows in the little forgotten corners not required for something else. And Mama had one word for them all, birds, sunsets, rainbows or flowers, a word inflected with wistful awe and longing and hunger for something precious that would be gone all too soon.
“Isn’t that beautiful, baby?” she would say, drawing his attention to whatever it was that had made her heart lift, and Ennis had learned that “beautiful” was the highest accolade of all, attached to things you could never own, that slipped through your fingers and were gone. They were not loved less, but more, for only appearing occasionally, and not always when they were needed most. But then, the unpredictable appearance of something beautiful was part of what made it beautiful. It was a gift, shared briefly and then put away someplace safe and secret so that no harm could come to it. And here in the quiet and shadows of their refuge on Brokeback Mountain, Ennis Del Mar looked down at Jack Twist and knew that he was beautiful.
He frowned, and shook his head. Beautiful! As quickly as it came, the word was scorned. It was a woman’s word. A word women used, a word used to describe a woman. And while Jack might not have been square-jawed and narrow-eyed, no one would ever mistake him for a woman. No. Ennis' eyes drifted over the heavy beard, implicit in strong shadow, and down, down, slipping over the broad shoulders and well-defined arms to sweep over the strong chest, noting its dusting of dark hair, following the enticing sable trace to the flat, muscled belly, where it swirled idly, casually, momentarily slowing the shy, greedy gaze, and then a little further, just a little further…no, there was no question anywhere along that well-travelled road, especially not at its conclusion, that the arrestingly well-made creature beside him was anything but male. Ennis' breathing quickened again. He had no words to describe, or understand, the sensuality of that he looked upon, for the erotic power in the smoothly turned, graceful lines of the long body, a composition that drew the eye finally and inevitably, over and over, to the juncture of belly and thighs, the tangle of dark thatch and the promise teasingly implicit in the fullness even at rest of the cock and balls. He didn’t know either that he coveted to the point of pain the startling face and the healthy, sleek, muscular body that shone silver in the dim light of the waxing moon. But somewhere deep inside, he did hear the single word he did know echoing softly with the ring of truth: beautiful. Precious, unexpected, unpredictable… His face pinched as his chest tightened. And soon gone. When the snows came, Jack would be gone. Of course he would. He would have to be. One shot thing anyway. Ennis Del Mar wasn’t no queer, no he was not. It was okay, what they did—all right, better than okay, a whole lot better. Okay, yeah, fuckin great, even. He sure didn’t mind getting off half a dozen times a day, who would, but a course it was just makin do. Stood to reason. And if it was this good with Jack, well, just wait till November, when he and Alma.… Ennis' head jerked back. For no reason, he flushed. It wasn’t respectful, he told himself, thinking about Alma like that, not here. Him and Jack had nothing to do with that anyway. Damn, it was true enough that Jack could do things to him, things like nothing he had ever dreamed of, but that was just Jack. So he’d better enjoy it now, because Jack would be gone and only Alma would be left. In his confusion Ennis didn’t see how he looked on this picture, and on that. He knew only that he didn’t like thinking about Alma all that much right now, and he didn’t like thinking about September at all. But it wasn’t September yet, of course. They still had weeks and weeks. And anyway, Jack wasn’t gone. Of course not. He was right here. The tight breathlessness faded, his breathing slowed. Jack was right here beside him.
It was the first time, he realized suddenly, since that first dawn, that he had found himself the one awake. When did Jack sleep, anyway? Not when they were together, that was for damn sure. No, it was always Jack who woke first, early and often. Ennis felt his face heating up. Jack would wake first, and then he would wake Ennis. And he had ways of doing that…Ennis shook his head, but he was already reaching, reaching, unable to defer his desire for one more minute. Long fingers, callused and cut up, but surprisingly graceful, reaching, and ah, finding and curling around a staff swelling stiffly for him, index finger hooking over the big knob, thumb squeezing and pushing, the tears oozing out to help slick shaft and fingers both. Damn! So hard, so sudden! Ennis bit his lip to keep back a moan that would have awakened his sleeping bedmate, but he could do nothing about the breath now hissing harshly. Yes, Jack was a damn devil, the son of a bitch, Ennis coming awake like a fish hauled to the bank, mouth open and gasping to find a big hand not his own steady at work pulling, twisting. Or Ennis would be drowning in hungry, breathy kisses that only waited for him to wake to go deep and devouring as a hard surging body urged itself against him until he grew impatient and angry and flung Jack over to do what he had to, even better if Jack fought him and they rolled around growling and hissing and yeah, laughing. But Ennis was always stronger, always. And so he hauled Jack up, did the bare necessary to help himself, and surrendered to the white heat and the shoving and found it went even better if he reached around and made Jack beg him to keep thrusting and jerking roughly until everything went dark and silent except for the roaring in his ears and the hoarse “Uh, uh, uuuh, uuugh, oh fuuhck” that he hardly realized came from himself. Afterward they would get it all over them, what Jack had spurted onto the blankets, and the tent by now had a haze of harsh musk Ennis would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Ennis had a sudden sharp yearning for the other way Jack liked to wake him up, their favorite way, though Ennis always pretended, or tried to, that it made him angry, that it wasn’t decent. Those great eyes, shameless and full of laughter, looking up at him from under the dark brows, all the while, the mouth hungry tugging at him, coaxing him to come…
Ennis was pulling hard and steadily now as he watched the sleeping face. Jack shifted, a frown washed his face, and Ennis found his gaze drawn instinctively downward, though he couldn’t have said why. What he saw made him bite his lip again as desire shuddered sweet and liquid through him. Jack was no longer asleep, at least not all of him. His handsome big tool that had been lying pleasingly enough nestled on his balls was flopped up onto his belly and growing. And all at once Ennis wanted something else. Frowning, he watched, breathing fast, as Jack's manhood stretched out full, and knew he wanted, knew he had wanted for some time, to taste it as Jack had so often tasted him. For a moment he hesitated. Was it queer? He shook his head impatiently. It was Jack. Once again, Ennis saw not the man who lay before him, but the one who had reached out to him, not the first but the second night, with a face so gentle it made Ennis hurt all over. He had never seen eyes like that, eyes that said so many things without any words needing to be spoken. It had been all right, then, to slip into Jack's embrace as though coming home. It was all right now to give, as Jack had given to him. It couldn’t be wrong. Nothing was wrong, not here, not now. It was Jack. They were alone, just the two of them. Ennis was lightheaded, drowsy, deeply aroused. Without another thought he swung round and hung suspended above Jack just for a moment, and then, pushed Jack's legs apart and let his tongue slide up the hard shaft.
It rose to meet his advance, and Jack moaned, a half-formed, still-asleep sound that made Ennis' cock jerk in his hand. He hadn’t expected the heat of it, though he’d had it in his hand often enough. Nor had he expected the scent, so much heavier and more intense at the source, making his nostrils flare to draw it in. Just as easily as that, his lips parted further and he tasted heat, and salt, as his tongue drew in the big knob.
Jack did wake then. “Jesus!” he gasped, hooked and landed as abruptly as Ennis ever had been. “Jesus! Ennis! Oh, fuck!” His head fell back on the pillow, his hips arched up, offering, and his long fingers tangled in the wheat-colored curls. “Oh, fuck! Ennis! Ennis!” He was laughing now, joyful. “Oh, God!”
He didn’t last long. It might have been Ennis' first time, but he’d been on the receiving end of this little slice of Heaven quite a number of times now, and he proved himself a retentive student. Jack had gotten very, very good at this, and now reaped the benefits of hours of patient experiment. Indeed, just the fact that Ennis was doing it was nearly enough. Seeing him there, curly head moving steadily, hearing the soft, erotic sound of suck, feeling the awkward caress grow confident, and eager, Jack felt the pull, the tightening, the awareness that the ground was falling away and he was flying, flying…
“Ennis. Ennis. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, Ennis…oh, Ennis, Ennis, I got a…I…oh! Oh, Ennis, fuck, I’m comin, I’m comin, I’m comin…” He convulsed, too far gone to feel Ennis spattering his thighs, and Ennis once again tasted salt. And it was good.
* * *
Whistling loudly, if not very tunefully, Jack Twist carried the laundry down to the creek and dropped it beside him with a “whump.” Hooking his fingers into the placket of his shirt, he whipped his arms apart in an exaggerated motion, popping every button on his shirt with one mighty yank. “Superman!” he laughed, and whipping the tails of the shirt clear of his jeans, popped the arm snaps as well and dropped the shirt on the pile. In less of a hurry, he shucked the rest of his clothes and stood naked on the bank, running his hands through his dark hair. The sky above him mirrored his eyes, promising another warm day like the last, and though it was still cool, the sun warmed his body, urging him to lace his fingers together, hoist his arms high above his head, and stretch mightily. It felt good. He felt good, deeply tired and deeply happy, and he held the pose as he stared, smiling, eyes unfocused, at the broken peaks and the sky above him. The sun poured off his perfect young body like water sheeting over marble until he broke the pose, abruptly, with a huge yawn that ended in a laugh.
“Damn!” The word was not a curse, but a deeply felt expression of reverent pleasure. “Oh, Ennis.” Jack stretched again, arms wide, embracing empty air, and laughed again, throwing his head back in sheer glee. “Oh, damn, Ennis. Who-wee! Just no knowin with you!” He had hoped, had prayed, had done a good bit of that praying with a hard tool standing stiff in his hand, that Ennis would do exactly what he had done first thing this morning. “I knew it would be good--but it was better!” The last word was a bark of laughter. “Uh!” He relaxed and dropped to a crouch to do the washing.
God. Yeah, he’d wanted it bad. He knew Ennis really liked him doing it, for all his frowning, for all that he would never directly meet Jack's eyes when he was getting it, for all his mock protests of “don’t you be doin that, damn it” and the like, and shit, he had wanted some too. But he knew Ennis was kind of shy, still, about what they did, shy in some ways anyway, and Jack knew in a way he couldn’t explain that he’d better not ask for it. It wasn’t as though he was going without that badly. Ennis had gotten awfully good with his hands. “Mmm.” Yeah. Awful damn fuckin good. But sometimes, lookin at that soft mouth, thinkin about the way Ennis kissed, yeah, he’d sure wished it would kiss down, and down… And then, at last, this morning, he’d woke up, if you could call it that, more like he’d exploded from the inside out, damn near come—and there was Ennis, crouched between his legs, and…his cock stirred as the memory washed through him. “Oh, yeah.” Never reluctant, Jack reached for it, but he’d gotten a pretty good going over in that first hour they were awake, as the blanket could attest, and it sighed back to sleep in his hand. Jack just grinned and got to work on the washing.
It was full afternoon when he awoke with a start, sighing and stretching. Good thing he’d gotten the wood and the water taken care of before falling half-dead onto the remaining blanket. It was a damn shame, but Ennis had taken the pup tent with him, a sure sign he was going to be where he was supposed to tonight. Damn shame. After this morning, too. Desire tickled his belly, and meant it this time. Shit, that had been good. So damn good. Jack's hand slipped quite unnoticed down his belly, flipped up his shirttails, and reached for the big tool stiffening quickly, glad he’d stripped off his jeans before sleeping. He pushed out of the tent, feeling a quick whim to just stand there in front of the tent and pull it off.
A movement to his left caught his eye, startling him. For a moment he thought it was Ennis, but it wasn’t. It was only Ennis' shirt, the one he had washed that morning, stirring in the breeze, along with his. Something about the picture caught at his attention, and Jack found himself drawn across the camp clearing to where the wash hung, his need fading.
The blanket hung on the rack in the normal way, but after noticing that the clothes took a long time to dry, Jack had employed an idea of his mother’s, and made hangers out of green branches and pieces of rope picked apart to make heavy twine. These he had tied here and there to low tree branches so that the ever-present wind could dry the whole garment at once. It looked a little odd, and the horses had spooked a little at first, his especially, but the clothes dried faster, and it was funny how when you knew you had something clean to put on, you wanted to put it on right away. Ennis had been surprised, he remembered, and had been so obviously impressed that Jack had not been able to bring himself to admit it was not his own idea. Not that it really mattered. And he had really liked seeing the warm approval in his friend’s eyes.
Now the shirts hung, side by side, his blue one and Ennis' almost-white one with the light plaiding. Jack liked this one a lot better than the other. The bold orange plaid was too loud for Ennis. This one looked better on him. He lifted the sleeve briefly. Ennis had been wearing this shirt when they met. He had also been wearing it not the first time, but the second, when Jack had been lying in the tent with his own shirt off, mouth dry, heart pounding, trying to seem relaxed but knowing that if Ennis didn’t pass in front of that fire and come under the tent roof with him it was going to be a really bad night, and a very long summer. But he had. And that made all the difference.
The shirts stirred in the breeze again, and the nearly dry sleeves of Ennis' shirt stirred and brushed against the denim of his own, as though Ennis' shirt was reaching for his. Jack put a quick hand to his stomach as something moved strangely inside him. It was this, he realized, that had he had noticed from across the clearing--the two shirts touching, sometimes playfully, sometimes uncertainly, as though their owners were still in them. Suddenly and very intensely, he wished that Ennis was there. His eyes dark and serious, he caught Ennis' sleeve and drew it around the shoulders of his own shirt, holding it that way for a moment before he let it drop. They spent a lot of time together now, it was true, and a lot that old Aguirre sure wouldn’t like to know they were spending, but it was never enough. On a day like this, it seemed like they still had all the time in the world, but Jack knew better. The days would shorten, the snows would come, and it would end.
But did it have to?
In a blaze of light, the idea came all at once into his mind. He remembered Ennis talking about that girl what’s-her-name, Alice or Annie or whatever—no, it was Alma. They were getting married, he’d said, when Ennis returned from the mountain. But later he’d said November. Jack stood very still. September this job would end. What was to stop them taking a job together on some big old ranch for a couple months? What at all? Riding together over the land, fixing fences in a lonely field, rainy afternoons in the hayloft… Hell, maybe he could just move in nearby. --Tell you what, come to think, Ennis never even talked about that girl.
There was a funny tight feeling in his chest as he stood looking at the two shirts, swaying and brushing against each other. But would Ennis do something like that? Unbidden, and unwelcome, the memories trampled on his wonderful idea: Ennis galloping off after that first time, like he wasn’t coming back. “You know I ain’t queer.” And “one shot thing we got going on here.” Jack shook his head, frowning. He hadn’t known at the time if Ennis even meant anything would ever happen again, and the words had nearly crushed him. But you couldn’t let the fear stop you. You couldn’t. So that night he’d lain on that bedroll hoping his bare chest was sending a message Ennis would hear, scared to death Ennis would just roll up outside again. But he hadn’t…
He stared at the shirts, not seeing them anymore. There were two Ennises, almost. Ennis who was the only real friend Jack Twist had ever had. Ennis so gentle with those big hands, Ennis who joked and teased, Ennis with his dark, sweet, hungry eyes, Ennis who could set him on fire with a touch, or a kiss. Jack closed his eyes, shaking his head. Jesus, but he could kiss. Oh, shit.
And then there was the other one. Jack's guts moved again, but this was a less pleasant feeling. Yeah. The other one. Ennis who wasn’t queer, who wouldn’t ever look at him for more than a moment, who’d shot him that look that made him feel sick and scared, and a little bit dirty, before tearing off after that first night like he couldn’t get away fast enough. This was the Ennis whose dark eyes blazed sometimes like he hated Jack, just before he took him like a beast in heat.
The funny thing was, well, that he didn’t mind Ennis being angry, not really. Ennis didn’t hate him. He knew that. Not that the anger wasn’t real. Oh, yeah it was. He knew real anger when he saw it. And yeah, it scared him. Ennis was a big strong man. And they’d wrestled enough that Jack knew he hadn’t a hope if Ennis really wanted to hurt him. But the shot of fear didn’t stay with him. It never had. You couldn’t get on a bull more than once if you went around worrying about it. When the ground blindsided him, and he ran for the fence, and spent the next three days cradling his ribs, he’d wonder why he did it, getting himself busted up again and again. And then he’d smell the animal, and feel its anger and power through the skin as he wrapped his legs around it, and he knew. He’d never really thought about it, but the thing was, it almost excited him, getting on a bull. He smiled a little. Ennis was a lot like a bull in some ways. Powerful. Dangerous. Unpredictable. He thought about what Ennis had between his legs, and the smile grew teeth. Yeah. Ennis had that in common with a bull, too. He stared down at the shirt, seeing, in flashes, the owner inside it: the face with its hard angles and soft mouth and secret dark eyes that said so much more than Ennis wanted them to, the lean, rangy build that was so damn male, and yeah, the big jutting dick. Damn, he liked all of that, but the longer he thought about it, the greater the certainty grew: it was the danger too. Jack liked it that Ennis didn’t like wanting him sometimes. It was part of what made him want Ennis so much. It was the eight-second ride. And tell you what, it was always one hell of a ride.
He reached out and stroked Ennis' shirt again. “Just don’t be scared a it, buddy,” he said softly, though in that moment, he wasn’t quite sure what “it” was. All at once, he tired of his contemplation. It was time to get dressed. He’d been alone long enough.
Where Bluebirds Sing concludes in Part 2 |
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[Jun. 7th, 2008|08:51 pm] |
Where Bluebirds Sing
Part Two
NC-17
With gratitude to Annie, Heath and Jake, whose creation these characters are
With beating heart he approached the sheep, able to hear—and smell—them long before he saw them. His heart spiked as he spotted Ennis' horse, but it took him a good minute to spot the man lying asleep on the blanket near a clump of bushes he was using for shade. A slow grin grew on Jack's face and he dismounted quietly, unsaddled his horse, and then crept over to Ennis. Ennis, sleeping with his hat over his eyes, never moved. Jack's grin faded as he stared down at his friend. Ennis, he thought, and his chest tightened. Ennis. Jesus. There must be some way… And then other ideas, more familiar ones, crowded out the soft cry in his mind, and Jack dropped to his knees and whipped the hat away, bringing Ennis jolting awake with a noise that could have been “huh,” or maybe “whut?”
“Hey,” Jack said softly as his friend stared up into his eyes, never knowing that Ennis saw not only the blue eyes but the blue sky beyond, wide and clear, summer without end. “Thought you could maybe use some company.” He leaned over and found Ennis' mouth with his own.
There was the moment of resistance. There always was. Jack didn’t rush him, though he did plant his elbows on either side of Ennis' shoulders and cradle his face in both hands, letting Ennis know that he was prepared to hang on the whole eight, tempting and coaxing with soft touches and brushes of his parted lips, until Ennis was ready to join him.
On this occasion, though, the resistance was only a token one. Perhaps Ennis had been dreaming of his friend and lover, the earth blending with the sky, seeming to be two distinct realms but in truth shading imperceptibly from one to the other, forever inseparable, dreaming each of the endless sky embracing the earth, the strength of the earth holding up the sky… Ennis' fingers slipped into Jack's hair, flipping the hat away to land unremarked somewhere, and pulled him down.
There was the soft catch of breath, life to life, as the mouths met, locked. Jack needed no more invitation than that to be astride, needing only a moment to pull one shirt, and then the other, open, freeing to each other the deep body heat between them. Ennis moaned in the kiss, protesting, as his big tool surged erect, as his lips opened to free a darting tongue, as his right leg hooked over Jack's left, as his left arm wound around Jack's body, binding them together. Both Jack's hands twined in his hair, even as Jack's sleek body surged against his like wind-lashed rain, again and again, forcing delicious frustrating contact that roused Ennis to madness.
But it was a laughing delirium this time, under the summer sky, as a horse jingled its bridle, as sheep grazed mindless and heedless, as a bluebird somewhere not too far away sought to claim a mate for its own and two hungry souls slipped earthly bounds to claim each other. In the mountain fastness, among the guardian peaks, in a cold, hard, poor place deemed fit only to be cheap graze for animals, there was sanctuary for something utterly unexpected to begin and grow, daring and dangerous, sending its roots deep against the wind and frost and all that would assault it, even as it revealed its first glory. They thought it was just fun, the two who created it between them, just friends, just fuckin. All too soon, they would find it was great, and terrible, inescapable and untameable, merciless…and priceless.
With a mighty heave, Ennis flung Jack off him, but in the next instant slammed him into the blanket so hard Jack saw stars. While he was still gasping for breath, Ennis fell on him, like a coyote on a sheep, heavy, purposeful and certain. For just a moment, their gazes locked, Jack startled and vulnerable, Ennis triumphant and lustful. Then Ennis deliberately shoved his belly into Jack's, grabbed two fistfuls of dark hair, and kissed him.
Jack did not so much accept his lover’s kiss as reach up and greedily claim it, slipping one big hand into the honey-colored curls and pulling their faces together, his mouth opening under Ennis', curved lips parting to share the hunger that no amount of eager tasting could ever appease. Even as Ennis' body fitted itself to his, inevitably, their mouths locked again, and Jack felt as much as heard his partner’s deep-bellied moan as Jack's eager tongue darted quicksilver against, and around, and finally through Ennis' own luscious soft lips.
Like leaves on the wind they were swept away. They were two, and thus separate, different, but the differences were of degree, not kind. Each felt stubble as they kissed, each felt a flat chest sliding against his, each clung to a body that surged with power rather than yielding, and as they forced the beautiful young bodies together, over and over, the dark one and the fair one groaned each to feel the hard heat of manhood yearning against his aching own.
There was nothing subtle about what coursed through Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar there on that seedy old blanket in the dappled shade under the sky in the secret place that belonged only to them. They were in all the first flush of their full young strength hardly more than vessels for something far greater than either, a life-force, a force of nature, a growing bond whose name they might deny with their minds, but whose truth would be no less than both the light and the darkness that would define their entire lives.
On that summer afternoon, though, they knew nothing more than the need that rolled like a river in flood through them both. It looked like wrestling, what they were doing, but there was no more play in them now. Ennis got his hand between them, ripping at his belt, and there was Jack doing the same, even as the mouths devoured. The need to mate tangled their bodies, and abruptly the denims gave way, almost in the same moment, freeing thrusting, oozing cocks that shoved belly to belly and rubbed and slid against each other in a delicious agony.
In their desperate thrashing they had freed each other of boots, and now the denims were wrestled off, drawing growls of frustration from both as each yanked at his own and his partner’s clothes, Jack's freed leg nearly clocking Ennis before Ennis hauled him up even as Jack turned away.
Panting with exertion and lust, it was nonetheless a sight that gave Ennis a moment’s pause: Jack still had his shirt and undershirt on, but below that… Ennis pushed them up and pulled Jack's enticing tight ass to him. Jack groaned as he felt it, hands squeezing and caressing, hot hard shaft rubbing, big knob bumping in the cleft, everything growing slick with Ennis, any moment now…
…and then it happened, Ennis impatient and aching and ready, his rearing manhood pushing and shoving, needing only a quick steadying hand to guide it…and Jack was his, again.
It took a little work, as it always did, but Ennis never grudged that, rocking steadily forward without any volition of his own, panting with each push, eyes wide at nothing, Jack's face screwed up not exactly in pain, reaching back for his lover’s strong right hand and finding it, drawing it to his oozing staff, “Oh, Jesus” as the fingers curled and began pulling, sliding over the slippery knob and down the full shaft, short and sharp, it was already so close as Ennis sank into joy on earth, so close, so clinging, so right, so hard…so fucking hard…
“Oh, fuck,” Jack gasped. “Oh, fuck, Ennis…oh, Jesus, fuck me, come on, oh, come on…”
“Uh. Uh. Uh…oh fuck,” Ennis groaned. His head went back, his mouth falling open, his hips surging with power now, giving all.
“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Harder. Oh, fuck.” Jack hardly even knew what he was saying, what he was doing. “Oh, God, Ennis. Oh, my fuckin God.” They had found their rhythm, bucking hard together, just right, so fucking right…
And Ennis lost the battle for sanity, with a choked-off cry and a long, drawn out “oh, fuuuuuhck!”
“Ennis!” Jack felt, Jesus how he felt, the hard, tight, jerking surges that brought him rapidly to his own climax. “Oh! Ennis! Ennis! I’m off! I’m off! Oh, shit! Ennis!” And he fell slowly to the blanket, still stroking the last bit out, as Ennis pulled away and collapsed beside him.
* * *
“Ennis.” Ennis made no reply to the soft entreaty, hoping if Jack thought he was still asleep, he’d get left alone.
“Ennis.” Apparently not. Ennis grunted a little, discouragingly. Jack, of course, was undeterred. “Look, Ennis, moon’s out.”
Ennis let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah?” He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He was very damn comfortable where he was, fingers laced across his chest, head on Jack's belly just below his ribs.
“Don’t you ever wonder why the moon comes out in the daytime? Sun don’t come up at night.”
“’F it did, it’d be daytime. Huh?” Ennis still didn’t open his eyes, so he didn’t see Jack smile, but the fingers combing through his curls tugged briefly.
“Think about it,” Jack added, when Ennis thought he was done. “You know, in four, five years, there’s gone a be an American walkin around up there on that moon.”
Ennis made no response beyond another sigh that said, “Can’t we just enjoy this fine afternoon lying buck nekkid together and not talk?”
“I wish it was gone a be me,” Jack added softly. “Yeah.”
Now he had Ennis' attention at last. “Huh?”
“Yeah,” Jack repeated. “Sure would like to be the first man to walk on the moon. ‘Course, I can’t. You got a been a college graduate, test pilot, stuff. But damn. Wouldn’t that be somethin?”
Ennis cranked his head around, peered curiously at his friend. “What the hell you want a walk on the moon for? Ain’t nothin there. No air.”
“You mean you ain’t never thought about bein a astronaut.”
“Nope.” Ennis rolled back to his comfortable spot and closed his eyes, willing the long fingers to start combing through his hair again. After a moment, to his great satisfaction, they did.
“Can’t believe that. You know we got a beat the Commies. Wouldn’t you like to a been the guy that does that?”
“Ain’t no Commies around here,” Ennis yawned. “Just sheep, dogs, wind, coyotes, and this one damn guy won’t stop talkin long enough for me to get me a nap.”
“Think about it, Ennis!” Jack was afire now. “First man a walk on the moon! Shit! Think about ol’ Christopher Columbus! We still got a learn about him in school, and that was hundreds a years ago. First man a walk on another planet? A thousand years from now, people will still know the guy’s name.”
Ennis studied him again. “That what you want, Jack Twist? People know your name in a thousand years? What you gone care then, huh? Be long gone.”
The wide skies fixed him, serious. “I do care. I want a be somebody. Somebody a lot more than Jack fuckin Twist from Lightning fuckin Flat, with two lines in itty-bitty type on the last page of the Crook County Register when I croak: ‘J. C. Twist, poor dumb shit-kicker, 102, survived by dried-up ole wife and 27 fuckin kids and grandkids.’ Man’s born ignorant, but he don’t got a die that way. I want a mean something. I want someone to remember me when I’m gone.”
“I’ll remember you.” The words came instantly into Ennis Del Mar’s heart, but not into his mouth. They were there in his eyes, though, in the instant before Ennis looked away, a strange feeling fluttering lightly in his belly. And Jack saw them, and flushed, though he did not know why.
“First man on the fuckin moon,” Jack said after the brief, awkward silence. “Yeah, Ennis. Think about it, friend—you wouldn’t never have to buy a single nother thing in your whole life. People give you trucks, houses, free stuff--televisions, everything. Swimming pools. You could be president. King. Statues everywhere. Picture on the damn money. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“No,” Ennis said with decision. “Be like the Dionne quints. People knockin on your window while you’re tryin a sleep sayin they’re your second cousin from Cheyenne once removed, and give em a lend a hundred dollars. People wantin you in Life magazine or somethin. Never leave you alone.”
“Yeah,” Jack said dreamily. “Like Joe DiMaggio. Or John Wayne. Fuckin great.”
“You go on ahead to the moon, Jack Twist Shepard,” Ennis yawned. “I’m stayin here on the Earth and get me some sleep.”
* * *
The shadows were long when Jack woke next. The first thing he saw was Ennis' hat, lying upside down a few feet away. At the same time, he was aware that his front was cold, but his back was not, and knew that he and Ennis were lying back to back on the blanket. But it was not that which sent a strange little electrical zip through him, one that Ennis would have recognized. He could feel that their feet were hooked together, and they were holding hands.
Jack didn’t know he would remember that moment for the rest of his life, but he felt its power even then. Everything stood in sharp relief, a relief not entirely caused by the low sun, which still had two or three hours to go before it would cast shadows like knives. There was Ennis' hat, the inside stained with sweat, the brim bearing gray smudges of fingerprints old and new, the lining torn in one place and crudely stitched. Beyond that lay a pile of denim. Whose they were Jack didn’t know offhand. He could see a part of a boot, one of his, and a sock, ditto, beyond the edge of the ragged, dirty blanket that bumped up here and was pulled in towards them a little lower. An ant marched up a blade of grass. The dirt where it showed was green in some places with moss, and just brown in others. He could see a few flowers. It was a scene remarkable for its unremarkableness, the only thing memorable about it that it happened to be in front of Jack Twist’s eyes as he realized he and Ennis Del Mar had been holding hands in their sleep.
How long he could have remained still, trying to make sense of what surged through him, he would never know. As though he sensed Jack's agitation, Ennis stirred then, and Jack felt him draw away, unhurriedly, probably still asleep.
Jack sagged, letting out breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. That was Ennis all over. What was going on here anyway? Jack wasn’t stupid. “Nobody’s business but ours” was, yeah, maybe a little more hopeful than true. He understood why Ennis would be worried about somebody knowing. It wasn’t an accident that Jack hadn’t told him the truth about just when Aguirre had rolled into camp that time, or about the funny way Aguirre had looked at him. And yeah, every cattle guy was ready with his stories about sheep guys fucking the sheep, and yeah, each other. Hell, probably the sheep guys said the same thing about the cattle guys. But it was the main reason he hadn’t told anyone but his mama and daddy exactly what he was doing on his Farm and Ranch job, not this summer or last summer neither. He’d taken more than enough crap already from guys he knew about his eyes and shit. Nobody messed too much with a bull rider, but he still got some stuff. Jack knew well enough what was said, and what was thought, about what they had been doing every chance they got.
Holding hands. Ennis would never have done that awake. He just didn’t do that kind of thing. Not after, anyway. A contradictory kaleidoscope of Ennis wheeled before him, much as it had that morning. There was some stuff that Ennis would do, and some he would not, and some times he would do it, and others not, and Jack never knew quite which was which. He did know that it was up to Ennis to decide, especially if he wanted Ennis to keep doing it. And he knew it was always disappointing that Ennis would never curl around him, or allow Jack to do the same to him, when they drifted off to sleep. Ennis just didn’t seem to know that sometimes it was just good to hold onto somebody else. And Jack knew, the way he knew they just didn’t talk about what they did, ever, unless they were in the middle of doing it, that this was another of those things it would be a bad idea to bring up.
He turned over. There was nothing more to be gained lying turned away from Ennis, not while he was asleep, and besides, he was getting cold. If Ennis would wake up, he might feel like warming both of them up again.
Ennis lay in a partial slant of sunlight, mostly on his stomach, turned away. Jack propped himself up on one elbow. He never minded looking at Ennis asleep. You had to take it where you could get it. His eyes swept along the broad shoulders and down the wide back, lingering over the rounded, muscular white cheeks. Jack felt the heat in his belly. He had damn good reason to know just how much muscle Ennis had at his command. He was a hell of a rider. And he had a hell of a body. Just what a man’s body should be, lean and long and rangy, not a hint of roundness or softness anywhere--except there, and in the curves of his arms…and his kissable, kissable lips.
Enjoying the hunger growing in him, Jack let his eyes be drawn back up. How was it that he had ever thought of Ennis' mouth as hard and unyielding? He had sure learned better, from the moment Ennis had started to relax, and talk, and smile even, when he’d started meeting Jack's eyes, even a little. Jack had found himself thinking about Ennis' mouth quite a lot after that, but it had taken him a couple more weeks to find out why. And then he thought about it even more.
Ennis asleep was so different. It had taken Jack a while to figure out what it was, but he knew now, and there it was again, as Ennis lay flung out on the blanket, oblivious to the fact that he was a feast for the eyes: he was relaxed. Even the frown that lived between his sandy brows was gone. He was at rest, and at peace. It was a face Jack saw only in flashes, when Ennis was awake.
I’d like to make that frown go away, and never come back. If you wasn’t gone a marry that Alma, bet I could do it, too. What you want a get married for anyways? Can’t do nothing when you’re married. Got a wife naggin at you all a time, squallin kids, shit, like bein in prison but you never get out. Wouldn’t be like prison with you, though. It’d be like this…
Here Jack's thoughts stopped. But it couldn’t be like this. Could it? He stared down into the profile of the man sleeping beside him. The unruly wheat-colored curls had become a golden crown in the slanting sun, and for once the softer aspects of the arresting face were ascendant. Jack thought suddenly of a picture he had seen framed in his church. It was, though he didn’t know it, a reproduction of a Baroque painting, showing an angel asleep. He smiled at the idea, but it was a crooked smile, not a Jack Twist smile at all. The hair was not very clean, and no angel ever had a beard shadow, or a line of dirt behind the ear, or a splash of small freckles on the cheek either, but there was a grace, and a strength, and yes, a beauty that seemed not quite of this world in the lines of Ennis Del Mar’s sleeping face.
Damn. Damn, Ennis. He reached out, the gesture strangely hesitant.
And then Ennis turned over, and woke, to find Jack Twist staring down at him, great eyes dark and serious, something showing in them that made his heart turn over.
For just an instant, Jack saw it, the eyes widening, the response, the mirror of his own soul, and then the shutters closed and the face with them. Ennis sat up, turned away, and reached for his clothes. “Bout time for some damn supper, huh?”
Sore and heartsick, Jack rebelled, tired of Ennis pulling back every fucking time.
“Got all I need to eat right here,” he said softly, and with the daring of the bull rider, ran a hand from Ennis' shoulder down his arm.
Ennis froze for just a moment, and then the shirts were pulled on as though Jack hadn’t spoken, or acted. And then he stood to step into his jeans, turning sideways, accidentally, or not, and Jack caught his breath in surprise, for the big beautiful cock was strongly extended, and made quite a handsome show before being made to disappear, not without apparent protest, into Ennis' trousers.
“Save you some for dessert, huh?” So hard was it for the startled Jack to tear his eyes away that he nearly missed the sideways flash of the dark eyes, and the knowing curl of a grin, that accompanied the words. He was still trying to catch his breath as Ennis pulled on socks and boots, and came around him to lift his hat on. Several minutes later, Jack halted in the act of swinging up into his saddle, his heart leaping: Ennis was strapping the pup tent back onto his saddle.
“What you doin, Ennis?”
Ennis shrugged, mounted, and rode up to him. “Don’t want no Forest Service seein it before I come back tomorrow.” And when Jack could make no answer beyond a stare, he added,
“Thought you could maybe use some company.” The dark eyes flashed again, and he was gone down the trail.
Just no knowin…
* * *
Two figures lie close beside the campfire. Beyond the influence of firelight the darkness is complete, the moon still hours below the jagged horizon of broken peaks. The cold creek with no name rushes by, but they do not hear it now. Their world is no larger than each other. It was playful, at first, Ennis knocking Jack's hat off as he has done before, and will again, Jack retaliating, both laughing, lust and whisky surging in their blood, shoving them down to the half-unrolled blanket Jack had dropped casually on the ground an hour before. They like doing it by the fire. They like what the firelight does to their bodies. Each revels in the other’s masculine beauty and power, and neither has any idea of his own. “Dessert,” Ennis says. “Yeah. Peaches and cream,” Jack laughs, mischief in his eyes, and Ennis rolls him onto his back and kisses him to stop him saying such things.
Playful, but it doesn’t stay playful, as they stop the rolling around that reassures Ennis it’s just horseplay, mostly, and lock together. It never has been playful for these two, who have cut fence but good. They laugh, and they snort, and they throw each other around, but it is not only lust that drives them into each other’s arms, and it is the other hunger, the one with no name, that has their eyes alight and their hearts beating fast for each other. It is sacred ground they are treading, beyond the fence, and it is also, for them, forbidden.
Jack, at least, would be willing to accept the truth. Ennis can’t. But he feels it, there between them, as they fumble with each other’s clothes, kissing, groping, feeling what is so shockingly the same, and yet different, wild with the scent of each other, with the joy of hands on warm bare skin, with the way each rouses to the other’s secret touching. And then the dark beast takes him, the fear and fury and the ineradicable memory of a mutilated man in a ditch, and he knows, for a terrible terrifying moment, he KNOWS…
Jack felt the change at once. They were tangled with each other, Ennis half on top of him, shirts pulled open, denims too, but no more, so abruptly had it taken them, and as they lay each with his head against the other’s shoulder and neck, each had captured for his own a big, stiff tool to tease and stroke. And then Ennis went stiff in a different way, and shuddered, but not like he did sometimes when he came, more of a wrench, and made a noise in his throat that was not pleasure.
They were too involved with each other for it to stop, they needed each other, and this, too much for it to even slow them down much. But for Ennis it was now a battle, neither the first nor the last, between love and hate, and Jack did as he always would do: his best, to help.
He turned his head slightly, pushing his forehead against Ennis' neck, a silent, instinctive signal that meant to reassure. Ennis may or may not have understood it, trapped in his own private hell of needing to touch and kiss and fuck another man, but the violence he felt tonight did not seek to make a target of Jack. It was himself he loathed.
There was nothing he could do, somehow, but go on. Jack was so close. They were giving each other more heat that the fire a few feet away. Jack smelled so good, raw and sharply male, and felt so good, strong and vital and alive, and damn that big cock felt so good in his hand, hot and heavy and slippery and standing stiff just for him, and oh, fuck, Jack's hand slipping and sliding and tugging and teasing just where he needed it most…oh…no…
Ennis moaned, but it was not a sound his friend had ever heard him make before. It was almost like Ennis was hurt, and trying not to cry, and in a way, Jack did understand. Ennis needed him, needed his help. He understood that. And he held on, and what had been lust and passion became something else as they moved together, each caressing, each bound to the other’s exquisite healing touch.
Ennis couldn’t stop the harsh, broken sounds that seemed to tear out of him. He was mostly on top of Jack now, his face hidden against his friend and lover’s neck, Jack's beard scratching his forehead, and every breath that escaped him was a hoarse cry of agony. Sometimes he seemed to be trying to say, or not say, something, but no clear word, or syllable even, made itself intelligible to his partner, who wrapped one big hand around Ennis' head and with the other did his best to help his friend end the hurting.
“Uh…ghh…unnnh…unnnh…nhh…nhh…” Ennis was thrusting into Jack's hand now, and then, all at once, his head jerked back, and it was torn from him in ropy white spurts that spattered Jack's hand and Ennis' and his cock and Jack's and Jack's shirt and belly and his own.
But that didn’t seem to have ended it, for Ennis was still making the noises, still wracked with his torment. Jack realized suddenly that Ennis was crying, even though he felt no tears on his skin, and he turned his head to kiss his face. In the same moment, Ennis turned to him, and their mouths blundered into each other.
Jack…please…Jack… Ennis heard a roaring in his ears, his own life’s blood beating in a primal tattoo against his eardrums. There was no teasing, no sensuality in this kiss. It was simply need, and it devoured them even as they devoured each other.
Ennis fell back, taking Jack with him. Now Jack knew exactly what to do, and he did it. Pushing up Ennis' undershirt, he tore away from the soft lips and stabbing tongue and began to kiss his way down Ennis' body.
Ennis moaned, and this time it was a sound of pleasure, of relief almost, and his back arched as Jack paused long enough to bite one nipple lightly and swirl a quick tongue around the other. Then it was soft, lingering kisses that left a hot, wet line that cooled like ice in the chill night air, even as big hands spread wide, pushing the shirt further up.
For a moment Ennis covered the hands with his own, squeezing, hard, and then his fingers slipped into the dark hair, clenching and unclenching.
It was no surprise, what Jack found when he had kissed his way unhurriedly down the ribs and the flat stomach,but it was a delight all the same. Most of what Ennis had spent had fallen on him, but a little had gotten Ennis as well, and Jack lingered to sweep it up with his tongue.
“Oh, fuck,” Ennis breathed, as that very educated tongue teased ever so close to the hard staff, Jack's head even bumped it aside, making him shiver with anticipation. “Come on, Jack.”
It was the first time he had ever exhorted Jack to do anything. The simple words were a hot stab in the belly, and Jack responded the only way he could—he pushed up and swallowed Ennis down as deep as he could.
“Fuck. Oh, fuck,” Ennis panted. “Come on, Jack. Oh, Jesus.” Again he was in agony, but it was a sweet agony this time. Jack was exacting a delicious revenge, if you could call it that. Ennis didn’t call it anything. He just surrendered to it, long endless minutes of tugging and sucking with one hand keeping him skinned as the other worked him good. Even with his last climax fresh on him, there was no way any man could have resisted that urgent, intimate entreaty for very long, and Ennis didn’t even try. With a hoarse cry, his hips shoving upward, he shook and shook as Jack, having skimmed off the cream, swallowed the milk. As he fell back, shattered, he felt Jack's release spatter him, not quite burning but luxuriously hot, before Jack collapsed on top of him. This time, Ennis did not check what was in him, and wrapped his arms around the man who had given him joy.
At some point during that night they stumble into the tent and sleep a while, but what is growing in both of them is too strong for sleep, and as the moon rises, they waken and turn to each other, naturally and easily. It is silent this time, no laughing, no anger either, and not a single word, just harsh breaths, and at the end a soft, painful moan from Ennis that does not express pain.
Neither has any way to understand what happened earlier, by the fire, when the demon had hold of Ennis, but Ennis knows Jack helped him, cared for him, just as he is always trying to. And in reply he gives Jack the night. There is no sleeping after that, just touching and dozing and reaching for each other again that is hardly slowed by the soft gray of dawn. They wash by the creek, but the sun gives glory to their nakedness and wakes them to each other again, and it is very good that time, cold water and hot need together. They must have eaten something, sometime, but now they understand, in a new way, how it can be, and the meal soon becomes Ennis tasting Jack again in the full daylight by the fire before once again joining with his body as he has already joined with his heart.
* * *
Ennis was about to put his foot in the stirrup when he caught sight of the tall, lean figure standing at the fire. The day had chilled, and Jack had his coat on again. Likely it would rain soon. For a moment he didn’t understand what it was about Jack standing there, unmoving, that caught his attention, and then he realized it was the very fact that even though he was leaving, and going up to spend the night with the sheep, Jack wasn’t talking, teasing, tempting, or even looking at him. He was, simply, asleep on his feet.
Something welled up in Ennis then, as he stared, slow with exhausted contentment, at the broad-shouldered figure standing so still, all alone there by the fire. He didn’t like Jack silent and unresponsive and not looking at him. Suddenly he found he couldn’t just go, leaving Jack alone like that, not Jack, his friend, his best and only friend…
Coming up behind Jack, he slipped one arm between Jack's left arm and his body, and the other around Jack's neck. Catching the collar of the wool-and-sheepskin coat, he pulled his friend close…
…and time held its breath.
Jack felt the arms go around him and relaxed back into the embrace as a deep, silent ecstasy bloomed inside him in gentle slow motion. You came back. You came back. Oh, Ennis, you ain’t afraid a it no more. You’ll see, it’ll be all right. It’ll be okay. I’ll take care a you. We’ll find us a ranch somewheres, nobody’ll know nothin, just you and me, just you and me, buddy… They weren’t words, really, in his mind, just feelings, and some part of them kind of thought as he stood there rocking silently in that sleepy embrace that he dreamed them, and Ennis dreamed them too…and they drifted, Ennis feeling the warmth of Jack through his coat, feeling a peace he had never known before, knowing dumbly that he needed nothing else from the world, never would, that nothing could ever be wrong with simply holding Jack Twist close to him. Neither of them really heard the soft lullabye he was humming, but they both felt it, as they stood rocking gently together, not marking time, with all the time in the world…Jack's lips brushed the back of Ennis' hand…just like this…always…
…and the silken strand parted. “You’re sleepin on your feet like a horse,” Ennis murmured, and Jack didn’t deny it as Ennis drew away and went to his horse, even as Jack turned, still bound to him, eyes soft and following.
“See you tomorrow,” Ennis added. He didn’t look back. He didn’t need to. He went in no particular hurry, seeing nothing before him, for his whole mind, his whole heart and soul were behind him.
And Jack Twist stood watching him go. |
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| ART IS A MIRROR PART ONE |
[Feb. 21st, 2007|11:06 am] |
ART IS A MIRROR PART ONE
These characters are not mine. With eternal gratitude to Annie Proulx for characters from "Brokeback Mountain," and to NBC for regular and guest characters from "Cold Case: Forever Blue."
With special thanks to amdaz and City Girl.
“Hey, Daddy,” Junior smiled, putting the pizza down just in time to keep from dropping it as her father swept her into a great bear hug. She surrendered to it like a child, rejoicing as she always did that her father never coyed his affection when he felt like showing it, undemonstrative though he usually was. Even though it had only been a week since the last time he’d seen her, he hugged her as wholeheartedly as though it had been a year.
“Hey, darlin,” he murmured in her ear, the endearment shy, private, like the man himself. That much had never changed. He talked more than she remembered from her youth, but his words of love were still sparing and never delivered to her face.
“Brought you pepperoni and sausage,” she told him, moving into the modest kitchen of his small house.
“Not that hot stuff, I hope.” Her father, with the ease of long practice, set about getting out the TV trays and table settings. “Gives me gas.”
Alma laughed at his unselfconscious frankness. “The sweet kind, Daddy.”
“Never could stand that hot stuff,” Ennis added, the additional words showing how pleased he was that she remembered.
They watched the news as they ate. “Man’s born ignorant, but he don’t have to die that way,” Ennis said sometimes, and Alma saw his reading glasses were sitting on top of a different book than they had been the week before. It still deeply gratified her that he had taken to reading so late in life, but not nearly so much as the fact that he’d even consented to have his eyes examined in the first place. It was almost fifteen years ago now, about the time he’d quit smoking, one day, just like that, after Jenny, who had always been good at math, came to him with a paper on which she had estimated how much money he spent on cigarettes in a year. Ennis had said nothing at the time, but he’d peered at the paper through his new glasses for a good little while, and the next time he had come to Jenny’s for Friday dinner, he had no cigarettes with him. He was like that. Like a rock. Like a mountain. He made up his mind, and that was the way it was going to be. Alma knew very well how hard it was to quit, but Ennis had never given any indication that he missed a habit of more than thirty years’ standing. The glasses had been like that too: she had subscribed to the newspaper for him, only to have him give her back the first two weeks’ worth of papers, all carefully preserved, when she next visited.
“No use to me,” he said, more sullen than she had seen him in a long time. “Didn’t want you to be out no money.” Alma knew he didn’t read books, but she’d never thought about why. She’d always figured it was because he didn’t think it was something cowboys did. Ennis could be very stiff-necked that way. Neither she nor Jenny had ever gotten anywhere with the sunglasses.
It came to her now, belatedly, that she didn’t think she’d ever seen him read anything. He looked at farm and ranch catalogs, but…“Daddy, I know you can read,” she said, a little hesitantly.
“I ain’t illiterate!” he said crossly, catching her drift. “Just can’t read worth nothing. Damn words blur on me.”
“You mean you need glasses?”
“Don’t need no glasses. Ain’t no damn banker. Don’t keep no store.”
Alma showed some of her father’s granite. “You mean all my whole life, you haven’t read anything just because you needed glasses? And you’re the one always used to tell us, ‘man’s born ignorant, but he don’t have to die that way’ when we didn’t want to do our homework! There’s a whole world to read out there, Daddy! Just cause you didn’t graduate school doesn’t mean you got a stop learnin.” Ennis had stopped frowning then, and studied her intently for a moment, walked away and gotten himself another beer, and then nodded.
“No. It don’t.” And so the glasses had been gotten.
“So what are we gone a watch?” she teased. That was another thing that had never changed. Ennis had always watched westerns and cop shows. And sometimes, Nature or The Crocodile Hunter. He had, startlingly, developed a liking for Deep Space Nine, which his grandson had insisted on watching when babysat, but that was a complete anomaly.
“Cold Case,” he replied. He picked up the TV section of the paper, adjusted his glasses, and read off “’Forever Blue.’ 1968: Rogue cop found shot in his squad car.” He looked at her to see if she would comment because he’d pronounced “rogue” correctly. Wisely, Junior made no notice of it. One book that was always on the side table was a dictionary that she and Jenny had given him for his birthday after he’d gotten the glasses. When Ennis Del Mar set his mind to doing something, he didn’t do it halfway.
The show began, in black and white, with a closeup of a candle being lit. A date was superimposed on the bottom left hand corner of the screen:
July 7, 1968.
Scene: a Catholic baptismal ceremony. A young man, dark and handsome in a rather sensual way, and his wife, a pretty blonde, wait with their baby and children at the altar with their priest and an older man in a police uniform. They are awaiting another participant. The mother sarcastically wonders if “he’ll” show.
Ennis' gaze lingered on the face of the young father. Dark hair, large, clear eyes, sweeping brows…the resemblance was superficial, yes, but it was there. Unseen by his daughter, Ennis' eyes softened. He had no picture of Jack Twist, and even the image graven on his heart had blurred with the passage of time, but even if he turned off the TV now, he would be happier for a few hours, simply because he had seen tonight someone who reminded him, even a little, of the one he loved and had lost, ever so long ago. Once, there had never been enough time. But now, though the years passed much faster than Ennis remembered from those old days, it seemed as though there was, often, far too much of it. Of course, there was nothing anymore to make the hours and minutes mean anything to him. Except when his girls, or their children, were near him. It was not the same, of course. No. It was not the same, and it never would be … Ennis veered sharply away from this unproductive line of thought and gave his attention back to the show.
A small commotion arises in back of the church as “he” arrives, at first obscured by blinding light from the open door. “He” resolves into another young man, moving almost at a run, tucking in his shirt. The older man smiles indulgently, and he and the other young man suggest to each other that the new arrival has been tomcatting. As he arrives at the altar, the men are all very comfortable and genial with each other, but though “Sean” tells the new mother she looks lovely, she seems cool toward him.
“Hey, Daddy,” Alma said all at once. “You know, the guy that just came in, he looks kind of like you, don’t he? I mean when you were younger.”
Ennis shrugged, indifferent. He didn’t think so, really. But then, he had never been one for looking in mirrors. If he ever had looked anything like that, it had been a long time ago. Thirty, forty years at least. He shook his head.
The ceremony begins, and Sean Cooper and his partner Jimmy Bruno have a sotto voce conversation:
Jimmy: Think he’ll be a cop?
Coop: No choice. It’s in his genes. “Forever blue.”
Jimmy: Someone’s gotta break out, live a better kind of life.
Coop: Yeah—what else can guys like us do?
Jimmy suggests: Sales?
Coop thinks this is funny: Sales. Yeah. That’s good.
Eileen shushes them, and they subside. Coop and Eileen exchange another, longer look. It is evident that there is a strain between them.
The scene changes, panning up over the hood of a police car. The window has a shotgun hole in it. Inside, Sean Cooper sits, bloody and dead. In his lifeless hand he still holds his radio transceiver.
:108, are you there?
The scene changes again. Two men are putting away several file boxes. Their manner is resigned. The boxes all bear the name “Sean Cooper.” One man rubs a box with his fist before they both turn away.
Another scene change, to the present day and into color. Lt. John Stillman and Det. Lily Rush are talking as they enter the state pen.
Stillman: Had a call, Agent Kahn, says he got a tip about a murdered cop, Sean Cooper, killed in ‘68.
Rush: ’68? You worked patrol then, John?
Stillman: On the street, 12th District.
Rush: So you knew him.
Stillman: Met him at the Academy. Kind of guy you wouldn’t forget. Real cowboy, the kind modern regulations don’t allow anymore…
They meet with a lifer who is bargaining to go home to die with his daughter. At first he isn’t very cooperative, but opens up, in bits and pieces when he sees the tough act isn’t getting anywhere.
Con: I found him, in the car, before the police got there…brick of heroin on the front seat…Saw him lying there dead, radio in his hand, eyes wide open. A black harp stamped on the brick.
Stillman, to Rush: Teddy Burke’s gang. Owned the North Philly heroin trade.
Rush to Con: You saying Cooper was dirty?
Con: Parked under a bridge, with a whole lotta dope in the car. Nasty laugh. He don’t look like a hero now, does he? Laughs more.
Scene: Lily Rush, John Stillman, and Scotty Valens are in squad room, examining Cooper’s case files.
Valens: Original theory—Cooper was killed on patrol in a bad neighborhood.
Stillman, looking at files: They worked this case to death!
Rush: Revenge theory? Gang hits? Jealous boyfriend? Apparently Cooper was quite the ladies’ man.
The scene changes. On a warehouse loading dock, Dets. Will Jeffries and Kat Miller are questioning the retired officer who found Cooper’s body. They ask him about Teddy Burke:
Jeffries: Cooper shaking him down?
Murphy, incredulous: Cooper? You’re kidding, right? He hated Burke. Came down on him real hard. You shoulda seen this guy. Let’s just say he…didn’t shy away from confrontation. Cooper was all about the law. There’s no way he got corrupted.
The scene changes again to 1968. Teddy Burke, leaning against the trunk of his car, is selling smack to an anxious young woman when Coop and Jimmy Bruno drive up, siren going. Murphy is watching, surreptitiously, from another parked car. Coop and Jimmy exchange fake, sarcastic pleasantries with Burke, and then Coop hits Burke, hard, in the shin with his truncheon. Jimmy looks in Burke’s car and comes out with a brick of heroin with a black harp stamped on it.
Burke, panting with pain: There’s ways of getting a piece, officer. That ain’t one.
Jimmy cuffs him and they lead him to the squad car. The angry Burke tells them,
Mark my words—I’ll last a lot longer on these streets than you will.
The officers are laughing as Coop shoves him into the car.
The scene changes back to the loading dock, where Jeffries says skeptically to Murphy: So this run-in just…slipped your mind when Coop ends up dead a few months later.
Murphy: I had my own reasons for keeping mum…
Now we are back in the present day Lieutenant’s office, where Lt. John Stillman and Det. Lily Rush are questioning a handsome silver-haired man.
Rush: Why do you think your partner was killed?
The man shifts. Flashback: he’s Jimmy Bruno.
Jimmy, reminiscently: He was fearless. Used to go looking for bad guys. I always figured one finally got revenge.
Stillman: Tell us about Teddy Burke.
Jimmy: Well, he sure hated Coop!
Rush: Were you protecting Burke?
Jimmy: No. Guy was in Atlantic City that night. I checked it personally.
Rush: Still—no mention of this bust in the logs.
Jimmy, simply: Because mentioning Burke woulda cost me my job. Burke had a lotta money, connections…
Rush: What’d he spend his money on?
Jimmy, pointedly: Making sure he stayed outta jail.
Stillman: He paid off cops?
Jimmy shrugs it off: It was ’68. Money was around.
Stillman: How high did it go?
Jimmy: All the way to the top…
1968: Lieutenant McCree gives Coop and Jimmy hell for collaring Burke. Jimmy gets the drift quickly: We’ll get clearance for politically sensitive cases.
Coop is disgusted: Jimmy and I have been together for a year. We’ve had more busts, more convictions than any other team. The captain appreciates our work. --You think he knows you’re such pals with Teddy Burke?
McCree: Do not try to go over my head, Coop. You’ll regret it.
And Teddy Burke trots down the stairs smirking and waving at the fuming Coop.
In the present day, John asks the older Jimmy Were you on the payroll?
Jimmy: You know how it was back then, John.
Rush: What was Coop doing under that bridge, Jimmy?
Jimmy doesn’t understand—it’s obvious to him: Responding to a dispatch.
Rush: No record of a dispatch in his patrol log.
Stillman: Who sent him out there?
Jimmy, still confused: Radio always sent all the dispatches—made by cops!
Stillman, thoughtfully, to Rush: Lot of cops with McCree.
Rush: McCree needed to get Coop under control—maybe he was set up.
Stillman, finishing her thought: By his own lieutenant.
Next we see Lt. Stillman and Det. Jeffries entering a bar.
Stillman: I’ve got Kat looking for the dispatch.
An older man doing a crossword is flashbacked: it is Lieutenant McCree. Greets his contemporary, John Stillman, warmly. At first, he professes not to remember Teddy Burke, but as the other two point out the glaring fact that Burke was never arrested, McCree opens up, saying frankly to his old acquaintance,
You get rid of one scumbag, another pops up. Might as well just tax him.
Stillman: You take care of your men.
McCree: Damn right I did.
Jeffries: How’d you take care of Coop? --We heard he was responding to a dispatch.
McCree, flatly: Then you heard a lie. He was a real playboy type, Cooper. Ain’t surprised he got shot.
Jeffries: Jealous boyfriend.
McCree: Husband…
1968—party at the Bruno house, after the christening. McCree opens the door into the kitchen in time to hear Coop say to Eileen Bruno:
I know it’s wrong.
Eileen: How could you do this to me, Coop? To us?
Coop: What do you want from me?
They see McCree and Eileen leaves hastily.
McCree: Looky what we got here. How long’s it been going on? Jimmy know?
Coop: No.
McCree: What would your old man say? His own son, banging another cop’s wife?
Coop: Leave Sarge out of it.
McCree Oh, you don’t tell me what to do. Not ever again…You end it, understand?
Coop, short: Yeah. I understand.
McCree: You crossed the line.
Back in the bar, the investigators digest this.
McCree, amused: Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it?
In the same church where the baby was being christened, Dets. Scotty Valens and Lily Rush find Eileen Bruno lighting novena candles.
Rush suggests: Coop was handsome. Brave. Back from the war.
Valens: By all accounts, an exciting guy.
Eileen: I suppose he was, yes.
Rush: You were married, with kids, maybe looking for some excitement yourself…
Eileen, incredulously: You think I was having an affair with Coop? You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Valens: You angry when Coop broke it off? Breaks your heart.
Eileen, firm: It wasn’t like that.
Valens: What was it like…Eileen?
Eileen: You two…so young, so certain. My heart got broke, yes. But not how you think.
One summer night in 1968, a very pregnant Eileen comes into the kitchen. She makes for the refrigerator, but is distracted by the voices of Jimmy and Coop coming from the back yard. She goes to the kitchen window, which is open. In the back yard, Jimmy and Coop are sprawled back in a pair of chairs at a table, passing a bottle of whisky back and forth, a little drunk:
Jimmy: Why not take money from Burke?
Coop: Are you afraid of that scumbag?
Jimmy: It’s not about fear. You know it ain’t.
Coop: What’s it about, Jimmy?
Jimmy: It’s about my job. I ain’t gone against McCree.
Coop: So that makes it all right to be on the take?
Jimmy, irritated: Everything’s all black and white with you. You don’t know anything.
Coop: We’re cops! That’s all I need to know!
Jimmy, getting angry: I got three kids. Don’t talk to me about taking 50 bucks a week from a piece of crap.
Coop, contemptuously: Then you are just like McCree.
Jimmy: Get off your soapbox, Coop! You go out there and bust shins cause it’s just another good time for you.
Coop: I bust shins because I’m enforcing the law.
Jimmy smiles sarcastically: You and your John Wayne act.
Coop, almost shouting: We’re the law! We’re here to put the scumbags away! It ain’t fun and games.
Jimmy: Sure it is! Just like the fun you had slaughtering Viet Cong! You miss that free pass to kill, don’t you?
Coop backhands him, knocks him off the chair. Punches him, and catches hold of him as though he means to do it again. He growls: You’re right. That was fun. I enjoyed it.
Jimmy uses his arm as a ladder, goes for him. They grapple briefly, turning, neither able to get control, and then, they break apart. Their eyes meet.
Suddenly, Coop grabs Jimmy’s face, kisses Jimmy, hard.
Sitting near his older daughter on the sofa, Ennis Del Mar gave a small cry, little more than a gasp, just the barest breath of a moan, but it was more than enough to tear Junior’s attention from the riveting turn in the drama unfolding on the screen. Ennis, flung more than forty years back into the dark night of his soul, never noticed her as he stared at the television in total shock.
Jimmy pulls away from the kiss immediately, stares at his best friend and partner. At first his face is shocked, then it changes as Coop stares back, tense.
It had been so long. So long. A struggle, a kiss, a punch—Ennis was suddenly drowning in memories that until moments ago had been a quiet stream that wove in somber peace through his life like a creek through an autumn forest. Great blue eyes staring shocked into secretive shy wells of dark brown—Jack Twist had looked at him just that way once, just that way, after Ennis had lost his battle with love and need and pushed him into a wall.
Then, Jimmy moves closer, takes Coop’s head deliberately in both hands, and kisses him, passionately.
“Jesus…oh, Jesus,” Ennis whispered. He had no idea that the words escaped him. The taste of Jack's mouth, the metallic salt of his own bleeding lip, a soul blazing back to life like a great jagged mountain against the sky after four years choking on the dust of the flat dead plain… Two strong young bodies together again, in joy and desperation and pure masculine fury, it was so right, I missed you, I love you, I always loved you, Jack goddamn fuckin Twist…
Eileen has seen the whole thing.
Rush, subdued: I see what you mean. They leave Eileen still lighting candles.
Back in the squadroom, Valens and Rush fill in Will Jeffries and Nick Vera as they come out of the elevator.
Vera snickers: Two male cops hittin it? Whoa.
Rush: Recipe for disaster.
Jeffries: Remember Ray Walsh, worked narcotics?
Vera: Yeah, big Sixers fan, retired to Vegas?
Jeffries: I heard he’s living with a guy.
Vera stops dead as Rush scoffs: So what?
Vera, worried: Ray Walsh took me to a couple Sixers games.
Rush: Did you…?
Vera shakes his head, thinking hard about it: Tickets were free…doesn’t mean anything.
The other two can’t see what he’s so upset about. Rush shrugs: Live and let live.
Jeffries adds: Don’t ask, don’t tell—works just fine today too…
Neither Ennis nor Junior heard any of this. Ennis could see nothing but the past, random moments tumbling loose about his head, crashing into him, the outside frozen, inside all in wild motion. Alma Stockton stared at her father, thrown into her own confusion. For so many years she had wondered. Parents fighting, cold and angry, Mama angry, Daddy angry, little girls trying so hard to be good so Mama and Daddy wouldn’t fight anymore, but it didn’t work, nothing worked, because they never had any money, and Daddy had quit his job again to go fishing with his old buddy…his old buddy…the name would not come. Mama hated those fishing trips. Hated that old buddy. And the marriage had ended, but the fishing trips went on. And Daddy had never remarried.
And one time, just one time, that old buddy had come by one day, and hugged Daddy real hard, and then looked in the truck…
With his great blue eyes and dark brows. Alma sat very still, a very odd, scared little feeling growing in her gut. And he’d been all smiles one minute, and then something had happened, and Daddy hung his head and the buddy drove away.
And the eleven-year-old Alma, not knowing what woke her that night, had followed the shouts down the hall, thinking her mama was there, wanting them to be back together, wanting to stop the fighting some way. But she didn’t hear her mama. What she heard, when she pushed the bedroom door open, was strange hoarse broken sounds, almost like someone choking. --No. Not choking, she knew at once--crying. She knew what crying sounded like. Her daddy was crying. She took one step toward him, reaching out in her too-old way, when he shouted “Stupid fuckin bastard, you let him go!” and flung the pillow at the wall.
You let him go. Not her. Him.
--And then, all at once, the name: Jack. Girls, this my buddy Jack… Jack. Jack Twist. Why didn’t Daddy bring home any fish, Mama? –Why don’t you ask Jack Twist? --Oh, hey--you ever see Jack Twist anymore, Daddy? How could she have forgotten the pure shock in his face, even after twenty years? And the answer, that almost didn’t come: –He died. Long time ago. Before you was married. Jack Twist. --He won’t walk across the street to take care of his family, but he’ll quit every job God sends to go fishin with that damn Jack Twist…
In Stillman’s office, Stillman and Valens have another talk with Jimmy Bruno.
Stillman: Well, we had a long talk with Eileen.
Valens: She said your marriage finally broke up—clears throat—because of the way you and Coop were.
Jimmy is startled.
Stillman: She saw you in the back yard, Jimmy.
Jimmy, stunned, absorbs this, goes into denial. He chuckles ruefully: Eileen’s still bitter about the divorce.
Stillman: I just want to find out who killed your partner.
Jimmy is defiant: You got the wrong info on us!
Stillman: Maybe someone else got the wrong impression too.
1968: It’s shift change in the police locker room. Jimmy, a big bruise under his left eye, stands next to Coop. Both are subdued, and the sexual tension between them is palpable. They are tense and scared of what is now between them.
Murphy comes in, laughing, making crude anti-gay remarks. Not meaning anything, he starts teasing Coop about getting it on with Viet Cong soldiers: Didn’t know you played on their team!
Jimmy: Shut up, Murph.
Murphy, still in fun: Aw, you too, Jimmy? You a fairy queen, or what? –Oh, I get it: Jimmy and Coop, The Dynamic Duo. –You know, they say Batman and Robin are homos.
Coop goes for him, slams him into a locker.
Coop, low and mean: What if I was?
Murphy has no idea: Was what?
Coop: A homo. A queer.
Jimmy, scared: Coop, easy.
Coop: You too, Murphy? That your problem, fairy boy?
Murphy, angry, shoves Coop away. I ain’t no queer. You get that straight…
In the present, Jimmy tells Stillman:
To a guy like Murphy, those were fightin words.
Valens is thoughtful: He was first on the scene.
Jimmy starts to leave, turns back, hesitates. Coop wasn’t…like that. Whatever you wanna call it. Neither was I. He leaves.
Stillman and Valens look at each other.
Ennis, a fist at his mouth, closed his eyes, bowed his head.
Next scene: Lily Rush and Will Jeffries have Murphy in an interview room.
Rush: Heard you had a problem with pansies on the force, Owen. We know Coop humiliated you in front of your boys.
Jeffries: Maybe you got even under the Bridge.
Murphy laughs: it’s absurd: Look—the guy was into freak, okay? But killing another cop? No way.
Rush: We’re not just gonna take your word. Doesn’t work like that.
Murphy deflates: Coop shoulda just let it go.
Jeffries: Let what go?
Murphy: What he and Jimmy were doing. Momentary flashback to younger self: Thing like that can kill you…
With a soft whine, Ennis wrapped his other arm around his gut. Alma wanted to go to him, tried to go to him, but she was frozen in her place, just as she had been that long-ago night. Between her and her agonized father a gulf had opened, and she had no better idea how to bridge it than she had at eleven. What he was going through was so intense, had him so fiercely and utterly in its grip that he seemed not to belong to the same world she did.
1968, the squad car lot: Murphy slides down the seat of his car so that Coop and Jimmy won’t see him as they face each other between two other cars.
Coop: I can’t go on like this, Jimmy. Makin plans day to day, not knowing when I’m gonna see you.
Jimmy doesn’t like this: You see me every day.
Coop: That’s not what I mean. –We got something here. And it ain’t gonna go away.
Jimmy doesn’t want to deal with it I got a family.
Coop: You think Eileen wants to be married to a stranger? You think if she knew, she’d want to keep living a lie? Remember what you were talking about, living a different kind of life? This is our shot!
Jimmy: That was just talk. We’re cursed with this thing!
“Thing.” Ennis' voice, just a breath, was flat, hoarse. “This thing. Grabs hold a us. We’re dead.” Alma’s head jerked around, yanked back again from the drama on the screen in front of her to the real-life drama only a few feet from her on the sofa. Ennis could not have failed to see such a sharp movement, had he not been bound heart and soul to the conflict playing out before him, his own life being lost all over again. And it was going to be lost, wasn’t it? Because Coop had been murdered. And there was no doubt in Ennis' mind why.
It’s a slap in the face. Coop is hurt, rallies: My folks, been married forever, right? Whatever they had, died years ago. Now I look around, see everyone like that—staying together because it’s expected. Because they got nowhere else to go. Cursed? We’re the lucky ones, Jimmy.
His eyes closing, Ennis nodded, rocking slightly in his own embrace. He hardly noticed that the fingers now spread over his mouth, and his side, dug hard into the skin. Every breath hurt. Every part of his body hurt. But the real pain had no locus in his body. It could be like this, Ennis, just like this. But you didn’t want it. It’s nobody’s business but ours. What we got, ain’t wrong. We ain’t hurtin nobody. It’s a bad word cause somebody decided it was. But you didn’t want it, Ennis.
Jimmy is agonized, shakes his head: I don’t know. He moves a little closer to Coop.
Coop’s voice is soft: You sure about that?
They move a little closer together.
Jimmy: Guess I have no choice.
Longing for each other, they move close enough that just the backs of their hands can brush, then they part.
Owen Murphy just stares, shocked.
Art Is A Mirror will continue in Part Two… |
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| ART IS A MIRROR PART TWO |
[Feb. 20th, 2007|12:53 pm] |
ART IS A MIRROR, PART TWO
These characters are not mine. Those from "Brokeback Mountain" are the creation of Annie Proulx, those from "Cold Case: Forever Blue" are the property of NBC.
Jeffries: You think to share this with anyone else?
Murphy: I told his dad, Sarge. The only person Coop would ever listen to. I figured Sarge’d…sort him out!
Next scene: John Stillman is leaving for the day when Kat Miller rushes in, excited: McCree lied about no dispatch card! Found it in the radio room files!
Stillman: So a dispatch definitely went out.
Miller: Yeah. And written on every card? Badge number of who sent out the call. She is amazed: Belonged to Coop’s father.
Stillman, in disbelief: Sarge?
Miller: None other.
Stillman: So he sent his own son to his death?
Once again, Ennis nodded, feeling the large hand close around his nine-year-old neck, the callused fingers scritching at tender young skin. “Look a that,” the voice in his mind said. “You boys take a good look a that.”
Scotty Valens and Nick Vera confront Sarge Cooper on a park bench.
Valens: We know about Coop and Jimmy, Sarge. You knew, too.
Sarge: My boy was a ladies’ man! He’s proud: Picked ‘em like cherries!
Vera: You work in the radio room the night your son was killed?
Sarge shrugs: Yeah. He doesn’t care.
Vera pulls out the dispatch card: This your badge number?
Sarge stares, and he crumbles.
Valens: You sent Coop to the Bridge, didn’t you?
Sarge, sad and firm: I didn’t kill my boy. I loved him. From the day he was born. He was a man. Not that…
Valens, coldly: Never that.
Sarge, plaintively: He had a reputation.
Vera: Cop’s reputation is all he has.
Sarge, sad: Coop was going to destroy all that.
1968, the day of the Bruno christening. Sarge and Coop are behind the altar after the ceremony.
Sarge, trying to be amused: You won’t believe the crap Owen Murphy just told me. He said that you and Jimmy are…uh… Long pause. Coop gives him no help. Uh, forget about it. Ain’t worth discussing. He looks for reassurance: He’s crazy. Right, son?
Coop returns his gaze with a steady, serious stare: You really wanna talk about this, Pop?
Sarge is stunned, but immediately lays down the law: You just find a new partner.
Coop is calm, doesn’t give an inch: Jimmy’s good.
Sarge begins to lose it: Jimmy’s a sick, disgusting son of a bitch.
Coop, still calm: No, he’s not.
Sarge is trying to rationalize it: You were led astray.
Coop is amused: No one leads me. You of all people should know that, Pop.
Sarge, desperate: You’re my son. You can’t be…can’t be…uh… Struggles. We raised you right! He is near tears.
Coop: It has nothing to do with you, Pop.
Sarge, furious and frustrated: You are not going to disgrace our family. The Force.
Coop: Quit looking at me like that, Pop. Please.
Sarge: I thought you were a man.
Coop, soft: I am.
Sarge: No you’re not. And you’re not my son, neither. He turns on his heel and leaves his devastated son.
But in his mind, it was a different voice Ennis Del Mar heard, cold and sneering. “He thought he was too god-damned special to be buried in the family plot. I know where Brokeback Mountain is. Tell you what, we got a family plot and he’s gone in it. ‘Ennis Del Mar,’ he used a say… This spring, he’s got another fella…” The words had been brutal. They had been intended to be brutal.
Indifference and contempt and cruelty for his queer son, aimed at his son’s queer lover.
In the present day, Sarge is dazed: I didn’t know what I was saying.
This brought Ennis' head up. “Yeah you did,” he told the old man, his words clearly audible for the first time. “Oh, yeah.” It was not grief, this time, that made his voice shake, or his eyes flat. It was not grief that had curled his hands into fists.
Valens: Tell us about the dispatch, Sarge.
Sarge, numbly: McCree told me, send him to the Bridge.
Vera: McCree knew?
Sarge: I told him. I thought they were gonna send some guys, rough him up. Long pause. Then I heard Coop was dead.
Valens: Wanna tell us the real reason Jimmy wasn’t with him?
Sarge is not really there: The two didn’t never split up. Not on the job. They never had before. Flashback to his younger self: I don’t care what Coop was. Present: Not anymore. Pathetically, he adds: I just want my boy back.
Ennis' shoulders slumped, the old, old anger bleeding out white in the face of a man’s understanding that had come, as it had to him, too late. “Just want my boy back.” The words hardly even had breath behind them. “Just want…my boy…back.” He hid his face in a large hand, a scarred and callused hand, a man’s strong hand that shook with the grief of a strong man.
And Alma sat beside her father like a statue, tears making silent trails of silver empathy down her cheeks.
Cut to Lt. John Stillman and McCree in an interview room.
Stillman: I don’t know what I would have done in your shoes. Firmly: You can’t have those types around the Precinct!
McCree: Time was we had standards.
Stillman, agreeing: And they were upheld.
McCree: See? You understand.
Stillman: Lieutenant—not a job for the weak.
McCree, one old-schooler to another: Ah, I see weak Lieutenants all the time. They can’t handle problems by themselves—they’re afraid of…waves his hand suggestively…discipline.
Stillman: So what about the guys you sent to do Coop and Jimmy?
McCree is confused: What do you mean?
Stillman: All due respect, it wasn’t discipline. Guys went to scare em and end up shooting Coop. That’s the definition of a mess.
In another interview room Lily Rush is talking to Jimmy Bruno.
Jimmy is insistent: I was training a rookie, that’s why I wasn’t with him that night!
Rush: What’s the real reason, Jimmy?
Jimmy: I told you a million times!
Rush: But Sarge knew about you and Coop.
It’s obvious Jimmy didn’t know this. Rush adds: He told your Lieutenant. That’s why Coop was sent out to the Bridge that night.
Jimmy is speechless.
Lily sits down: Truth time, Jimmy. You owe him that.
Jimmy, hoarse: If I’d been with him in the car that night…he woulda had a chance.
Rush: But you let him go on his own. Insists: Why?
Jimmy can hardly talk: Because if I got in that car…the whole world was gonna know.
Rush, softly: Know what, Jimmy?
Jimmy, finally: What I was…
Back in the other room, Stillman is berating McCree for failing to control his men:
In a strong Precinct, that would never have happened, Tommy! Undisciplined cops not following their Lt.’s orders!
McCree resents this: I didn’t have undisciplined cops! My men followed orders!
Stillman: Not on the night Coop was killed!
McCree, loathing: Coop! There was no word for what he was! And what do you care?
Stillman: He was a cop!
McCree loses his temper: He was a joke! His type was unnatural!
Stillman goes along: You had to clean house.
McCree You’re damn right I did!
Stillman pushes hard: So what did you do?
McCree snaps, flashback to younger self as he shouts: I shot that queer! Present: And I’d do it again!
And Stillman just looks at him.
Ennis made a low sound in his throat. The drama continued, giving the impotent fury he’d carried for twenty years no time to build, but his daughter saw the hate blaze in his eyes as McCree shouted his guilt, and she shrank from it.
In the other room, Lily Rush and Jimmy Bruno regard each other with shimmering eyes.
Rush: The world back then didn’t understand. You believed it was wrong. But that kind of thing comes around once in a lifetime…
Arms now wrapped around himself, Ennis nodded, rocking.
Her voice is close to breaking: And you, you got to hold on, or you’ll lose it. Jimmy stares hungrily at her, hearing an understanding voice for the first time in his life. –Coop was right—you were the lucky ones, Jimmy.
Jimmy, simply: I miss him.
Rush: I know.
Ennis Del Mar would never know that he stared at the woman on the screen with the same hunger Jimmy Bruno did, still yearning for words of kindness and understanding, still yearning to be allowed a time and a place where it was all right for him to love a long, lean, laughing cowboy with caring eyes as wide as the wild sky. Her words were an absolution, but they were as bitter as they were sweet. Sean Cooper wasn’t coming back, and neither was Jack Twist. I know. I know. I miss him. I know. I know exactly how bad it gets.
In the squad car lot, McCree brushes by Jimmy, goes to Coop, who stands a little distance away.
McCree: You two stick close tonight. I’m getting armed robbery calls from under the Bridge.
Coop, jokes: Send in the bad guys!
McCree: Try and scare some up for you. He leaves.
Coming the other way, Owen Murphy passes Jimmy, and as he does, he sneers: Keep an eye on the bathhouses, Jimmy. And the shocked Jimmy knows Murphy has found out about them. He panics. Meanwhile, Coop has missed this exchange.
Coop, beside the car: You getting in or what?
Jimmy, trying to be nonchalant: Think I’m gonna take out a rookie.
Coop’s smile takes a hit: Serious?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Coop tries to rally: I’ll pick up some beer, meet you after.
Jimmy does what he thinks he has to do: I can’t make it tonight.
Coop: Why not?
Jimmy, feeling the pressure: Maybe it’s time for a change here.
Coop doesn’t like this at all: What kind of a change?
Jimmy is troubled but determined: I haven’t been right…for a long time.
Coop tries to help: What’s wrong, Jimmy?
Jimmy says it: I’m not gonna make it over your place anymore. So get a new partner.
Coop’s voice is low: You afraid?
Jimmy bristles: It’s got nothing to do with that.
Coop, gently: I’m afraid too.
Jimmy wants out: Look, I gotta get goin.
Coop is desperate: Jimmy. Don’t go. Please.
Jimmy turns, half-willing, half in denial. Coop tries to buck him up, and says the wrong thing: We’re the lucky ones, remember?
Jimmy makes his choice: I think you got it wrong there. This visibly hurts his lover. Jimmy persists, intense: I ain’t queer. He walks away, in turmoil.
“Fuck,” Ennis moaned. “Oh, fuck.” Both hands covered his face, and his shoulders began to shake. “Oh, fuck.” Ain’t gone a be that way. Not now, not ever. Because you didn’t want it, Ennis. In his mind were all the faces of parting, silent and accusing, but none so cruel as the last face, the last face of Jack Twist he would ever see in this life, drawn and worn with twenty years’ longing and disappointment, brows pinched, great eyes brimming with suffering and despair as Ennis pushed him away for the last time. I wish I knew how to quit you, you son of a whoreson bitch. Ain’t gone a be that way. No matter what. It ain’t never, never gone a be that way. I miss you so much I can hardly stand it. I miss you so much. Always.
Time had done much to dull the grief, but it was powerless to ever, ever ease the regrets.
Coop starts the patrol car, starts to drive off, and Jimmy changes his mind:
Coop!
But it’s too late. Coop is gone.
A short while later, the deeply conflicted Jimmy is staring out the window while the rookie drives. The radio crackles into life with a message about a robbery suspect fleeing on foot in the vicinity of the Bridge.
: Cooper responding.
Ennis lifted his head, sensing the denouement, his face a mask, tears running down freely, getting his breath in loud sniffs.
Jimmy tenses, concerned now because Coop is alone.
Under the Bridge, Coop parks, looks around, reaches for the door handle.
McCree appears in front of the car, though Coop never sees him, and with cold deliberation, shoots him twice.
And on the couch, Ennis Del Mar jerked, wailed in a high, thin voice, “No…noooooo…” Drowned in his own blood. Pulled him around by his dick till it come off. Broke his nose and jaw. Threw him on his back. Flies rising in clouds, buzzing. A face like you don’t never want to see. And then, at last, the name, in agony, punching its way out of a grief now two decades old: “Jack. Oh, Jack.” By the time somebody found him, he’d drowned in his own blood. He was only thirty-nine years old. You boys take a good look. His type was unnatural. That’s what happens to queers. Two men living together? No way. He never had a chance. Because I wasn’t with him. I did want it, Jack. You’ll never know how bad I wanted it. But I just couldn’t do it. And you died.
And I still can’t stand it.
Or fix it.
Neither Ennis nor his daughter ever remembered afterward exactly how he came to be in her embrace, but when his heart-cry finally shattered the impasse between them, she wound her arms around her stricken father as though he, and not she, were the child, and they cried together, for love, and for loss.
The radio crackles again
:Officer down…East end of the Bridge…I been hit… Jimmy is aghast. Been shot…outta nowhere.
Jimmy: That’s Coop! Move it! He is clearly terrified for Coop.
Coop, bleeding from numerous small wounds, makes an effort: …Jimmy? …You out there?
Jimmy is distraught: I’m here, man, hang on! –Coop!
Coop is weaker: Jimmy…?
Jimmy, panicked: Keep talking! We’re almost there! A beat. You hear me? --Coop?
The voice comes over the radio: We’re the lucky ones. Don’t forget that.
Jimmy: Coop!
There is no answer. Coop is dead. The camera pans the squad car as it did in the opening scene, showing Coop fallen back against the seat, blood everywhere, his eyes open. On the radio, it’s Sarge: 108, are you there? –108, are you there?
Fade to black.
The Bob Dylan song “Younger Than That Now,” covered by the Byrds, begins to play over the closing montage:
McCree and Sarge, shown both in present and flashback, pass each other, staring, in the squad room as each is led away in cuffs.
Lily Rush, putting away the file boxes for Sean Cooper, the word “closed” now written on each, pauses to look with bittersweet admiration at a picture of Coop in Vietnam. After a long moment, she puts the picture in the box, and the box on the shelf with the others, and leaves. In the cop bar, Stillman and Jeffries, the older members of the homicide task force, raise glasses to the official picture of Coop that hangs behind the bar.
In the darkness, Jimmy Bruno comes to the former squad car lot, now a fenced-off alley, where he last parted from Coop nearly forty years ago. As he enters the alley almost timidly, in his imagination he sees Coop standing there beside the squad car just as he did that last night, smiling at him. As they gaze at one another, the eternally young Coop and the older Bruno, Jimmy begins to smile too. He walks slowly forward and becomes his younger self, and the younger men come into color for the first time in the episode. Jimmy comes to the car, where Coop leans casually against it, and deliberately places his hand over Coop’s. They are allowed to stand that way for a moment, and then Coop and the car fade slowly away, leaving the older Jimmy to slip his hands in his pockets, turn, and slowly walk away.
“Yes my guard stood hard
When abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define those terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now.”
As the story faded to black, Ennis faced his daughter at last, but the words out of his mouth were the last she would have expected—not a denial, or a justification, or even a question as to what she knew, or guessed.
“Why didn’t she give him the picture?” For the first time Alma could remember, her father looked, not older, but old. More than that, he looked like Coop’s father: defeated, almost pathetic. Unchecked, the tears ran down his sparely handsome face, a face weathered, like the soul behind it, by a lot of hard years and a lifetime of loneliness. For the first time in her life, the daughter saw the father will all the walls down, broken open by the hideous unfairness of it all. “She should a given it to him! She should a given him Coop’s picture! Why didn’t she give it to him?”
“I don’t know, Daddy. She should have.” Alma had raised three children of her own. There is a time to get to the bottom of things, and there is a time just to hold your child and be mommy. But then, perhaps forgetting for a moment that this was, after all, her father, Ennis Del Mar, she tried to wipe some of the tears away, and Ennis sat back, pulled away from her, and dragged a worn sleeve across his eyes.
“Stop fussing with me, girl,” he muttered. “I can wipe my own damn snot.”
It was a relief, really, her Daddy acting like Daddy again, but as they returned to their familiar roles, both were aware of the TV still on beside them, symbol of something important that was now changed between them. Neither knew what to say, Ennis certainly. Three years after Jack's death, after Junior had asked her idle question about the old friend, and passed the answer on to her mother, Ennis and his ex-wife had made their peace on that soft June night when he had been babysitting in Junior’s back yard. He had never said anything to Alma about telling, or not telling, his children, but he knew that she had respected his privacy and said nothing. He wished suddenly that she were here, for if ever there were something better told by a mother than a father, this was it. But Alma had been lying in the Riverton churchyard for more than ten years, so he would have to find a way himself.
He reached for the TV control, and then they faced each other for a moment, loving and awkward. Hesitantly, Alma reached out to touch her father’s face. He caught her hand, but not to pull it away. His fingers closed on hers, and brought the hand, so much smaller than his, to his lips.
“I wondered, Daddy,” she said, bringing his eyes to hers. “I mean, I never sat around thinkin about it, but I guess I had questions.”
“Now I guess you got some answers.” Ennis shrugged, uncomfortable. “I’m sorry.” Sorry for what, he wasn’t sure. But where his children were concerned, there were plenty of things to be sorry for.
Alma didn’t really notice the apology. There were so many things she could say, could ask, but she didn’t know what was all right to say, what she wanted to say, what would not be proper for a daughter to say. But it seemed only natural, for a father who had spent a lifetime hiding this, to say something to reassure him.
“It wasn’t like I would have guessed it, really, Daddy,” she offered. “I was glad you didn’t marry Cassie, I guess, but that was just cause I didn’t like you bein with somebody besides Mama. I was just a kid then, and guess I got…jealous, or something. Me and Jenny would a been happy for you to find somebody else. We used a talk about it. I must a wondered sometimes, a little, cause you’re a good-lookin man” Ennis shrugged dismissively “and women always liked you, but I never really…well, I mean, you don’t look…” she flushed, realizing too late that she had veered from reassurance into insult.
Ennis' gaze was level. “Don’t look what, Junior? Huh? Don’t look like no queer? That what you mean?”
“I wasn’t…”
“Cause that’s what I am,” he continued, his voice quiet and matter of fact. “I’m a queer, and I always been a queer. You want to know what a…homo-sexual looks like, you lookin at one.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she said gently.
Ennis shook his head. “Nope. Used a think it was. Spent half my damn life thinkin it was. But Jack” he choked a little “Jack knew better. Thirty years ago--more, he done told me it was only a bad word cause somebody decided it was. And you know somethin? He was right. But a lot a people got a have somethin to hate—he done said that, too, and he was right. And I…darlin, when I was nine years old my daddy showed me and my brother a man been killed and flung in a ditch cause he was livin with another man. And my daddy thought that was good, he been beaten up and pulled around behind a truck and left by the side a the road to rot.”
Alma shuddered. “Jesus Almighty Christ, Daddy. And you were a little kid? And he showed that to you? He wanted you to see that?”
Ennis' voice was bitter. “Guess he didn’t want no queers in his family. I used a think…” Ennis hesitated to tell her, then remembered Mathew Shepard “I always wondered how my daddy knew old Earl was there, before the sheriff or anybody. I pretty much decided, he done it himself. Or helped, anyway.”
Junior’s face lost color. “God, Daddy, are you serious?” Her hands went to her mouth.
“Dead serious.” There was a touch, just a touch, of gallows humor in his eyes.
“What a thing to live with.” And then she remembered something else. “--God! And that…is that…did that happen to…”
Ennis stood up, and held out a hand to her. “Come ere, darlin. I’m gone a show you somethin, and then I’m gone a tell you some things. And then you’ll know.”
Art is a Mirror continues in Part Three… |
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| Art IS A MIRROR PART THREE |
[Feb. 19th, 2007|12:51 am] |
ART IS A MIRROR PART THREE
These characters are not mine. With gratitude to Annie Proulx, always, and Tom Pettit and NBC/Cold Case.
Ennis and his daughter stood at the foot of his wrought-iron bed with the blue and red plaid cover, looking at the two ancient shirts that hung on a simple nail over it.
“And he kept your two shirts hanging just like that for twenty years,” Junior said, tears stinging her eyes again.
“One inside the other. Like they were holdin each other.” She shivered at the beauty, and the wretched sadness, of the gesture.
“Mine inside a his,” Ennis corrected her, letting go her hand and going to the shirts to caress the right sleeves. “When I found em, it was mine inside his. But when I hung em up again,” he shrugged one shoulder “only seemed right I should be holdin him.” He rejoined her.
It was a simple story, as her Daddy told it: two desperately poor kids, meeting by chance in 1963 on a Farm and Ranch job, sent up a mountain with a thousand sheep for a summer. And lightning had struck. Though of course Ennis Del Mar didn’t put it quite that way. “We got a be friends,” he said. “That was first. Don’t guess I’d ever really had a friend. After Earl, I didn’t hardly look at nobody for three, four years, then Mama and Daddy died, I had a go to work—didn’t have time for no friends. Didn’t want no friends, really. Then I met your Mama. She was the first person I knew since they died who wanted a be good to me. Gave a damn. She was so sweet, and pretty. Course I thought I loved her. Damn it, Junior, I did love her.” Ennis shook his head. “Just wasn’t…it just wasn’t that kind a lovin. Like it should a been. But I didn’t know. So then I met Jack, and…and…just seemed like I could talk to him.” Ennis considered this, and added, “Thing was, I wanted to talk to him. I wasn’t shy with him like I was with your Mama. Or somethin. We was just two rag-ass guys takin care of some sheep, and just…likin to be with each other. And he cared about me, too.” Across the years, Ennis felt a wet bandana gently blot the dried blood on his face. “And I was happy. I hardly knew what that was, I guess. But I was. And I…I just liked him.” He rubbed the top of his thigh. “And then it was more than that.” He looked away, seeing in the privacy of his mind a thousand shifting images of just what “more than that” had been. He could focus on nothing, it was all blended and hazy with the passage of time, but behind his dark eyes the beautiful past drifted and swirled and danced like smoke in shafts of sunlight. His shoulders lifted, dropped. “Jack Twist loved me, Junior. And I loved him.” Ennis took his daughter’s hand, met her eyes. “But it was wrong, you hear me? That was all we knew. Jack, he didn’t mind. He was just like that Coop. But me…I was just like Jimmy. Scared.” Ennis shook his head as Junior squeezed his hand. “Yeah, I loved him. But in twenty damn years, I never said it to him. I knew it, but I couldn’t say it. We didn’t have no ‘relationship.’ We wasn’t ‘lovers.’ We was ‘friends.’ We was ‘buddies.’ We just had this…this ‘thing.’ Cause I couldn’t never say to myself one time that I was in love with another man.” Ennis sighed, and shivered. “Til he was gone.”
There was a long silence as father and daughter sat in silent communion, Ennis miles and years away with Jack, Alma recasting her understanding of her youth and a man who had only seemed to be in complete control of his own life. Ennis was not the only Del Mar who could be comfortable with silence, but, uncharacteristically, it was he who finally broke it.
“--Your Mama hated Jack. Can’t blame her for that. Way she saw it, Jack took me away from her.”
Alma was startled out of her reverie. “Mama knew?”
Ennis let out a breath, awkward again. “Yeah. See, when you was just a little un, Jack come to see me.” He got up from the bed, went to the bureau, and came back with a small packet that proved to be a stack of postcards about an inch and a half high. Memory sparked. She had seen them before, at least some of them. They had arrived a few times a year throughout her childhood.
Ennis now handed her the one on the top, of a red and white inselberg in New Mexico named Signal Peak. Alma did not fail to notice that he did so with some reluctance, but as she took it, and read the simple note with its childish misspelling, she had no way of knowing, no reason to think about the fact that hers was the first hand, other than her father’s, that had touched this small memento in almost forty years.
“Jack come to see me in ’67. We hadn’t seen each other in four years. I wasn’t too sure what was gone a happen, but, well, I guess I knew what I wanted to happen.” Ennis let out a breath, uneasy telling this to his child. “What happened is, I kissed Jack, and he kissed me, right there in the street at the bottom of the stairs, and your Mama looked out the door and saw it.” In making this simple recitation, Ennis skated over a maelstrom of memories powerful and turbulent, memories that swirled around him, and surged within him, with a force he hadn’t felt in a very long time. “But I never knew that. Not until that night she come to visit, when Lizbeth was a baby, and I was sittin. And she told me she knew.” Another missing piece of the old puzzle dropped into place. “And God help me…” once again Ennis had to pause “she forgave me.” He bowed his head, glanced at his daughter from under his brows, still feeling that he had never deserved that. “Your mama had a lovin heart, darlin.”
Too many new things to think about, too much to absorb. Her heart was overwhelmed, left her mind to the work of simply filling in the blanks in her childhood. “And that was when you started…goin away with him.”
“Yeah.”
“For twenty years.”
“Just about.”
Alma did not look up, but sat staring at the card. “Friend, this is long overdue…” She had been three years old, almost to the day, when her Daddy had read this message the first time. It was such an insignificant thing to look at, worn, yellowed, obviously much handled. It gave her a curious feeling, suddenly, this homely bit of writing, still bearing its few pennies of postage, a sense of much greater weight than any scale would show. Her father had handed it to her as though it were a treasure, but, like most hidden treasures, it had also carried a curse. It had changed the course his life, and Jack Twist’s, forever, and put them into collision with their families and the whole of their world. Alma just shook her head as Ennis gently reclaimed the postcard, stroking it with a thumb before replacing it on top of the stack.
A question came to her, all at once. “And didn’t you never think about makin a life together, like Coop wanted with Jimmy?”
Ennis closed his eyes, looked away, his lips tightening, and she knew the answer before he could tell her.
“You were scared to. Like Jimmy was.”
Ennis nodded.
“Did he ask you to?”
“’What if you and me, we had a little ranch somewheres, little cow and calf operation? Could be a sweet life.’” The words he now repeated almost reverently were a whisper that had been part of Ennis Del Mar’s soul since a September night in 1967, a beautiful and terrifying idea, an unattainable dream forever beyond his reach. “Jack said that the first time I ever went away with him, when he come to see me that time. And then I told him about Earl and Rich, and I told him it wasn’t gone a be that way. But Jack, sweet Jack…he never stopped hopin.” Ennis' eyes grew dim again.
“Until, maybe, that last time. May a ‘83.” His gaze focused on two men he could see clearly in the past, angry and distraught and cursing each other for half a lifetime of hurt they couldn’t help inflicting on each other. “And I had to tell him I couldn’t come out on another trip till November, when I’d done said August. Too stupid, too afraid to tell him right off, waited and waited for a better time, till there wasn’t no more time, it was time to go, and told him…and that did it.” Until now, Ennis had been quiet, calm, sketching out the bare bones of two ruined lives and a great love destroyed with no hint of the forces that had wracked him all over again as he watched “Forever Blue.” But these were the memories with which he had never been able to make peace, not then, not when he had sobbed them out to Alma a few years later, and not now. The memory of the threat he had made to the one he loved best in all the world, the memory of Jack's bitter fury, the devastating admission he had all but flaunted at Ennis, the drawn disillusionment that would be Ennis' last memory of Jack Twist’s beautiful face—even more than two decades later, he had not been able to lay these ghosts.
“Jack got real upset, like he did a couple times before when I had a change things, one time I couldn’t make it at all, and…and we both said…some real hard things. Bad things.” He sat still beside his daughter, but inside Ennis Del Mar was lost, lost in time, falling helplessly, failing that one last test one more time.
“But he’d a still gone with me then, if only I would have.” The words were a hoarse whisper, accusation as much as declaration. He shook his head, and the hot tears slipped down. “But I never would. Cause I wasn’t no queer. What’d that guy Jimmy say? If he’d got in the car, everybody would a known? Well, if I’d lived with Jack…” Ennis broke off and shook his head, unable to finish the sentence, hands twisted together and trembling in his lap.
“Anyways.” He sniffed loudly and dragged his sleeve across his face again. “I left him standin there, starin after me in my mirror. –Oh, Jack.” All the regret in the world cried out of those two small words, but even as Junior closed her hand in his, Ennis was pushing on, on to his doom. “And four months later I send him a card, not knowin if he’ll even answer.” Slowly, Ennis drew the bottom card, the plain one, the one in his own hand, from the stack. He didn’t look at it as he passed it to his daughter. He never looked at this one card with that one last word red as blood stamped carelessly across it as though it had hardly been worth the effort to give the sender the message. It burned him even to touch it, but he could no more have thrown it away, or destroyed it, than he could have the man whose name was on the other side, the man who had never read it. Alma Stockton drew in her breath as the word that had haunted Ennis Del Mar since October of 1983 leapt off the card at her.
“Well, he didn’t answer.”
And then, more slowly and much more haltingly than before, as he slipped the end of his younger life back to the bottom of the pitiful little record of twenty years’ mutual devotion, Ennis told Alma Junior about his phone call to the widow Twist, and his one visit to the Twist ranch, and the precious bloodstained things he had found in kept that small secret place of undying memory. He did not tell her about the “other fella.” He had told Alma, but he would not sully Jack's memory to anyone else. But he did tell her, as he had told himself so many times since then, that when he found the shirts, he knew Jack had not only loved him, always loved him, but had never stopped loving him. Ennis found now that he needed her to know that. More than that, though, was nobody’s business but his, and Jack’s.
He had forgotten, though, that Alma had learned that Jack's death wasn’t an accident, and now, sorting through the bewildering mass of what she had learned that night, Alma came back to the one thing her father had said nothing about, which now seemed to make little sense.
“But Daddy…Daddy—in the show, Coop was murdered. Like that man your Daddy showed you. For bein gay. So I thought that was how Jack Twist died. But you said Miz Twist said it was an accident. And it was in Childress. You wasn’t there. So why do you think he was killed?”
“He was killed. He was cut down like a dog.” The words were flat, certain.
“But how do you know that?”
The words were soft, but they were not gentle. “I know.” The eyes, too, were flat, and in them now rose the same old and impotent rage Alma Junior had seen when Lt. McCree had all but gloried in his guilt. His arms folded across his body, Ennis turned that dark anger to her, and she shrank again from it; not in fear, she had never feared her father, but in dismay at the fury he still carried that would never be brought home to anyone.
“I don’t understand,” she began.
“You don’t got a understand.” Abruptly, Ennis shoved to his feet and returned the postcards to their small box in the top drawer of the bureau. “I know.” Turning to her, he added, “Bout time you got goin. Kurt be callin here any minute.”
It was obvious she had crossed some kind of line. “Daddy, I didn’t mean…”
“It’s all right.” Ennis started for the bedroom door, turned back when she didn’t move. “Come on, girl, your man gone a be worried about you.”
“I want to stay here tonight.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to be alone.”
Ennis actually managed a rusty noise that might have been mistaken for a laugh. “I been alone a long time, darlin. One more night ain’t gone make no difference.” It was the first time Alma had ever heard it from her father, but there was no mistaking the bitterness in his words. He was still punishing himself, and her heart bled for him. She went to him and put her hand on his arm.
“I don’t want you to be lyin here, in the dark, thinkin about…” she glanced at the shirts. “Cause I know you’re gone to. I’m…Daddy, I’d be worried about you.”
Ennis looked into her face suspiciously. “Worried about what?”
She didn’t know how to say it delicately, so she just said it. She was a Del Mar, after all, and was well able to speak bluntly. “You ain’t a young man. You been through a lot tonight. I don’t want somethin to happen to you.”
Ennis faced her squarely. “Junior, if I was gone a die from losin my Jack, I’d a died in the middle a the road outside the Riverton PO in October a ’83. God knows I wanted to. And if I believed in Heaven, I’d a found a way to Jack a long time ago. But I don’t believe. You die, you just dead. It’s over. Jack's gone. He’s been gone a long time. Cept in here.” He touched his chest. “And up there.” His large hand indicated the shirts. “I don’t got no picture, I don’t got no ring, no grave I can tend. But as long as I’m still here, there’s maybe a little bit a him still here too. So I ain’t plannin on gone nowhere tonight.”
“And what about what you don’t plan?” Alma insisted. “You could have a heart attack or somethin same as anybody else.”
“Then it’d be over, wouldn’t it? And I wouldn’t have to miss him no more.” Ennis' eyes were like stone.
Alma burst into tears, her hands darting to his chest. “Don’t say things like that! I don’t want you to die! I love you, Daddy! And Lizbeth loves you, and Kurt-Ennis, and Jenny, and…”
“Aw, shit,” Ennis muttered. “Stop fussin, lil darlin. C’mere.” He took her into his arms, held her, rocked her, kissed the top of her head. “Can’t stand my women cryin.” When the tears had subsided, and she drew back, he wiped her face with his thumbs, drawing a watery smile.
“Don’t you worry about me, Junior,” he said softly. “I couldn’t never do nothin to hurt my girls. Now you take it easy, and go on home and let your old dad be. I’ll be okay.”
There was no swaying Ennis Del Mar once he’d made up his mind, and Alma bowed her head in resignation, hearing the voice of decision she knew so well. She looked up, though, surprised, when her Daddy stooped and kissed her cheek.
“I’m kinda glad…you know, now,” he added, surprising her even more. “I always kinda figured, you’d see our shirts one day, ask me about ‘em. I never knowed exactly what I was gone a say, but I guess I always figured on tellin you. Reckon I owe you and Jenny that, seein how bad things was when you was kids.”
“Do you want me to tell her?” Alma stood holding his hand, swinging it a little the way she did when she was small.
Ennis shrugged. “Might be best. Don’t think I could stand a watch that TV show again,” he replied, making her laugh a little. “I don’t know if I could do it twice. Maybe you should. But I’ll show her…” and he gestured vaguely at the wall. “If she wants.”
They moved together through the other room. “You call me if you need anything,” Alma said, more because she really didn’t want to leave than because she would ever believe he would.
“Sure, darlin.” And that was that, except that as he hugged his daughter fiercely, Ennis whispered the words into her ear, just as he always did. It had startled her the first time, the day she’d gotten married, but she’d heard them, as Jenny had, many times in the years since. Only now, as he said them again, she knew why.
“I love you, darlin.”
And her eyes stung with tears all over again. If Jack Twist had hurt her family, he had also given them a gift.
* * *
Jack came to him that night, of course. Ennis always hoped, but Jack didn’t come to him all that often anymore, not that he remembered, anyway. But he did tonight.
He found himself in the cabin, naturally, the snug little place they’d built on the Brokeback in his heart. They’d been here countless times over the years, even if he never remembered it when he was awake. And as Ennis became aware of his surroundings, and felt the joy rising, he felt also the presence of his beloved. He turned, and there he was, Jack fuckin Twist, nineteen and beautiful and full of the life he had left behind somewhere on a back road in Childress, Texas. No disappointment, no bitterness marred the perfect features, the smiling face alight from within as he came into Ennis' strong arms, arms no longer stiffened with long hard years and a life of privations. The shock was great. It always was, to feel that vital young body against his again, to know that Jack was his for the taking, just as he was Jack's, and always would be. Their mouths met so easily, so naturally, not so much joining as rejoining, blending, reuniting the two halves of the one soul with a power that had defeated even death. They moved together, in each other’s arms, half dancing, half wrestling, knowing it was not a contest but a celebration, moving to the handbuilt bed with the double ring quilt all in shades of blue. And once they were on the bed, the clothes seemed to come away without effort, and then it was all power and passion and the life-force, and Ennis crying “I love you, Jack” and Jack saying “I know, I know, Ennis, Ennis, oh Ennis…” until Ennis found himself awake again, and alone, with the half-light of gray dawn outside the window and grief on the pillowcase and love on the sheets as it always was. And he sighed, and slept again.
* * *
It was a good while before Ennis saw his older daughter again, but Jenny came to Sunday TV night the next week, and he showed her the shirts, almost timidly, but not the postcards. Nearly two years younger than her sister, she had missed much of her mother’s anger against Jack Twist, and Alma had never told her sister about the night she’d heard her father crying, so the truth was a great shock to her, but she accepted it more easily.
But it was almost three weeks before Alma returned, and then she did so unexpectedly, one Saturday afternoon, with her sister in tow, both brimming with a suppressed excitement that Ennis did not fail to miss, but also, of course, took no obvious notice of. He couldn’t remember the last time they had both visited together. He wondered if Kurt had got that big job he was supposed to be up for. Maybe Junior was moving away—it had been discussed—and they thought they could soften the blow this way. Ennis gave a mental shrug. Well, they couldn’t. But best not to borrow trouble. It came ready enough. Whatever it was, they would tell him when they were ready.
They didn’t keep him wondering long. “I brought you something, Daddy,” Junior said as they sat down on the couch, one on each side, and she handed him a flat parcel wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s this? Ain’t my birthday.” His daughters shared a laugh with each other in that happy, nervous way of someone who knows they’ve managed a good surprise. “Nother picture of Lizbeth’s lil squirrel?” He glanced behind him at the collection of family pictures on the table. “Big one.” It was at least an 8x10, maybe 11x14.
“Might not have room…” And then he got the paper off and stared down into the face of the twenty-one-year old Jack Twist.
Alma Stockton and Jenny Betts never forgot the way their father’s face twisted, as if in pain, nor the high, whining cry that tore from him as he stared down into the smiling face. For long moments, all Ennis Del Mar could do was stare and catch his breath in short gasps, his head trying to shake in disbelief but only managing uncoordinated little jerks from side to side.
“My God,” he blurted at last. “God. God. Jack. Oh, Jack!” And he collapsed, slowly, over and around the picture, embracing it with his whole body as Alma sat with eyes closed, nodding, crying. Jenny, who until now had only half-believed her sister’s description of the night they had watched “Forever Blue,” just stared, open-mouthed and blinking rapidly, as her father became someone she could hardly believed existed.
“Where you get this?” he cried at last, eyes wild, lifting only his head, still folded over the priceless gift.
Alma wiped her eyes and managed a crooked grin. “Where you think, Daddy?” she laughed, her voice breaking. “From Lureen Twist, of course!” And she wrapped herself around her astonished father and his overflowing heart.
Art is a Mirror concludes in Part Four… |
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| ART IS A MIRROR PART FOUR |
[Feb. 18th, 2007|01:11 am] |
ART IS A MIRROR PART FOUR
These characters are not mine. Those from Brokeback Mountain are the creation of E. Annie Proulx, those from Cold Case/Forever Blue belong to NBC.
She had taken some finding.
Once Alma had learned, unsurprisingly, that a man dead twenty years produced no hits on the Internet, she had tried calling rodeo associations. After the fourth call, she knew that wasn’t going to work either. Each time she explained she was looking for a picture of a man who had been a bull-rider in the ‘60s, she was given a variation of “back in them days, it wasn’t regulated like it is now, place to look be the local papers.” But Junior knew the best place to find a good picture of Jack Twist would be in the possession of the woman who had been married to him. And so she had taken her vacation time and driven to Childress.
It was a place with pretensions--or, to be more charitable, aspirations--which for the most part remained just that. Though its population was, at 6700, nearly three times Riverton’s, it was still very much a small town, with one main street that even when prosperous looked as though it was never far from withering on the vine. It was, as she had expected, flatland, though not as dry as she had imagined. She had smiled driving over the bridge that proudly announced the “Prairie Dog Town Fork” of the Red River, the name so in excess of the importance of the small brown waterway. Rather like the city itself, proclaimed by a very large sign shaped like the state of Texas that blazoned “Welcome to/City of Childress/County Seat of Childress County/Est. 1884/ Pop. 6708”.
But as she stood stretching stiffly beside her car, Alma Stockton was not smiling. She shook her head, not for the first time, thinking about the drive she had just made. Eight hundred miles. Hour after hour after tedious hour, listening to one radio station after another spit and buzz and fade out, eating sandwiches from gas stations, bored and tired and sore all over, wondering if she would ever get there. And Jack Twist had driven these same roads, there and back again, two and three times a year, just to spend a few days with her father. For seventeen years. Alma had always been proud that her own marriage was strong, and had weathered a dozen years of long separations as Kurt had traveled from one oil-field to another in his way up through the company—but she knew now that this paled beside the simple testimony written in every mile that Jack Twist had navigated to close the distance between himself and Ennis Del Mar. Junior’s feelings about the love that had riven her family were still very mixed, but she had been brought up to all but revere a capacity for hard work, perseverance, determination and endurance. What Twist had done humbled her. No, she admitted; it awed her.
Her quest didn’t get far at first. Her first stop, the next morning, was the Childress County Examiner, where she learned that a 1990 fire had destroyed the paper’s morgue prior to 1975. Lureen Twist was now her only real hope. The 20-something girl who waited on her was friendly enough, but neither bright nor interested. She did give Alma a name: Benny Rulo. “Family been here since the Mexicans owned the place,” the girl said. “He’s retired now, though.” When pressed, she made an enormous effort and asked someone for his phone number.
Like most old men with nothing much to do, Rulo was glad to talk, and invited her to stop by, as he lived only a block from the paper. He proved to be a short, solid man with a face straight off a piece of pre-Columbian pottery who could have been anywhere between fifty and eighty. His wife served iced tea while Benny tested Alma’s patience a little with yarns from almost fifty years at the paper.
Finally, Alma was able to bring the subject around to Lureen Twist.
“Lureen Twist. Can’t say as I recall anybody by that name.” He didn’t seem too worried about it. “Sure it ain’t Lorraine? Know a passel a wimmen named Lorraine.” He winked suggestively, mightily pleased with his own humor.
Alma wasn’t all that sure, she realized. But the name her Daddy had said hadn’t sounded like Lorraine. “Don’t think so, Mister Rulo. I don’t really know much about her, except she married a bull-rider named Jack Twist, back in the late 60s.”
The name, floated hopefully, produced nothing. “Lots a rodeo boys through here in them years,” Rulo volunteered.
Then Junior remembered something else. “And her daddy sold tractors and things.”
The old man’s attention sharpened. “Tractors? You mean like farm tractors, big stuff?”
Junior nodded.
“You ain’t talkin about old L. D. Newsome’s daughter?” Memory stirred. “Yeah--Lureen Newsome! Goodness, that was a long time ago.” He pursed his lips. “She was a barrel racer, I’m thinkin. Real pretty, too.” He nodded, gave it a little more thought. “Know somethin? Think she did marry a rodeo cowboy. Big article in the paper. Was a picture of them at this rodeo where they met, along with the wedding one. Good lookin couple. He was from a long ways off. Colorado, Montana, maybe. --Dint he die, long time ago, maybe a car accident? Seems to me.” Serious now, the old man searched a memory that in those years had been very good indeed as Junior sat very still on the wicker seat, willing him to remember more. All at once, Rulo let out a breath. “You know, I don’t think she lives around here no more.”
Alma’s joy collapsed like a flag falling back to the mast, but Rulo was scratching under his chin reflectively.
“Don’t rightly recollect her name, understand, but I’m thinkin she remarried and moved off. Long time ago. She sold the business, see. Maybe fifteen years ago. Newsome Combine and Tractor. Some place down south. Maybe Dallas, or Houston, even. There’s still an office here in Childress, though. Old L. D., he didn’t choose Childress by accident. Land was cheap, lots of it, not a dust bowl like some parts, and it’s real well located for sellin farm equipment all over the place. Called Amalgamated Combine now, or it used to be. Things change names ever five minutes, these days.”
Alma headed off a long grumble about how things wasn’t like they used a be by asking where she could find Amalgamated Combine.
“Oh, it’s on Commerce Street, honey. Childress ain’t that big a place yet. Everythin you want, on Commerce Street.”
* * *
Alma would have driven right past it except that there were several combines and tractors, and a couple bulldozers and back-hoes, behind a high chain-link fence. Rulo was right: things did change names every five minutes: the sign read “AmCoM/A Division of Farm-Tek Southwest.”
“How kin Ah help yew, ma’am?” The accent was pure Texas.
“I’m trying to locate the woman who used to own Newsome Combine and Tractor.”
The man’s face screwed up. “Woman? Ahdn think so, ‘oney.”
“Yes. Her maiden name was Lureen Newsome. She sold the business maybe fifteen years ago?”
“Oh, thass a long tahm go, ‘oney. We isn’t even based year, y’know. Headquarters in For’Worth. Ah bin’ere eight years, guess thass long’s anybody.” Seeing Alma’s deep disappointment, he offered, “Whatcha need is, call a For’Worth offs. Might be they got summn there, members her.”
* * *
“Am I speakin to Miz Stockton?” The voice was deep, loud and friendly a day and a half later. “You’re looking for Lureen Mason?” And it was that simple.
“I got a copy of the contract right here,” he told her. “I helped broker the deal. She was a real good businesswoman. Knew what she had all right, and didn’t mind the brass knucks, neither.” He chuckled. “Nice little retirement income, even for Texas! Husband and co-signer, Rudolph Mason, MD. They was about to move, I member. Not sure where, though, but I think it was Amarillo. Coulda been Abilene, though.”
* * *
As Alma pulled her Wagoneer into the driveway of an expensive suburb of Abilene two mornings later, she couldn’t help feeling more than a little like the country mouse.
The Mason residence was nothing less than a junior mansion, with a fountain—and a gold Jaguar--in the front, done in a buff adobe-meets-Quattro-centro style that worked surprisingly well. The yard and plantings had the sort of intensely manicured look that said not only money, but a good-sized team of Mexican yard men, had done a lot here. Alma was not easily intimidated, but as she approached the leaded-glass front door, she might have quailed with any less motivation than had brought her so far already.
Somehow, though, in her concern with exactly what she would say, it had never occurred to Alma to wonder much about the woman who had been Jack Twist’s wife, and she had, not unnaturally, conjured up a mental image of a woman not unlike her mother. Later, she realized that had probably been wishful thinking. Nor had she made any special note of Ralph Cordell’s remark about Lureen Mason not minding “the brass knucks, neither,” but when the door opened, she wished she had, for if the house had made her feel the small-town girl she was, when Mrs. Mason answered the door, she felt like the country mouse’s tobaccy-chawin bare-foot cousin.
Her first thought was, time had been kind to the former Mrs. Twist. And then at second glance, Alma realized that the march of time had likely been sandbagged with a little help from plastic surgery. The woman who studied her with a certain amount of suspicion was tall, absolutely towering over Alma standing on the stoop, with great dark eyes and blonde hair so artlessly cut and coiffed that even the relatively unsophisticated Junior guessed she spent a lot of money at the beauty salon. Her clothes, simple and perfectly cut to enhance a still-notable figure, were in cool pastels, and gold shone everywhere on her. There was also a hint of perfume.
And she was tough. Hard as cut glass. Intelligence was obvious in her face. Kindness was not.
“Yes?” she prompted when Alma failed to speak at once.
“My name is Alma Stockton.” Alma began a well-rehearsed speech, wondering now if it was going to do.
“I’m sorry.” The door began to close. “No, thank…”
“I’m not selling anything.” Alma had correctly anticipated this at least. As Lureen hesitated, she added, “You don’t know me, but I wonder if you ever heard of my father. His name is…Ennis Del Mar.”
For a moment there was no recognition in the dark eyes, nothing but a puzzled frown. And then the eyes flew open, and anger flashed, and the door swung, faster this time.
“Wait! I just want a picture!” Junior cried desperately.
“What?” The word was a whip crack of angry incredulity.
Junior flung her carefully rehearsed speech into oblivion. “My daddy loved your husband,” she began.
“My first husband.”
“My daddy’s been alone for twenty years, and he doesn’t even have a picture.” The words tumbled out of the rattled woman. “I just want…”
“Isn’t that sweet.” Lureen took a step down to stand on the porch with Alma, hands on hips. “Ain’t that precious. And aren’t you just the most dutiful daughter, to do this for your poor old gay daddy.”
Alma’s lips tightened. “I didn’t come to cause trouble.”
Lureen laughed. It was not a pleasant sound. “Course you didn’t! Just thought you’d roll up, knock on the door like it was Trick or Treat and ask for a family snapshot. Figured I’d just pat you on the head and go ‘here you are, sweetie, oh, and say hi to your dear old dad for me, never mind that he helped my husband cheat on me for damn near two decades!’” Her voice rose to a shout.
Alma’s spine stiffened. “My daddy didn’t mean…”
“I don’t give a fuck what he didn’t mean,” Lureen shot back. “You hear me, honey? I don’t give a flyin fuck. You got some damn nerve. Do you have any idea what you’re askin? Do you? Do you have any idea what it’s like to fall in love at first sight with the handsomest man you’ve ever seen, or ever will? And do you have any idea what it’s like to realize, somewhere along the line, that he started slippin away from you just about the moment he put that ring on your finger? No. You don’t, Ennis Del Mar’s daughter. You have no idea what it’s like to wake up one day and realize you’re married to a bitter alcoholic with a lot of secrets who don’t care about nothing in the whole world except his next drink, and goin fishin with his old buddy in Wy-omin. --Oh, yeah--and some damn place he goes on and on about whenever he gets just the right shade of drunk. Some damn place called Brokeback Mountain. ‘Favorite place in the whole world. Most beautiful place there is. Place where you can lie there all day listenin to the wind and countin the clouds. Sky that goes on forever. Peaks glowin orange in the sunset. Air smells like Christmas trees.’ If I had a dollar for every time I heard that speech, I’d be twice as rich as I am. And honey, that’s rich.”
Alma tried desperately to stem the tide of bitterness, but Lureen shut her up with a stabbing finger.
“No. You just listen. You wanna come poking dogs with a stick, you’re gone a listen. Because you need to know, honey, what it means, you come knockin on my door, asking for a god-damn picture of Jack for his ‘old buddy’ Ennis. Because you need to know I spent a lot a years wonderin why a man who hated the cold got so het up about gone fishin eight hundred miles away in the damn mountains in April, November, whatever. And after a while, I got to wonderin, too, what that husband of mine was doin on all them business trips he took. Since he pretty much hated the business. Well, I got to noticin he always took plenty a cash. So I started lookin for lipstick marks, perfume—I figured he must be touchin somebody, cause he sure as hell stopped touchin me. But you know, all I ever found was a couple business cards for masseurs. And some gas station receipts from Juarez, in Mexico. Long way from here, Juarez. It took a long time, but eventually, I started to get another idea. Maybe you can guess what it might have been. And then, long about the end a ’82, Jack starts to get real friendly with these new neighbors, husband workin for a rancher nearby. Even started gone fishin with him. Imagine that.”
Alma froze. Lureen smirked. “What’s the matter, sweetie? You mean your old Dad didn’t know he wasn’t the only one whose lap Jack liked to go fishin in?” But Alma hardly heard her. In her mind, she heard the exchange again:
So why do you think he was killed?
He was killed. He was cut down like a dog.
I don’t understand.
You don’t got a understand. I know.
And then she remembered something else: We said some real hard things. Bad things. Junior knew she was unlikely ever to know the whole story. But one thing was clear: her daddy had known, or guessed, something. And he had been right.
Lureen was staring off into the distance now, still bitter, but aiming her anger now at one who was beyond her reach.
“And then one day, the sheriff comes by, says he’s got some bad news. And he tells me Jack had a tire blow up on him. And he tells me he’s identified the body, I shouldn’t look, I should ‘try to remember him as he was.’ And that made me so damn mad I looked anyway. And then I got sick. And then I kept thinking it looked like a lot more happened to him than they said. --Funny thing, that same week, that ranch foreman quits, and him and his bubble-head wife are gone, just like that. Wonder why?” Her voice was soft, sarcastic.
“So a few months go by, it’s October of ’83, and I’m just starting to put things back together, tryin real hard not to think about all those things I couldn’t help thinkin about, and then, I get this phone call.” She saw the awareness in Alma’s face. “Oh, told you about that, did he? Out of the blue, there’s this man with a deep, husky voice on the other end of the phone, sayin he’s Ennis Del Mar, ‘old buddy of Jack’s.’ How he found out, I have no idea. Musta got one a his little postcards back.” Alma nodded, seeing the word DECEASED leaping off the card at her. “—Uh, huh. That’s what I figured. And I told him what they told me happened, tryin not to remember what was left of my husband’s face, tryin not to remember a couple a funny looks I caught on those deputies’ faces, and he asked me if Jack's buried in Childress. And I told him I sent half his ashes to his folks, up in that godforsaken place called Lightning Flat, sounds like something out a some crappy novel, because Jack wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain. But told him I didn’t think there really was such a place. Cause between us? Long time since, I figured he just made it up because it was a place he could get away from me, in his head.
“And then that deep voice says, ‘no ma’am, we was herdin sheep up on Brokeback one summer, back in ’63.’’ For the first time, Lureen’s voice lost its edge. “And then I knew. All those things I didn’t want to know, all those years. I knew all of em. My gorgeous husband had married me for my money, and then spent half his life slippin off to be with another man.” She looked away, her lips tightening, and silence settled heavy and dark over the two women on the stoop.
Alma spoke softly at last. “You’re right, ma’am. I don’t know about any of that. All I know is growin up with my mama and daddy yelling at each other all the time about how Daddy never has a good job, because he’s always quittin to go off with his buddy. And about my mama cryin and angry all the time when he would go away. And askin my mama one time why didn’t Daddy bring some fish home, and thinking she was gone a hit me, and she snaps ‘why don’t you ask Jack Twist?’ And one day she gets me and my little sis together and says ‘Mama and Daddy can’t live together any more,’ and we cried because we thought they was punishing us for being bad. And then, for a couple years, I only saw my daddy a half-dozen weekends a year, if that, until one time he comes to Thanksgiving with us in our new house with Mama’s new husband, and we’re watchin TV after dinner and all of a sudden they’re in the kitchen shoutin at each other again, and Daddy storms out, and my sis and I didn’t see him for almost two years, cause Mama wouldn’t let us. And then one day, late in 1983, I go to see him, tell him I’m engaged, ask him to come to the wedding, and he says yes, but when I drive away, even though I’m happy, I keep thinkin he looks so much older all of a sudden. Old, and sad. But I never knew why. Until a few weeks ago, when we watched a show where these two policemen fall in love back in 1968, and one of them gets murdered when their boss finds out. And my daddy, who you could just about run over with a truck and he wouldn’t make a sound, just fell apart, crying and cussin and makin these awful little noises like he was gone a die.” Alma made no attempt to stop the tears that came at the memory.
“He has these two shirts hangin over his bed, Miz Mason. They used a belong to him and Jack, from when they was herdin the sheep. Jack got a hold a his somehow and kept it, and when Daddy went to see Jack's parents, like you said, his daddy wouldn’t let him have the ashes, but his mama sent him up to look at Jack's room, and he found the shirts hidden in the closet. Jack put Daddy’s inside his, sleeves inside each other, and left them there, all those years. Now Daddy has them over his bed, with his on the outside.” Meeting Lureen’s eyes again, Alma found Jack Twist’s widow regarding her with a frown, still, but it no longer seemed to be an angry one.
“It was a long time ago. Daddy hurt all of us, and so did Jack Twist. I don’t care. He loves us, and we love him, and he’s a good man. And he doesn’t have a picture.” She spoke heavily, sick with the sense of failure.
“My husband’s golfing,” Lureen said abruptly, bringing Junior’s attention back to her. She looked at her watch. “He usually comes back in about a half hour. If I can find a picture for you before then, you can have it. If I don’t, you leave, and you don’t come back. Understand?”
Alma nodded. “Thank you,” she managed.
Lureen’s mouth twisted. “Don’t thank me yet. Now come on. Let’s go up to the attic.”
* * *
“The attic” proved to be a large walk-in storeroom with deep floor-to ceiling shelves on two sides, filled with the usual detritus of people’s lives—out-of-season clothes, sports equipment, a couple floor fans, carpet and wallpaper remnants, luggage, extra bedding, and numerous bulging cardboard boxes containing all those things that everyone means to sort through one of these days. Lureen went to these and started pulling them down. Alma flirted with the idea of offering to help, but thought better of it, and remained silent, polite, and very tense, near the door.
Lureen offered no commentary, so Alma had no idea what she was looking for or if she were making progress finding it. All at once, however, Lureen moved to another part of the attic to continue the search. Tension knotted deep in Junior’s gut. More than ten minutes had passed, and Lureen’s first search had obviously been a dead end.
“Thirteen years. My memory must be slipping.” Lureen reached deep into a corner obscured from Alma’s view and drew out a small trunk. “Whatever I still got, it’s in here.”
Cautiously, Junior drew closer as Lureen put the trunk on top of an old desk. “Used to be at the foot of my bed when I was a girl,” she added. “My hope chest.” She shook her head, but there was no bitterness in her voice now.
Though she wanted to, something inside Junior kept her from approaching too closely. She wasn’t afraid of Lureen, exactly; the woman seemed to have spent her anger—but all the same, Alma was uneasy as Lureen reached into the past, very much aware of being an intruder. Would Lureen find what she so badly wanted before time and her patience ran out? It could go either way.
And then Lureen straightened up, and a thrill of apprehension shot through the waiting Alma. Lureen was holding a large framed picture, studying it expressionlessly.
“I was pretty then,” she said softly. “You forget. Maybe, you want to.” She handed the picture to Junior. “Here you are.”
And there he was, thirty years after the only time she had ever seen him. Alma didn’t even notice, at first, the lovely dark-haired and dark-eyed girl standing beside him. She had eyes only for her father’s beloved, looking as he must have looked when Ennis Del Mar had first lost his heart to him, all those decades ago on the cold wild mountain among the pines and the sheep. It was a portrait shot, and both Jack and Lureen were holding what were obviously rodeo trophies. Lureen was leaning toward him, flirtatious even as she smiled for the photographer, but Jack just faced the camera, grinning proudly, and his face was just as Alma remembered it—all great eyes and dark brows.
“You were beautiful,” she breathed, giving credit where it was due to the man who had destroyed her family.
“Thank you,” said Lureen quietly. Sensibly, Junior did not correct her mistake, though she reddened a little as she handed the picture back.
Lureen shook her head, refusing it. “No. I meant that. It’s yours. I guess you’ll want to have it blown up.” Seeing Alma didn’t understand, she added wryly, “Get me out of it.” When Alma looked away, embarrassed at the shrewdness of her thinking, she added, “I don’t know why I even kept it. Maybe just because that was the day we met. I don’t know. Nobody ever accused me of being sentimental.” She shrugged. “Jack was the sentimental one, I guess. You wouldn’t believe the junk I found in a locked drawer in his desk after he was gone. An empty can, some old weeds or something in a bandana, rifle casings, some of those old postcards” Alma lifted her head “—no, honey, they’re long gone.”
Alma flushed. “Daddy has all the postcards Jack ever sent him.” She didn’t in fact know this for certain, but she was sure of it.
“You know, I didn’t cry when he died,” Lureen said thoughtfully. “I suppose I’d done all my grieving long before. But I cried after your daddy called. I don’t even know why. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was jealousy.” She made a face. “And I have no idea why I’m telling you all this. I never told Rudy. --But you were right. It was a long time ago.” After a moment, she added, “I’m sorry I went off at you like that. I didn’t even know I was still angry about it. Anyway, it wasn’t your fault.”
Alma hesitated. “I don’t know, any more, if it was really anybody’s fault, Miz Mason.” When Lureen didn’t seem to take this amiss, she added, “I had a lot of time to think, coming down here. I don’t really know how I feel about your late husband, sometimes I remember how much my mama got hurt, and how much I missed my daddy for so long, and I get pretty upset. But then I remember Daddy watching that show and crying, and the way he talked about Jack when he told me, and those two shirts…” She shook her head. “You know, none a that would have happened if they didn’t have to lie and hide their whole lives. I spent a lot of time thinking about what my life would be like, if I could only see my husband in secret, a couple weeks a year. I don’t guess they wanted to love each other. But they did. I don’t know. I may not ever really be happy about what them lovin each other did to me and my family, but one thing I can’t do is hate your Jack for lovin my daddy. Because he really did. I know that. And Daddy loved him.”
Lureen’s lips pressed together, and she made another decision. “Here. You might as well take this, too. I gave most of Jack's things to our son, but I kept this. Why, I don’t know. But your daddy would probably like to have
it. And now you got a be goin.”
She surprised Alma by walking her to the car. As Alma was about to get in, Lureen surprised her again.
“Miz Stockton. You got a picture of your daddy?”
Not sure what to make of it, half afraid Lureen would shriek and tear it to bits, Junior went into her wallet and pulled out the only picture she had of her father in his youth—a small copy of his wedding picture.
Lureen studied it for several long seconds, then handed it back. “Just curious. So that’s the face that went with the voice. Handsome man.” She gave Alma a sideways smile, and suddenly, Junior saw the girl in the photograph. “I mighta liked him myself. For all the good that would a done me!” And then she was the cool and collected older woman again. “Have a safe trip home, honey. And, don’t come back.”
“I don’t think I will, ma’am. Thank you.”
* * *
“…and then she gave me this,” Alma said, and handed Ennis the yellowed box.
Ennis opened it almost as though he were afraid to. As he saw what was inside, he caught his breath again, and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the tears were plain.
“Never thought I’d see this again,” he said huskily, and carefully lifted out of the box the black hat Jack Twist had worn on Brokeback Mountain.
“She said Jack wore it on a lot of his trips with you,” Alma said, her voice unsteady. He had also been wearing it in the picture, and she suspected…
“He was wearin it when I met him,” Ennis said quietly, never taking his eyes from the hat as he turned it in his hands, stroking it crown and brim. “And the last time I ever saw him.”
Alma’s hand went to her mouth. She had been right in thinking it was the only hat Jack had had in those early years, but this turn of events she had not anticipated.
It was a long time before Ennis spoke again, and his daughters let the silence stretch out without grudging it, just sitting quietly by as their father wandered for a little through a world at once unattainable and a part of his every breath.
“I don’t believe you did this.” The sound of his voice after so long made Junior jump a little, and brought Jenny’s head up. “After what I…what Jack and I…done to you girls, and your mama.” The dark eyes were sad, and wondering.
“We love you, Daddy,” Junior said simply, and Jenny slipped her arm though his in silent agreement. “That’s really all that matters anymore.” And that was true enough, for him, and for now.
Ennis shook his head. “I hope you know…” but his heart was too full to allow him to tell her what all hoped she knew. He had to trust that she would figure it out. He needn’t have worried. It was all there, in the dark eyes full of gratitude, and love.
“There’s one other thing, Daddy.” Jenny spoke at last.
Ennis looked at her almost incredulously. “Other thing?” He was still holding to himself the photograph, which was, as Lureen had guessed it would be, an enlargement of Jack alone. He couldn’t imagine what more there could be. He had a picture of Jack, and his hat. What more could he need? Only Jack, and Jack was dead and gone. What more could he want?
They had given much thought as to what they would tell him all at once. Alma had edited her visit to Lureen quite a lot, and did not see any reason to ever tell him about the ranch neighbor, or Lureen’s thoughts about Jack's dead body, though at some future time she would certainly tell him that Jack had kept some mementos of Ennis other than the shirts. This one thing, though, they wanted to tell him now.
“I called the coroner’s office in Crook County about ten days ago,” Jenny told her father, watching his face to see if he remembered whose home had once been there. The quick frown told her that he did. “See, I was wonderin if Miz Twist was still alive, she sounded like she liked you, we thought maybe she might let us have his ashes. Let you, I mean.” She blushed a little. “But she’s passed. But Daddy, the man remembered her. Because when Mr. Twist passed, he said ‘91, Miz Twist asked the coroner’s office if the funeral home could exhume her son’s ashes while they were burying her husband. That’s why he remembered it, it was such an unusual request. And they did, and gave them to her. But he didn’t know what happened to them after, since his responsibility ended once the ashes had been exhumed. So she might have took them, Daddy. She might have took them to Brokeback for you.”
Ennis Del Mar sat very still. He remembered a sad, worn woman with kind eyes, and he remembered, ever after, the slight push, little more than a pat on the shoulder, but just a little more, that had sent him up into the stark and silent room in which Jack had kept his heart safe and secret for half his short life. It had taken a long time before Ennis had thought about anything in that visit but John Twist’s cruelty, and her gentleness, and the discovery he had made, but he had eventually realized that it could not have been by accident that the closet door had been open, inviting him to enter. From that time on, Ennis had been sure Mrs. Twist had sent him deliberately into the little room, by the time he saw it less a reminder of bygone youth than a sterile museum in which everything had its one immutable spot and nothing was a half-inch out of place—save for that door, which stood open. There was no reason for a room no one used to have the closet open. No reason save one: so that the room’s one visitor could find what he had been meant to find.
Ennis bowed his head over the picture and the hat again, nodding. She had reclaimed the ashes. There was no doubt in his mind what she had done with them. No doubt at all. He looked up at Jenny, and Alma, and surprised them both with his one-sided smile.
“That’s all right, then,” Ennis Del Mar said, and for a little while he was close to all three he had ever loved best.
* * *
It was early in the afternoon when they finished checking stock, and Jack, preferring warmth as he always did, led the way into the snug cabin of Ennis Del Mar’s dreams. He said something about taking a nap, but when Ennis had hung up his coat and hat next to Jack's and run fingers through his curly hair, he turned to find Jack lying naked on the blue double-ring quilt, fingers laced behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. Ennis stopped dead, utterly bewildered as he always was, always had been, always would be, at the lean, supple beauty being displayed for him, and him alone.
“What’re you doin?” he asked stupidly.
“Nothin.” Jack turned his head, looked Ennis up and down boldly. “That could change, though.”
Ennis quirked a bit of a smile. “Wondered why you was in such a hurry to get inside. Ain’t that cold.” Disdaining his usual orderliness, he shed his clothes in little less time than it had taken his lover and put his knee on the bed.
“Gonna be warmer in a minute,” Jack suggested, reaching for him, but Ennis had his own ideas, and pushed him down. Jack, of course, was nothing loath, but the laughter and anticipation in his eyes turned to puzzlement when Ennis turned him away and snaked sinewy arms around his body, pulling him close.
“C’mere, cowboy,” Ennis muttered in his ear. “You need some cuddlin time. Huh?”
“Ennis!” Jack whined. “Not right now!”
Ennis merely grunted and wound himself more firmly around his beloved.
“Ennis!” Jack was well aware of how unreasonable Ennis was in this mood. “Can’t hardly breathe!” Ennis relaxed his hold. Slightly. “Now come on. Lemme go.”
“Uh, uh.”
“What if I got a go?”
There was a silence. Ennis didn’t really want to talk. He wanted to hold Jack close. “Uh…mmm.” He was having trouble thinking. Jack was so warm and alive, and he smelled so good…
“What if I had a go?” This was Jack the agitator, as Ennis well knew.
“Then I’d have to go with you,” he muttered, and bit Jack's earlobe, flicked it with his tongue. “Huh? Now stop fussin.”
Jack squirmed and pretended to resist, and it got more than a little hard for Ennis to hang on to his self-control, but in the end Jack settled with a sigh and both luxuriated in the peace and completeness between them. There was silence for a while as they listened to the fire crackling across the room, and then Jack allowed,
“Tell you what, you cuddle pretty good.” Ennis couldn’t see the smile spread wide across Jack Twist’s face, but he could hear it.
“It’s cause you’re snuggly,” he said into Jack's hair. This brought a small laugh. “Yep. Snuggly.” He had felt this way before—after their second night together, the whole night they had spent loving after four dreary years apart, the morning after their ten-year anniversary, that remarkable Christmas the same year: it was the slightly dizzy, effervescent feeling of getting away with it, of everything being just as it should be, of not being afraid to love Jack Twist. Well, he wasn’t. Not anymore. Never again.
“Snuggly,” he said again, his voice muffled in the black hair he was happily scenting. “You just the snuggliest…I don’t know what.”
“You best not call me no cuddlebunny,” Jack warned him.
“Will if I want to.” Ennis nosed behind his ear. “Cuddlebunny.” Jack squirmed again, hugging his arms happily, and Ennis felt the deep need warming his belly.
“Uh, oh,” Jack was laughing, softly. “Feels like Ennis don’t want to cuddle no more.”
“Who says?” Ennis was now slipping his hands over strong lines that stirred, stretched, arched under his caress. “What, man can’t cuddle and have some lovin at the same time?”
Jack turned in his arms. “Show me,” he breathed, great eyes huge and dark. “Show me right now.”
Their mouths met, inevitable, unstoppable, a silent cry of joy and hunger that pulled them together with a gasp, bodies seeking the joining the souls had made long, long ago. They did not tire of this, they did not rush it, no matter how great the need. Very soon Jack was on his back, inviting Ennis to fit their bodies together, and then the long lines were blending, shifting, teasing, all slow, natural and sensual, hands seeking, nothing forbidden, loving and admiring with every possessive caress. The need to mate was a slow, deep heat between them, and Ennis groaned to feel Jack's big hand slide between them and capture him, even as a shameless tease of a tongue darted over soft lips, following their sweet shape before slipping between, taking and giving. Jack's head went back, breaking the kiss, as Ennis caught a prize of his own to stroke and squeeze. The heady musk was thick in the air and Ennis seemed to hear a slow, sweet song, like a waltz, weaving its way around and between and inside them.
“Ennis,” Jack moaned. “Love me, Ennis.”
“I love you.” The words were soft, but they were sure, and Jack opened his eyes, dark and hazed with the relentless need, to see the words reflected in deep wells that no longer broke from his. “I love you, Jack.”
“Show me,” were the words of Jack's reply. “I know,” was the answer in the eyes, no anger, no frustration, no pleading, no disillusionment—nothing but the love he had always given, full-hearted and unafraid, blue skies wide and cloudless, forever summer.
It was so easy, then, for Ennis to have what they both wanted him to, and his deep-bellied groan vibrated through both their bodies as he found his way into the heat of joining, as the slip-sliding rhythm of desire shifted into the slow, deep ebb and surge of the love-tide.
And through it all, the music, dream and meditation, a song Ennis had heard once when he was missing his Jack, but now there was no more loneliness, only the love, no more denying, only the truth, no more pain, only the joy.
They knew each other so well now, after so long, both knew when the soaring eagles had to fall, and fall, and fall, they were ready for each other, ready to rise, and come together, all but one as they gave it all up, the words just as they always had been, irrelevant, of the body, but for those other three words, “Ennis, Ennis, I’m comin, I’m comin, I love you, I love you, Ennis,” and the hoarse cries of “Jack, Jesus, Jack, oh, fuck, Jack I love you” and then, only the fire and the breathing slowing to calm.
“Now you gone a let me cuddle you? Huh?” Ennis murmured as he drew Jack close, pulled the quilt over them.
“Long as you like,” Jack sighed, nestling into his embrace. “Rest a my life.”
“Rest a your life,” Ennis echoed. “Rest a your life, Jack. I ain’t lettin you go again.”
“Guess I’m in luck, then,” Jack smiled, but his eyes were serious as he ran gentle fingers along his beloved’s face.
“Guess we both are,” Ennis answered him, smiling too, but there were tears in his eyes. “We’re the lucky ones, Jack. You hear me? We’re the lucky ones.”
Ennis Del Mar smiled in his sleep even as he cried a little, two shirts on the wall over his head, a picture on the bed beside him, two hats on the bedposts at his feet, and in his dreams it was morning again in the mountains, with Jack Twist always smiling, smiling, smiling into his heart.
Thanks to amdaz and City Girl. |
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| Trailhead |
[Aug. 22nd, 2006|11:38 pm] |
TRAILHEAD
These characters are not mine. They are the creation of Annie Proulx, for which I thank whatever Deity may be listening, and bear no intentional resemblance to persons living or dead.
This is one of the erotic ones. Rated X.
July 1969.
This was the part that never got any easier. Ennis always believed that it would be so much better if they could just load up the horses, sling the gear into their trucks, and head out without so much as looking at each other. This, though, he knew well, was as much a fantasy as Jack’s longing for them to live together. This was, what, their seventh trip in two years, and all of them ended the same way—Ennis trying as hard as he could to shorten the agony of goodbye, and Jack doing everything he could to prolong it.
Ennis had no idea why Jack had tried so many times to do everything from keeping him talking to seducing him—and this last had worked a couple times—it didn’t change the inevitable. They had to part. That was bad. Why make it worse? Ennis knew that once the high of having been with Jack had worn off, the following weeks would be miserable as he slipped back into the home routine and tried not to think how long it was going to be before he and Jack would once again be naked on the blankets, hands and mouths and bodies slipping and sliding, finding and taking. No, Ennis Del Mar tried not to think about any of that while he was in Riverton, though sometimes, at odd moments, it would seize him so hard he would shake, and then he would get angry to be in the grip of something he couldn’t control. He knew there was a word for what he felt. There was also a word for men who felt that way, actually there were several words, and Earl had taught him to hate and fear them all. But Ennis Del Mar was a very practical man who knew that pretending wasn’t going to make anything change, even if his girls still thought it would. And he knew, sometimes, in the dark, or driving along a lonely road in the truck, or mending a fence in some distant field, that all of the words belonged to him. And sometimes it made him think—why was it wrong? Why was it evil? How could it be wicked to look into those eyes and feel the things he felt, to kiss that sweet mouth and want to fling that laughing cowboy down and fuck him with all the need in his body? I don’t want to let him go. Not now. Not ever. But I gotta.
And here was Jack, making it worse, the door of his truck already open, but him not getting in, just standing there, looking at Ennis with those sweet eyes sad, those sweeping black brows pinched in, that perfect mouth still and straight without a hint of smile in it. Ennis found he just couldn’t stand that, damn it. Damn him.
“’s’ wrong, Jack, huh?” Like I don’t know.
Jack frowned more, shook his head. “I hate this, Ennis.”
“Yeah, well, I ain’t crazy bout it.” Ennis kicked the grass. “’s the way it is, Jack.”
Jack hung his head. “’s always like this, Ennis. Every fuckin time.” He lifted sad, pleading eyes to the man he loved. “Shit. I blink, I miss it. I mean, we had ten days this time. And it’s over. It seems like it ain’t never gonna end, and then it’s over. Jesus--November. Seems like a damn year from now. I hate this, Ennis. I don’t want to say goodbye.” His voice wavered.
“Aw, shit, Jack. You ain’t gonna cry on my ass?” Once, frustrated and grieving, Ennis had punched his friend. It was something he still remembered with shame. Like life wasn’t hard enough on them, without him doing some damn stupid thing like that. So now, when he saw Jack dissolving before his eyes, it was not anger, or contempt, that he felt, or acted upon.
“Jack, don’t you cry on my ass,” he said hoarsely, and his hands of their own accord cradled Jack Twist’s face. “I mean it.” Their faces were only inches apart. “Don’t you fuckin cry.”
That, of course, only made the tears escape. “I’ll cry if I fuckin want to,” Jack muttered, avoiding his lover’s eyes. “I feel like shit, I don’t wanna go, I just…”
Ennis knew Jack, once started, would go on complaining, and crying, for as long as he was let. So Ennis didn’t let him. He might not be able to stop the tears, but he could definitely stop the complaining.
“Aw, Jack,” he growled, and pulled their faces together.
But Jack resisted, really resisted. It was just plain cruel of Ennis to kiss him, to set match to tinder when he had no intention of starting a fire. Ennis knew how hungry Jack Twist always was to kiss, it was just the way he was made, he would be happy to kiss Ennis Del Mar all day long and had just about managed it from time to time. Start with the mouth, of course, that soft, curved mouth that quickly shed its grim cast under Jack’s patient, eager encouragement, and when he’d tasted and devoured for a while, move on, coming back every now and then to make sure everything was still all right as he kissed his way from here to there—closed eyes; earlobe; soft spot behind the ear; maybe a nuzzle of the neck; collarbone; nipples, maybe linger a bit here; flat belly; belly button, maybe tickle a little with the tongue there; and then, inevitably…
Jack groaned as Ennis shifted his stance, pushing him into the truck. He felt Ennis’s cock rising, swelling against his as Ennis quested for the deeper kiss Jack was denying him. With a thrill like a bolt of lightning, he realized Ennis wasn’t teasing, wasn’t fooling, and his own cock thrust against his trousers to make a hard, proud stand against its partner. Both Jack and Ennis caught a sharp indrawn breath, and then Jack had Ennis’ face in his hands and was kissing him.
The world shrank to the compass of their embrace. In his joy, the kiss Jack Twist gave his lover was not the soft or the sensual caress he usually preferred, but the savage, devouring, union of two into one that was both conquest and surrender, the kind of kiss a man could only give another man. It was a kiss in which both parting and rejoining were implicit, for despair lay at the back of it, the knowledge that there were only so many kisses allowed before they had to stop. Ennis and Jack had never kissed like this on Brokeback, though they had come close sometimes. But four years later, after Ennis had pushed Jack into the wall, Jack had all but flung him against the opposite one, taking his mouth with a savagery that had made them both into animals. It was the first time they had kissed that way. That night, as they fucked each other to the point of exhaustion over and over, all their kisses had either begun or ended in the same madness. And they both knew. Neither knew how to say it in words, and Ennis would never find a way, but from then on, it was there in every touch, and every kiss, and neither would ever pretend it was not.
Jack felt his hat being pulled off. Moaning and crooning in the kiss, he let his mouth shift a little, his tongue darting and teasing and sliding along his lover’s parted lips before he slid his long fingers into Ennis’ hair, knocking his hat off as well, and locked their mouths together again. Ennis responded with a growl, thrusting Jack harder into against the side of the truck, forcing the hard ridge in his worn denims against its aching mate. Jack tore free of the kiss to groan, but Ennis allowed him no escape, capturing the soft, perfect mouth again at once, needing to possess it as he needed to possess Jack: completely and utterly.
But Jack was not so compliant in this as his nurturing ways or his delight in being fucked hard would suggest. He fought Ennis’ natural dominance, making Ennis win him, reminding Ennis yet again that while he might be tamed, he, too, was a bull and not a steer. It was with a man’s strength that he wound his arms around Ennis Del Mar’s body, and with a man’s force that his hips bucked and surged against the need in every lean, powerful line, making their two belt buckles clink and scratch.
Ennis broke the kiss at last, gasping, dizzy with lust, taking great breaths but keeping his lover pinned hard to the truck even as Jack clung to him, a handful of jacket and shirt in each fist.
“I’mna make you feel better, Jack Twist,” he said hoarsely into Jack’s ear. “’s ‘elp me, I’m gonna make you smile ‘f it’s the last thing I ever do.”
“You’ll have to fuck me first,” Jack gasped, his head flung back. “Fuck me, Ennis. Ram it in hard. Make me scream.”
“Maybe,” Ennis allowed, his hard cock jerking delightedly, and delightfully, against his trousers. “Maybe I will.” His hand slipped between them, and worked at freeing Jack from his clothes. Jack didn’t need telling twice, and in a moment he was at the same good work, helping Ennis make up his mind. It didn’t take long for them to make things a lot easier for each other, but somehow in the process, each managed to let his hand roam quite a lot, caressing and squeezing and letting fingers rediscover all the private details of size and shape, even as the mouths came together again, as right and natural as breathing, lips and tongues caressing and promising eagerly, mouths locking and shifting.
And then Jack broke the kiss with a groan, his head going back and his eyes closing. Ennis had gotten his hand around both rigid tools, and was stroking them together, making him whimper.
“What’s a matter, Jack?” Ennis’ dark voice was like warm honey. “Don’t you want me to kiss you no more?”
“Course I do,” Jack managed.
“That’s good,” Ennis nodded, his lips close to Jack’s ear. “Where you want me to kiss you next?”
Jack was startled out of his daze. “What?”
“Guess I wasn’t clear enough.” The words were distinct. “Where would you like me to kiss you next?”
“You askin me?” Jack could hardly think, let alone speak. Ennis had let go his stroking, allowing them to slide against each other, unfettered, and the heat and intimacy between them was nearly unbearable.
“You see anyone else here name a Jack Twist? You gone tell me” Ennis stuck his tongue into Jack’s ear “or you just rather get fucked right now?”
“My cock!” Jack blurted. “I want you to kiss my cock!”
“Your cock?” Ennis growled low in his ear. with this he slid both big hands under Jack’s shirttails and pushed up shirt and undershirt. “My goodness gracious, Jack Twist wants me to kiss his cock. Hmm. Well, I could maybe do that. That all you want me to do?” Ennis knew it wasn’t. “Just kiss your cock?” He liked to hear Jack say it, wanted to make him say it.
“Suck it!” Jack begged. “Suck my cock, Ennis. Please.”
“Mm, mm, mm,” Ennis clucked. “Suck your cock.” Jack’s whole body jerked at the notes in his lover’s voice. “Mmm. Don’t know. Gone have to think about that.” And Ennis began to kiss his way down.
Jack was panting so hard he was near hyperventilating, eyes wide and staring at nothing, trembling with anticipation. He felt Ennis’ lips, and his tongue, leave a trail of fire down the center of his chest. The kissing wandered a bit after that, lips planted slowly, thoughtfully, here and there, even as Ennis’ big, calloused hands wandered over bared skin. His fingers combing spasmodically through Ennis’ curly hair, Jack had a curious sense of time slowing, and stopping, and the world itself was starting to get dark and grainy.
“Hey,” Ennis said softly, as if to himself. “What’s this, huh?” His breath was warm on Jack’s straining manhood. Jack gritted his teeth, so aroused he was near tears. “Looks mighty uncomfortable.”
Jack didn’t have to be hit over the head to get it. “It hurts,” he whined. Which was nothing less than the truth. “Ennis, it hurts.”
“See if I can make it feel better.” And Ennis planted a soft, wet kiss on Jack’s handsome, flushed cockhead. Jack’s body jerked again, and a fresh love-tear oozed out of the tiny opening. It seemed only right to Ennis to taste it, making Jack groan from deep in his belly,
“Oh, Ennis.”
And that was when Ennis dropped the playacting. As Jack sank back against the truck with a cry almost of despair, Ennis sent his tongue slithering all over and around the gorgeous big bell-end of Jack Twist’s aching cock even as his mouth opened wide and softly captured the prize for his own.
“Ennis. Ennis. Oh, damn. Damn.” Ennis slowly took him down almost to the crisp black whiskers, then pulled back to lavish his attentions where they would do the most good. Almost as an afterthought, one large hand spread itself over Jack’s belly, fingers and thumb on either side of the full shaft, while the other worked at giving Ennis some relief.
“Oh, Ennis.” Jack hardly knew he was speaking. Little inarticulate cries worked themselves out of his throat as he surrendered to Ennis’ hunger. “Unh. Unh. Unh. Oh, Ennis. Ennis. Oh, that’s so good. Oh, damn, that’s so good. You’re gone make me come. Unh. Oh, Ennis. Oh, Ennis. Oh, you’re so good at this. You’re so greedy. You’re so damn greedy.” His long fingers clenched and unclenched in the ragged hair. “Oh, shit. Oh, Ennis, suck my cock. I need to come.”
But Ennis needed no prompting, no guiding from the hands almost pulling his hair as they urged him on. He was deliriously out of control, swamped in sensation, reveling in the heavy scent of male musk and the taste and texture of the male spear he was devouring. Jack was trembling continuously now, taut with his nearness to release, and Ennis was more than willing to help.
“Ennis. Ennis. Ennis, oh, Ennis. Ohhh, Ennis. Ohhh, Ennis. Ennis. Ennis.” It was this Ennis had been waiting for. It was this, Jack chanting his name over and over like a stream tumbling over the cobbles in its bed, that moved Ennis again and again when they were apart to find a place to hide and wring it out something hard. This was the sound of Jack Twist ready to come. Now, only now, did Ennis slide that other busy hand between Jack’s legs, and two fingers inside, and caressing, even as he set his tongue to flicking and fluttering at the magic spot where velvety head joined jutting shaft.
The reaction was immediate. Jack’s back arched and his head flung back so hard it banged the side of the truck. He hardly noticed. With a cry of “Oh, Ennis!” he went into release, hips jerking, giving Ennis the salty mouthful he had worked so hard for. It seemed to go on quite a while, but then Jack was always generous, and Ennis didn’t hurry him, didn’t want any of that sticky stuff to go to waste, made sure he milked out every last salty drop.
When Jack was done, Ennis hauled himself to his feet, licking his lips, dark eyes blazing into bewildered blue ones. With an authority that would not be brooked, he spun his lover around, pulled him to one side, bent him over the high seat of the truck, and took him, hard.
“Jack. Jack. Oh, fuck. Oh, Jack, I gotta come.” Ennis gave no quarter, shoving and thrusting even as he entered, bucking worse than any horse Jack had ever broken to the saddle. It lasted longer than he would have thought possible, but nature would have her due, and all too soon, the maddened Ennis gasped out “Uh. Uh. Oh, fuck. Oh, Jack. Oh, Jack!”
With a half-dozen violent strokes, he convulsed, with a hoarse, guttural cry as his need for Jack Twist was wrenched from him yet again. He was dimly aware of Jack groaning under him, of Jack having a second orgasm, and then they collapsed together.
It was a good little time before Ennis drew back and slapped Jack across the buttocks. “Now, cowboy, you better get your ass in that truck.”
Jack straightened, and turned. “I don’t think so.”
“What?” Ennis demanded.
“Pull my pants up and drive off with you leakin out of me? You big idiot.” Jack clouted his shoulder and then hung on to it as he bent over to pull off one boot, and then the other, to free himself from his jeans as Ennis watched incredulously. “Now come on. Get your ass down to that creek with me and let’s get clean.”
Ennis couldn’t argue with his logic, but where Jack was concerned, he was always inclined to be suspicious. “Long’s that’s all we gone do, is get clean.”
Jack made a face. “Scout’s honor.” It was only a good deal later, when Ennis called him on it, that Jack reminded him that he’d never been a Scout…
As Ennis resigned himself to the inevitable, he soothed his conscience with the thought that the important thing was that Jack Twist was smiling.
And as for Ennis Del Mar, by the time Jack was done with him, he was positively grinning.
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| Never Enough Sleep, Part 1 |
[Jul. 28th, 2006|10:32 pm] |
Never Enough Sleep, Part 1
It's Ennis and Jack's tenth anniversary. Poor Ennis just wants some sleep, but bad boy Jack just won't leave him alone…
Rated X-tra Juicy.
These remarkable characters are not mine. They are the creation of Annie Proulx. And they are fun to play with.
June, 1973.
Jack Twist, awakening, made several delightful discoveries at about the same moment. The first was that he was lying against Ennis Del Mar, was in fact wrapped around him from behind. He let out a happy little whiffle of breath against the place where Ennis’ neck and shoulders met and kissed the spot softly for good measure.
The second discovery he made was that they were naked. This was especially pleasing. It wasn’t often warm enough for them to sleep this way during their mountain getaways, but the nights had been mild since their arrival three days before. Ennis, ever the pessimist, predicted a frost, but that hadn’t stopped him taking full advantage of the opportunity to sleep skin to skin with Jack.
Next, Jack became aware that at some point while they both slept, Ennis’ right hand had found his, or vice versa, and Ennis was now holding their two hands, fingers laced, against his chest. Quick tears stung Jack’s eyes. Ennis, if not given to talking about his feelings, was in his quiet way very affectionate, but to find Ennis embracing their twined hands even in sleep… His throat closed up, and he kissed Ennis’ shoulder again.
And then he realized that it was raining. It was probably what had awakened him. Jack’s lips parted in a wide, toothy, and distinctly wolfish grin. It was raining. That meant he and Ennis wouldn’t be riding anywhere today…except right here in the tent. And that was when Jack made his last discovery—the obvious one, really. But at that moment, it became a lot more obvious.
“Hey, Ennis,” he said softly, laying his face against Ennis’ shoulder. When this produced no response, he squeezed the hand that was linked with his. “Hey, Ennis,” he crooned again, nuzzling warm skin with a scratchy face.
Ennis groaned. It was not a groan of pleasure, or desire, but of annoyance:
“Aw, shit.”
“It’s rainin, Ennis,” Jack announced, with quiet glee. “Know what that means?”
A brief silence, then: “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” Jack grinned, licking his lips. “Exactly.”
Ennis made a sound like a grumpy bear being prodded with a stick. “Damn it, Jack, I need some fuckin sleep,” he muttered.
“Too late.” Jack moved against him, intimately and suggestively. “I’m up already.”
“Wonderful. I ain’t.” Ennis pulled Jack’s hand closer to his chest, or tried to, but Jack slipped his fingers loose, and slid them down.
“Yeah, you are too,” he announced a moment later, propping himself up on one elbow.
Ennis let out a breath. “You grab it, it’s gone do that.” But though he didn’t sound less irritated, he sounded a whole lot less sleepy.
“Got news for you. It was already doin that.” Jack was encouraging it, too, to go right on doing it.
Ennis tried to pull his hand away, but somehow his own hand only ended up riding Jack’s as it continued a slow, and very damned nice, tease. “Jack, you got to quit that. I ain’t kiddin.” Ennis made a sharp movement that failed to dislodge the warm, strong hand curled possessively around his stiff manhood. “I need me some damn sleep.”
“Well, I need me some seein to.” This was soft, in his ear, followed by a light nip of his earlobe that made Ennis shiver all the way down.
“Seein to? You need seein off,” Ennis told him a little breathlessly. “You’re just a damn rabbit, is what you are.” Giving up, he turned over and faced his beautiful tormenter.
It was a shock, as it always was. There was Jack, smiling mischievously like every fevered dream Ennis had ever had of him, come true. The dark hair was tousled, and the heavy stubble combined with the black brushstroke brows and the fair skin to accentuate the arresting eyes almost ridiculously. And there was a look in those eyes, a look Ennis knew was for him alone, the blue skies dark and cloudy with lust and a terrible need that went far, far beyond lust. Some part of Ennis, as it always did, failed to understand: Why me, Jack? I’m as plain as the hind end of a mule. You coulda had anybody. Why me?
He didn’t know, as he stared back into that blue soul-gaze, what Jack saw: intense, serious, compelling eyes that at one moment were nearly black, at another dark amber, set in a fascinating face whose lines blended an almost granitic masculinity with an unexpected leavening of vulnerable softness, especially around the mouth, a mouth that when relaxed, as it was now, was nearly as kissable and tempting as Jack’s own.
And it was a temptation Jack rarely resisted. As Ennis lay temporarily paralyzed, Jack acted, pushing him onto his back and coming down hungry, mouth finding mouth with eager assurance. Ennis groaned again, and his body arched up to meet his lover’s, as Jack’s quick tongue slid sensually all over his lips before darting between them to taste and plunder. Ennis surrendered, with a harsh indrawn breath, and their mouths locked, passion igniting between them.
Abruptly, the earth moved. At least, that’s what it felt like to the startled Jack, but when his eyes flew open, and he saw both the tent and Ennis above him, he realized that it wasn’t the earth that had moved, but Ennis, which in terms of raw power was often much the same thing. Ennis had turned the tables with his usual decisiveveness, and was now staring down at him with hooded eyes.
“Don’t think you can just bother me any old how you like, Jack fuckin Twist,” Ennis said softly. “We gone do this my way.”
Jack licked his lips. “Make me,” he whispered.
The next thing he knew, his hands were pinned over his head. “Gotcha now, Jack-rabbit.” There was a quiet amusement in the voice that made Jack shiver, washed the laughing defiance right off his face, and parted his lips.
“Ennis,” he whispered.
Ennis dropped on him then, gentle, inevitable, a thistledown alighting on a leaf, his mouth settling with care only after the rest of his body had fitted itself exactly to Jack’s, skin to skin, the long, lean lines sliding together like coming home, surging into sync, rippling together with liquid tension. He still had Jack’s hands pinned over his head, but in truth they surrendered to each other, as they always did. Ennis didn’t hurry, he didn’t like to be rushed ever, and his free hand found Jack’s face, cradled it, as his tongue met Jack’s quicksilver eagerness with deliberate, passionate earnestness, dart met with thrust, quick taste met with a slow licking of the open lips as his thumb slid under the bottom lip. The only sounds were of harsh breathing and half-muffled cries of protest and desire, Jack moaning and whimpering, Ennis growling and purring in his deeper voice as the mouths and bodies slid together in the ancient dance.
Ennis dropped his head beside Jack’s abruptly, chest heaving against his lover’s.
“Christ Jesus, Ennis,” Jack gasped, his body surging involuntarily. “Christ, you can kiss.”
Ennis’ lips brushed his ear. His head swam; he had difficulty getting the words out: “I had a good teacher.” His hoarse voice made it two words: tee-chur.
Jack’s eyes closed, he caught his breath; his arms, freed, wound around Ennis’ head and back.
“I never knew what a kiss was, before I kissed you the first time,” he breathed. For a moment they just held each other.
Then Jack butted his nose against the side of his only friend’s face, making Ennis look at him.
“Ten years ago,” Jack told him deliberately. “Give or take a day.”
He saw the shock in Ennis’ eyes, saw him fall back in time to that night that had begun with fear, and reassurance, and grown into passion, and completion. Expressions, muted as they always were on that face, chased themselves from surprise to remembrance to acceptance, and then they were gone, and Ennis’ eyes narrowed.
“’Bout time you got it right, then,” he said, and took Jack’s mouth again, hard this time, no fooling. Now the hands were in play along with the powerful masculine bodies, roaming over flesh, muscle, and bone, calluses scratching lightly, a feeling familiar and beloved to both as large, strong hands explored and claimed. It was Ennis, as it often was, who first got a hand between them. His aching cock had been bumping and sliding against Jack, and Jack’s stiff tool, in a very stimulating but unsatisfactory way, and he needed more than that. His big hand curled around both proudly substantial weapons and began stroking them together, slicking them with the love-tears both were unashamedly shedding. He was dimly aware of Jack’s fingernails digging into his arm, the other hand combing through his hair. It would be easy, it would be damned easy, to just keep going this way, just keep going…
But Ennis had more in mind than that. Suddenly, he pulled away, coming to his knees. Jack, not unnaturally, misunderstood, and started to turn away.
“Uh, uh, cowboy,” Ennis said, though it cost him more than Jack was allowed to know not to just take what Jack was offering here and now. “Outside.”
Bewildered, Jack stared, motion arrested. “It’s raining.”
“Yeah. You done told me.” It was a real effort to talk, with Jack staring up at him, great eyes wide, graceful lines all bare, big, handsome cock at full staff. Ennis shook his head to clear it.
Jack was having his own problems, staring at Ennis’ broad chest, flat muscular belly and rigid manhood, even larger than Jack’s, with its prominent veins and plum-sized knob. He licked his lips. “Why we gotta go out?” The words were complaining and seductive at the same time. He fell back to his elbows.
“Cause I can’t stand up in here,” Ennis told him simply.
Jack was outside almost before he got the door fully unzipped, shivering in the cold rain. He fell to his knees as Ennis, scorning to hurry, joined him, but Ennis lifted him by the chin and made him stand again. For a moment, their eyes met in a gaze that seared them both, and then the two were one again, kissing, the rain unregarded, time falling away.
And then Jack was kissing his way down, enjoying it. He would do this as often as Ennis would let him, which was often. Ennis had never quite decided whether he liked fucking or being cocksucked better. The best thing was probably to just keep trying both, and maybe eventually he would know.
The rain was steady now, and Ennis’ belly was slippery, with that and with trails of salty, musky tears. The rain muted the heavy, heady scent somewhat with its own sweet fragrance, but it was still unmistakably Ennis Del Mar, and Jack, shivering a little, found himself rubbing his face against the flat belly, tickling and scratching Ennis with his beard. Inevitably he rubbed against something even harder, with a heat of its own that defied the chill of the rain, and this he began caressing with lips and tongue. With a groan, Ennis curled one hand around the base of his stiff pride and slipped the other into Jack’s dark hair, bringing flushed cockhead and soft mouth into close proximity, rubbing the silky plum against parted lips and the quick questing tongue.
And then the curved lips parted further, and the suddenly impatient Ennis made a rather abrupt entry into a place that if it wasn’t Heaven was close enough for the moment. With a guttural noise, he closed his fist in Jack’s hair, got hold of his shoulder, and spurred him on.
It seemed like Jack made it a point of honor to take Ennis a little deeper every time. Ennis was too big for him to get as close as Ennis could for him, but he never stopped trying, and Ennis’ moans of gratitude told him the effort was appreciated.
“Jack. Jack. Oh, fuck…Jesus H fuckin Twist.” Ennis shook his head again, but was helpless before Jack Twist at his most determined. “Don’t you suck me like that. I ain’t ready. Don’t you do that,” he groaned, pulling Jack’s head closer, encouraging the noisy, eager suck with both hands now in the dark, wet hair. It was so good. Jesus, it was so fucking good.
And then Ennis pulled back, found his resolve again. It had to finish with a fuck. Jack, torn, gave up his capture reluctantly.
“Said we was gone do this my way,” Ennis reminded him shortly, and dropped smoothly to his knees. Jack, hair in his eyes, was shivering, but Ennis, dark eyes now dominant as the wet curls were plastered to his head, heated him as he made him turn and shoved him down.
The sight made Ennis growl, and he lurched forward, sliding his full erection against the tight buttocks that cushioned his pushing and shoving just right. Jack was swaying, enticing, ready, panting, but Ennis, head buzzing with fatigue, hadn’t forgotten that all this had started because Jack wouldn’t let him have a few more hours of badly needed sleep, and suddenly, even as he rubbed his big tool teasingly in the cleft, he gave his inconsiderate lover a hard slap.
Jack shied like a startled horse as Ennis slapped his arse again, hard.
“Wake me up when I need me some sleep,” Ennis muttered, bending over his back. “You a bad boy, Jack. Real bad.” Another slap.
Jack groaned, and reached for his cock. Ennis knocked his hand away. “Uh, uh. No playin. Not when you gettin your punishment.” Another slap.
“Oh, fuck,” Jack panted. “Oh, Ennis.” He was weeping in his excitement, and his shivering now had nothing to do with cold. “Oh, Ennis. Don’t spank me. I didn’t mean it.”
“Hell you didn’t. You always wantin a fuck, don’t care nothin bout anythin else. You ain’t natural, boy. Time you learned.”
With an especially hard slap, Ennis mounted, and took what he wanted.
It was relief that made him groan this time, and relief that tore an answering cry from Jack as the two again made themselves one. Every other moment together was tension, all other moments led to this one, the union that was so powerful in itself that climax was only a matter of degree. Once it had gotten this far, there was almost never any controlling what followed, for either of them. It was too intimate, too intense, and too precious. Ennis, spanking reflexively, thrust with an authority that spurred Jack to madness.
“Ennis. Ennis. Oh, Ennis. Damn…oh damn, oh, damn…Ennis…Ennis…Ennis, oh, Ennis…” It was the river in flow, and it was more than Ennis could bear. His balls, slapping against Jack, tightened exquisitely. He bent over Jack, reached around, and closed his hand over Jack’s jerking fist.
“Come, Jack,” he said hoarsely. “I gotta come. Come now. Now. Now.” His body began to convulse.
“Ennis! Ennis! Oh, Ennis! I’m comin! I’m comin!”
“Jack! Jack! Oh, fuck!” And they went into rictus together.
When Ennis finally pulled away, both were shivering uncontrollably. Jack’s teeth were chattering.
“Fuck this,” Ennis gasped, and they all but flung themselves into the tent and closed it up behind them. Once inside, rather than get the bedroll all wet, they set to drying each other with the bath towels. Both were so cold they were clumsy, and the process was a rather rough one.
Unfortunately for poor Ennis, it was also rather stimulating, and rapidly escalated to the point where it became obvious that he still wasn’t going to be allowed to sleep.
Eventually, however, the two, being one, became two again, and Ennis, having ridden Jack hard about the whole matter, collapsed on top of his beloved, and slept.
For a little while, anyway.
"Never Enough Sleep" continues in Part Two… |
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| Never Enough Sleep, Part 2 |
[Jul. 28th, 2006|10:16 pm] |
Never Enough Sleep, Part 2
Rated X
These characters are not mine. They are the divinely inspired creations of Annie Proulx. I'm just, ah, playing with them.
Late in the afternoon, after a breakfast so late it was really lunch, the sky cleared and they packed up, saddled the horses and followed the stream course. It was just something they had gotten in the habit of doing over the years on their longer trips—moving every few days to a new camp a few miles on, and then working their way back. Neither even knew why it had started, just Jack saying on their second trip “let’s move somewhere else today, Ennis,” and Ennis agreeing without giving it any thought. In truth, had they thought about it, they would have realized that moving from here to there, and the work of setting up and striking camp especially, gave them a sweet echo of the Brokeback days. Just riding along together, in no great hurry, with no special destination in mind, seemed to put them outside of time and the world again, and brought them together with a special intensity whenever they stopped.
They’d been wending their way along a fairly narrow edge for nearly two hours, and had seen nothing better than a few little gravel bars or tiny clearings not nearly big enough. And then, they rounded a bend and there it was.
The place might have been made for them. There was good graze on both sides of the creek, which here was shallow enough to cross easily, while the spot itself offered a gorgeous southwestern view of craggy peaks in the near and middle distance. As for the clearing itself, it was like something almost out of a fairyland. Trees pressed in close on three sides, but they were mostly aspen and beech, and not the dank firs that smelled so good but were always so dark. The clearing itself was only about twenty yards across, meadow grasses mixing freely with lupine and columbine. At the back of the clearing lay a great boulder from some forgotten ice age, covered with several centuries’ splashes of lichens in yellow and orange. But beyond that, the clearing had something else: an intimate, private quality that seemed to beckon, and welcome, the two who must always hide from the world who they really were and what they felt for each other. Ennis looked at Jack, and Jack at him, in the same moment, and both felt the belly-tickle of desire. They dismounted without needing to say a word. This was the place. Both also knew they would not move from it until it was time to leave.
They worked in silence setting up the camp. The labor had become a ritual, a slow tease for them both, one they had grown to appreciate and anticipate, each watching the other out of the corner of the eyes, enjoying the displays of supple body and masculine strength. It was a given that it wouldn’t be long, in warmer weather, before Jack would very deliberately unbutton his shirt enough to pull it and the undershirt off together, and maybe stretch a bit, ostentatiously, perhaps running his hands down his body as if to call attention to its graceful lines as Ennis watched with narrowed eyes. Ennis usually turned his back to accomplish the same operation, without haste, perhaps folding the shirt with some care and laying it aside, all the while knowing, needing to know, that when he turned he would find Jack watching him hungrily. The work of pitching the tent, gathering firewood, and setting up the fire ring and grill would continue then, along with lingering and much more direct stares. Getting everything set up comfortably was essential, and even Jack showed remarkable restraint, as a rule. But all the while, his cock would be swelling, stiffening, and displaying itself boldly against his jeans as his eyes wandered over his friend, and he never made any effort to hide it. Ennis, though not as blatant about it as Jack, had been known to let his eyes drift down and linger over special areas of interest pretty openly as he worked, with results that Ennis didn’t hide either.
The last thing they did, when the nights were as mild as this, was to lay an eight-foot square of oilcloth near the fire and then spread out a couple plaid blankets and their pillows. They had gotten lucky here, too, and there was already in place a large old broken log that would serve equally well as fireside seat and headboard.
Ennis, having given the blankets a final twitch, straightened up. Jack was staring at him, making no pretense of doing anything else, feet planted apart, hands on waist, eyes glittering.
“What you lookin at, Jack Twist?” Ennis asked softly.
“Only thing here worth lookin at,” Jack told him. He came around the foot of the blankets. “And the way I figure, I’ve been just lookin long enough.”
They seemed to blend together like the spirals of smoke from their fire, winding around each other so naturally, so easily. In every kiss Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar ever shared was the memory of that first kiss, so long ago on Brokeback, and that other kiss, when they had shoved each other into the walls below Ennis’ Riverton apartment. They came together gladly, as they always had since that night ten years before, and the primal power of what was theirs alone, theirs and no one else’s, shivered through them.
His feet planted apart, Jack had Ennis’ face in both hands. Ennis for his part had wrapped himself around his lover, cradling him, rocking him, as they swayed together. Jack had long ago stopped wondering why it was so wild with Ennis always. He just leaned in and devoured his greedy share, crooning and moaning in the kiss as arousal surged through his body like a river in first thaw.
Ennis didn’t wonder either. When he was in Riverton, he worried about the intensity of his feelings for another man. Right now, though, he rejoiced in them. He was where he needed to be, in the arms of his other half, they were alone, and nothing else mattered.
With a groan from deep inside, Ennis slipped his fingers into Jack’s hair, pulling his face closer as their mouths locked. It was just so right. It was so damn right. It was Jack, and that was right, broad shoulders and hairy chest and big hands that could close so hard they left marks, or caress like a breeze whispering over his skin. And that perfect, kissable mouth, curved and soft and oh, so good at everything wonderful…
You’re mine. You’re mine. I want you. I need you. But Jack was teasing him, tongue sliding over his lips, darting between in delighted contest with his, flicking, stabbing, aggravating Ennis, who wanted everything, who wanted Jack to moan and cry for him. His breath hissing deeply, he pulled Jack just a little closer, no daylight between them now, and took uncontested possession of Jack’s mouth. Kiss me. Kiss me, Jack. And that was when Jack hooked Ennis’ legs with his heel and flung them together onto the blankets.
The fall knocked the breath out of both, and then they were rolling together, laughing and wrestling, Jack on top first, then Ennis, no clear winner, long legs flailing, wiry arms grasping and slipping. It was desperate, and very aggressive, each reveling in his own unchecked strength and that of his lover. Both would get bruised, and scratched, and sometimes a muscle got overstrained here or there. Neither minded, ever. It was right, and natural to embrace the animal madness within them. It felt so damn good.
Ennis pinned Jack at last, as he always did, always the stronger, wanting to be dominant, but in truth Jack wanted it as much as he did. He scissored Jack’s legs with his knees, surging against him, sliding his rigid manhood against its hard, yearning mate. The lovers fitted together, belly to belly, aware of the love-heat between them, slightly sweated, deeply aroused and deeply relaxed.
Ennis wrapped his arms around Jack’s head, and, slipping his fingers into Jack’s hair, pulled his head back suddenly, making Jack’s eyes widen and his lips part.
“What is it with you, huh?” Ennis growled softly, nuzzling his neck. “Can’t even set up a camp without you starin at me and all.” Jack moved under him eagerly, and Ennis pushed back, hard, making Jack moan softly. “Don’t like it,” Ennis added sternly. “Get me all uncomfortable, make me all hot.” He ran a wet tongue along the underside of Jack’s jaw to his earlobe, making Jack moan in protest. “You impossible, Jack Twist. Thought I’d learned you this morning, but you still a bad boy.”
“Oh, you learned me, all right,” Jack breathed, his hands going to Ennis’ face, spreading wide. “You learned me good. Just want you to learn me again, is all.” He licked his parted lips, slowly, brazenly, his eyes dark with languid invitation.
“Bad.” Ennis shook his head. “Naughty.” He closed the little distance that remained between them.
His mouth found Jack’s with soft abruptness, a little inward catch of breath at contact, and both felt the hot, liquid, electric pulse deep in the belly that made them surge together yearningly. Jack’s fingers wound themselves into Ennis’ curly hair and he gave himself with joy into the kiss, surrendering and conquering both as his lover devoured what he had taken.
It was Ennis who broke the kiss, as Jack reached between them.
“Uh, uh.” He pulled Jack’s hand away. “Now you gone lie there and be good. Got to do me some checkin.”
“Checkin?” Jack frowned, prepared at a moment’s notice to complain.
Ennis shook his head. “Fell on you pretty hard. Mighta hurt you.” He came to his knees, crouched low over Jack. “Then you was wrasslin around, tryin a get away. Got to check you good.” He ran his hands meditatively along the line of Jack’s shoulders. “Any stockman worth his pay gone take good care of his little bull calf. Huh?”
Jack shivered, and settled. “That what I am? Thought I was a jackrabbit.”
Ennis frowned. “You a damn nuisance, is what you are. Run off, get in trouble, just a bad little bull calf won’t stop runnin away from his mama.” The deep voice made the words a caress. “Always havin to fuss with you, make sure you ain’t killed yourself.” Large hands slid down Jack’s muscular arms, admiring the sleek, wiry lines.
“Gone take care of me, ain’t ya?” Jack asked softly, great eyes searching his lover’s face.
“Got to,” Ennis muttered, never meeting the serious gaze. He bent, his lips grazing Jack's collarbone “You worth too much.”
Jack caught his breath, his eyes closing. “Ennis,” he whispered. “Ennis.”
“Shh. And stop wigglin. You a fussy little thing.” Ennis breathed. But Jack couldn’t have held still to save his life. Ennis seemed determined to run his large, callused hands over every inch of Jack’s body, slow and careful and following hands with mouth, slow, soft kisses over breast and nipples and ribs and down the center line of the belly, and Jack writhed and squirmed longingly under his touch, the heat building unbearably.
All at once Ennis’ hands checked. “Huh,” he announced. “Found somethin.”
Jack’s breathing was quick and shallow. “Yeah you have,” he panted.
Knowing fingers searched, explored, rubbed the hard shape straining against denim, slid over the slick spot. “Need to have a look at this,” Ennis decided.
“Please,” Jack gasped. “Hurts somethin terrible.” He bit his lip as Ennis undid his buckle, and then the button, and then eased the zip down to let him spring free at last.
But he couldn’t stifle a cry when a strong hand curled around his heavy shaft and began stroking. “Ennis! Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”
“Feel better when I do that?” Ennis asked with apparently clinical interest.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuckin Jesus, Ennis,” Jack moaned, arching into the caress. Strong fingers stroked, slid over the slickened head, rubbed the small opening. Then the other hand joined the play, and rubbed the hairy balls before slipping downward and finding that other caress that by itself could bring a man to madness.
“Ennis! Ennis!” Jack cried. “Fuck me! Fuck me, Ennis! Fuck me!”
Ennis let go abruptly and stood up. With swift economy of motion, he shed boots, socks and jeans, revealing a big, jutting erection, plum all but purple with his need. Jack’s face went slack with lust at the sight, and his eyes followed it as Ennis dropped to his knees and with the same controlled impatience, divested Jack of the remainder of his clothing. Only now did Ennis lean off to one side and make quick use of the stuff in the jar he’d once told Alma kept the lines from tangling. And then he was on Jack, pushing his legs up against his body and mounting on him, sinking into the heat with a groan torn from his belly that was answered in Jack’s tenor cry.
“Fuck me,” Jack moaned in time with the powerful thrusts that rocked him forward and back in a deep, strong rythym. “Come on. Come on, Ennis, fuck me. Fuck me hard. I want it hard. Damn…oh, damn, you’re so big…you’re so fuckin big…oh, shit, oh shit, you gotta fuck me so hard, come on, Ennis…come on…hurt me, fuck me hard, harder, harder…Ennis …Ennis…Ennis…Ennis…”
“Oh, fuck,” Ennis gasped. “Oh, fuck. Oh. Oh. Uhhh. Uhhh. Jack. Jack, I’m comin, I’m comin. Uhhh. Uhhh…Jack. Jaaack. Uhhhh.” His body convulsed into violent spasm even as Jack’s hand went between them and with a half-dozen strokes, brought his own pent-up need bursting from him as he went into climax with his beloved.
* * *
When Jack returned to their alfresco bed, he found that Ennis had gotten there first, lit the fire to heat coffee, and was waiting for him with one of the blankets. Ennis didn’t need it himself, but Jack chilled easily always, especially after almost ten years in Childress. Dropping to his knees and lying down on his side, Jack smiled as a strong arm hooked him around the waist and pulled him close even as Ennis drew the blanket over him. He sighed as they settled into a snug pair of spoons. Ennis’ lips brushed his ear, tickling.
“Come ‘ere, cuddlebunny.”
Jack laughed. “’Cuddlebunny!’ Where’d you get that, Ennis?” His voice was laced with fond amusement.
“What’s a matter? You don’t like it?” Ennis sounded affronted.
Jack laughed again, nestling back against the lean naked body of Ennis Del Mar, reveling in the contact. “No, I like it fine. It’s kinda silly, is all. Just don’t sound like you. Kinda cute, though. ‘Cuddlebunny.’” He snickered.
Ennis rubbed his face against Jack’s shoulder. “My mama used to call me that, when I was real little.”
Jack went still. “She used a say, ‘you’re just a little cuddlebunny,’” Ennis added quietly. “Don’t know why. Guess I…just…I mean, I know I liked her a hold me a lot. –When I was little,” he added defensively.
Jack turned to face him. “Course you did! She was your mama.” His voice was fiercely compassionate, his face serious, black brows drawn tightly together as he ran a knuckle down the side of Ennis’ face. But Ennis was withdrawn now, and Jack realized he looked very much as he had one long ago night when he had still been afraid of what was between them. “I still like havin my mama hold me,” he added stoutly. “Course she don’t get to, much, not with Daddy always tellin her to leave me be or somethin,” he added. “But you bet I do hold her a few times and good when I’m there no matter what, Ennis. Cause she needs it too, I’m thinkin.” His voice became reflective, his gaze drifted off to one side. “Tell you what, I think sometimes she needs it even more than I do.” He lifted Ennis’ chin with a crooked finger and thumb, to make his lover look at him. “Cause you know, she ain’t got no Ennis to hold her. Just me.” But Ennis turned his head away, and Jack knew he was retreating further. It was time to change the subject.
“Maybe your mama thought you looked like a bunny,” he suggested lightly.
Ennis’ lips twitched. “K. E., he said I looked like a bull. Always had this forelock, and I used a kick the ground when I was standin around, like a bull pawin. And you know, bright light, always makes me kinda squint. K. E. said I always looked like I was mad.”
“Bet you was cute,” Jack teased.
Ennis met his eyes for a brief, amused moment. “Me? Huh uh. I was just a little snot-nose. Never was cute.” His eyes skated over Jack’s face. “Bet you
was, though. Huh?”
This time it was Jack whose gaze dropped. He wasn’t used to compliments from Ennis, and he knew he had just been paid one. Still, he laughed. “Hell no, I wasn’t cute! I was tall and skinny and had these big eyes. They used to stick out.” He made a goofy face at Ennis. “Other kids called me ‘bug eyes.’ And ‘fish face.’” His mouth quirked.
Ennis frowned. “I’da been there, I’da busted them kids one.”
Jack’s laugh this time was full-hearted and full of affection. “Hell you would have. You’da been callin me names right along with ‘em,” he said without heat, stroking Ennis’ face with his knuckles. “Kids is cruel. That’s the way they is. –Besides. It’s easier, just be funny. Lot less painful, too.”
They reflected on this for a moment, and then Jack looked up in surprise as Ennis’ fingers laced through his own. “That why you such a fool, Jack Twist?” Ennis’ eyes were gentle.
Again Jack had to look away. “Been that anyway, I expect,” he shrugged, mouth quirking, but his fingers tightened in Ennis’.
“Yeah, I reckon,” Ennis agreed. But he was frowning, and his mouth was working, and suddenly, just when Jack was thinking he needed kissing, Ennis sat up abruptly.
“Ain’t right,” he muttered. “Just ain’t right, Jack.” He flung the blanket aside, and stood up.
“Ain’t right, Jack,” he repeated, loudly, walking toward the fast-flowing creek. Jack, sitting up, watched him, nervous, not at all sure what it was Ennis didn’t think was right. Then Ennis turned, and flung his hands out.
“What? I don’t get it, Jack. I think about it, and I think about it, and I just don’t get it!” Ennis had no idea how arresting a sight he was in his nudity, but just for once, frowning uncertainly up at him, Jack hardly noticed.
“Why’s it wrong, Jack? Why’s it wrong, what we got? Why we gotta be way the fuck out here, hind end a nowhere, just to talk bout our mamas huggin us and them mean kids you knew?”
Jack was up off the blanket and beside him in three steps.
“I mean, why’s it matter if we want a fuck each other?” Ennis demanded. “Why we gotta be afraid a that? Huh? I mean, I could fuck ten women beside my wife, and every guy in town’d be snickerin at what a big stud bull I am, wishin they got so lucky. But they find out I fuck you, they kill me. I don’t know why. Why’s it wrong?” There were tears now, in the dark eyes. “ I just want you, Jack. I mean, that feels right to me. Why’s it wrong?”
Jack’s eyes were angry, but his anger was not at Ennis. “It ain’t wrong, Ennis,” he said in a low voice. “Listen to me, Ennis Del Mar. What we got, ain’t wrong.”
“Bible says it is,” Ennis shot back.
“That a fact?” Jack’s eyes were hot. “Bible says a lot of things. You know what? Used to know this kid, had the whole thing memorized, time he was fifteen. We used to make him tell us the dirty parts. ‘Song a Solomon,’ kind a stuff. One time he tells us, Lot done fucked his own daughters. Yeah. I looked it up. He did. You know that? And that was okay. Lot was the one, wife got turned into a pillar of salt, just cause she didn’t want to leave her house when God done destroyed Gomorrah. But it was okay with God, he fucked his kids. Tell you what. You go home, fuck your girls, then try telling the sheriff you only done it cause Lot did. See how far that get you. Bible got some good things in it, but it’s full a shit, too.”
Ennis had his own doubts, but he wasn’t ready to go quite that far, and he didn’t like Jack talking about his girls that way, either. “It’s against the law, Jack. What we do.”
“So’s speedin,” Jack shot back. “So’s drinkin before you’re sixteen. But we both done that, too. What you gone do? Everything’s against the fuckin law, Ennis. You ever had one them preachers in your church, tell you you gone go to Hell, no matter what? Yell at everybody they’s sinners, and gonna burn, and maybe they’s eighty-year-ole grammas?” Ennis nodded. “Same fuckin thing, I reckon. My mama ain’t gone to Hell, tell you that. Ain’t no way. Just some people in this world ain’t happy less everybody else is scared of their own shadow. They had their way, it’d be like Hitler. So I like lettin you stick your dick up my ass. What the fuck? We ain’t hurtin nobody.” Jack reflected for a moment, realized maybe that wasn’t quite true. “Least ways, we wouldn’t be hurtin nobody, they didn’t make us pretend we don’t want this. You know somethin? I guess I am a queer, Ennis.” Jack’s chin lifted defiantly. “I like havin your dick up my ass, so I guess that makes me a queer. Who gives a shit? It’s a bad word cause somebody decided it was. Fuck them.” Jack turned to stare out over the magnificent vista spread before him, but all his attention was on the ugliness that he and Ennis had to live with every day of their lives.
Ennis for his part didn’t know what to say. In secret, into the most private recesses of his heart, these same conclusions had crept, over the years, and would not be dislodged, but they were frightening ideas, and it distressed him desperately to hear Jack admit proudly to them. He was almost afraid for Jack, as though the very trees and rocks were listening and would betray them. It was not in him to beg Jack to be still, but he stood frowning beside his lover, silently begging him to hush, hush, they had too much to lose.
“Guess that means I’m gone to Hell,” Jack added sarcastically, nodding. “Jack Twist, rather fuck Ennis Del Mar than his wife. That’s awful, that is. Way worse than napalmin babies in Vietnam so the Commies can’t have em.” He rounded on Ennis again. “Tell you what, friend:” a long finger stabbed toward Ennis “them devils, they’re too late for me. I got me plenty of Hell right here on earth. Every damn day I’m not with you. That’s what hell is.” Jack flung his hands out. “Couldn’t be worse, less I never saw you again. You want evil? What I do with Lureen—that’s evil. She’s the most beautiful woman I ever saw, and I don’t give a shit. I married her to get out the poor house. She don’t look right, she don’t feel right, she don’t smell right and I don’t want her. I want you. But I fuck her anyway, when I need it. Sure I do. Don’t last long, and it don’t do much. Fuckin one person when you’re wantin somebody else--that’s evil. I ain’t the best man ever been born. Never said I was no saint. I drink too much, cuss too much, complain too much, and I’m lazy. I know that. But I done one thing right in my life, and that’s got you in that tent with me that night. The rest don’t mean nothing. And it ain’t nobody’s business but ours. Not then, not now, not ever.” The amazing blue eyes were full of tears.
Ennis looked away, and back. “I don’t think you cuss too much.”
Jack blinked. “What?”
Ennis shook his head. “Don’t think you cuss too much. Maybe, just about right.”
In spite of himself, Jack had to laugh, a gasping, choked-off laugh. He knew Ennis was teasing him, was trying to change the subject, uncomfortable as ever over the deeper water. Looking into the dark eyes, eyes still warm and bright, he also knew Ennis was agreeing with him.
“But you think I’m lazy.”
Ennis shrugged with his lips. “Don’t think nothin. ‘S a fact.”
“Yeah? Who’s the one, always wore out? ‘Need me some fuckin sleep?’” Jack did a creditable imitation of Ennis.
“That’s cause you make me do all the work.” But there was a gleam in the dark eyes now.
“Make you. That’s good. Ain’t never been able to ‘make you’ do nothin.”
It was Ennis’ turn to laugh. Stooping suddenly, he caught the surprised Jack up in a fireman’s carry. For several seconds he staggered perilously, Jack whooping, but at last, with a grunt he settled the load and carried Jack to the blankets, where they more or less fell together onto them in a tangle of arms and legs, laughing with the pure joy of simply being foolish together.
“Now,” Ennis murmured, pulling Jack back into his arms in front of him. “You gone let me cuddle you some, and I’m gone get me some fuckin sleep.”
Jack yawned.
“Heard that.”
Jack caught Ennis’ hand, laced their fingers together, and drew their hands to his chest. “You’re just gettin lucky,” he yawned. “I’m lettin you off real easy this time.”
“Huh. You just ain’t got nothin left.”
Jack kissed their laced fingers. “Just you wait. Cuddlebunny.”
“Fish-eyes.”
“Snot-nose.”
“Knock it off, Jack,” Ennis sighed, hugging him.
And they both slept. For a while, anyway.
"Never Enough Sleep" concludes in Part Three. |
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| Never Enough Sleep, Part 3 |
[Jul. 28th, 2006|10:14 am] |
Never Enough Sleep, Part 3
Rated X
These characters are not mine; they are the creation of Annie Proulx.
Still with me? Read on…
After supper, Jack reclined against the log, sipping and smoking, watching Ennis wash up as the last rays of the sun painted selected distant peaks with alpenglow. Jack hardly noticed. It wasn’t that he indifferent to the changing play of light or the humbling panorama before them. It was just that he found Ennis, even dressed, of greater interest.
So pleasant was this pastime that it was not until Ennis returned to the fire and placed the empty can of peaches on one of the stones between them and the fire that Jack realized he had been rinsing it out along with the pots and plates. He had no idea why Ennis hadn’t burned the can, but he was too happy and relaxed to care. It came as a complete surprise, then, when Ennis hove into view with a fistful of lupine, which he dropped into the can with deliberate carelessness as he shot a somewhat defiant look at Jack.
Jack felt his chest tighten, but he knew better than to show any sign of the painful tenderness that lanced him at Ennis’ completely unprecedented gesture. You sweet-hearted son of a bitch. Just when I think I got you all figured, you just about kill me. He nodded as Ennis dropped to the blankets beside him and adjusted his pillow so that he too could lean back against the log. Ennis got a cigarette going and passed back the offered bottle. A few minutes passed before he nudged a foot toward the peach can.
“Always liked them blue ones. Don’t know what they called.”
“Yeah. They’s nice.” Jack gave no sign he knew why Ennis had collected the flowers. “But you need the other ones too. The Dutchman trousers.” And he rolled off the blankets to collect some, both the red and the yellow. Arranging them untidily in the can among the lupine, he stood back to survey his work in the firelight. “Pretty. They was growin in that meadow where you punched me that time.” Happy anniversary to you, too. He slipped back to Ennis’ side.
“You sure?” Ennis was pretty good, too, at elaborately casual.
“Yep.” As he had lain clutching his head and moaning, a clump of stepped-on red columbine had been in Jack’s field of view. The pain, the shock, and the flowers were his memory of those moments.
“It hurt?”
Jack snugged his shoulder up against his friend. “Couldn’t hardly touch it for a week.” He slipped his large hand to Ennis’ thigh, where Ennis’ right hand covered his. “Daddy slapped it.” He hadn’t meant to say it, the words just slipped out.
Ennis stared at him, frowning. “Slapped where I hit you? Why?”
Jack shrugged, avoiding his eyes, wishing he hadn’t brought it up. He hadn’t thought about it in years, but he couldn’t remember the punch without remembering that, too. “Thought I was sassin’ him. I wasn’t.” Remembered resentment colored his voice.
Soft lips touched his face, exactly where the blow had landed, and they rested there together, head to head. And then the words, so soft that for a moment Jack wasn’t sure he’d heard them correctly:
“I’m sorry.”
Jack was so surprised that he broke his cardinal rule for this man with the exceedingly low startle point: he turned, wide-eyed, lips parting, and then cursed himself for being so obvious. But Ennis wasn’t turning away, or frowning, or getting up. He was staring back, his face serious, his dark eyes direct and unflinching and suspiciously bright as Ennis Del Mar studied his lover’s face in the gathering gloom,
Jack’s heart began to race as he saw the serious gaze change, saw the lines of the face shift, soften. He held perfectly still, his breathing going shallow, his lips parting.
His hand going to the back of Jack’s head, Ennis drew their faces together. “Kiss me, Jack,” he breathed, and as Jack was about to do just that, Ennis fell back and pulled Jack on top of him.
Desire exploded white-hot in Jack Twist’s belly, sweet and painful at the same time, as he found himself on top of Ennis Del Mar. It was rare, it was awfully rare, but he knew he had just been given an invitation. He stared down into the dark eyes, eyes others usually found hooded and unrevealing, and met a gaze that only here, in the sacred and secret mountains, and only with him, the other half, revealed the heart, unashamed and unafraid. Jack Twist leaned over his lover and accepted the invitation.
His soft mouth brushed, feathered against curved lips already parted for him. Pulse after pulse of desire washed through him as he hovered there, tasting delicately, his tongue slipping and sliding over the open lips, tracing their shape, letting the deep hunger build. And then Ennis moaned, a deep, animal sound, and Jack wound himself around his beloved, and took his mouth.
Ennis was bewildered by the force of his desire as Jack’s mouth came down on his. He had called Jack his teacher, but in truth he had needed little more than the right encouragement to release a sensuality easily the match of Jack’s. And he knew Jack had spoken truth: it wasn’t wrong. It was only bad because someone had decided it was. There was no way it could be wrong, when they both wanted it so much, and it felt so good. So right. He wound his arms around Jack, and pulled him down.
One heart, two bodies. Two bodies, one soul. And, in that moment, no lying, and no hiding. Only need. And love.
It was always like this. The fire met the fuel, consumed it and was consumed in the doing. Jack’s mouth was quick and
greedy, his tongue teasing and eager, impatient, devouring, and it had its answer in Ennis’ unchecked passion, a hunger no kiss could ever satisfy, tender and untamable, a raw life-force. Jack could pull back again and again, questing, but the need to deepen the kiss, to surrender utterly, was irresistible. So had it been ten years before. So it would always be. His mouth locked at last on Ennis’, and they kissed as though starved for the taste of each other.
Somewhere in the forceful, fluid shifting of long bodies against each other, the hands found their own way, and by the time Jack broke the kiss with a cry, shirts had been pulled loose and quite a lot of buttons had been dismissed from their daily work of holding things together. Jack, coming to his knees to pull off shirt and undershirt, found that Ennis came with him, not letting him get away for an instant, snatching quick kisses even as the two men wrestled out of sleeves and helped each other get quit of what was in the way. Chests bared at last, they swayed together, fingers laced, kissing, Jack’s hard manhood nuzzling boldly against its rigid partner. And then Ennis was standing, and pulling Jack with him to his feet.
Again their eyes met, now with the blaze of real desire incandescent between them. Firelight limned them from the side, and they were transported back in time, to the night when they had first seen each other this way. Jack might have been a young love-god, luminously beautiful in a way not often granted to mortal men, while Ennis, as the chains loosed themselves from his shuttered soul, was revealed in his own more subtle beauty, a more martial sort perhaps, a face that in youth could sometimes seem callow and almost plain, but which as it matured would become both striking and memorable in its utter masculinity. Standing there together, they knew what they had in each other, and were glad.
“Ten years, huh?” Ennis said, his dark voice like honey.
“Give or take,” was all the spellbound Jack could muster in answer. Ennis did not often look at him as he was looking now.
Ennis nodded. “Think I’ll take.” And he knelt in front of Jack.
Jack closed his eyes and licked his lips. He had thought…but he was not about to deny Ennis if Ennis was in this mood, either. Kissing was not all Ennis did well with his mouth.
Careful and capable hands found him, and Jack bit his lip as strong fingers rubbed the aching ridge and slid slowly over the slick spot. He knew Ennis felt it when his painfully confined manhood jerked against the firm caress.
“Oh, Ennis.” His long fingers slipped into the ragged curls.
Then, at last, the belt was clinking as it was unbuckled, and the button, and zipper, were giving in that abrupt way known to every man when his cock is ready to force its way out. And even as Jack’s denims were slipping, Ennis’ hands, and
mouth, were moving over his belly, and down.
“Mmm,” Ennis murmured. “’S nice. Nice, soft skin, Jack.” He was kissing, and nuzzling, muttering against the skin, and they could both feel Jack’s belly flutter in response. “Soft skin and hard muscle. Like that.” Jack’s eyes closed and his lips parted as the big hands played over breast and ribs and abdomen before sliding down to the thighs.
Ennis drew back now to admire what he had bared. In the firelight, Jack’s whole athletic body was gilded, and the effect was breathtaking. Jack was not as whipcord lean as he had been at nineteen, but the view was still one to draw, and fill, the eyes. Ennis’ eyes drank in the view, the most beautiful thing by far nature had ever made, until at last his gaze wandered down the centerline of the strong young body to the place where the dark line of hair suddenly, and excitingly, dived into a tangled patch just above the hardest muscle of all, thrust up rude and unashamed and begging for his attention.
“Nice, Jack,” Ennis murmured, and Jack could feel the warm breath close. “Real, real nice.”
“Ain’t as big as yours.” Jack’s voice was breathless with anticipation.
Ennis acknowledged this with a warm swipe of his tongue that slid up the rigid tool. Jack gasped.
“Nope. But it’s still real nice,” Ennis growled softly, and then, with a swirl of tongue around the large, handsome bell-end, he wrapped his big hands around Jack’s tight buttocks and swallowed him down nearly to the whiskers.
“Oh, Ennis,” Jack groaned, almost protestingly, as he was captured and swallowed and devoured. “Oh, shit. Oh, shit.”
The taste, the texture, the scent, were maddening. Ennis’ fingers dug in, spurring Jack forward even as he drew back to give suck where it was so badly needed. Feet planted apart, Jack wrapped one arm around his head and hung on for dear life to Ennis’ shoulder with the other as he rocked tightly back and forth.
“Oh, my God,” he groaned. “Ennis. Ennis. Easy…easy, Ennis…easy. Oh, shit…oh, shit. Oh, God, that’s so good. Oh, damn, Ennis. Oh, damn, you’re just gonna make me come doing that!” Ennis knew what Jack liked: he was pulling down with one hand after the other, hard, only down, always down, while at the same time giving relentless suck.
“Oh sweet Jesus,” Jack gasped. “It’s like you’re sucklin on me. Go on. Go on and suck. I know you’re hungry. You’re so hungry. Just suck my cock, Ennis. Oh, damn…you’re so fuckin greedy. You gonna make me come. --Ennis! Easy, Ennis! Don’t hurt me, Ennis! Please! Please don’t hurt me.” Ennis was using his teeth now, nipping just so, something he’d done by accident once, but on purpose since, sometimes, since that first time it had made the startled Jack go off like a Fourth of July firework. Ennis was always a little unpredictable, and sometimes it did hurt. Jack felt it all the way down, a jolt of stinging adrenaline iced around the edges with fear, and in that moment, Jack Twist was utterly and all the way alive.
And then Ennis did something else, fingers slipping between and inside, and with a cry torn from deep inside, Jack was
sent hurtling into space.
“Ennis! Ennis! Oh, Ennis! Ennis! Oh, my God! Oh! Ohhhh! Ohhhh, shit! Ohhhh, Ennis!” His head was flung back as his body began to convulse.
He had hardly begun to get his breath back before Ennis was on his feet confronting him, eyes almost feral in their intensity, big hands spreading over his face, kissing him all over, quick and soft and hungry over flushed cheeks and high cheekbones and closed eyes, lips touching the mole over his upper lip before taking the gasping mouth again and then pulling back abruptly.
“Get down,” Ennis said hoarsely, and in two crisp movements had his jeans pulled open.
Dazed, Jack went to his knees, the euphoria of release singing in his blood. His hands, and lips, did their own exploration,
moving over the hard golden body, seeking, as Ennis had sought, the rucked lines of scars old and new, the bone under the muscle, the hard nipples, the small dimple of navel, but down, always down, until they found it, hard and hot and hugely extended, rearing proudly from the jeans, scorning the confines of clothing, longing for other confinement.
Jack felt dizzy as he drew in the heavy musk and followed it, like a bee to the nectar, to the source. Instinct took over and his lips parted, tasting salt.
Ennis groaned as he felt his rigid cock slide slowly into a soft, coaxing suck. The first time Jack had kissed and licked his way down, on that night they were now celebrating, Ennis hadn’t been quite sure…until Jack’s mouth had enclosed him, just like this, and they both had discovered just exactly what joy was. Ennis had let Jack get his fly open for a taste so many times in the days that followed that there were times he really wished he could just go naked. It was a wonder the zipper had held. Even now, sometimes, Ennis wondered, because Jack had never lost his taste for this particular act of worship. And he sent up another prayer of thanks for that.
“Oh, damn, Jack. You got to stop that. Stop doin that all the damn time,” Ennis groaned, his hard buttocks flexing, pushing. Now it was Jack’s turn to be greedy, and noisy, giving a deep, rough suck to the anxious cock working itself in and out of his hungry mouth.
“Oh, fuck!” It was too good. Ennis was quite capable of making it last an hour, but never with Jack. Not like this. “Oh, fuck. It ain’t right, Jack. Ain’t right. You gotta stop.” Jack knew damn well the last thing on earth Ennis wanted him to do was stop. He’d done it one time, pulled away, just to tease, and Ennis had cuffed him in the side of the head, and not very gently either, eyes fathomless and blazing. Ennis could take teasing sometimes, but not these times. Ennis always tried to hold back, to protest, when he felt his control slipping, and Jack knew it. Long careful fingers rubbed the balls, even as Jack’s educated tongue flicked and speared all around the big cockhead, over the tiny opening, and at last, batted again and again at the place, the place, the sweet secret spot where spearhead joined shaft… And Ennis lost the battle. Again.
“Jack. Jack! Oh, fuck. Don’t stop. I need…need…need…uhhh…uhhh…oh, fuck…ohhhh, fuck!” Ennis’ eyes flew open as his whole existence shrank to a pinpoint of exquisite pain, and then blew apart.
They fell together to the blankets, tangling into a clumsy embrace. Both were still strangely on edge, quivering with the depth of release, but unrelaxed, unsatisfied. In a moment they were rolling around, but not playfully, each trying to get the upper hand as they freed themselves from their remaining clothes. For several minutes the only sounds to be heard were harsh breathing and grunts from Ennis and Jack’s soft whining. To the surprise of both, it was, again, Jack who ended up on top, and as their long bodies writhed together, their mutual movements had an almost desperate quality. Jack found with a dreamy sort of inevitability that he was hard again, which at nineteen had been normal for him, but ten years on was damn near miraculous. Ennis, too, was coming erect again. Somehow, on this night, it didn’t seem strange.
And then Ennis pulled away from the kiss, and let go one word:
“Jack.”
It was the same invitation he had given once already, and both knew that this was why they were still needful, still nearly frantic for each other.
Without haste or hesitation either, Jack reached for the small jar, spun the top off, and dug two fingers in. It had been a long day, and he was, finally, nearly as tired as Ennis, but his strength rallied this one last time, his focus, indeed his whole world, narrowing to this one thing he absolutely had to do.
Surging over Ennis, he pushed his lover’s legs up and had entry. It was a slow and dreamy fall, Ennis wide-eyed, tense but trusting, and wanting, Jack sated enough to be patient and loving until the joining was complete and they were one. Now there was no sound except for the crackle and spit of the fire, burning low now, bodies not so much gilded as glowing softly, and the kind of deep breathing that is never the same as the breathing of rest. They were wrapped around each other, Jack giving himself utterly to the man he loved, Ennis’ guard stripped away, allowing him just for a little while to be totally defenseless, the greatest gift he could give the one he cared for most in all the world. Their loving this time was a slow, powerful tidal surge, deep and ceaseless as they clung to each other against the world’s hate and brutality.
It seemed to last forever, and perhaps in a way it did, for each moment while it did last was the only moment that mattered, or ever would. But at last Ennis began to gasp, and Jack to thrust harder, and faster, and Jack got a hand between them to cover Ennis’as they found deep and complete release with each other once more.
For a little time they lay motionless, shattered. Ennis felt Jack’s hot tears on his shoulder, mingling with those slipping slowly down the sides of his face. Jack stirred slightly, wanting to make a remark, but he was simply too drained to waste breath on speech. Gradually their breathing slowed, and they became aware of a universe beyond themselves, the soft stirring of the night wind, the tentative “whoo-who” of an early owl, the acrid smoke of the dying fire. Neither wanted to move, neither wanted to end this rare moment of complete peace, but the night was becoming chill, and at last Jack shivered, and pulled away. They stumbled first to the stream and then, pillows and blankets in arm, to the tent. Deeply relaxed and sleepy, they fell into each other’s embrace, Jack wrapping around Ennis and nuzzling his neck.
“That was fuckin amazing, Ennis,” Jack sighed into his friend’s ear. “Actually, you’re fuckin amazing.”
Ennis, fading fast, hugged the arms Jack had wrapped around his waist. “I’m fuckin half dead, is what I am,” he growled. “Can I get me some fuckin sleep now?”
Jack laughed softly. “You can sleep when you go home, Ennis!”
There was a small silence, and then, quietly:
“I am home.”
And it was then, his living breath stirring his lover’s hair, that Jack said, very softly, the words which he did sometimes dare to say, at moments like this, in a voice so soft that only someone very close would hear it, and even then, might not. Unless he were listening, half-hoping, for those words to be said.
And after that, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist finally got some fuckin sleep.
Good Night. |
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| Three Little Words, Part One |
[Jul. 27th, 2006|09:40 pm] |
THREE LITTLE WORDS, PART ONE
These characters are the creation of Annie Proulx, may she live long and prosper.
Rated X.
September 1973.
It wasn’t a bad day, Ennis decided, as he settled himself against the reassuring bulk of the tree with his thermos and his lunchbox. Jack would probably call it a damned unpromising day, big overcast and a thin wind hinting at the winter still some ways off, but Ennis didn’t mind the wind he had grown up with, except that he preferred not to have grit deposited in his coffee, which was one of the reasons for the tree. As for the overcast, it suited his over-sensitive eyes, though he allowed that blue skies were prettier. And, of course, they reminded him of Jack. But since damn near everything reminded him of Jack in one way or another, blue skies were just another note in the constant keen of loneliness that was simply a part of his life, had been for so long he couldn’t imagine what life would be without it. Like the wind.
It wasn’t a bad spot, either, though if he had offered that opinion to Jack, Jack would undoubtedly have rolled his eyes, snorted, and made some comment about settling for nothing. That was Jack’s problem, of course. He never would stop fighting the bit and the girth strap. Never stopped crow-hopping. For Ennis, who had forgotten how to rebel when he was nine, assuming he had ever known, it was one of the incomprehensible things about Jack that both disturbed and attracted him. He leaned back against the tree, stared into the sluggish irrigation ditch that was the closest running—if you could call it that--water within twenty miles, cradled the unopened thermos against his body, and gave up the unequal struggle. Jack wanted thinking about, and, well, that was another reason for the tree, and the brushy scrub along the banks of the ditch, and the fact that Ennis’ favored lunch hideout was two fields away from the buildings and most other signs of life on the ranch. Here he could think about Jack. And if that thinking led to anything else he might need to do, well, he could do that too, seeing as he was sitting on the side that both sheltered him from the prevailing wind direction, and the line of sight of the ranch.
Ten years. Ten years since those two nights that had changed everything. Ennis shook his head, the movement only fractional, tied down and reined in, like the man himself. The Riverton man anyway. There was another, one who did not release his words as though he were paying dear for each one, but that man wasn’t here. He lived in the mountains, on one in particular, on a mountain whose name the man sitting under this tree never spoke and tried not to even allow into his thoughts. And the one sitting under the oak tree cradling a thermos against his body, lunch forgotten, was afraid of his other self. Afraid of what he was, and what he felt, of what had been both burden and joy for ten years now.
It was a long time. Ennis had known, of course, that the last trip was occurring over this anniversary, but he had only known in a way. He had not dwelled on it, had not realized that Jack had pushed for this time because it was the anniversary. Ennis didn’t like to dwell on things. Good things were too soon gone, and wishing them back led to regret, and frustration. And as for bad things; well, you fixed them, or you stood them. But it was hard, in his experience, to fix anything big, like poverty, a marriage gone dead, or the fact that memories of another man wove themselves through your days like a river of gold, and if you dwelled on those things, it was very damned hard to stand them. But ten years would not be brushed aside, mashed down, made harmless, to be dropped into a box and stuck in the closet. Ten years meant something. Ennis respected that kind of passage of time. It was what those years meant that ate at him.
It had been different, this trip. Different from the moment Jack had made a point of bridging the two moments in time, the two different worlds. It was always intense, but this—this had been…like Brokeback.
Ennis poured a cup of coffee with hands that were not quite steady. He had spent the last three months in a state of unrest. He worked hard, and slept hard. But he could not relax. In two weeks, they would be seeing each other again, and for the first time, instead of being happy, he was unnerved and agitated. He was used to carrying Jack as an undercurrent to his days, had accepted that Jack was a part of him, but in these last weeks, Jack had taken over. He heard Jack’s voice in his head, saw him in every dark-haired or blue-eyed man around him, and God knew he felt the impress of those hands, tasted and felt that mouth, roused too easily and too often to a visceral, almost feral awareness of that supple body moving against his in yearning tension. Why was it so different, this time? Just what the hell had happened? But he didn’t have to ask, really. It was ten years. Ten years, and three little words.
“Now can I get me some fuckin sleep?”
“You can sleep when you get home, Ennis.”
Three little words: “I am home.”
I am home.The words had not escaped him in a weak moment. He had meant to say them, meant them to be heard. They were a gift to the one who had left his own brand on Ennis Del Mar. Ten years meant something. But Ennis hadn’t been prepared to find out what they meant to him. He didn’t dwell on things, after all. But in their deliberate way, the important considerations would make their way downstream, and in the end, he would know. There might be nothing he could do with the knowledge, but there it would be. When Jack smiled, the sun shone, hurting his eyes, but making him warm inside as nothing and no one else could, and when Jack was unhappy, it rained and the world was a miserable place. And that was just the way it was. When they were apart, Ennis had the memories. And when they were together…I am home.
Three little words. Jack, also, had whispered three little words, three little words and his name, into his hair that night. Maybe because of the ones Ennis had given him, maybe not. It was not the first time he had said it, anyway. Two months after that night in the motel, Jack had come back, and the second night, when it was very late, and Ennis near the point of sleep, there had come a bare whisper, hardly even sound, near his ear but not quite in it. The words had shocked Ennis to the core that first time, and for a long time after, he had not been sure he’d really heard them. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be sure. But the next time, the next year, he had been sure, and now it was something he found himself half fearing, half waiting for, every time. It still gave him a shock, and it upset him, but it also reassured him. It told him that though the long months were ever slow wearing themselves away, and though the distance between them was great, and not entirely composed of mere miles, one thing did not change: Jack Twist was still his. Ennis shifted uncomfortably. And he was still Jack’s. Jack’s. He was still…
Jack did not so much appear as separate himself from Ennis, and coalesce into the moment. “Jack.” The single word was a soft moan of protest, barely uttered above a breath, as Ennis lost the fight, and was swept away again three months into the past, to the morning after he had dropped that fistful of lupine into the peach can. His hand suddenly had a will of its own, and slipped free to slide into his lap. Breath hissed as his groping fingers found what they sought, rode the abrupt swelling, the bare touch of fingertips enough to tease the big tool quickly to the full, arching it up hard against a hand that rubbed and squeezed roughly through the skin-fitting denim. The thermos was cast aside forgotten as the other hand moved to help, releasing the buckle, the button, the zip. But in Ennis’ mind it was not his well-accustomed hands that found what he had freed to his caress…
“Jack!” Ennis came awake with a gasp, his hips surging upward to meet a devilishly subtle tugging, gentle and warm and wet, that surrounded, that coaxed, that all but begged… Ennis flailed out with a hand that was not yet fully under his control and found, of course, Jack Twist, crouched between his open legs, making a quiet but sincere--and brutally effective--plea for Ennis to join the day. Ennis, up on one elbow now, blinked almost witlessly down at the arresting sight of his desperately responsive cock in the ecstatic grip of a Jack Twist wake-up suck. Feeling Ennis’ fingers fumbling in his hair, Jack looked up, and drew back, but not quickly, from his prize.
“Mornin, Ennis,” he grinned, fine eyes dark and wicked under sweeping brows, curved mouth parted not an inch from Ennis’ straining manhood. As if that weren’t shameless enough, he licked his lips, deliberately. “What’s up?”
Ennis cuffed him, but not hard. “I was asleep, damn it,” he managed. “Son bitch.”
“Your own fault.” The bastard was unrepentant. “There I was, mindin my own business,” (Ennis snorted) “I wake up, and what do I see? Here’s Ennis Del Mar lyin stark beside me, covers throwed off like he’s makin me look, and you know you do, and there’s his big ol horse cock standin up stiff off his belly like it just won a prize or somethin. Ain’t fair.” Jack addressed this remark to its subject, and then licked it, reassuringly, drawing from Ennis something between a moan and a growl. “He’s mean to me, Ennis is,” Jack confided. “He is. I ain’t hardly woke up yet. Got no right, makin me do this.”
“Makin you? More like you pushed your way between my legs and had at it,” Ennis said. At least, he thought he remembered saying that. The first two words, for sure. And then Jack had said, “Well, I’m hungry anyways,” and time went away.
It was the one thing Ennis could never resist. He no longer knew if Jack had always been this good, he only knew that every time he felt his lover’s lips open over him, felt the tongue slipping, the mouth taking, he was back in that first tent, in the golden shadows, in the throes of a longing he had never known before, pulling Jack on top of him, wanting to let someone else be strong, no longer afraid, trusting the sanctuary of the night and the mountain, the gentleness in those hands, and the aching understanding in that remarkable face. All that had been torn from him was restored, given in soft, insistent kisses, the encompassing warmth of cradling arms, and the feel of the living breath of another human being on his body. It had never been like this with Alma. Hurt so badly himself, Ennis feared hurting her, feared releasing the forces he knew were inside him. He had held her gently, kissed her carefully. Suddenly, in the arms of another man, he was free. He had been a beast with Jack, and Jack was unharmed, unafraid. With Jack, he could be himself. He didn’t have to mind his manners, or his words, or try to be anything he was not. He was unlettered and poor and plain and awkward and Jack wanted him anyway. Jack wanted him anyway. And so he lay trusting, the blood singing through his body, tears and joy both in his closed eyes as Jack pulled his shirt open, pushed up the undershirt, and kissed his way down with soft little scalding kisses over skin no one else had touched since Ennis was a small child. He didn’t even guess where Jack was going, or what he was going to do. It just felt good to be tasted, to be kissed, to be revealed, to be vulnerable. He let his fingers slip, wonderingly, through Jack’s thick hair. It was soft. He liked touching Jack. He liked the way Jack smelled, too. And his hands. Big, careful, gentle hands…
And then he felt his belt being undone. His eyes flew open, and his mouth, but before he could decide if he were quite ready for this, his stiffly extended manhood reared out of his clothes, and then Jack did something else, something Ennis had never even imagined, something incredible, something he would do again and again and again…
Ennis groaned. And now he was doing it just as he had that night ten years before, and again the next morning, when he had awakened his lover exactly the same way.
“Oh, Jack,” he groaned. “Oh, Jack. Son of a bitch.” Large hands were guiding his legs further apart, sliding over hard thighs, over muscle and bone, one rubbing his belly, the other his aching balls. Abruptly, Jack released his captive and bent to suck one, and then the other, into his mouth, where he unleashed a quick, darting tongue to slide eagerly all over, all around.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck,” Ennis panted. His large hands combed through Jack’s hair. “Oh, Jesus. Suck me, Jack, come on, suck my cock, Jack…oh, Christ, Jack, you son bitch, fuckin cocksuck me.” After a moment Jack drew back again, hovered over Ennis for a breath, licked his lips appreciatively, lowered his head, and obeyed his beloved’s command.
Curved lips parted, slowly, over the great flushed bell-end of Ennis Del Mar’s battering ram of a cock. Ennis thought it ugly, compared to Jack’s elegant masculine spear, but Jack loved every massive inch, and as his tongue made its slip-sliding way down, stroking the prominent veins, tugging Ennis ever deeper into loving capture, Ennis was left in no doubt of Jack’s pleasure as well as his own. Ennis' head went back. It was so good. It was so fucking good. “So fuckin good,” he groaned, both hands clenched in the dark hair. This time he wasn’t going to stop Jack. This time he wanted it just this way. Just this way, lips and tongue groping their way down, pulling back, sliding down, pulling back, parting more, sliding down, really determined, really hungry, so knowing, a sweet, relentless assault on Ennis' stiff resistance… “Suck me, Jack. Suck me. Don’t stop. Don’t fuckin stop. Oh, fuck, you’re so good. So good.”
Ennis felt it happening. Jack pulled back, nearly all the way back, teasing, quick and agile tongue flicking and batting at the tiny opening, at the sensitive spot. Ennis groaned as his cock jerked, and he knew Jack tasted salt as he set his tongue sliding over the slick, silky plum. In his agony and pleasure Ennis was pulling Jack’s hair hard enough to hurt.
And then, when he couldn’t take this tasting and teasing one moment longer, Ennis felt his full, rigid penis slide slowly into a deep, urgent suck even as long, greased fingers slid firmly down, curved inside and stroked him just so, just so. He was lost. He was absolutely, deliciously, overwhelmingly lost. It was going to happen. He was going to come. His body arching, his breath came shallow and quick as Jack’s other hand curled around his cock.
“Uh…uh…uh…I’m…I’m…oh, darlin.” Ennis’ face contorted into a mask somewhere between ecstasy and destruction. “Oh, Jack. Jack, I’m gone a come. Gone a come. Now. Now, Jack. Now!” he cried. “Oh, fuck…uhh…uhhh. Oh…fuuuuhck!” It was too much. Jack would have what he would have. The relentless sweet tugging, the long, knowing fingers, the big, curled hand…his whole body vibrated, shook, jerked, thrust upward, and with a final shout of protest, Ennis felt orgasm take his body like a slow deep wind ripple across a great ripe field, and jet after jet of need spurted free, swallowed gladly and greedily. In a dim haze he heard but did not understand Jack say, “I’m glad you was home for that, cowboy, hate you to have missed it,” and then Jack was beside him, guiding his hand to Jack’s own yearning, and drawing him into a rough kiss that tasted of salt as bodies shifted and moved and the hand stroked, and Jack’s fingers closed convulsively on his arms, bruising, as Jack broke the kiss at last, to cry “Ennis, Ennis, Ennis…” and thrash and jerk and spurt and make Ennis’ fingers and his cock and their bellies sticky with what he had to give up. Ennis sucked his fingers for the taste and pulled Jack possessively into his arms like the cloth pony with the yarn mane he didn’t remember.
* * *
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Uh…uh…uh…ohhhh, Jack…” The name was only a shape, a gasp of breath, as Ennis’ memory spurted up and out over and through his fingers and he fell back twitching against the tree.
It was strange how little relief it had given him. But then it never seemed to help, anymore. It didn’t even feel all that good. He felt weak, and spent, but there was still an ache in his body, a hurting, something wrong, something missing. Something called Jack Twist.
It was his own fault. He had said too much, far too much, and now he was paying the price: he was trapped, and he knew it. Trapped between a life he no longer wanted, and a home he could never have. A life he could never have. He had struggled to avoid this from the beginning, he had told Jack it couldn’t be that way, but Jack had seduced him, seduced him in a hundred ways large and small, and he had been weak. And now he was caught by the leg, and the jaws of the trap were tearing into flesh. The river of gold had become a dangerous, muddy torrent, no longer placid, peaceful and life-giving, but wild and uncontrollable, past flood stage and sweeping away everything in its path.
Three little words alone hadn’t done this much damage. The anniversary wasn’t the problem either. Together, however, they had shone a blinding light on all the things Ennis had spent a great deal of time not dwelling on for the last ten years, and Ennis was finally beginning to realize why he couldn’t relax. It wasn’t just Jack who was with him night and day. It wasn’t just Jack he saw when his mind wandered even for a moment. There had been another man in his life before Jack. Ennis had known him only briefly, but the effect he’d had on Ennis had been permanent. He and Jack hadn’t been alone in that tent, or in any other. They were never alone. They could never be alone, no matter how far up into any mountains they went. There was always someone else who went with them.
Someone named Earl.
Oh, Earl usually went away for a while, when things got hot by the fire, or near a stream, or against that boulder, or in a grassy meadow, or even, a few times, between two horses saddled and ready and standing patiently, but he was never very far away, and sometimes visited Ennis in his dreams, sometimes when he was with Jack. He had never told Jack that, because he knew what Jack would say, but it didn’t matter what Jack would say. Earl was just as real as Jack, and his hold over Ennis was just as strong. And sometimes, especially when Jack was a long way away, Earl seemed to make a lot more sense. Ennis Del Mar was one of nature’s pessimists, and a world in which anything he wanted was beyond his reach or forbidden just seemed like the natural order of things. The child of generations of tough, poverty-stricken people, Ennis accepted his lot with a complacency, and even a kind of contentment, that Jack Twist would never understand. Left to himself, he would have still have been spare of speech and best pleased with hard, simple work in the open air. But he had within him, too, unsuspected, the seeds of a lust for life, and its pleasures, a capacity for great tenderness, and a quiet dry wit. The dry wash and Dead Horse Road hadn’t killed those things in him, but in his terror and his grief, the boy Ennis had built very high walls around them. One minute you’re laughing and playing, the next, you’re looking at a dead man who’s been destroyed, like a rat, or a coyote, because he was a queer. You’re looking at your parents lying silent and gray in boxes about to be stuck under the ground. Your home is being taken from you. Happiness is being taken from you. Before Jack, Ennis didn’t talk, didn’t laugh, hardly smiled, hadn’t known what passion was. Jack had given him, or given him back, all of those things. But Jack was a man.
Just like Earl. Just like Earl.
I like having your dick up my ass, so I guess that makes me a queer. Who gives a shit? Ennis cringed inwardly, as he had then. Jack had said that. Said that out loud, with his chin up, like it was okay to even think things like that, let alone say them. It didn’t matter that it was just the kind of thing Jack would say. It didn’t matter that it was true. You just didn’t say it. You shouldn’t even have thought it, Jack. It ain’t allowed. Cause the truth is, it’s only right while it’s a secret. It’s only okay long as we don’t get caught. And Ennis found himself caught up again in the same argument that had been haunting his days and nights for nearly three months, an argument whose roots went back ten years, and beyond. Jack’s defiant words had seemed to make sense when Jack said them, and Ennis couldn’t ever remember being happier since the magic weeks on Brokeback than he had been in those ten days, ten years later. But he and Jack, inevitably, had parted, and come back down into the thicker air of the high plains, and the only words Ennis heard now were those of Earl, whispering “Folly, folly.” Or was it “remember me…”
It couldn’t go on this way. On that gray day beside the sluggish water, Ennis' fears bore their bitter fruit at last. It was not a sudden understanding. It was more that the confusion of obsession and desire had finally been eroded away, revealing the harsh truths that had dogged his every step for a lot longer than the last three uneasy months. The truths were simple enough, once he could finally see them: His life was no longer his own. Jack was no longer an undercurrent. He was the current. Nobody’s business but theirs? Only wrong because someone else thought it was? The thing was that someone else did think it was. And someone else had made rules, and laws. And for those who contravened them, there were tire irons. And crows. And coyotes. And flies, flies buzzing in their dozens and their hundreds, drifting over what was left like black veils of death and damnation. His father had tried to teach him the law, but Ennis had failed to heed the lesson. And the lamb had been torn open, and now he was near drowning in waters he had thought he could safely navigate.
Ennis could do nothing about the flood. But he could do something about the river: he could dam it. He could wall it up, and it would never endanger him, or Jack, again. This, at least, was something that it was in his power to fix. Yes. It was the only way. That was hard, but life always was hard. It was the only way. And they would both be better off.
If anyone had happened along shortly after, they would have seen an unremarkable picture: Ennis Del Mar sitting against the tree, staring into space, expressionless as always, eating his lunch with steady deliberation.
For all that he tasted it, it might as well have been cardboard and sawdust.
Three Little Words continues in Part Two… |
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| Three Little Words, Part Two |
[Jul. 27th, 2006|05:15 pm] |
THREE LITTLE WORDS, PART TWO
Thanks as ever to Annie Proulx for creating these two.
Rated X.
I am home. Jack Twist turned the key on the drawer that held his treasures, reached for the decanter, changed his mind, sat back, and stared into the slanting moonlight that gave his “office” all the illumination it needed at this hour. If he squinted a little, he could almost fool himself into thinking he was somewhere a long way from here, among the pines and the firs and the aspens, his nose stinging with wood smoke. And lying beside him, in the moonlight… I am home.
Ennis didn’t know that Jack had not thrown away the flowers in the peach can when they had wilted, but had rolled them carefully up into a bandanna that disappeared into one of his saddlebags. Now, still in the bandanna, they resided in the locked drawer in his desk along with several postcards, starting with the one that said on the back only “You bet.” It also held a few other items: a spent cartridge from Ennis’ .30-.30, the peach can itself, a button from one of Ennis’ shirts, and the prize of the collection, another bandanna, which seemed to contain nothing, but contained something very precious indeed: that first afternoon as they lay beside a stream on that very first fishing trip, after their plunge off the bluff, Jack had dipped the bandanna in the water, wrung it out, and used it to sponge off both his own belly and Ennis’. The cool water, and Jack’s lazy play with the bandanna, had stimulated them both, and within minutes, the bandanna had been forgotten in the grass. When Jack retrieved it later, and went to wash it, he hesitated, thought about it for a moment, and dropped it casually behind the seat of his truck a little later. It was no substitute for the long-gone fleece-lined coat, or the two shirts safely hidden a long way from the claws of Lureen, but it was something intensely of Ennis, and of himself, and Jack liked very much that the stiff bandanna both instantly revealed and completely concealed the truth. It had long since lost its viscerally evocative scent, which was maybe just as well, but Jack still sometimes drew it to his nose and lips, just to savor what he knew it to be. There had been a time when he wished he had a picture, but these days, the idea of having a picture of Ennis Del Mar in his own house, where Lureen could see it, did not appeal to him. He didn’t want her to see his Ennis. It was none of her business what Ennis looked like. Besides, he didn’t need a picture. He could see Ennis just fine inside his head. He reached for the decanter again, and again drew back. It seemed that he didn’t need that as much these days. Especially not now, when in two short weeks he and Ennis would again be home, deep in the Bighorns and Brokeback country.
Jack closed his eyes and leaned back against the high-backed snakeskin chair. Two weeks, and he would be in the arms of his love, his beautiful Ennis. A slow grin spread across his face. His wonderful, amazing, beautiful Ennis. His own Ennis. Together again. They would be together again. With a shiver of joy, Jack tightened the arms folded across his chest into an almost-embrace and let the beloved syllables drift into the silence and the moonlight: “Ennis Del Mar.” He tasted the name, let it roll around, explored the shape of it, and released the spell again: four simple syllables, and then three more, the ones he dared say only in the latest and darkest hours, when they might just be the night breeze in his lover’s hair. Gently, gently: lay your hand on him, speak in a soft voice, let him feel your nearness and learn that you will not hurt him… “Ennis Del Mar… Oh, Ennis.” Two weeks, and he would stand beside the dark water in the cool thin air listening with pounding heart for the sound of a truck laboring up the track. He would stand waiting, waiting as he always waited, waiting as he always would, for the engine to switch off, for the door to open, for the dream to take living form again, and become Ennis himself with his shy, awkward grin standing on the sacred ground. “Oh, Ennis.” The words were a soft moan as Jack gave himself up to anticipation, again, sent long fingers groping for the sweet rising ache, again, and called out to the vision that at times was more real to him than anyone or anything else in his life. He seemed so close in the silver-white light and the blue shadows, so real in this private hour: Ennis, his dark eyes happy and serious and intense all at the same time, as always a man of unsettling and exciting contrasts--hard cheekbones and soft mouth, violence and tenderness, a will like the mountain itself and a gentle heart. Oh, Ennis; yeah, Ennis—caressing baritone voice and big work-roughened hands and, son of a bitch, best of all, a hard, powerful, and utterly masculine body, naked and glowing with health… Yes. Yes. Just like that. Jack’s breathing quickened as his hand straddled, rubbed the swollen ridge. Yeah, Ennis. Just like that. Just like you was on that morning three months ago, a few hours after I had you for breakfast, just standing there stark naked, hoisting a bucket of water over your head…
The unexpected vision stopped Jack dead as he reappeared from his errand into the trees. Jesus, what a sight. There he was, standing there in the grass, matter-of-fact and unconcerned in his nudity, allowing the sun to caress him and Jack Twist to stare needfully at him as he emptied the bucket of water over himself and stood gleaming, deep chest heaving at the shock of the cold water. For a moment, as he ran his fingers through his wet hair and shook the water out of his eyes, Ennis Del Mar, all hard angles and clean curves, was enough to tempt an angel, everything it meant to be powerfully, vitally male. And then he stooped for the soap, and became a man again, not a god or a work of art, but still more than enough of both for Jack Twist. “Ennis,” Jack whispered, as he stood at the edge of the trees, and as he sat back in his chair, lost in the memory. And then, in both places, he said the other three words, but only the four walls, the moonlight, the sun and the trees heard them.
It was a moment Jack Twist would never forget: only a few dozen yards separated them, but for Jack it was almost as though he were watching a movie, the soaring peaks behind and the trees to either side and providing a magnificent stage setting for the glorious figure caught unawares in a quiet, almost meditative act. Jack stood transfixed. Son of a bitch. What a man he was. It was not often that Jack had, or took, the time to simply contemplate his lover; when they weren’t in each other’s arms, they were working, riding, or asleep. But now he recognized the opportunity, and took it, gladly.
Ennis stood easy, neither fully in profile nor quite with his back turned. Nothing was hidden from appreciative eyes, and Jack made no pretense ever of not appreciating all he so loved to look upon. The Greek sculptors would probably have scorned Ennis Del Mar as a model, with his stooped shoulders, heavy thighs and slightly bowed legs, but Jack Twist could hardly breathe as he watched his lean, supple-bodied lover slide the soap up one cleanly muscled arm and down the other. There was nothing hasty in the movement. It was considered and controlled. Ennis was as careful and thorough bathing as he was in everything else, and Jack shivered as his eyes greedily followed the progress of the soap, strong hands working now under the arms, over the broad breast, down the ribcage, over the flat belly, slipping arrestingly near the dark thatch…
And then Ennis started soaping between the thighs, and over and around the hard buttocks. Jack licked his lips, feeling the hot surge of full erection shove his cock hard against coarse denim. How could Ennis stand it? How could he be so easy and so relaxed with his hands slipping so intimately, so teasingly, over that magnificent male form? Jack’s own hands were moving now, moving to release his aching cock to his caress, careful fingers sliding over the still-swelling ridge, clothes giving, big cock all but nuzzling itself into possessive hands… And then Jack saw Ennis shift his stance, his head dropping a little. Suddenly, the simple task took on a whole new flavor, and Jack bit his lip, his heart racing, for Ennis’ big cock was no longer hanging head down, handsome in sleepy indifference. It had wakened, and was lifting, and stretching, poking its head out, growing proud and needful and great as both Jack and Ennis watched. Ennis being Ennis, he didn’t grab at it right away, but let his hands work their natural way to the big stiff thing, the first one to reach it taking full pride of possession, stroking and tugging, one hand keeping him skinned as the other stroked and tugged and worked at soaping and stroking and satisfying.
Jack never remembered how, afterward, but somehow he was across the clearing, and naked, and snugging up behind his lover to let him feel the hard heat of risen manhood in the cleft of tight buttocks. Somehow, Ennis didn’t seem very surprised to find him there.
“Hey there,” Jack breathed into Ennis’ right ear, his voice husky as he ran his hands down slippery strong arms. “What you want to be startin without me for? Ain’t very neighborly.”
“Startin what?” Ennis growled, but there was no anger in the dark tones. “What, man can’t give himself a wash without everybody in town playin Tom Peep?” He shifted a little against the insistent grinding of Jack’s hips, a slow heat building down deep, making him ache with the need to fuck, and fuck hard.
“Just thought you could use some help, is all.” Jack’s hands slid around the soapy body to give a little friendly assistance.
Ennis intercepted the reaching fingers. “That don’t need no help,” he said firmly. “Doin fine all by itself.” Jack Twist wasn’t the only one who could tease when he wanted to. Fortunately Jack couldn’t see how the big tool jerked at the nearness of Jack’s educated hands.
“Okay, that’s the way you want it…” Jack started to draw back, knowing he would not be allowed to escape, grinned as he was pulled sharply forward, stiff prick nestling happily in the firm cleft once again.
“Didn’t say I was totally objectin to the idea,” Ennis allowed, guiding Jack’s hands up, and up, to tweak stiff soapy nipples as Jack lay his face against Ennis’ shoulder. “But you all sticky and stuff. Ain’t lettin your big ol dirty hands go…just…anywhere.” His head went back.
“Maybe we could help each other get clean,” Jack suggested softly, big ol dirty hands sliding over his lover’s ribcage. “That’s what friends do, you know. Help each other…” And then he was sputtering and laughing along with Ennis as Ennis stooped, turned, and emptied the other bucket over his head.
“’S a good idea. Don’t like havin no dirty cowboy messin with me when I’m clean,” Ennis informed him, and then the soap was being deployed all over Jack. It was true that the washing up went a little differently this time, with Ennis scrubbing Jack’s hair vigorously, and then holding both Jack’s hands over his head as he ran the soap down one arm and then the other, but Jack wasn’t complaining, couldn’t complain if he wanted to, for as Ennis’ soapy hands slipped into his hair, it only seemed natural that one soft mouth should find the other, even as Jack pulled their bodies together. Ennis groaned in the kiss, not seeming to mind Jack being either dirty or sticky as their hard cocks rubbed together in an exquisite tease. He didn’t seem to mind either, as he ran his hands over Jack’s long body, that Jack’s hands, once freed to wash and play, seemed most interested in sliding all over, and between, the delicious tight buttocks that made possible all those long, hard, thrusting rides.
It was all one, in the end, whether Ennis pushed Jack down or Jack pulled Ennis on top of him. Jack surged under Ennis, calling his name, as he felt the weight of his beloved settle on him, moving like a deep tide to fit them together, graceful lines blending, shifting, seeking. Turning his head, Jack sought Ennis’ mouth, but Ennis denied him, hissing in his ear,
“You botherin me again, boy. Done told you bout it, but you won’t listen a me.” He pulled back, his dark eyes blazing into Jack’s wide skies, and Jack felt the raw power jolt him all the way down. Ennis saw the confusion of deep lust under the black brows, and growled deep in his throat, shoving Jack hard into the grass.
“Suckin a man’s cock before he’s even woke up.” Ennis shook his head. “Don’t get no sleep, don’t get no peace. Makin me so fuckin hot I can’t stand it. Ain’t right, Jack,” he growled. “Ain’t havin that. You got me? Can’t even take me a bath, but you slip-slidin your big hands and your sweet mouth and your hard dick all over me. Just won’t leave me alone. I’m gone a have to fuck you, boy.” Jack’s lips parted, and his eyes widened as if in fear. But Ennis knew it was not fear he saw, not when Jack mewled for him and tried to pull him down into a kiss. “Nope, not gone kiss you,” Ennis insisted, his eyes wide with something barely under his control. “Gone a fuck you. Get over. Get over, Jack. I need a fuck you, I need a fuck you so bad.” And Jack was turning, turning at the first words, even as Ennis gasped hoarsely, “Jesus, Jack, I need a fuck you,” and then he was doing it as Jack came to all fours, a rough, grunting entry eased by the soap and Jack being so ready, so ready for a hard ride. The sun was hot on him, Jack was hot under him, their thighs and balls smacked together as Ennis wrapped one arm around Jack’s chest and got the other around that fat saucy cock that had been teasing his ass and stroked it good as Jack groaned and bucked under him.
“I need a fuck you, Jack.” Ennis hardly knew he was speaking, but the words were a ragged chant. “Got a fuck you. Got a fuck you. Need a fuck you. Need a fuck you so bad. ‘S so good a fuck you. So fuckin good,” he groaned.
“Oh, Ennis. Ennis. Ride me hard. Fuck me hard. Fuck me,” Jack panted. “Come on, fuck me, Ennis. Harder. Harder. Oh, Jesus, you’re hurtin. Oh, shit. Oh, shit. It’s so good. Go on, Ennis. Go on, take it. Oh, honey, come on. Come on, fuck me! Oh, Ennis! Ennis!” His voice rose to a shout. “Oh, darlin! Ennis! Ennis! Oh, God! Ennis!”
“Oh, fuck…uhh…I got a come, I got a come,” Ennis gasped, swept away helpless, helpless always at the sound of Jack calling his name. “Jesus, Jack, you done me…done me again…bastard…uhhh…oh, fuck, ohhhhh fuck…” His head flung back, he slammed into Jack over and over as ecstasy crashed over him like a flash flood through a broken dam.
* * *
For uncounted minutes they lay still but for heaving chests, and then Jack stirred. “Get off me, Ennis,” he hissed. “Get off! Something stickin in me that ain’t you.” He struggled to push up, all but forcing Ennis to pull away. Ennis didn’t go far, though, falling on his back beside Jack with a grunt as Jack found a stick under himself and flung it away before falling likewise beside his friend.
“Son of a bitch,” Ennis managed at last, lying like a broken doll where he had fallen. “It’s broke. Yeah. You done broke it.” Despite his complaint, he didn’t seem very upset.
Jack turned a puzzled frown on him. “Broke? Broke what?” And then his face cleared and he started to snicker. “’Broke it.’ You’re funny, Ennis. ‘--Broke it.’” He rolled onto his side, still laughing as Ennis turned smiling eyes to him. He gave Ennis a light smack. “Betcha it works just fine after a while.”
“Not less you stop pesterin it for a while,” Ennis told him decisively. He studied his lover for a moment, and decided something else. “I got a say, you look damn funny with all that soap in your hair, Jack Twist.”
Jack laughed. “I ain’t the only one. And you got muddy knees,” he pointed out.
“Yeah? So do you.” Ennis scratched his belly complacently. “Grass and stuff all over you, too. And you still sticky.” He closed his eyes, lacing his fingers behind his head.
“Your fault, friend,” Jack told him, reaching over to do a little belly-scratching of his own. “There I was, mindin my own business…”
Ennis batted his hand away. “Doin a lot of that this morning.”
“MINDIN my own BUSINESS,” Jack repeated.
“You was takin a dump.” Ennis always called a spade a spade.
“Yeah, so, and I come back, and what do I see?”
Ennis sighed the sigh of the much put-upon. “Nothin that was any a your business.”
“Tell you what, buddy. When Ennis Del Mar’s standin there buck nekkid like to give the fuckin pope a hard-on, you better believe it’s my business.” (Ennis merely snorted.) “And then he starts showin off with that damn King Kong dong a his…” (Ennis laughed, and shook his head tolerantly) “…yeah, go on, you know it is…” And suddenly the penny dropped, and Jack smacked Ennis in the side a good bit harder, snapping his eyes open.
“You whoreson bitch. You did that a-purpose.” Jack was nodding, his mouth screwed up into something between a frown and a laugh.
Ennis' brown eyes were all blank innocence. “What?”
Jack’s face was very wry. “You waited till you figured I was comin back and then you got busy playin with yourself. Like to give me
a heart attack.”
“Dick attack, morelike,” Ennis yawned. “Huh?” He shrugged into Jack’s accusing blue glare. “’S a matter, Jack? Man ain’t entitled a get his own back a little?” He scratched his belly again, nearer the dark thatch. “’S only right. Suck a my cock while I’m asleep. Why, you might a give me a heart attack.”
“See if I ever do it again,” Jack muttered.
“First chance you get,” Ennis agreed. Their eyes met, and Jack felt his stomach flip at the warmth and acceptance in the dark
gaze. Ennis. Oh, Jesus, Ennis… and then the look changed, Ennis' mouth quirked, and the moment was gone.
“What?” Jack demanded, irked.
“It’s just…I’m real sorry, Jack…it’s just you look so damn funny. You should see yourself, hair stickin up every whichaway, stuff in it and shit.” Ennis was trying very hard not to laugh.
“You’re no prize yourself,” Jack snapped. His eyes fell on one of the empty buckets, narrowed. “Guess I’ll just go get myself clean,” he added, heaving himself to his feet. “By myself.”
“Aw, come on, Jack, now don’t be fussy.” In spirit, Ennis got up and went after him, but the flesh was feeling spoiled and drowsy, and he settled back in the grass, his eyes closing. As an afterthought, he tried to arrange himself fetchingly, though the effect was spoiled somewhat by the soap, dirt and grass that clung to him in various places. “Come on, buddy, lie down here and lemme cuddle you. After a bit maybe we can get clean.” He yawned. He’s so tetchy. Just needs a bit of kissin, that’s all. Couldn’t help it a save my life. Looked like he stuck his finger in a socket. In spite of himself, he sputtered out a laugh. “Might be I’ll even let you mess around some with ol King Kong.” Jack fuckin Twist. I’ll twist you. He smiled. Funniest fuckin thing I ever…
“HUH!” With a shout of shock and pain, Ennis jolted bolt upright to find Jack standing beside him with the empty bucket in his hands. Empty, because the gallon or so of deeply chilly mountain stream water had been poured right into his lap.
“Poor ol Kong. Quite a disappearin act,” Jack observed, and then ran for it, shrieking with laughter, as Ennis lunged to his feet and for him.
Ennis had better endurance; Jack was faster. Neither was relevant now, as they quickly found out. Feet unaccustomed to running unshod had both stumbling and cursing, but at least Jack managed to evade the pursuit until Ennis changed his strategy, retrieved the other bucket, and filled it. Jack, knowing that Ennis could heave a mere couple dozen pounds of water a substantial distance, hastily adopted the same strategy, and in a moment they were slinging water at each other. Ennis connected, and Jack’s heave was a clean miss as the force of the flying water made him stumble backwards. Knowing at once his only hope was to be nearer the source and quicker off the mark, he went splashing into the chill stream, and got off a good shot that if it was not enough to cause Ennis to stumble was at least enough to spoil his aim. This got Ennis into the stream with him, and water went everywhere in great gouts, accompanied by much shouting, strategic splashing, insults, and laughter. At last, the two combatants ended up within arm’s length of each other, and regarded each other soberly.
“Well, I guess we clean now, anyways,” Ennis said. He didn’t even know what he was saying. His eyes, like Jack’s, were taking in the long, lean body opposite his, now glistening, the sun and the shining water accentuating the glorious form.
“Looks like it ain’t broke after all,” Jack said softly. He tended not to miss things like that.
Ennis caught him by the shoulders, and Jack caught his breath, the look in the dark, intense eyes pinning him like a butterfly on a card. Just like that, it was there between them again, the deep bond, the utter trust, everything that they shared with each other and no one else. Jack wasn’t even aware that he licked his lips, but Ennis felt it all the way down, and his whole body groaned.
“’S’elp me, Jack Twist, you ever do that again…” he began, but it was no use. The great eyes were going wide and cloudy again, darkening helplessly, and Ennis in his turn was snared in the spell. He closed the distance between them abruptly, even as Jack’s hands snaked between them to cradle his face.
Their mouths came together with soft abruptness, with the joy of being alone, and together, and understanding that whatever the world thought, they belonged here, in each other’s arms. As they stood together in the middle of the stream, the sun kissed them, the breeze wrapped around them, and the water washed away all the hurts and the fears, for a little while.
Until Jack realized that he couldn’t feel his feet, and pulled back with a gasp. Ennis, returned to the present, made the same discovery. They had the same thought, in the same moment, but it was naturally Jack who put it into words.
“Let’s get out a this friggin water! Colder than an outhouse in January!” Their free hands brushed, and met, as they stumbled for the shore, and after some rather ludicrous lurching about on half-frozen feet, they fetched up, shivering, in the tent, where, between the towels and the blankets, and some friendly, mutual assistance, Ennis and Jack were soon warm again.
And no, it wasn’t broke after all.
Jack made sure of that.
* * *
Jack slumped back against the chair as his breathing slowed. “Oh, shit,” he breathed. “Oh, shit.”
Ennis. Ennis Del Mar. Replete as he was, Jack still felt a sudden wash of adrenaline, and he shifted with a yearning that had nothing to do with desire. It had been a long time since Jack had dared to actively revisit his longing for them to live with each other, but he had never failed to gauge Ennis when they were together, hoping to see some sign that his heart’s friend was coming to understand that they needed to be together all the time, that they must be together, always. His vigilance had only grown keener as he had picked up that Ennis' marriage was in trouble, and his reward had been to come away from the last trip with a growing certainty that, at last, he had seen such signs. Every time they were together, Jack always felt it was the best, save for the time on Brokeback, but this time had been different, and he knew that Ennis had felt the same way. The sex was always incredible, and Ennis for all his mock protests never pretended he didn’t need it just as much as Jack did, but what he had seen in Ennis' eyes, what he had heard in the quiet voice, what they had shared, the flowers, the warmth in his beloved’s eyes when they finally parted…all that, and three little words. I am home. Yes. It had been different.
For Jack, at least, there had been no question, and no difficulty, for some long years now, in knowing just exactly how he felt about Ennis Del Mar. Any remaining doubts had vanished in those first moments below Ennis’ apartment, when the cautious, hesitant Ennis had flung fear aside, pushed him into the wall with lust and gladness in his eyes, and kissed him, hard. Something had exploded inside Jack Twist then, and he had known, for sure, that this was no one shot thing, and no little thing either. It was real, it was powerful, and it was forever.
Ennis had wondered, more than once, why Jack Twist cared for him, but Jack could have told him, would have gloried in telling him, if he would only ever ask, would only even give Jack a decent excuse. Ennis was everything he knew a man should be, and many things he knew he himself was not. Quiet, for one: his daddy had told him only women yammered all the time--men kept their peace until they had something to say that needed saying. Jack hadn’t understood, as a child. The world was such an interesting place, so many things to look at and wonder at and ask about. But he learned quickly not to ask his father why the sky was blue or why the sun came up over the fence next to the barn in the winter and six feet along it in the summer, or why bulls and dogs and boys all had such similar things down there—or why his was different from his father’s. It had always been a source of shame to Jack. He’d been born in the county hospital, and he’d been cut. The other boys he knew had been born on ranches, and they were not. Neither was Ennis. He was a full man, the way Jack should have been.
And he was a real cowboy. Jack just didn’t make the cut, and he had given up trying long ago. Jesus F Christ, he sold tractors for a living! Any pussy-whipped dude from Oklahoma City could do that! And Ennis wasn’t any fat-assed foreman either, slopping all over his horse like old Aguirre. He did the hard work, just as he always had, just as Jack had done once, and he did it without complaint, without wasted breath, and with a powerful, graceful economy of movement that it aroused Jack to watch. When Ennis handled things, they went where they were supposed to, the way they were supposed to. Ennis never hit his boot toe instead of the tent stake. Ennis never got shit all over when he opened the cans. Ennis never dropped any of the wood he carried. Ennis could even get the girth strap pulled up in one go. No huffing and puffing and cursing and jabbing the damn animal in the gut three or four times to get it to let out a breath for Ennis Del Mar. Horses knew Ennis wasn’t fooling, and when he gave that strap a haul, it went tight. And when he handled Jack Twist, it was the same. And Jack loved him for that competence, that assurance, that calm and utter masculinity. He was everything Jack had always longed to be, and was not—and he loved Jack Twist anyway. Jack was pretty like a woman, and he chattered and complained and couldn’t shoot worth a damn, and wasn’t even as much of a cowboy anymore as he’d been ten years ago—and Ennis Del Mar loved him anyway.
And he did. Jack knew it. And Jack longed to tell him that he knew it, longed to take his face in both hands and say it, just say the words into those dark amber eyes. He had seen it there, looking back at him, a beautiful clear wellspring out of a wounded soul. He had seen it there many times; if never admitted, never coyed either. He had seen it through the lust, and the laughter, and the tension that strained every parting. But God, he wanted to dare to say it, and more than anything on earth, save one thing only, he wanted Ennis to say it to him. He’d almost said it this time, with the flowers. He’d come even closer, later. But which was greater—the love, or the fear?
It was here that Jack Twist’s high courage failed him, turned the words to clay in his mouth. If--ah, if--Ennis' fear was greater than his love—it might be the end. Jack wasn’t afraid of tire irons or of being dragged behind a truck. He was afraid that if he said the words, Ennis would end it between them. Three little words. They were just three little words, but they had power. And they hung in the air between them at every moment he was with Ennis, true and real, but they were too dangerous to say. And he longed to tell Ennis that, too.
It was not the fault of Ennis Del Mar that his heart embraced fear and feared joy. It was not the fault of Jack Twist, either, that he believed the damage could be undone. Let me help. Let me hold you. Let me heal you. In the silence and the moonlight Jack Twist dreamed, as he had dreamed all his life, of better things, things beyond his reach, but within his power, if he believed, if he tried, if he dared.
For Ennis Del Mar, he could do all those things.
Three Little Words concludes with Part Three… |
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| Three Little Words, Part Three |
[Jul. 27th, 2006|04:58 pm] |
THREE LITTLE WORDS, PART THREE.
These characters are not mine. God bless Annie Proulx for creating them.
Rated X.
“Can’t do this anymore, Jack. Got a stop it. Just can’t be that way.” Ennis was pacing now, even his monumental patience frayed as the anguish and the anxiety got the upper hand at last. Fate would have it that for the first time, Ennis was early, and Jack late. The turn of events had thrown Ennis into confusion. Jack was never late. He was always there first, tent set up, fire ring done, coffee heating, grinning and teasing. But not this time. At first Ennis had simply sat in the truck, but with coffee long gone could only smoke, and this did not occupy his mind. Then he let the horses out to graze. He didn’t know why he had brought them. He just didn’t know how not to. He didn’t want this trip to look any different to Alma, who was hostile enough on the subject already. She didn’t need any more ammunition. But he had no intention of staying. He knew what would happen if he did that. So, having done the fire ring too, simply to keep from going out of his mind with apprehension, he could only pace, and mutter, repeating a weary refrain that he dared not allow to fall silent. Ennis knew exactly how hard this was going to be. The only hope he had of getting through it was to hit Jack with the bad news in the first moments. And now his one simple plan had been thrown askew, and all he could do was say the words over and over, trying to keep his courage from going off the rails altogether.
“Sorry, Jack. Sorry, but it’s got a be this way. I can’t do this anymore. Can’t stop thinkin about you.” Where is he? Did something happen to him? He’s never late. Never can wait. “Can’t stop thinkin about you. You’ve took over my life. Can’t be like that. Can’t get away from you.” Maybe he ain’t comin. Maybe he changed his mind. --No. He’d never do that. “Never wanted this. Don’t want this.” He had said this to himself so many times it came out automatically. If only belief came as automatically. “Can’t do this anymore. Got a live my own life. Can’t be with you. Can’t do without you.” Where the hell did that come from? “I don’t want to hide no more, Jack. Don’t want to lie no more. Maybe I am queer.” No! –Oh, fuck it, I just don’t know anymore. “Sick of worryin about it. Don’t want to live like this.” Where are you? Why don’t you come? Ennis had a sudden vision of two gray things that looked like his parents, but didn’t move, didn’t look right, smelled funny, lying so very still in those two boxes… He broke a sweat, and for some moments stood breathing hard, with his arms across his body. Not Jack too. Jesus Christ, not Jack too. Twelve hundred miles… “Can’t do this anymore. Can’t do this anymore, Jack.”
The distraught man hadn’t noticed that the day, which even he acknowledged was unpromising, was now deteriorating quickly. A fine rain had begun, and as Ennis paced—to the truck, away from the truck, over to the horses, back to the fire ring, back to the truck—it became heavier. At one point he thought of getting wood, but after picking up three or four branches, he threw them away with a curse. He wasn’t staying. He couldn’t stay. He had been over it a hundred times in the two weeks since he had made his decision: There was no way to write something like this. He couldn’t call Jack. It had to be face to face. He owed Jack that much. He owed him much more than that, but it couldn’t be like that. Tell him, and say goodbye, and go. Just how he was going to do that, in the face of Jack’s devastation, he had no idea. It was beyond his ability to imagine more than that Jack would be upset. Boys who had seen torn up corpses, and dead gray parents, didn’t imagine things. Reality was more than enough. Dead Earl, dead parents, dead Brokeback, dead marriage, dead Jack—no! Not dead. Just everything that had been between them, dead. He had to kill it. It was the only way. “Can’t do this anymore, Jack.”
Ennis had not slept more than a few hours a night since he had made his decision. He had not had anything to eat or drink since before daybreak, and then only coffee and a stale roll, for he certainly hadn’t had any appetite. He was now half-crazed with fear and grief and the burden of his iron determination and was nearer than he knew to passing out with sheer exhaustion. But still he paced, in the cold, soaking rain. And it was thus that Jack Twist found him.
Between the rain and his distracted state, Ennis never heard the truck coming. It was not until the headlights swept him that he knew Jack had arrived at last, and the wash of light stopped him in his tracks, partway between the horses and the fire ring. It was only now that he noticed the rain, and was aghast that he had not loaded the horses back into the trailer and covered it with the tarp. And then Jack was leaping out of his truck.
Ennis watched him approach, helplessly, coming like a trusting puppy into the gunsights. He felt a cold wash of terror, and an irrational desire to run, the same fear that had savaged him twice before in his life—once, when he was nine, as he stood beside a dusty wash with his father’s hand on his neck, and once again, ten years later, when he had awakened in a cold gray morning and realized that sometime in the previous night, he had fucked the man lying beside him. In some part of his mind, he was shouting at the man approaching him, telling him to go away, get away now, I don’t want to do this to you, but no word could escape him. And he didn’t understand why he was so distraught now that the moment of freedom was finally come.
Jack hurried to him, of course, grinning broadly, of course, and Ennis would remember later something about a flat tire, but at the time he heard only sound. And then Jack was slowing, and a dark frown was gathering on his face. It was now or never. Ennis opened his mouth, but, as usual, Jack managed to speak first.
On such small things do lives pivot. If it had been darker, so that Jack could not see Ennis clearly. If Jack had still been preoccupied with his fury at getting a flat now, of all times. If Jack had chosen to tease Ennis, or be irritated with him because he was too stupid to put on his slicker when it started to rain. But the frown that pulled Jack’s eyebrows together was not of irritation, but concern. More than that, of worry. He did not see the Ennis Del Mar he expected to see, after the lightning bolt of hope that had gone through him at the sight of Ennis' truck at the camp site at least two hours before his normal time. The man before him looked ill, old, washed out and weary, dark circles under sunken eyes, and was staring at him as though he expected a terrible punishment. And he was soaking wet. And so the face Ennis saw that dark afternoon was the only one against which he had no defense, no recourse, no strength: great sweet eyes darkening with love and compassion, showing the heart open to him, reaching out to him, sore with the need to help him. He had seen this face ten years before, when he had come yearning and frightened into the tent where Jack waited, and it had undone him forever. In this moment of decision, Ennis Del Mar was reminded, at last, not only of what he had, standing before him, but what he stood to lose. Or to throw away.
“Jesus Christ, Ennis,” Jack whispered. “What’s the matter?” And his hand cradled Ennis' face, stroking icy skin.
“Jack, I…” A bandanna, damp with warm water. A sleeve for a bloody nose. The back of the hand, drawn along the side of an unhappy face. He cares. He cares about me. He wants me anyway. He’s always wanted me anyway. And I…I… “I missed you!” Ennis blurted, his eyes wide. “Missed you! I missed you, Jack, I missed you!” He had Jack by the shoulders, in a vice-grip, and was shaking him. “I missed you!”
Something ripped through Jack, then, something that understood, on a gut level, what Ennis was really saying. But at the time, it made no sense to him, not issuing from this wild-eyed, sick-looking man. Something must have happened, to reduce Ennis to such a state, and it was that certainty that held all Jack Twist’s attention. Shaking his head, he stroked his friend’s face. “You don’t look good. You all right? What’s wrong?”
“I missed you,” Ennis insisted, panting, his eyes intense. “I missed you, Jack.”
That was when Jack knew there were more immediate concerns than getting Ennis to talk. “We got to get you in my truck while I set up,” he said, with a stubborn decisiveness Ennis knew well. “Come on, Ennis. Get in my truck.” Jack knew the heater in Ennis' truck didn’t work. He had another thought. “When was the last time you had something to eat, buddy?” Ennis looked at him blankly, confirming the suspicion. “You look like you ain’t ate or slept in days.” Jack guided him to the truck, got him inside, and went around to start the engine. “Now I’m gone a set up, and you gone a sit here. And get them wet clothes off. There’s a blanket behind the seat. I’ll get you your dry stuff. I think there’s some cold coffee left.” Jack slammed the door on him and went to work, loading the horses, putting on the feed bags, flinging the tarp over the frame, setting up the tent, slinging the blankets, sleeping pads, pillows, and towels inside, and flinging after them Ennis' change of clothes and his slicker and some food. In twenty minutes it was all done and he was back at the truck, where he didn’t waste any time being surprised that Ennis had not moved. He managed to coax Ennis out of the truck, made him take his wet clothes off outside the tent, and all but shoved him inside. It was a pity neither Jack nor his Ennis was in a condition to notice the calm efficiency with which all this had been accomplished.
Once the two of them were finally inside the tent together, Jack went about the task of getting Ennis dry and warm, since he seemed unable to do even that for himself. So great was Jack’s worry that he hardly even noticed the beautiful body he had been dreaming of ever since the last time he had seen it, but it would be wrong to say he failed to notice it altogether. He certainly saw that his friend had lost weight.
Ennis now sat speechless and neither resisted nor participated in Jack’s ministrations with the bath towel. It was very difficult for Jack to run hands over Ennis this way and get no response, but if anything, it made him more gentle, and neither of them knew how much Ennis needed that, just now. Jack found himself talking to Ennis as though he were a frightened child, or a skittish horse, kissing the damp curls, whispering “shhh, shhh, it’s all right, honey, it’s okay, take it easy.” It was not until he was patting Ennis' face dry, after toweling his hair, that Jack discovered that it was not rain, or not just rain, making his lover’s face wet. There were tears, too, slipping steadily down his face. Jack’s own eyes filled. He had never seen Ennis cry before, not actually cry, and it tore at him. At last he got Ennis into his dry shirt, shed some of his own clothes, wrapped blankets around them both, and drew them down together. It was not by the intention of either that Ennis' head ended up on Jack’s breast, but it was not accidental that both instinctively sought to embrace as they had on that night long before, when they had found something waiting in each other that no one else would ever be able to give them. With a sigh and a shudder, Ennis Del Mar accepted the embrace, and was asleep within minutes. But Jack Twist lay staring at the tent ceiling for a long time after that.
* * *
It was probably a good two hours before Ennis woke, and all unthinking burrowed his face against Jack’s chest with a smile. And then he remembered. Jack felt the change in his body, and they both sat up, avoiding each other’s eyes.
Jack’s next task was easy enough: he made Ennis eat and drink, and Ennis devoured the spaghetti cold right out of the can. After that, a few shots of whisky and a cigarette, and he felt halfway human again. It was not until he had finished the cigarette, and chucked the butt outside, that Jack spoke, and hit him right between the eyes.
“You were gone tell me to go away, weren’t you?” Jack asked, nodding, his voice quiet, his shoulders rounded. “You were gone tell me to go away and never come back.”
Ennis went very still. Having found he could not go through with it, he was satisfied with his choice, and just wanted to forget it. It had not occurred to him that Jack would figure out the truth. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to say anything.
“Answer me,” Jack said, his voice still soft, but with a definite edge. “Answer me, Ennis.”
“Didn’t do it.” The words were dragged out of him, they way they used to be.
“But you were gone to!”
There was no choice but to admit it. “Yeah.”
“Why?” The single word was a cry of anguish. “Why, Ennis?”
“I didn’t. Forget it, huh?” The words were clipped, but Ennis was begging.
“Oh, yeah, sure!” Jack’s eyes were ice chips. “Just lay down and let you fuck me and go home never knowin if I’ll ever see you again. What, I look stupid, Ennis? And you ain’t answered my question. I mean, Jesus motherfucker, after that time we had last time! Why?” His voice broke. “Tell me, Ennis! Why?”
“I can’t stop thinkin about you!” Ennis blurted. “I can’t stop! It’s too much. You’re always there. Always. I take Alma Jr. to get her new shoes, I put gas in the truck, I fix a fence post, you’re there. Don’t even have to close my eyes no more, you’re there. Don’t have no choice. Can’t stop thinkin about you.”
“I think about you all the time!” Jack cried, flinging his hands out. “What the hell’s the matter with that? Shit! Think about you? Tell you what: I breathe in: ‘En!’ I breathe out: ‘Nis!’ How the fuck you think I get from one day to another, but thinkin about you!”
“You don’t mind it like I do!” Ennis shot back, his voice even more hoarse than usual. “You don’t mind it like I do, Jack! It was okay when I could just do it when I wanted to, but after that last time, it was all the time. All the damn time. I mean, fuck it--you know how many guys there are, name a Jack? Like gettin electric shock, every time I hear somebody go ‘hey, Jack! Over here, Jack!’ I’m fuckin seein things: You in the mirror. You on the TV. You every guy with dark hair, blue eyes. Gone out a my fuckin mind. Just can’t stop, not for a minute.”
“And that’s bad.” Jack’s eyes shimmered, his mouth was tight.
“It ain’t the same for you,” Ennis said flatly. “You don’t have to remember, like I do. You didn’t get took to see no old man lyin in no ditch, blood everywhere, flies everywhere, with a face you don’t never want to see. You don’t still have no fuckin nightmares, twenty-some fuckin years later.”
“Oh, don’t I? Don’t I have nightmares? Fuck I don’t,” Jack shot back, his finger stabbing out. “I dream like I’m on my way up here, but I can’t remember where we’re sposed to meet--I can’t never find it, can’t find the right road. I dream like I’m sposed to be with you, and I wake up and it’s Lureen next to me, and I’m back in Childress, and it’s too late to get back here. Sometimes I dream we’re kissin or fuckin or somethin, and then I really wake up, and she is lyin next to me. You want a nightmare? Try that.”
Ennis' voice was very soft as he picked at the blanket around his shoulders.
“Sometimes…sometimes it ain’t Earl, in that ditch.”
Jack’s eyes closed. He looked away, hesitated.
“I ain’t ever told you this,” he said at last, reaching into the painful silence. “But right before I met Lureen, in ’65, I got the crap beat out of me one night in a bar by this guy named Billy Rick.” He felt, rather than saw, Ennis' head come up, turn toward him. “He was another bull rider, really good, way better than me. We been crossin paths for months. Hated me at first sight. Never knew why. It’s like that with me. Lot a guys, they don’t like me. Just the way it is. Anyway, Billy Rick started sayin stuff. Sayin I liked guys better than girls. It’s this, Ennis:” Jack turned to find Ennis frowning at him, and pointed at his face. “Same as in school. ‘Bug-eyes’ wasn’t all I got called. Till I got a beard, I looked like a damn girl. Boys used to make kissy noises at me, stuff. You know.” He shrugged. “Billy Rick, just more a the same. I told him to go fuck himself and he lit into me. And I got the shit kicked out a me. You know me, Ennis. I ain’t no fighter. And when they pulled him off a me, he called me a faggot. Just cause it was the nastiest thing he could think of. Well, I did me some thinkin after that, friend. At least you look like other guys, Ennis. Nobody gone a look at you, think ‘Ennis Del Mar, he looks like he likes to fuck other guys.’ Me, I can’t hide. Not with this fuckin face. So when Lureen come along, I took what she was offerin with both hands and my dick. And I’ll tell you somethin else, Ennis: I tried a forget you. I tried real hard. Shit, would a been a hell of a lot easier for both of us, if I could a. But the more time went by, more I realized I didn’t want a forget you. And then Lureen threw away my coat, and that did it.” Jack’s head dropped, and he was silent a moment.
“So yeah. It’s hard.” Jack shrugged again. “You got Earl, I got Billy Rick, dumb jerks I went a school with, and shit, I still see it sometimes, guys look at me funny, and yeah, I worry about it some. So I guess I can understand, you dreamin it’s you beat up dead…”
“Me?” Ennis was startled into speech. “Uh, uh!” He looked away, shaking his head. “Not me, Jack. You. I dream it’s you.”
A deep tingle of fear went down Jack Twist’s spine then, and he shuddered. “Jesus, Ennis. Jesus fuckin Christ.” And then his mouth tightened, and his eyes hardened. “You know what? Fuck that, Ennis,” he said, in a voice that made Ennis turn to him. “Fuck that. It’s a dream. It’s the past. This is now. --Look, I know I can be stupid about this. I know what we do is takin a risk. I guess it’s good one of us got some damn sense. I know I don’t. I’d a just about fucked you right there in the damn street, that time in Riverton. I’d a done anything you’d a let me. So maybe it’s good, you ain’t that dumb. But Ennis, I guess what I mean is, what it comes down to is, who’s boss in your life? You, or some dead guy you never even knew, from when you were nine? I mean, he was there when you met me. But that didn’t stop you that night it was so cold. Or the next night, when you wasn’t drunk, he didn’t stop you from comin into that tent. And he didn’t stop you four years later. But you got a decide, friend. You got a know. Cause tell you what--if he’s boss, one these days, you are gone tell me a get lost. And I ain’t sure I can go around with that noose on my neck, waitin to feel it go tight.”
“Ain’t gone be that way, Jack.” The reply was quiet, but immediate, and sure. “Ain’t gone do that.”
Jack looked up, and saw the dark eyes steady and serious, but every nerve still jangled with the memory of the half-crazed Ennis who had wanted to be rid of him. “No? And why in the hell not? I want a know, Ennis Del Mar. You was all ready to cut me loose, when I got here. How’m I ever gone be sure you won’t?”
Ennis turned his face away, and the answer was a little time coming. “Cause…because when I looked in your face…when I looked in your face, I remembered somethin.”
“Yeah?” Jack still had his neck-hair good and up. “Like what?”
Now, at last, Ennis met Jack Twist’s gaze, with meaning, his dark eyes full.
“I remembered…what it was like, cuttin you loose ten years ago. After Brokeback.”
And Jack felt the slam of a fist into his face again, and the terrible night after that, and the distance growing between them even as Ennis leaned against his truck the next day, refusing a lift, refusing even to shake hands, refusing, refusing, diminishing in the mirror, irretrievable, unattainable, smaller and smaller, turn the corner and gone, like he never was, like none of it ever was…
“Ennis. Ennis.” The dark brows pinched up, the eyes overflowed. “Oh, shit, Ennis!” And then he was on top of Ennis, pushing him back onto the blankets and pillows.
In a way, it was like the first kiss, so long ago, the first real kiss, when Ennis had pulled Jack on top of him and finally allowed Jack’s eager mouth to find his. They both knew how close it had been, and there was a wild relief, an edge of desperation, in them now. That was not to say that the kiss was wild. It was not. The awareness of a great danger, narrowly escaped, was bone-deep in them both, and it was a kiss that sought to bind, and to hold, and to reassure.
Their mouths met with certainty, and trust. As Jack’s curved lips parted over his, Ennis caught his breath harshly, and Jack moaned. Desire surged strongly, long body against long body, belly to belly, mouths locking, Jack's arms winding round Ennis' head, Ennis' arms wrapping Jack so tightly that Jack had to break the kiss long enough to gasp that he couldn’t breathe. But even as he did so, his mouth was seeking again, finding again, his lips brushing, sweeping, taking, his tongue slipping along a soft, sweet arc, tasting and caressing, before darting into loving contest and conquest. Ennis' callused hands slid everywhere over the firm lines, though perhaps they did linger over the handsome buttocks, squeezing and pinching, giving both the benefit of Jack's immoderate pleasure as his hips plunged and bucked against his lover’s. Ennis surged up to meet him, pulling him down, forcing them together, Ennis groaning, Jack whining and gasping as each big cock slid ecstatically against its mate. Each thrust increased the sensitivity, the need, the mutual awareness, until it became painful, until the blood was beating in Jack's ears, and Ennis' heart was pounding. And then by silent consent they were on their knees, Ennis finding both rigid tools and stroking them surely. The only sounds now, the only sounds in all their world, were beating hearts and gasping breath and the ancient song of their cries for each other, Ennis' hoarser, deeper voice, winding in urgent counterpart to Jack's, tenor above him. And then Jack was straddling Ennis' thighs, making Ennis sit back on his haunches, and Ennis gasped, “Jack, oh God,” as the joining was made.
Jack caught Ennis' hair, pulled his head back, and took his mouth again, urgently, as his lover’s big hands spread over his buttocks and spurred his hard ride. They rose and fell in a tight rhythm that was far more intense than it would have seemed, Jack's hands slipping to steel-hard biceps to help pull himself down, Ennis pulling him down and forward. For a little, neither was dominant, neither wanted to be, the giving and the taking were all one and the same.
“Ennis,” Jack's voice was a soft wail. “Ennis. Oh, fuck, it’s so good. Oh, shit. Oh, shit, that feels so good.” His head dropped, his forehead touched Ennis'. “Oh, damn, ain’t nothin else feels like you. Nothin else. That’s all I want, Ennis, just you inside me. Oh, shit, I need you. I need you so much. Oh, Ennis. Oh, Ennis, fuck me.”
Ennis was in a silent ecstasy of his own. As his hands moved over his lover’s buttocks, they gave, and pushed, and he loved the feel of the living muscle moving in his grasp. His hands moved, too over hard, hairy thighs; over the smooth back, caressing muscle and bone; over the inescapably masculine chest, flat and hairy; but always coming back to the surging, pushing ass. It was Jack. Only Jack felt this way. Only Jack could make him feel this way. As the heat between them rose, he could smell the male sex, and sweat, and everything that was Jack. Everything that was right. Everything that he needed, to be complete. Forehead to forehead, he could hear Jack gasping for breath, feel the sheen of sweat between them. Jack kissed him, again and again, and he kissed Jack, his own Jack, his darling Jack. He ran a hand through the thick brush of hair, down the sweet face. As Jack's head dropped to his shoulder, Ennis held him close by the back of the neck. Finally, saving the best for last, one wandering, loving hand found its way down the hairy belly, through the musky tangle and up the hot, heavy shaft that reared between them. Hard and silken at the same time, slick with Jack's excitement…Ennis took Jack's mouth again as Jack groaned, and stroked, hard, harder than a woman ever would, the way a man needed to be stroked. Jack rewarded him with kisses all over his face and a wonderful sharp quickening of his surging pace.
Neither ever knew afterward how long they loved this way. A long time, a healing time, but at last, they needed it to deepen even more, to surrender completely to passion. Easily, naturally, Ennis tipped Jack onto his back, pushed his legs up, and sank in hard.
The pulse of joy between them then nearly undid them both. It didn’t last long, at any event. Jack cried out and Ennis groaned as his weight settled on his lover, and then they were heart to heart and belly to belly and mad with the need of each other.
“Jack, oh Jack,” Ennis moaned, thrashing, bucking into the tight heat. His breath was ragged in Jack's ear. “I missed you, Jack. I missed you. Oh, fuck. I missed you so much. So much.”
“Ennis! Ennis! I missed you, too! Oh, Jesus, I missed you!” Once again, Jack knew, even as Ennis did, in his way, exactly what those three little words really meant, and for both, the understanding was enough to bring on climax.
“Oh, Jack, Jack, I missed you, I missed you, oh, fuck, fuck, don’t let go, don’t let me go, I got a come, got a come, got…got…oh fuck! I’m comin, I’m comin, oh fuck…” Ennis convulsed, swept away once more on the flood that released and released and released deep inside.
“Ennis! Ennis! Oh! God! Ennis!” Jack wailed, and he fell and fell, his love and need spurting hot between them as if it would never stop.
* * *
They lay as they had collapsed for a long time, as breathing slowed and calmed, as heartbeats settled slowly to normal. For Jack, the ecstasy of love with Ennis was so great that it was able to all but erase the bad hours he had lain staring up and wondering if it was over between them. He knew he still could not boldly tell Ennis the truth, and a sad part of him understood that they were still not going to leave the mountains together, but nothing could ever take from him the realization that, if Ennis' love was not altogether greater than his fear, it was great enough to conquer fear’s attempt to separate them forever. He would never forget either Ennis' wild face--Ennis had made up his mind, and it had all but sent him mad—or the heart-cry of three little words that might have been, all along, what Ennis had meant to say. He was that much to Ennis Del Mar. That much, and more, if being face to face with Jack again was enough to defeat a will Jack knew well was nearly impossible to divert from any set purpose. He did not see it as a defeat. If he had not won the victory he had sought, still, he knew how much he had won. And they still had a week together. And they would keep on having weeks together, until that day came…
For Ennis, as he pulled away to lie next to his chosen companion, the awareness was simpler, though no less powerful. He had been sick with misery, and now he was happy. He was so tired, and so content, in that peaceful, super-aware state that lies beyond exhaustion, and there he found that he was glad, and that everything was okay again. All the weeks of fear and worry seemed to have happened to someone else. It was all gone. He was where he belonged. Maybe he couldn’t stay there, but he would never again question the essential truth: Jack Twist made him happy. He loved his girls more than his life, but Jack Twist, and Jack alone, made him happy.
“C’mere, Jack-rabbit,” he said, turning on his side to face the friend of his heart. He meant to add something about cuddling, but the sight of Jack's full face robbed him of speech, black hair mussed over the forehead, the fine eyes soft under the beautiful brows, cheeks softly flushed, lips parted in a smile given only to him…Jesus. Jesus.
“Ain’t a bad face, Jack,” he said at last, a bit awkwardly. “I like it.” He ran a crooked finger along the warm cheek, watching the blue darken for him. “I think that Billy Rick was just jealous.”
Laughing fondly, Jack pulled them together and they kissed, ankles hooking together, fingers twining as they drew back again.
Though as always, Ennis couldn’t hold Jack's gaze long, he kept looking, and it was something to Jack to know that the deep warmth in the dark eyes belonged to him alone. He let go his friend’s hand to run his own along Ennis' face, to trail his fingers through the curly hair, to caress the strong arm, to slip over the broad chest, and down… And then an irresistible hand caught his.
“Now you behave, Jack,” Ennis admonished him. “Stop tryin a tickle my ding-dong.”
For a moment, Jack's face was a study. His mouth worked, and then he burst out laughing. It was infectious, and Ennis began to snicker, and then to laugh, too. Suddenly playful, he grabbed Jack, and they began wrestling, but Jack for one was laughing too hard to really gain any ground, and the snickering Ennis was able to throw him around pretty much as he pleased. At last, he fell on his back beside Jack, who was wiping tears from his eyes and holding his stomach.
“Oh, shit, Ennis, my gut hurts.”
“Your own fault. Huh?” Ennis said, digging him in the ribs and feeling fine.
Whatever Jack might have replied to this additional burst of wit was lost forever when there came a startling sound from outside the tent that brought them both bolt upright. It sounded like nothing either had ever heard before, but at least they did both know instantly that it was no noise made by men. As one, they crawled to the door of the tent and looked out.
It had stopped raining some while before, and the black scud was retreating in the east. The sun was just setting on the little lake, and in the blaze of color they saw at once what had made the noise. Even as they watched, the biggest birds either had ever seen were landing on the lake, and some of them were calling as they swam around fluffing and settling their wings, establishing their own territories for the evening.
The two men slipped out of the tent, naked save for the hats they caught up automatically, not minding either the nippy air or the cold wet grass, though Ennis did reach behind him and snag a blanket, thinking Jack might want it. They moved cautiously toward the lake, not wanting to frighten their visitors.
“Trumpeter swans,” Jack whispered, awe-struck. “I think they are, Ennis.” Ennis only nodded, equally moved.
There were three families, three pairs of enormous snow-white adults with their heavy black and red bills, and a confusing number of large dirty-gray cygnets which finally resolved itself as sixteen. The males were calling as they swam around their females and offspring, but all finally settled peacefully into a striking flotilla.
“I ain’t never seen nothin like that,” Ennis whispered. “They beautiful, Jack.”
“God, ain’t they,” Jack breathed.
Ennis slipped the blanket around both Jack's shoulders and his own, and they stood together, just watching.
“I never knew they was this far west,” Jack said, after a while.
Ennis just nodded. It was a moment to be still, and just be grateful. And he was. Grateful for the gift in front of him, and the even greater gift beside him. His hand reached out, found Jack's reaching for his, and their hands met, fingers twining.
“Them swans, they mate for life, you know,” Jack added thoughtfully, his eyes on the scene before him, his heart beating for the man standing at his shoulder.
Ennis nodded. “Yeah. They do.” There was a note in his voice that brought Jack's head around. Three little words…
And then they were turning to each other, the blanket slipping from their shoulders, revealing them in their own beauty as their arms went around each other, and their mouths sought, and found. When they drew apart a little, Ennis added, soft and serious,
“I missed you.” Three little words…
The answer was there in the sky-blue eyes, but Jack said it anyway.
“Me, too, Ennis.” Three little words…
And then the two men were gone, into their own refuge, into the refuge of each other’s arms, and the swans were left to dream
on the lake as the mountains faded into night.
Some time later, in a tangle of blankets, clothes and damp towels, Ennis and Jack lay curled around each other, smiling, for they lay skin to skin, body to body, heart to heart, and it was good.
As they floated into sleep, they smiled still, for with every breath, every sigh, and every heartbeat they rejoiced--in each other, and in the truth and the power and the glory of three little words.
Goodnight. |
|
|
| Under The Tree |
[Jul. 26th, 2006|11:37 pm] |
UNDER THE TREE
The last part of the story that started with "Never Enough Sleep."
These amazing characters are not mine. May Annie Proulx get all the Christmas presents in the world for thinking them up.
December 24th, 1973
Ennis paused, turned back on his way out the barn door. “Hey, Bob,” he called. “Bob. Time’s it?”
Bob Dozorets looked impatient. “When you gone get yourself a watch, Del Mar?” When Ennis just shrugged, he answered. “It’s quarter after six.”
Shit. Nodding his thanks, Ennis started out the door.
“Hey. Ennis,” Bob Dots called after him. “Merry Christmas.”
“Thanks. Yourself.”
He cursed again silently as he started his truck. Quarter after six. And he’d promised Alma it’d be four-thirty, latest. Well, nothing anybody could do about it. Margery Dots’ quarter horse Golden Boy had gone colicky, and he was a valuable animal, to say nothing of what he meant to Margery. Ennis pictured her standing silent and pale as the hands and the vet had worked with the horse through the afternoon. She was a nice kid, two years older than Junior, and old enough to know colic could be fatal to her beloved Boy. He was glad to have helped her Christmas be a happy one and not a heartbreaker. Just every now and then, things worked out okay.
He wondered how okay his Christmas was going to be as he started down the long dirt road that led off the Dozorets ranch. Alma had begun popping the popcorn the night before, so there’d be plenty, and the girls’d be stringing it by now. Or maybe they’d still be cutting out mittens and snowmen from colored paper to make ornaments. And the sky as he had last seen it, low and leaden, promised a good fall of new snow by the morning. It would look like Christmas, and between the turkey and the fresh greens in the apartment, it would smell like Christmas. But there would be a chill in the air indoors as well as out, and Ennis knew that it would be a very long day, and as much as he liked seeing his girls happy, he for one was not looking forward to it. Automatically, his mind turned away from thoughts of Alma, and he reached for a more pleasant image.
He didn’t have to reach far. He never did. All he had to do was let his guard down a little, relax with the knowledge that for the next hour or so he was alone, and the visions would come, bringing him as close to happiness as he could ever manage here, so far from the freedom of the wild mountains. A smile, a look, a laugh, blue eyes wide and dark with sweet hunger… Ennis' shoulders relaxed their tense set as he freed Jack Twist to wind himself around the moment.
But it was not a memory of Jack, curiously enough, that came to him then. Ennis found himself thinking of the first Christmas he and Alma had shared. There had only been the two of them then, and they had been free to devote the day to each other. Ennis remembered being happy then, as happy as he had ever been without Jack. He knew now that it had been a pallid sense of joy, a joy he kept expecting and hoping would grow strong enough to replace those other, intense and dangerous memories, but which never had. That brief time in their early marriage had been as good as it would get. Alma had fussed over him and cosseted him and given herself to him freely, and for a time Ennis had enjoyed having a woman to care for him again. But she was a woman, and that was the problem. That, and that she was not Jack Twist. From the first, almost, he had found himself driven to take her as he had taken Jack, trying desperately to find in Alma something of what he had had on the Mountain, but it was a failure. It had always been a failure, and always would be. Alma submitted dutifully, but she didn’t like it, and, knowing that, for Ennis it was always as much self-punishment as pleasure.
Still, there had been times when the demons of grief, guilt, loss and loneliness had left him alone for a while, and one of those had been that first Christmas. Whether real or simulated, Ennis had felt the cheer of the season, and a real tenderness for the wife who had outdone herself to make the day special for him. The moment he always remembered had come when, dinner eaten and cleared away, they had curled up together on the sofa to watch the snow fall and listen to carols on the radio. A great sense of peace had filled Ennis, and he had almost, for a few hours, been really happy.
A thought struck him now—what would it have been like, that Christmas of ’63, if it had been Jack tangled up with him that night? Just a quiet moment, a private moment, just lying together watching the snow fall, work done, sharing a beer, listening to the music and each other’s breathing, knowing that tonight they would bed together, tomorrow they would wake together… It could be like this, just like this, always…
The sound that forced its way out of his throat startled him, almost a child’s wail of pain. Ennis tried to stop the thoughts, but he had given Jack permission to be with him, and Jack never went easily. Other images followed, inevitably—cutting down a tree together, decorating it, exchanging gifts—but even as Ennis shook his head at the ridiculousness of him and Jack Twist celebrating a traditional family Christmas together, the idea had a power that hurt him deeply. He wanted it, suddenly and terribly, with a force that clenched his hands around the steering wheel until the knuckles whitened and the hands hurt. And he knew that if he only were with Jack tonight, he wouldn’t give a damn about trees or presents. The trappings were irrelevant. It was the night of all nights to be close to whomever was most dear, and he would never be. Never.
The headlights coming the other way jerked his attention back to the here and now. Ennis would have been grateful for the distraction, had it not been that for some reason the driver was taking his half out of the center of the drive. There was plenty of room for two vehicles to pass each other, but not if one of them was in the middle. Ennis' frustration aimed itself at the other driver. Who the hell would be going to the Dozorets place now? They hadn’t any family coming until the next day. Mrs. Dots had said so in his hearing that afternoon. And why didn’t the damn fool get the hell out of the fucking way and let him go home?
Maybe it was Sam. Old Sam, that was it. Old Sam—he didn’t seem to have any other name—was always drifting from ranch to ranch, working hard for a while and then vanishing for a drunk. Ennis clenched his teeth, anger beginning to rise. It didn’t matter whether it was Old Sam or Old Nick. Saint Nick was supposed to come that night, and he needed to get home.
He had to stop. The trucks were now close enough together that, despite several blasts of his horn, Ennis could tell the idiot wasn’t going to move to the side. So he stopped, and jumped out, his jaw set, but still in his tidy and frugal way remembering to turn off the engine and lights before he slammed his door and started for the other truck.
“Hey!” he yelled as the door to the other truck opened. It increased his irritation that he had to turn his head away, had to really squint against the other truck’s lights. “You mind getting the hell out a my way?”
“Yeah, Ennis,” came a voice that stopped him in mid-stride. “Seein as how I done gone to so much trouble a put myself in your way.”
Ennis felt his knees turn to water. There was no mistaking the slightly nasal tenor, no mistaking that precise intonation of his own name, and no mistaking either the tall form striding toward him, though it was silhouetted, not illuminated, in the headlights. It was Jack Twist.
It was Jack fucking Twist.
He was still shaking his head, unable to reconcile desire with reality, when Jack closed the distance between them, and suddenly things got very real indeed. Strong arms wound around him, one around his body, the other around his shoulders and head. Hat brims met as Ennis even in his shock turned instinctively into the embrace, and he caught a harsh breath as a soft mouth blundered into his. With a moan from deep inside, Ennis wrapped his arms in turn around his lover, even as he swayed, dizzy. He managed the one word “Jack!” before need overwhelmed him and he found Jack's mouth with his own.
Even if he hadn’t just been thinking about him, hadn’t just been yearning for him, Ennis would have been defenseless against the unanticipated taste of Jack's kiss. In the cold and the dark he felt the quick tongue dart into his mouth, and passion roared to life with a scream of joy as their mouths locked. Against all hope, against all possibility, they were together. On this night of all nights, he had Jack Twist in his arms.
Sanity dissolved. Jack lit like a bonfire to the madness in his lover’s kiss, and the heat literally rose from their bodies, steam ascending into the silence and the dark along with half-stifled moans and breath that came in gasps. Jack in his own urgency pushed Ennis back one step, two, three, into the grill of his truck, and his delighted groan wrapped around Ennis' deep growl as the steel obstacle forced their bodies together, giving Ennis nowhere to go as Jack bucked and thrust against him. Inevitably Ennis turned the tables, shoving Jack into the truck, wild with frustration, in full rut, his surging hips sliding his achingly extended cock ceaselessly against its desperate partner.
The kiss broke for breath, and left the lovers gasping against each other, stilling to stave off the climax that was all too close, leaving them quivering, their bodies taut with tension.
“Jack,” Ennis managed, his blood singing. “Christ, Jack. What the hell you doin here?” Running his hands over Jack's chest, he buried his nose under the collar of his lover’s shirt, drinking in the scent of him. It’s Jack. It’s Jack. Darlin, darlin Jack fuckin Twist… “Jack fuckin Twist,” he crooned. “You blue-eyed bastard.”
“That’s a hell of a way to say howdy to Santa Claus,” Jack answered, his voice husky and suggestive. “Merry Christmas, Ennis.”
Christmas. The word hit Ennis broadside like a freight express. “Fuck,” he croaked, pulling back, sick. “Oh, fuck. Jack! Jack, I’m so glad a see you, I want a see you, I want…I do…but…Jack, it’s Christmas. I can’t…I can’t go away, can’t even go to no motel, not tonight…” his voice broke in his anguish.
“I’ll make it easy on you, Ennis.” The words were soft, sweet and coaxing as Jack curled his hand around the placket of Ennis' shirt and pulled, just a bit. “I can’t stay neither. Four, five hours it’s gone start snowing big time, and I got a get my ass movin south fore it does. But first you got a get your Christmas present, and tell you what,” his hand spread against Ennis' chest and slipped down a little “I ain’t takin no. Now, I got me a nice big bedroll in my truck, pillow and all. You just take us somewheres we can lay it out.”
An image flashed into Ennis' mind, a single oak tree two fields away by an irrigation canal… Even as the idea came to him, though, the part of him remembering his irritated wife and patiently waiting daughters started to reject the idea. He couldn’t, he was already late…
And then Jack, who was no fool, leaned in and nuzzled under his ear, making Ennis shiver.
“You’re all I want for Christmas, Ennis,” he breathed. “And we ain’t got a lot a time.”
As Jack Twist’s lips touched his skin, Ennis Del Mar had a moment of absolute clarity: he could go home, sick and angry, and make excuses to children who didn’t need them and a wife who would still be unappeased…or he could be hung for a sheep instead of a lamb.
“C’mon,” he said harshly, pulling at Jack's arm, and they headed for Jack's truck at a run, suddenly laughing, Jack giving out a rodeo yell.
There was indeed a bedroll in the truck, one Ennis had never seen before.
“What you got a new one for?” he asked as Jack started the truck. He didn’t give a damn, really. He felt…he felt kind of like he was being shocked, a funny, fizzy tingle, though it didn’t hurt. It just filled every bit of him as though the top of his head might come off. Like a glass of ginger ale with all the bubbles running up the sides. Ennis knew he was drunk with his joy, and he laughed for no reason.
“Shit, you think I’m gone on a business trip to Denver with our bedroll? What in hell you think Lureen would a thought?” Jack was laughing too, for the same no reason. He was high as a kite on a windy March day, so high he could hardly see the ground. “Ain’t but so dumb, buddy. I told her I was gone a drive to Lightning Flat, see the folks, take em their presents. She thought I was crazy. I mailed em, soon as I got…what you doin?” This was said in a very different tone.
“Lookin for my present. I figure it’s around here somewheres.” “Here” being Jack's lap. “--Turn right and go past the next eight posts. There’s a gate.” The words were a bit muffled, as Ennis now had his nose in Jack's neck. He had realized that nobody, but nobody, would be on the road now. It was utterly dark, and lights would be seen a long way off.
“You’re just like a little kid.” Jack pulled his hand away. “Can’t wait till mornin.” His voice was a little breathless. Rough, passionate Ennis he was used to. Bold Ennis he didn’t see very often, and the occasions tended to be memorable.
“Ain’t got till mornin.” Ennis kissed the warm skin of his neck. “Want it now.” His hand resumed the search.
“Now come on, Ennis.” The level of complaint was not really very high as Jack's fingers worked, not very rigorously, to move Ennis' hand again. “I been workin hard on this present all day…”
“Just bet you have.”
“…and you got to…got to…--stop it! –There! ‘S eight!” Jack's voice rose in pitch with his relief. Ennis had been working on the belt buckle.
Once through the gate, they limped as fast as they could toward the canal, Ennis with the bedroll under one arm, Jack with the pillow, arms around waists, flinging teasing remarks at each other. When they finally reached the tree, Ennis flung the bedroll out and Jack stuck the pillow inside.
They could see each other now, in the dark, and for a moment they just stood, breathing hard, facing each other as the tension and the joy vibrated like a living thing between them.
“Jack fuckin Twist,” Ennis said hoarsely, and then there was no more distance between them, and they were falling to their knees together, hats coming off and rolling into the darkness unmarked.
It was always awkward, going into the bedroll fully clothed, but neither minded wrestling with their clothes and each other, boots the only thing left behind. It was Brokeback again, laughing and crooning and growling and always the panting, gasping breath that sometimes left a rime on the outside of the bedroll as they struggled to get coats off and clothes open even as mouths and hands and bodies moved naturally, so naturally, and so easily, into the mating dance.
It was skin against skin now, at last, shirts open, undershirts pushed up, hands spoiled for choice, mouths locked, Ennis on top as usual, revelling in the sweet torment of sliding and surging hard against his lover, denim against denim unable to blunt the deep-belly thrill of feeling how hard Jack was, how hard he was… Christ, it was good. It was so good.
“Go on!” Jack broke the kiss to gasp. “Go on and open your present!”
Ennis was already reaching between them. He actually preferred it this way, the two of them cocooned in the bedroll, fighting to get at each other. It was wonderful on the warm afternoons and the warm nights, of course, when they could be naked and admire each other, but the struggle to disrobe was exciting, and Ennis loved the visceral heat trapped between them and the way the sharp masculine body scents were intensified in the close quarters. Much as he loved seeing the man he was fucking, in the dark it was like fucking a dream, and his surrender could be total. He was home, again. As he fumbled with Jack's tight jeans, Ennis cradled the beautiful scratchy face with his other hand, sliding his thumb under Jack's lower lip, and poured out his joy and his gratitude, and his love, in his insistent and relentless kiss, making Jack fight for breath, never letting him escape for a moment from the sensual assault…
“What the fuck?” Ennis had finally managed to free Jack from all constraints, and he found both exactly what he expected to find…and something else.
Jack was laughing now, laughing hard, and reaching, and then suddenly there was a light in the bedroll, nearly blinding Ennis as Jack directed the flashlight down between them.
“Said…I had a present for you,” Jack snickered. “Had to wrap it…didn’t I?” Around the base of his cock, an arresting sight in itself, he had tied a twist of red and navy yarn ribbon into a big shoelace bow. “Well? Ain’t you gone unwrap it?”
“Nope,” Ennis decided. “Like it that way. Looks cute.” And before Jack could do more than snort, Ennis had pinned the hand with the flashlight, turned it on Jack's face so that he could look into the remarkable eyes just for a moment, and then turned it off.
“Aw, Ennis, let’s have it on. I can’t see you,” Jack protested, but his protests were cut short as a soft mouth claimed his again with utter authority.
For a little time there were no words, just the sounds of harsh breathing and muffled moans and the rustle of fabric as two long, lean bodies slid together in yearning syncopation, a punctuated rythym of need and sensuality, and in the center of it all, one rigid, aching spear against the other, rubbing, caressing, leaving a salt love trail each on his own belly and his lover’s too.
“Don’t want no light now,” Ennis gasped suddenly, and his hand slid between them again, curling possessively around both big shafts, stroking hard. “Don’t need a see you,” he added over Jack's wail of pleasure. “I know every inch a you, Jack Twist. Don’t need no light.” The dark voice was harsh and loving too in Jack's ear. “I want a taste your mouth and your cock and smell your body and feel your cock and your balls and your ass and your face and your belly. I want a fuck the livin shit out a you in the dark.”
“Ennis! Ennis!” It was too much, too much. “Oh, Ennis, I missed you so much! Fuck me, oh fuck me, I’m comin, Ennis, Jesus, Jesus Christ Ennis, oh, Ennis…”
Ennis felt it, the gorgeous big cock jerking in his hand, the eruption sticky and hot between his fingers. And the name, and the words, thin and strained and close to his ear. “Jack. My Jack. All I want…oh, fuck, oh fuck I got a come.”
It hardly even slowed them down. They knew what they wanted, what they needed. Desperate movement turned deep and sensual, Ennis shoving, Jack surging under him, bellies now slick with salt and sweat both. Ennis brought a sticky hand up between their mouths, his nostrils flaring delightedly at the heavy scent, and slipped the fingers into Jack's mouth and his own, tongues greedy for the taste of each other sliding quickly over and around the big callused fingers, teasing, teasing and promising even more delight. His belly fluttering to the feeling of Jack Twist licking their excitement off his fingers, Ennis drew his hand away only to bring it back with more, feeling the liquid slosh of desire as Jack sucked the offered fingers eagerly.
“Like that, do you, Jack-rabbit?” The soft growl in the dark voice now held notes that only Jack Twist had ever heard, or ever would. They were the sound of Ennis Del Mar adoring, a song of laughter and love and a need that drove him beyond all reason, all fear. “Mmm. Go on, lil cuddlebunny, have a suck. Tastes awful good, don’t it?” And Ennis was sucking his own fingers again, and his lips feathered over Jack's until Jack groaned and Ennis wrapped his arms around Jack's head and ravished the perfect sweet mouth until both were gasping for breath.
The freezing air stung as they rolled around in the open bedroll, Ennis pulling Jack over on top of him, and he hauled it over them again as Jack swung round, knowing what was wanted, knowing what he wanted. Ennis' deep groan echoed Jack's as he felt a curious, friendly tongue swipe his flat belly and tease a salt droplet out of the big bell-end of his cock as it rose protestingly again to full stand. Jack in turn gasped out “Shit!” as he felt soft lips part over his straining tool and welcome it into a deceptively gentle capture even as a strong hand curled around the full shaft to guide and tease it.
Time went away then as mouths well-accustomed to the work set diligently about licking up every last spilt drop even as they made eager, coaxing re-acquaintance of hard-risen shaft, swollen balls, silk-velvet plum. Only when he couldn’t bear Jack's educated torture any longer did Ennis release his own prize to gasp “Damn, Jack, stop, you got a stop, don’t make me come, not yet.” Jack hesitated, not sure if Ennis meant what he said, but when Ennis panted, “Get up here, Jack, get up here now,” Jack didn’t wait to be told a second time.
“I want you, Jack,” Ennis breathed as big curving fingers combed lovingly though his sweaty curls, as nose and lips nuzzled his neck. And then he said something Jack didn’t expect, words that froze him with surprise.
“Fuck me, Jack.” The dark voice was soft and hoarse. “Come on. Don’t wait. We ain’t got time. I need you so bad.” Joyfully, Jack stopped his mouth then, and Ennis felt the long body lift off his, felt his legs being pushed up, the brief pause as Jack reached for the little jar, and then…Ennis surrendered.
“Oh, honey,” Jack crooned, breaking the kiss with a moan. “Oh, fuck, that’s so good. Oh, Jesus, Ennis, I’m inside you. Oh, damn, you’re so hot.” And then after that there were no more words, just Ennis groaning, Jack whining and moaning, and the sounds of shifting fabric and coupling, until quite all at once, long minutes later, Jack's head flung back and he cried “Ennis, Ennis, oh darlin, oh shit, Ennis, Ennis I’m comin, oh fuck, I’m comin inside you” and his body bucked desperately as all control was flung away and orgasm shuddered over him.
With a growl, Ennis pushed his lover off and had him, still shattered with release, over on his belly and then up on his knees. As he had done it so long ago, so he did it now—a swipe of his tongue over his hand, his hand over a cockhead well slicked, and in one hard move, absolute completion.
“Jack. Jack. My Christmas present. I want you so bad. Oh, God. Oh, God, I got a fuck you.” The words were grunted out as Ennis slammed their bodies together. “I missed you so much. Wanted to be with you so much now. Come ere, Jack darlin, come ere, Ennis gone a make you come again for Christmas.” His hand reached around, found a beribboned cock already rising, stroked it full over Jack's ecstatic encouragement. “Oh, fuck. You’re so good. You’re so good. Don’t want nobody else. Nobody else ever. Want you…I want you…come on, come on, darlin, got a fuck you so hard, fuck…you…so…hard…” The words were coming through gritted teeth now, and Ennis knew what was about to happen. “Uh. Uh. Uhhh…Jack. Now, Jack. Now. Now. Oh, fuhhhhhck, oh, fuck I’m…comin!” With a shout, Ennis convulsed, went flying into space, taking Jack Twist with him. They hung suspended in rictus for a sweet little eternity, then Jack collapsed, taking Ennis with him, an undercut riverbank sliding into the slow rolling water. They lay where they fell.
At last Ennis pulled himself away and they lay side by side as their breathing slowed and racing hearts calmed. Now, Ennis didn’t object when Jack fished out the flashlight again and they could see each other clearly. He wanted to remember the flushed face, glazed with sweat, the eyes huge and dark, forever.
“That was a hell of a Christmas present, buddy,” Jack breathed, drawing his fingers along Ennis' face.
“Sorry I didn’t have time to wrap it for you.” Relaxed and happy, Ennis Del Mar was grinning. It had been a long time since Jack had seen his lover smile like that.
“’S okay,” Jack grinned back into the warm eyes lit from within with his lover’s joy. “I like your present a lot better unwrapped.”
There was a little silence, and then:
“I sure am glad you’re here, Jack. I really am glad.”
Jack looked away, eyes brightening, and it was a moment before he could answer.
“Merry Christmas, Ennis.” And then, eyes shy but determined, fingers drawing once again through ragged curls, his other Christmas present:
“Ennis? Ennis, I love…”
“…Daddy!”
Ennis jerked up in the bed as though he’d been shot. “Merry Christmas, Daddy!” Jenny cried again as he stared dumbly at her. On the other side of the bed, in the gray light, Alma Jr. was doing the same to her mother.
Struggling as he had hardly ever before struggled in his life, it was not his daughter that Ennis Del Mar saw before him, as he fought to keep what was inside from showing on his face. Tears stung his eyes. A dream. So real, but it was only a damn dream. Jack had never been there at all. He’d only dreamed it. Jack. Jack. Son of a whoreson fuckin… His fist closed…and his dark eyes widened.
“Daddy?” But Ennis didn’t even hear her. He was staring down at what he held in his right hand.
It was a twist of red and navy yarn, tied into a bow.
With a laugh that brought Alma’s head around, Ennis pulled Jenny into his arms. “Merry Christmas, darlin!” he said. “Let’s go see what’s under the tree!”
It was the best Christmas ever. |
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| Cycle of Broken Dreams, One; Shadow on the Heart |
[Jul. 1st, 2006|01:55 am] |
Cycle of Broken Dreams
Part One
Shadow On the Heart
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine, they are the creation of Annie Proulx. They are not intended to represent actual persons living or dead.
Rating: R, language
It was one of those long, soft spring evenings when the world seems to slowly come to a halt for a little while, when the soughing breeze dies back to a sigh and the air stays warm like the memory of one last hug. Ennis Del Mar was going to put Lizbeth in her crib, but he liked holding his granddaughter, who was six months and sleeping through the nights now, and he decided to carry her out into the back yard. It was a nice little yard, and Kurt had bought a lawn set when Lizbeth was born that had two folding chairs, and a rocking loveseat. Ennis set his cigarettes and lighter into the cupholder Kurt had put on the arm of the loveseat, and sat back with a small sigh, holding Lizbeth to his shoulder as he got a cigarette going.
For a long time there was no sound at all, maybe the murmur of a TV or a stereo down the street somewhere, and once he heard a door close, and then a car door, and then somebody drove off toward town. Ennis found himself drifting into that peaceful place he could find now and then these days, where if he didn’t think about it too hard, the memories could kind of float at the edge of his mind. Sometimes they were the good memories, but sometimes they weren’t, and he didn’t really have any control over that. Still, memories were all he had of Jack now, and he didn’t fight even the bad ones.
Tonight, he thought, they would be good ones. They could hardly not be, he thought, when it was so sweet and peaceful out. Unbidden, he could see the alpenglow up on Brokeback, see the nightline sliding up the sky, see the first stars coming on, see those eyes like the sky over Brokeback smiling wistfully at him from under charcoal-black brows. Ennis sighed again, and shivered a little, and hugged Lizbeth a little closer. He could remember just how those eyes looked in any light, in any mood. Black Irish, he remembered Jack had said. Short fuse, he had said, and a taste for whisky, and a dreamer. Well, that was true enough. All true enough. Once, just thinking about Jack’s eyes had been enough to stir him but good, especially if they were going to be seeing each other soon. Now, well, now the memories of those eyes in the firelight made his throat close up, but Ennis didn’t care about that. Nights in the mountains were usually pretty damn cold, but a little lower down you got some like this, sometimes in July, and he’d been with Jack on a few of them. For a little, the world was young again, he was young again, and Jack was very close.
And then he heard a car drive up, and stop, but the motor didn’t cut off, and after the door closed, it drove off again. The intrusion annoyed Ennis a little, but between the whisky at his side and the sky above him, he was willing to forget it so that he could slip back into his dreams.
The gate at the side of the house opened, and closed. He didn’t look behind him. He didn’t care who it was. He just wanted them to go away again and leave him and Lizbeth alone with Jack.
“Ennis? Mind if I sit with you a spell?”
Ennis was startled out of his reverie. It was Alma. They had nodded at each other at Alma Jr. and Kurt’s wedding, and had been polite with each other since Lizbeth had been born, but she hadn’t sought him out, nor he her, since that Thanksgiving almost ten years ago when she had walked slam into him about the “fishing trips,” and Ennis had come damn near hitting her for the name she had called Jack.
With a shrug of his eyebrows, he indicated he didn’t mind, and she sat near, but not too near, in one of the chairs.
“Kurt said you was sittin tonight,” she said after a minute, as a way of explaining her presence. “So I come by.”
Ennis nodded a little as though he understood, though he didn’t.
“Pretty evenin,” she added. Ennis took the last drag of his cigarette and stubbed it out on the arm of the chair.
“Lizbeth’s gettin big,” she said after another little silence, and Ennis, wondering what she wanted, allowed that she was. It came to him that Alma was nervous about something, smoothing her skirt too much the way she always used to, picking at the seam on the button placket.
“Ennis, Junior told me about Jack Twist,” she said suddenly. “Told me he died.”
Ennis’ head slewed around, and anger kindled in his dark eyes. “Alma,” he said warningly.
“Told me she ast about him, whatever happened to your friend Jack, she met that time,” she went on, but tremulously. “And you told her…”
Ennis stood abruptly.
“Ennis, wait a bit,” she said, pleading, putting out her hand. “Don’t go.”
Something in her voice stopped him. After staring down at her for a long minute, he reseated himself and the baby slowly, his face averted, suspicious and resentful.
Alma took a deep breath, as though coming to a decision, and rose from the chair. Even though it should have been obvious what she was going to do, Ennis was still surprised when she sat down next to him on the loveseat.
“I know what that meant to you, Ennis.” She tried to peer into his face.
His voice was low and hoarse. “God damn it, Alma…”
“I seen you staring out the windows, Ennis,” she went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “For a long time, now. You always been quiet, never say much, but these days you don’t say nothin at all, just take the baby and go off another room somewheres. I thought it was me, you didn’t want to talk to me, and I let it be, but I got to thinkin, he looks so sad, so…empty, sorta. And then, couple of weeks ago, Alma told me. Year and a half ago, she said, maybe more. And I thought, and that’s how long he’s been like this, cause he was awful quiet at the weddin. Smiled a little, danced with Junior one time, and I thought I saw tears in his eyes. But hardly ever spoke two words.”
Ennis had lit another cigarette and was smoking it steadily, staring out into the gathering gloom, his face closed. Lizbeth, sleeping peacefully against him, kept him in the chair, silent, otherwise he would just have left, the first minute Alma started up with this.
“I know how much he meant to you,” Alma added softly.
Again his head slewed round. “You don’t know nothin.” His voice shook, and he was breathing hard.
“I know you loved him.” It was a whisper.
In his anger, Ennis began to tremble, shaking his head. “If it wa’nt for this baby girl, woman, God help me…” His free hand closed into a fist.
“Ennis Del Mar, you keep quiet with our Lizbeth, and you listen to me,” she said, her voice low and controlled. “I didn’t come here to accuse you, not after all this time. What’s done can’t be helped, by nobody. Bible says forgive. I loved you, and you hurt me, hurt me bad, but you didn’t mean it, I know that, and it was a long time ago. I was hateful to you about him that night, cause I was hurtin, but I know you loved each other, or you wouldn’t never a done that.”
It took Ennis a long time to get the words out, and they shook when he did. “You don’t know nothin, Alma,” he repeated, but it was her understanding he denied this time, not her knowledge.
“I saw you kissin him, Ennis,” she said distinctly. “I know what it was I saw.”
Ennis’ head turned slowly toward her, and he really looked at her for the first time since she had arrived, maybe for the first time since that terrible Thanksgiving so long ago. At last the sense of her words began to penetrate to him, and he saw compassion, and yes, love, in the face of one he had long thought an enemy.
It was Alma who turned away now, staring back into the worst moment of her life. “When you didn’t come back in right away, I went to come down, say howdy, and when I opened the door, there you was at the bottom of the stairs with him, kissin him, and him kissin you, like you was both gone die if you couldn’t. You never done kissed me that way, Ennis, not ever.” There was no bitterness, no anger in her voice, only sad acceptance. “In them days, I thought it was…was wicked, you know, cause that’s what we was taught, and it used to make me sick to my stomach when you would go off to him, all in a hurry like you couldn’t get out the house fast enough. I just thought it was bad, it was wrong, but I’m nearer old than young now, and I ain’t near so sure about things like that. We didn’t none of us know nothing bout that stuff, growin up, nobody’d never heard a it. But I seen a bit since then, ain’t no little girl no more, and one thing I do know is that nobody never kissed a body like you and him was kissin, thout it was life and death to em. Grass can’t help gettin burned in the fire, Ennis, and you and him couldn’t help what was between you. I just wanted you to know I know that now. And I cried, Ennis, when I heard he was dead. I cried for you. And I just wanted you to know that, too.”
Ennis kissed the top of Lizbeth’s head, and his hot tears fell bitter into her wispy brown hair, as he felt the memory of lips touching his head that way, in benediction, in the sleepy languor after loving. He turned at last to his ex-wife, not even minding that she saw him with tears on his face, tears he had never shed for her.
“I never done told him, Alma,” he said. It was not what he had meant to say, but the long shadows gathered privacy around them in gentle understanding, and he came out with one of the things that hurt the most of all. “Twenty damn years we was more’n friends, way more, and I never done said once, ‘Jack Twist, I love you.’”
“He knew,” Alma said.
“Sure he knew,” Ennis snapped. “Christ, course he knew. Not the damn point. I never done said it. It’s like a damn knife in me, can’t pull it out, can’t stop the bleedin no way in hell.” The words stumbled out of him, him unwilling, but needing to be said, said to some other human being, and with her unexpected mercy, Alma Beers Del Mar Miller had broken the dam behind which Ennis had kept so much for so long.
“He wanted us to live together.” Ennis’ voice was hoarse, and breaking, now. “All that time ago, first time him and me took off, he says ‘It could be like this, Ennis, always. You and me, cow and calf operation, a little cabin somewheres. Could be a sweet life.’ But I told him, ‘two guys livin together? No way.’” He paused, looked away. “And then I told him, when I was just a boy, I seen a man had been beat to death, beat to damn death like a mangy ol coyote, for bein like us. Man’s supposed to be strong, Alma. But I couldn’t never forget that beat up dead body. Made me a coward. Just a fuckin coward. Jack would look at me, sometimes, with them damn eyes, I ain’t never seen nothin like, them eyes color a sky in a mountain lake, them black eyebrows like, I don’t know, like a soot smudge or somethin, and I’d like to die, it would hurt so bad. But I never said. I never said nothin.” Ennis scrubbed at his face. “He drove fourteen fuckin hours to me, after I done told him we was divorced, ast everbody till he found out where I was, come drivin up honkin his damn horn like it was a revival meetin or somethin, jumps out’n the truck, ‘here I am!’ I was sick as a damn dog with rat poison, seein him standin there grinnin from ear to ear, thinkin now, we was goin to be together. Coul’nt even let him stay, cause there was Junior and Jenny sittin in my damn truck. Cried the whole damn night, thinkin about him, drivin all the way back to Texas like a whipped dog.” Ennis struggled to speak, because he knew that nothing had ever been quite the same after that. It had been after that, he was sure, that Jack had started doing the things that he had kept hidden, hidden until that last, searing time, when in his misery and frustration, he had said more than he meant to, and Ennis had guessed.
“He used to say it to me,” Ennis whispered after some time, returning to the wound he could not stop bothering. “Not often, just now and then, he’d say it into my hair, real quiet: ‘I love you, Ennis Del Mar.’ And it’d go through me, Alma, God help me, tear me apart. But I just couldn’t say it. Don’t know why. Never knew why.” There was another small silence, and Ennis became aware for the first time that Alma was gently stroking his arm, and weeping quietly, had been for some time. He didn’t know what was driving him to go on and on like this, maybe the trusting warmth of the small life in his arms, maybe the sweet night of peace around them, but the flood once freed could not be called back.
“The last time we was ever together, Jack says ‘Tell you what. The truth is…’ and then he stops, like he can’t talk, and then says, real quiet ‘sometimes I miss you so much I can’t hardly stand it.’” Ennis gulped back a sob. “And the next day we had a real donnybrook, bout when we was goin to get together again, and he says…” But Ennis couldn’t tell her about that. There was too much about that last conversation that even now he could not bear to think about, much less tell anyone else about. And then Alma put her arm around him, and Ennis Del Mar found himself embracing his ex-wife and his granddaughter both and weeping like a child.
“Jack,” he sobbed, “Jesus son of a bitch, Jack Twist, I love you. I love you, Jack. You son of a bitch. Oh, Christ.” Jerking away, he fumbled to light a cigarette, but his hands shook, and without thinking, Alma held out her arms for Lizbeth. After a heartbeat of hesitation, he passed her the baby. It was the first time he had relinquished the child to her voluntarily since Lizbeth had been born, and she knew the gesture for what it meant.
But Ennis couldn’t light the cigarette. His fingers didn’t work, all of a sudden. And then, it came out, abruptly, the worst of all, the thing that woke him sweating, the one thing worse than all the empty years, the partings, the fear and guilt, the knowledge of betrayal, the one thing worse even than the train-wreck of his loss. “If you can’t fix it, you got to stand it,” he’d said to Jack, but this one thing had proven more than even Ennis Del Mar could stand.
“Alma,” he blurted. “Alma, he didn’t die in no accident, somebody done killed him, killed my Jack, my darlin blue-eyed son of a bitch.”
“Ennis!” She lifted her head, staring. He had told Alma Jr. nothing about Jack’s death, and she had assumed it had been Twist’s heart, or him driving drunk or something.
Ennis never looked up. “Lureen, she said when I called her that he’d been changin’ a tire, and it blew up on him. But he was all alone, Alma, alone out in the middle a nowhere, and…and I think” Think, nothing: Ennis knew, but it was just too cruel and hurtful not to soften it a little in his mind “I think he was…was seein… some other man, there at home, and it got found out. His face was all beat up, she said. You ever hear of a man, die from a tire blowin’ up? I mean, nowadays? No way. Jack, my sweet Jack…” but he couldn’t finish. Alma could feel from the tension in his body that there was still something inside, needing to get out, so she just waited, just stroked his arm, patted it and waited. At last, Ennis let go a groan from somewhere deep in the belly of his grief, a low, angry animal noise.
“Had to do it, di’nt you, Jack?” he muttered. “You always was like one them damn sheep, run all over the place, all the time complainin. Fuck all you did, complain. I can see you now, Jack,” Ennis said hoarsely, his eyes flat, staring at something only he could see, “’I’ll show that damn Ennis Del Mar, thinks he’s boss dog, thinks he’s gone stop me gettin what I gotta have.’ Huh? I told you fifteen years ago, boy, you don’t do it where there’s people around! But you was mad, got your neck up, gotta show me something, huh, no horse gone throw you.” Ennis shoved to his feet. “You dumb fuck!” he shouted, flinging his hands out and down. “Dumb arrant fuck!” He kicked viciously at the grass. “Well, you done got your little fancy boy, di’nt you, Jack? Very own piece of boy-ass, right outside your own damn door. Tell me somethin, Jack—“ Ennis was leaning forward now, eyes blazing, “did you see it comin? Did you have time to scream, or was your mouth full of blood and teeth already, huh? Huh, Jack? What was you thinkin about then? Huh? Was it him, or was it me, Jack?” Ennis raged. “Did you cry for help? Cry out for me to help you? Well I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, ol buddy. You was there with your piece a ass in Texas, and here’s dumb ol Ennis Del Mar stuck up in Wyomin. There wa’nt nothin I could do, you hear me? There wa’nt nothing I could do, Jack!” Ennis was breathing in great ragged sobs, with the loud, dragging sniffs of someone trying, and failing, to make it stop. “I’d have laid my life down for you, given you my last breath, you dumb stupid whoreson bitch, Jack fuckin Twist. How bout that, Jack? Guess you done quit me after all. But I can’t quit you, no way in hell. You were my whole life, you son bitch, didn’t you know that? Why’d you do it, huh? Oh, Jesus, Jack. I feel you so close, don’t leave me here.” He fell to his knees, pounded his fist uselessly into the grass, not even able to make a satisfactory thud. “You whoreson fuckin son bitches. God damn you. God damn you to everlastin fuckin hell.” Just like that, it was over, and he collapsed back on his heels, his head hanging, gasping for breath.
Alma sat still as a stone, speechless. It was true she had forgiven Ennis, but she had never seen reason to forgive Jack Twist for what he had done to them. She had hated him, wished him dead, blaming the lover and not the husband as women will do. But this—no, he had not deserved this. And neither had Ennis. At his last words, she came to her feet, went to him, kneeling beside him, and just touched his shoulder. She more than half expected him to throw off her hand, but there was no fight left in him now, and he turned to her, and let her take him against her. He didn’t embrace her in turn, just gripped her upper arm, for a moment so hard it hurt, and then he pulled away and stood up, refusing as he always did to take comfort when it was offered.
They stood together, Ennis staring at the ground, Alma with her lips to the child’s head, rocking her to and fro, but with all her attention on the man beside her. Lizbeth sighed in her sleep, but she was such an easy baby, and the emotional thunderstorm that had broken over her head had done no more than wrinkle her brow.
“I’m sorry, Alma,” he said after a time. “You’ll never know how sorry I am for what I done to you. You didn’t deserve it. I shouldn’t never have married you. It would have been better.”
“But lookit this beautiful little girl, Ennis,” she said, putting a hand to his back. “She wouldn’t be here otherwise, nor Alma and Jenny, neither.”
“You’re a good, loving woman, Alma.” A pause, and then he added, “Way too good for me.”
“I know what it’s like, have the world fall out from under you one day,” she said, without any trace of bitterness. “You feel like there ain’t nothin worth livin for no more.”
“In’t true,” he said. “There’s Alma Jr. And Jenny.” He brushed the child’s back lightly with calloused fingers. “And this little Lizbeth here.”
“It ain’t the same thing, Ennis,” she said quietly. “It’s important, and it keeps you goin’, but it ain’t the same thing.”
There was a long silence, so long that she thought he had gone back into his customary way of not answering at all, when he said, very quietly,
“No. No it ain’t.” He turned, slowly, obviously not wanting to end the rapport between them. Linking her arm though his, Alma steered them back to the seat, and once seated, shifted the child to her right arm, so that she could cover his right hand with hers. She made no attempt to link their fingers, but Ennis closed his hand around hers in silent gratitude.
“I went to visit Jack’s parents,” he said, the words quiet and gray, the body still and spent. “Lureen told me he been cremated, and she done sent half a his ashes to em. She told me he used to say…he wanted his ashes scattered…on Brokeback Mountain.” Alma looked up sharply, for she remembered the name, but not that Jack Twist had any part of it. For one moment more Ennis hesitated, but he had remembered that Alma had never known the truth about how they had met, and now he wanted to tell her, now that they had made their peace. “I know I said different, once, but see, we was shepherds on Brokeback, in the summer a ’63, me and Jack. That was when we met. That was when…when it begun. Lureen, she said he told her, it was his favorite place. But she didn’t know why.” He was quiet for a bit, had to clear his throat before he went on. “So I went to call, and his mother told me I could see his room, she’d done kept it like it was when he was little. So I went up.” Ennis was starting to struggle for words again, and Alma squeezed his hand encouragingly. “It was just a few things in the room, you know, but I went in his closet, see, no reason, just to look…” It was a few minutes before Ennis could continue. “Damn it,” he muttered, wiping savagely at his eyes. “I can’t stop with these damn tears.” Taking a deep breath, he went on. “And there, kind of hidden in the back of this little old closet, there was our two shirts. It was the same ones we wore on Brokeback that summer, twenty damn years ago. Every year Jack was coming back, see, help his folks out for a little while on the place, and there was these two shirts. He’d stole mine from me. I thought I’d left it up there. But he’d took it, so as he’d have somethin to remember me. Somethin was mine. Somethin been next to my skin.” Ennis was gulping again. “Somethin, maybe, he could hold, now and then, that was always there, wasn’t never gone go away. Jesus. Christ Jesus, Jack. There was them two damn shirts, mine inside a his, like he was holdin me.” The last word was a whisper: “Always.”
Alma closed her eyes, bowed her head.
“And you know how I knew, they was ours?” Ennis wasn’t really asking her. He was asking, really, the spirit he wanted to think he could feel, hovering near in the sacred stillness. “You know how I knew, Jack fuckin Twist? Because the blood was still on em, all dried up and brown. From when I was so mad that we had to leave early, and say goodbye, and I tried to half choke you, and you bloodied my damn nose. And then you tried to sop it up, like you always did, tryin to hold me after you’d made me mad, and then I swung into your face. And there they was, with blood on your sleeve, and mine, in the back a that fuckin closet, together. Never enough time, Jack, never enough. Never enough.”
Alma slipped her arm around him then, and Ennis Del Mar cried without let for the one thing in his life he could neither fix, nor stand.
* * *
Finally the baby stirred fretfully, and by unspoken consent, they took her into the house and put her into the crib.
They sat for a while on the couch, holding hands, Ennis smoking. They sat in complete darkness, for neither wanted to turn the lights on and push the night away. At last, a car pulled up in the driveway, Alma and Kurt come home from the party. Ennis stood and stretched, and then, suddenly, pulled Alma into his arms and hugged her fiercely. “I wa’nt no good husband to you, Alma Del Mar,” he said into her hair. “But as God is my witness, you the only woman ever meant anything to me.” He pulled away, and went to the front door and opened it, even as she turned on the light, and they saw the faces of Alma Jr. and Kurt go slack with surprise to see Alma there with him.
“Baby’s sleep,” Ennis told them, and then surprised all of them by hugging his daughter. “She was real good.” And he brushed past them, disappearing into the evening and driving off down the road.
* * *
Two days later, Alma got a worried call from her daughter, saying she couldn’t reach Daddy, he wasn’t answering the phone. He didn’t, always, she added, if he didn’t feel like it, but not for two days.
Alma knew then, really.
They went to his trailer together, silent and tense, and it was there that they found him. Ennis Del Mar lying in his bed quite peaceful, almost like he’d been laid out. In his arms, against his bare skin, he held a pair of shirts, old, faded and falling apart, a denim one inside a white with a plaid pattern on it.
And on the sleeves of both, there was blood. But it wasn’t fresh blood. It had dried up and turned brown, a long, long time ago.
Cycle of Broken Dreams continues in How the Promise Was Kept…
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| Cycle of Broken Dreams, Two; How the Promise Was Kept |
[Jun. 30th, 2006|02:18 am] |
Cycle of Broken Dreams
Part Two
How the Promise Was Kept
These characters are not my own; they are the creation of Annie Proulx and bear no intentional resemblance to persons living or dead.
PG 13
One night in the spring about eighteen months after he learned of Jack’s death, Ennis Del Mar drove to Lightning Flat for the second time. It was not a social visit. He pulled up and turned off his truck well down the road from the Twist homestead. On this night, the moon was waxing, nearly full, but it was ducking in and out of cloud. Ennis had chosen his time well. He had watched the weather carefully for weeks, waiting for a particular spring confluence of precipitation and moon cycle. There had been several thunderstorms recently, making the ground wet and easy to dig, and another rainstorm was expected within hours. He felt not a tremor of either doubt or guilt as he opened the cheap gate that let him into the Twist family cemetery, carrying a shovel and a canvas bag. He also had a flashlight with him, though he nodded with satisfaction as he saw that the orientation of the headstones would allow him to read them in the moonlight without it. There were not so many stones, which was as he remembered from the only other time he had seen the plot, as he had driven past the previous year. He moved among them with a simple, set purpose until he found the one he wanted, the only one in which he could have any interest: John C. Twist, Jr. He stared at the simple stone, feeling the coldness of the way this life had been brushed off, dismissed, reduced to a name and two years separated by a dash, but seeing the name spelled out here provoked no reaction, which surprised some distant part of him. This name meant nothing to him, this name belonged to the hateful and bitter old man who, all unknowing, had driven the knife deep with his remark that Jack had decided he was going to bring “some other fella” to live with him on the Twist ranch. Would he really have done it? In his inarticulate way, Ennis had been examining this question for a long time, taking into special account the bitterness and pain they had caused each other at the end of what would prove to be their final meeting. And the answer was always the same: no. Ennis took no credit for himself in coming to that conclusion. He had known the man for twenty years, listened to him bitch and complain time without number, and understood him. Jack’s heedlessly careless words to his father had been misery speaking, nothing more. When Ennis called to him again, he would have come, bitching and complaining and loving all the way. It was that simple. Their love had been a force of nature, a bond that could not be broken. The light could be dimmed, but it could not ever be extinguished. It was for this reason, for the love of Jack Twist, that Ennis Del Mar was here tonight.
Putting shovel to the soil with forceful, graceful economy of movement, Ennis made a set of incisions in the earth that loosened the soil over the most likely area of the grave. A few turns of the shovel laid the grass and turf to the side so that he could dig.
In the end it was almost ridiculously easy. He had hardly been digging three minutes when the blade struck metal. In this moment, Ennis felt a single, white-hot shaft of exultation. It had been his only fear: that they would have interred the remains in a coffin. They had not. It would have been, as he had thought, too expensive, not to mention not at all to the taste of the father whose last act toward his son, following the likely pattern of a lifetime, had been to punish him. Ennis dropped to his knees, dug in the wet dirt with his hands, and retrieved a steel box about eight by eight by four.
It was only now that it hit him: in his hands he held, at least in part, the mortal remains of the one great passion of his life. For a moment, Ennis buckled, his head bowed over the box, which suddenly felt as heavy as death itself. Recovering himself, he put the box to one side, and then he stood, with an effort of will that wrung a grunt from him. With the same economy as before, he covered the hole, using the contents of the bag to make up for what he had taken. Though he had a violent streak, Ennis Del Mar had never been a vindictive man—but he knew he would never forget, or forgive, the first words John Twist had uttered, to the room at large, in his presence: Tell you what—I know where Brokeback Mountain is. He thought he was too God-damned special to be buried in the family plot.
To the shattered Ennis, the hideously unforgiving words had been sacrilege. And now he had his revenge. With a silent prayer for forgiveness directed at Mrs. Twist, who had loved her child dearly, Ennis revealed his considered opinion of the old man, filling the deficit in the grave with fresh chicken shit. He turfed it over again, and was preparing to turn and collect the box when a sudden spasm contorted his face and body, swinging the shovel over his head and bringing it down on the grave with all his force. There was a wet thud, and the ground quivered. Nothing more. Ennis nodded, picked up the box, and quitted the cemetery, allowing the gate to clack shut unremarked behind him. He had to walk nearly a mile down the road to the point where he had left his truck, a walk he made with expressionless face and a ground-eating stride. Reaching the truck, he started it up and drove off without a backward glance. He wasn’t really worried about the feelings of Mrs. Twist. He rather thought she would approve. Ennis Del Mar drove the whole way home in the same set silence that had brought him to Lightning Flat, the box on his lap, his right hand on the box. From time to time, a tear ran down his face. Jack Twist would never come back to him, but at least he was free at last.
* * *
Originally, it had been Ennis’ intention to do as he had promised Jack and himself, to get a horse into his trailer and go up into Brokeback to their camps and scatter the ashes where they had been together. But something stopped him, and the ashes were put, and remained, under his bed, with the dried earth still on the box, until the night about three weeks later when he made his confessional to Alma. When the undertaker drew the sheet back, exposing the body, they found also a muddy box that proved to contain human remains. Alma took uninformative custody of it, and Ennis and the shirts were cremated together.
It was July when she and Alma Jr. drove up into the Brokeback area. Alma Jr., mystified, by the unidentified ashes especially, had undertaken with Kurt’s help to obtain a map of the Forest Service roads into the area, and in his four-wheel drive the two women were now wending their way up to a meadow. It was a silent drive. Alma wasn’t talking, and Alma Jr. knew better by now than to ask questions.
They arrived at the meadow, well up into the mountain but well below the sheep camps, though they were not to know it. It was a cool and cloudy day when they got out, stretching stiffly after the long drive. There was also a breeze, sweet but chill and brisk. Alma didn’t hesitate. She had come here to do something, and she meant to do it, and her daughter was content by this time to let her mother lead.
Alma walked into the middle of the field with a cardboard shipping box. From it, she drew an urn that now contained, she knew, the ashes of Jack Twist. In the box also was another urn, which contained what remained on earth of her late ex-husband and the two shirts. Handing Alma Jr. the empty box, she picked up Twist’s urn and opened it. She uncapped the other urn with set face and red eyes, and stood, holding both the open containers by the foot in her two hands. Making the decision abruptly, she swung her body in an arc and the ashes of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar were flung into the air, after more than three years finally together once more.
And in the same moment, with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a moan, the breeze freshened sharply, and quite a lot of the ashes went into suspension. Alma Jr. would remember for the rest of her life a sudden, intense feeling that she should not stay any longer, that she stood in a place she did not belong. She turned and walked quickly back to the car even as her mother did, and they drove off, as Ennis had done, without a backward glance.
In the now-deserted meadow, therefore, no human eye was witness to what happened next. All at once, there was a break in the ragged clouds overhead. And if Ennis Del Mar’s ex-wife and daughter had been permitted to remain, they would have seen the sky clearing rapidly, as it will after a summer thunderstorm, while a whirling wind from down the side of Brokeback Mountain sent the souls of the two who had loved there free into a wide and wild blue sky.
There was no way the mother and daughter could have known, of course, that the reason the Forest Service road ran up here was that this was the drop-off point for the stock trucks transporting sheep. On a long-ago August evening, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist bringing their sheep down off the mountain, had halted in the slanting light within sight of the meadow but still fifteen hundred feet and three miles above it. Seeing that the trucks were not there, and knowing they would not arrive before the morning, they had made one last camp, and one last, miserable, lover’s knot, in silent mutual desperation. And early the following morning, waking first for a change, Jack Twist had spotted his lover’s shirt, spattered with blood, lying atop the heap of their clothes.
It had only taken him a moment to slip it into his bag.
Above the meadow, the sky was now very blue, blue as a pair of remarkable eyes, and the very wind carried joy on it to all the peaks and crags, all the valleys, the forests and the flowing streams of the great glacier-carved mass of Brokeback Mountain.
As the wind whistled over the rock, there might have been just discernible the sound of a rather asthmatic harmonica.
Or was it just the memory of laughter, friendship, and love?
Cycle of Broken Dreams continues in Explanation and Exoneration…
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| Cycle of Broken Dreams, Three; Explanation and Exoneration |
[Jun. 29th, 2006|07:24 pm] |
Cycle of Broken Dreams
Part Three
Explanation and Exoneration
These characters are not my own; they are the creation of Annie Proulx and bear no intentional resemblance to anyone alive or dead.
PG 13
April 2006
Taking her aside, the lawyer handed Alma the sealed letter. “Your mother left instructions for you to have this once she was buried,” he said, adding, rather ominously, “She said you’ll want to be alone when you read it, and to have plenty of time to think about it.” Alma Jr. turned the envelope over in her hands curiously. She had a feeling the contents referred to the breakup of her parent’s marriage, but she did wonder that her mother had found it necessary to send her a letter about it from beyond the grave, and the additional instructions frankly made her nervous. It also made her curious that her sister had not also received such a letter. What with one thing and another, it was nearly a week before she had the nerve to open the envelope, but even then she could never have guessed in her wildest dreams—or nightmares--what the letter would contain.
November 2005
(Spelling and grammar lightly corrected)
My dear daughter,
You will not read this letter until after I have passed, but once we are all gone, there are some things you wondered about, and I thought you would want to know them. I have thought about it for a long time, and I don’t think your Daddy would mind if I told you. Not any more.
I know you were real curious the time we drove to Brokeback Mountain to scatter Daddy’s ashes. You wondered who the other ashes belonged to I scattered with his. They were Jack Twist’s.” Alma’s face screwed up in puzzlement, even as she felt an all-over tingle of premonition. “Jack Twist?” It had been so long… and then the penny dropped: him. The fishing buddy. With the blue eyes. Alma had expected learn they were some woman’s ashes. It didn’t make any sense. And then she read the next four sentences and many things all at once began to make terrible sense.
“In 1963, when I was engaged to your Daddy, he had a job that summer herding sheep way up high on Brokeback Mountain. Jack Twist was shepherd with him. It’s hard for me to tell you this, baby, but there’s no use in make-believe, you know. Your Daddy fell in love with him, and they were lovers.” Alma’s eyes opened wide, her lips parted. A frown gathering between her brows, she reread the stunning sentence a half-dozen times, shaking her head rapidly in stuttering disbelief and denial both, before she could go on. “I don’t know why they didn’t stay together, maybe they were too scared to. I know your Daddy was.” Alma blinked at the idea of her father, Ennis Del Mar, being afraid of anything. “When he was just a boy, his daddy showed him a man who had been beaten to death for living with another man. And Daddy never forgot it. He told me that.”
“Merciful Jesus Christ,” Alma breathed.
“Anyway, me and your Daddy got married that December, and while things were always hard, we didn’t have money, for a long time it was good with us, and we were happy with you girls. And then one day in 1967, your Daddy got a postcard from Jack Twist, saying he was coming through Riverton, and asking your Dad to let him know if he was going to be there. I remember that day like it was yesterday. You don’t forget something like that. Ever. I was so busy with you girls that day that I didn’t really notice that Daddy was nervous, real jumpy all day, frowning, sitting by the big window over the parking lot, drinking all the time, but I remembered it later. When he finally drove up, Daddy bolted out of our apartment like a colt the first time it feels the spurs, clattering down the stairs. He didn’t come back right away, so I made sure you two weren’t going to get into anything and I went to the door to meet this friend of your Daddy’s. My whole life afterward, all I had to do was close my eyes to see again what I saw when I opened that door. I can still see it now. There at the bottom of the stairs, where the two staircases met, was Daddy and Jack Twist. They had hold of each other’s faces and were kissing and breaking apart like they were so excited they couldn’t stand still long enough to really kiss.” “Oh, my God,” Alma breathed, her hand going to her mouth. “My God.” “I know this shocks you, baby girl. It about killed me. But that’s what happened. Your Daddy and this other man had found something up on that mountain that would last for twenty years. That was when your Daddy started going on what he called fishing trips with him, but I can tell you for sure that they did not go away with each other to fish.” Alma flushed. “Jack Twist lived fourteen hours away in Texas somewhere, and he came to see Daddy, as you remember, three and four times a year, in the early years. I remember Jenny asking me once, why are you so sad when Daddy goes fishing? Well, now you know.
“You asked your Daddy about Jack Twist a couple weeks before he died. I guess you see now how you shocked him.” Her lips parting again, Alma looked up from the letter and into a moment she hadn’t thought about in years, but which once recalled brought back a razor-sharp memory of knowing at once that she had made a serious mistake in her innocent question. So many things she remembered now that had never made sense, but suddenly just fell into place: not only her mother’s depression and anger every time Daddy went away with his friend; but how he never brought any fish home; that he went at all, when there was hardly ever a penny to spare in the house; but most of all the way he had started when she had asked him about a man she had seen only once and hadn’t heard of in years, because she had seen a man on TV who had reminded her of him. She remembered that sharply, even twenty-five years later, the way Daddy’s head had jerked toward her, the instant of pure shock in his unrevealing face, how he had turned away like he wasn’t going to answer at all, and then had said, he’s dead. And she had said, purely by reflex, I’m sorry, and after a moment, he had said, it was a long time ago. Before you was married. And then he strode out of the house into the back yard, where he had stood smoking, in the middle of the yard, for a long time. “I never told him you said to me, when I asked you, pretty sharp, what you were asking about him for, that you looked kind of embarrassed and said you met him one time, right after your Daddy and I were divorced, he came to Daddy’s new place, and looked in the truck at you, and you never forgot what beautiful eyes he had.” Alma flushed again, with shame this time. “So did your Dad think. He said Jack’s eyes were like the sky on a mountain lake, and when he would look in them he’d like to die.”
For a long minute after she read this sentence, Alma Del Mar Stockton stared into space, trying to encompass the idea of her father having ever thought something like that about anyone, let alone said it—about another man.
“You see, when you told me about it, I knew at once that was the reason Daddy was so quiet that whole year and a half before he went. It was because he was grieving for Jack. So that night you and Kurt went to Bob and Jill-Ann’s anniversary and Daddy sat Lizbeth, I went to see him.” Alma had forgotten how startled she and Kurt had been to come home and find her mother there spending time voluntarily with her father for the first time in years. “And I told him what I now tell you. He already knew I knew about their affair. That Thanksgiving when I was shouting at him in the kitchen and he ran out, it was because I had told him I knew, and I used some pretty bad words against Jack Twist, and your Daddy almost hit me. So he knew I knew. But by this time, it was all a long time ago. And I had forgiven him, Alma. Jesus says we have to forgive, and I did. And I told him that. And then he told me a lot of things. It was really hurting him, and, I know this will surprise you, he got started talking and couldn’t stop. He was really upset because he had never told Jack that he loved him, and he started crying about it, saying Jack used to say it to him, but he never could say it back.” Alma by this time was shaking her head nearly continuously and beginning to blink back tears, though if asked she could have not have said why she shed them. “He told me, that time you met him, it was because he had told Jack that we were divorced and Jack drove all the way from Texas right away to be with him, and Daddy had to send him home. Jack always wanted them to live together, you see, but Daddy wouldn’t because of the dead man.” Now, for the first time, Alma understood that very strange day. Like an old phantom itch, it had lain unexamined in her mind, all but forgotten, but marked somehow as much more important than it had seemed. It had been a very long time ago, and she could not remember any of it exactly, but she did have what was like a memory of a memory: Daddy had been about to drive them somewhere, probably to get some ice cream, when there had come the sound of honking, several quick blasts in quick succession. Alma remembered suddenly too how her high school boyfriend had driven up to her house, honking just the same way because he had gotten the scholarship to SMU that he had dreamed of all through high school. He had been over the moon. And so, also, must Jack Twist have been. With adult understanding, she knew now the reason for the way they had hugged—the girls had both seen it through the back window of the truck. Even at that young age, she had been startled to see her father embrace anyone so wholeheartedly. And she remembered, or remembered the memory, that Twist had been really happy. --Or maybe, she thought, excited. Was that why his blue eyes had made such an intense and indelible impression on her, because they were hot with an excitement and anticipation that not even the sight of the two girls had been able to immediately dampen? She would never know for sure, but the woman thought it was likely. She remembered, too, twisting around to watch the striking-looking man out the window as he and her father had moved away from the truck. Twist had changed suddenly. She had been too young to understand, but his shoulders had fallen, and he had become very still, all of a sudden. And then he had gotten back into his own truck and driven off. Alma shook her head. What she was reading shocked her more than she had ever thought she could be shocked, but she had had a friend who had persisted in persuading herself that a certain boy was eventually going to come around to her. One night she had worked herself up to go to his house, and had found him making out with another girl. Alma remembered what she had looked like when they had next seen each other. It was, she now knew, exactly the same extinguished look she had seen on the face of Jack Twist.
“And then he told me that he believed Jack had been beaten to death too.” Alma caught her breath. “I never found out how he even knew Jack was dead. Maybe Jack didn’t show up for one of their trips.” For a moment Alma wondered if she heard a little bitterness in this thought. “Anyhow he called Jack’s place and his wife told Daddy that Jack had died from a tire he was changing blowing up on him, but your Dad didn’t believe it, and if you think about it, I think he was right. The thing is, your Daddy believed that Jack was having an affair with another man,” Alma’s eyes widened again “there in Texas where he lived, and it got found out. I don’t know why he thought that. But he did. And I knew your Dad. He wouldn’t even have said he thought something was so, if he wasn’t sure. There’s such a lot I never knew, but I’m telling you all I do know for sure. You’re a grown woman now, as old as I was when Daddy told me these things, and I know you can handle it.
“Your Daddy was real upset about this idea he had of Jack Twist and some other man. The only other time I ever saw him so angry was when he nearly hit me over Jack. He was sure Jack had been careless, and someone had seen Jack and this other man, and killed Jack for it. I used to wonder if they killed the other one, too. You would think. Anyway, Daddy was standing there in your back yard yelling at Jack like he was standing right there, about what he called ‘your piece of boy ass’ and that you didn’t do it around other people--and Daddy was right about getting caught, wasn’t he? And then he said some things I’ve never forgotten either, as though I heard him say them yesterday. He said, did you see it coming? Did you have time to scream? Or was your mouth full of blood and teeth already? Did you cry out for me to help you? I’m sorry I couldn’t. I was here in Wyoming and you were there in Texas with your boy ass. There wasn’t anything I could do, Jack. You were my whole life. I’d have given you my last breath. Why’d you do it? And then what he said raised the hairs on my neck, and I remembered it when we found him. I feel you so close, Jack, don’t leave me here, he said.” Once again Alma stopped reading, and just sat there a while with the letter in her lap, shaking.
“After a while, Daddy told me he was so sorry for what he’d done to me, that I wouldn’t ever know how sorry, and that I was a good loving woman who was way too good for him. And also that I was the only woman who ever meant anything to him.” Alma had a sudden vision of her father’s girlfriend Cassie, and knew with a grown woman’s insight that he had told her mother the truth. There was not much to be glad about in this letter, but it did help a little to know that, in spite of everything else, her mother had meant something real to him. She had idolized her father, and what she was reading was turning her world upside down.
A
nd then she had another thought, and was thunderstruck. When she had told Daddy she and Kurt were getting married, he had asked her first how long they had known each other, and then, directly: this Kurt fella—he loves you? More than fatherly concern had been behind those questions. He had not been asking if she were sure Kurt did care. He had been seeking reassurance that Kurt could care. He was remembering what he had done to his own wife, afraid for his daughter. Alma Jr. knew also, then, how much she also had been loved.
“And then he told me the last thing, and when I’ve told you, I think you will know everything you didn’t know. He visited Jack’s parents after he heard, because Jack’s wife had sent them half of Jack’s ashes. He had told his wife he wanted them scattered on Brokeback Mountain because it was his favorite place. So your Daddy went there to get them and do it for him. For both of them, really, I guess. Jack’s mother invited him to visit Jack’s room, and he went and looked around. And there in the back of Jack’s closet, kind of hidden, he said, he found two shirts. You remember the shirts, the ones we found with him.”
Alma caught her breath. Two shirts. One white with plaid, one denim. Yes, she certainly did remember. “He found them there in this closet, his (it was the plaid one) inside of Jack’s. And that was when your Daddy really started crying. He’d been crying all along, but that really did it. He said something about being mad they had to leave early that summer they spent together, and he tried to choke Jack, and Jack bloodied his nose, and then tried to wipe off the blood, and your Dad punched him in the face. And after that, Jack stole your Daddy’s shirt to have a remembrance of him. And then after all those years, your Dad found the two shirts hanging together, he said, like Jack had never stopped holding him. He said Jack went back every year to see his folks, and those two shirts were always there. And your Dad said, never enough time, Jack, never enough. And he cried in my arms for a long time, and then we went inside and sat together until you got home.”
Alma remembered now the strange look she had caught on her mother’s face when in her first grief she had turned to her: her mother had been staring down not at her father’s body, she realized now, but at what he held. The younger woman had made nothing of the shirts, except the oddity of it, but her mother had known whose they were, and what it meant that Ennis Del Mar had been holding them when he died. Struck by something, she reread the last part again. Yes, there it was: when her father had found the shirts, his had been inside of Twist’s. When she and her mother had found him, Twist’s had been inside of his. As though he had never stopped holding Jack Twist. And then Alma burst into tears, holding a fist to her mouth as she understood that she had barely known the father she had loved so much, that the gentle but undemonstrative and monosyllabic man she had thought she had known had been able to love deeply, fiercely, tenderly. It devastated her that she had only caught the barest glimpses of what he had really been. It was a long time before she was able to return to the reading, and when she did, it was with a large leavening of anger and bitterness for the pain Jack Twist had visited on her family.
“I know this has been a hard letter to read. It was hard to write, but I wanted you to know, and I felt like your Dad did too, I really did.” Alma just shook her head at this. “Your dad was the love of my life, and in the early years, before Jack Twist came back, we were happy together. But Ennis was a good man, and I honor his memory. And the next time you ever go to think poorly of some one, if you ever do, I want you to think of your loving Dad and what he carried around secret inside for all those years, that he and Jack could be killed for loving each other even though they couldn’t help it. I have often thought in all those years since that night, what it really means when the Bible says, judge not lest ye be judged. I hope you can understand now why, even though he broke my heart, I decided to forgive Jack Twist too and scatter their ashes together on their mountain. With our Lord Jesus in my heart, I hope they will always be together there, where nobody can ever hurt them again.
May God bless my baby girl always,
Your loving mother.”
For a very long time Alma sat holding the letter in her lap, staring into space, trembling, crying. It would be a long time, she knew, before she could restructure her memories and feelings about her father to naturally encompass this upsetting but essential part of his life. Her thoughts about Jack Twist were even more turbulent. She had always thought of him, to the extent she had thought about him at all, as a memory of his eyes, seen once but never quite forgotten. Now she had to accept him as the love of her Daddy’s life, and that was hard, very hard. But the resentment, and the anger, toward Twist that had been rising through her reading of her mother’s letter had had the legs cut out from under it with the letter’s last paragraph. Her mother, who was after all the one Twist had hurt most, had forgiven him, and her quiet, thoughtful words forced Alma Jr. to consider that most likely he had not wanted to love her Dad any more than her father could have wanted to love him. Loving Jack Twist had frightened her Dad—and the love Jack Twist had borne for her father had, on at least one occasion to which she had been witness, brought him terrible hurt. It just couldn’t be as simple as hating someone who had come between her mother and her father. It was natural, she knew, to want to lay blame, but there was nothing to be gained here by blaming anybody. She had loved her father, and had accepted him as she had thought he was. She did not love him any less now, and ultimately that would have to mean accepting him as he had really been. And it would also, therefore, have to mean accepting Jack Twist. This train of thought did not occupy a small space of time, but it did ultimately arrive at the destination Alma Jr.’s mother had intended. Before she arose from the chair, folding the letter carefully, putting it back into its envelope and wiping the last tears from her face, Alma Del Mar Stockton had forgiven both her father, and the man with the great blue eyes and the sweeping black brows who had brought both passion and destruction to Ennis Del Mar.
Cycle of Broken Dreams concludes with Candle in the Wind… |
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| Cycle of Broken Dreams, Four; Candle in the Wind |
[Jun. 28th, 2006|07:34 pm] |
Cycle of Broken Dreams
Part Four
Candle in the Wind
These characters are not mine; they are the creation of Annie Proulx and bear no intentional resemblance to persons alive or dead.
R; language, sexual situations
Author's note: This one began as a dream, which should explain a lot.
Jack Twist was drunk. It helped. It didn’t help nearly enough, but it did help. To be honest, he reflected as he took another swig of the fifth, he couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t been a bit of a drinker, but he knew, and even sometimes admitted, that drinking had begun to take over his life. If you could call it a life. Jack stared grimly ahead of him, one hand on the whisky bottle, the other on his cigarette. Yeah. If you could fucking call it a life. Stuck with a wife and child who meant almost nothing to him—and the “almost” referred to Bobby; Lureen really did mean nothing to him—running combines around a gravel parking lot trying to part assholes from their money. It wasn’t exactly what he had imagined, staring out the window of his bedroom in Lightning Flat all those years ago. Except the money part. Now if only that damn L. D. would kick off—but Jack no longer even had any real hopes there. Lureen was L. D.’s only child, and Bobby his only grandchild, but the old fart hated Jack—it was cordially mutual—and Jack knew he would find a way to keep his money out of the hands of Jack Twist if it was the last thing he ever did. And that was just on general principle. If L. D. were ever to find out the truth about what Jack was, about what he did, about where he really was on nights like tonight—feeling a rush of loathing for the man who had treated him only with contempt from the beginning, Jack took another deep swallow.
It did help. It helped to drown the guilt and shame Jack still felt on nights like this. He no longer had to go into alleys to get what he needed, he had learned the ways, he now knew how to find it clean and discreet from his hotel room. Even here, in a cucaracha flophouse in Juarez. That didn’t mean he liked it—well, he did like it. He really liked it. And he really needed it. But when he did it this way, after the first rush of relief and release, it only made him drink more, especially in a seedy place like this, where it was inescapable that he was here for one reason and one reason only. At least in Denver or Kansas City he could pretend that he was really there for serious business and the sex was a perk, not the necessity he knew it to be. He took another swallow and stubbed out his cigarette. But even in Dallas or Little Rock, it was still just a fuck with a stranger he was paying for the privilege, a stranger he was always afraid saw him with contempt, like his father. And afterward, as he lay there alone in the stained sheets, weak with relief, he cried sometimes, hating the prison the world kept him in, a prison never more evident than at times like this, when his life was reduced to a hard cock, a sour bed, and four grimy walls. It didn’t have to be like this. It wasn’t always like this. Tears stung his eyes again, the acid distillation of both pain and anger. It could be, and sometimes it was, wild and amazing and beautiful in the fresh wind under the sky and the stars woven through with the fragrance of horses and running water and Douglas fir. Sometimes it was Ennis.
But not nearly often enough. The tears ran down. “Ennis,” Jack whispered, just wanting the taste of the beloved name in his mouth. “Ennis Del Mar.” It seemed almost wrong to say that name here, in this disgusting place. Then his mouth twisted, and his great eyes hardened and narrowed. He wouldn’t fucking be here if it weren’t for Ennis Del Mar. Ennis and his dead man. Ennis who didn’t mind taking it, and taking it hard, when it came his way, but when it came to really meaning something, there was always old Earl with his dick pulled off and his face bashed in. Jack twisted on the bed and swallowed some more whisky. Ennis, the great Ennis, stone-faced and stone-hearted too, was just a coward. Just a fucking coward.
“Yeah,” he said out loud, startling himself momentarily with the sound of his own voice. “Coward! You are. I ain’t afraid, Ennis. But you are. If you really loved me, you’d live with me. If you really loved me, you son bitch.” Even as drunk as he was, he felt a rush of shame at that. Ennis did love him. Maybe he’d never said it, exactly, and maybe he didn’t show a lot in his face, but he showed enough, and Jack knew damn well Ennis Del Mar loved him.
More tears ran down his face, and he shook his head. “But you don’t love me enough. Do you, Ennis? No, it’s just fine for you the way it is, ain’t it? Get together, fuck me like a bull on uppers ten-twelve times, and you’re good to go for a damn year or something. Well, I ain’t. I need it, Ennis. And I need you. But I don’t get to have you. Do I? Get to borrow you once a while, if you ain’t too fucking busy with your damn kids or something. Damn fucking kids.” Jack glared into the memory, now two years old, of the two little girls sitting in Ennis’ truck wondering who he was and what he was doing there.
“What the fuck was I doing there?” he asked bitterly. “Shoulda known better.”
Yes, you should have. The thought was cool common sense. But you believed what you wanted to believe, and you hurt yourself.
“Fuck I did,” Jack growled. “I wasn’t the one sent me packing back to fucking Texas.” Common sense had nothing to say to that, so he wiped his eyes and added, “I wouldn’t be here now, I wouldn’t never have come here, if that damn Ennis…” He wiped his eyes. “…if that damn Ennis…Ennis… Damn you. God damn you, Ennis Del Mar.”
Don’t worry. He’s damned.
“What?” Jack shook his head, trying to clear it. “Oh, God, I hate this.” He scrubbed at his face with both hands. “I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be here. All alone in a shithouse, so drunk I’m talking to myself, and hearing things. I don’t want to be this way. I just want to be with you, Ennis. But I ain’t gonna be, am I. You don’t know, do you, how hard it is for me. How bad it gets, when I can’t be with you.” It was a well-worn track, heavily rutted with resentment. “And you wouldn’t care if you did know. Son bitch. I hate this. I hate them whores. ‘Ay, señor, que usted bello. Que bello, ojos de usted.’ ‘Beautiful.’ --Fuck.” Jack spat. “Ennis don’t care about my damn eyes. Ennis don’t think I’m beautiful. Wouldn’t tell me if he did anyway. Wouldn’t tell me to save my damn life. Son bitch. Hate you.” Jack sniffed loudly. “Hate you,” he shouted, and flung the nearly empty bottle at the far wall, where it smashed, the remaining alcohol hardly showing against the grayed, dirty paint.
“Shit!” For a moment he just stared at this calamity, the rest of his whisky gone, and then he began to weep uncontrollably. “Shit!” In his misery, he rolled into a little ball on the sheets, winding his arms around himself and rocking. “Ennis! Ennis, I love you! Why don’t you love me like I love you? I hate this. I wish I was dead. I wish I was. Then you’d be sorry. Then you’d be sorry, Ennis fucking Del Mar. –No you wouldn’t. You don’t care. You don’t care.”
Don’t say that. The other voice was shocked. You have no idea…
“Shut up!” Jack screamed, vaulting off the bed, swinging wildly with both arms.
It was the very strangest thing. As he leapt up off the bed, he seemed to push through something, something insubstantial and cool, like fog, and for a moment there was a sharp image in his mind: a woman’s face, one he had never seen before, but which imprinted itself indelibly, a face sad and concerned, with tears in her eyes. Jack stood, swaying, breathing heavily, wondering what in the hell was happening to him. As he struggled to clear his mind, he had a sudden sense of fear, a fear that, even more oddly, was not his own.
“What the hell?” he said softly. He turned clumsily, nearly overbalancing, and there it was again—he couldn’t see anything, but a part of his mind swore there was a woman standing there, turning to face him, and looking shocked.
“Who the hell are you?” he asked. In his present state, it didn’t seem much stranger to ask a question of an invisible woman than to curse at the absent Ennis Del Mar.
She now looked—his mind told him—even more upset, and turned away quickly.
“Wait a minute!” Jack demanded. “Come here!” He meant to have an accounting, though of what, from whom, he could not have said.
And that was when things really began to get strange. Because suddenly, he could see something. It was like a bad TV picture from a long way off, washed out and blurry, but there was definitely something there, a slim form his own height, long braids…
“You get in here,” he ordered, pointing a finger at the floor. The form began to clear, sharpen, and take on more color. He could see her now, really see her, and she looked aghast. As Jack opened his mouth to say something else, she suddenly flung her hands crossed in front of her with fingers spread and palms out, and chopped them sideways like a magician doing a flourish.
Jack felt the world spin, and fell to his knees, thinking he was going to be sick. And then he decided he really was sick, because suddenly he was no longer in the motel room in Juarez. He looked up from his crouch to see his visitor still standing in front of him, looking as real as anyone he had ever seen, but he was now on knees and one hand in a darkened hallway in front of a large sliding-glass door looking out on a tropical sea. He looked from the strange vista, which looked wrong somehow, up at the woman, who was looking down at him with one hand over her mouth. He again opened his mouth to speak, but she beat him to it.
“Shit,” she said. “Now I am in trouble.”
Jack, deciding he was not going to chuck, rose unsteadily to his feet. “Who the hell are you?” His drink-addled mind wasn’t quite sure that was the most important question he could ask, but it was the only one he could think of at the moment. He rolled his eyes as an answer occurred to him, a ridiculous answer. “Wait, I got it, you’re my guardian angel. Yeah.”
She appeared to consider this, though she was clearly distracted. “I…suppose…there are some similarities. To you, yes, I guess you could think of me as an angel. If that helps.”
Jack snorted, not buying it. “Where’s the wings?”
She shrugged, offered what seemed an embarrassed half-smile. “Optional.”
“Optional,” Jack repeated irritably.
“I’m not really an angel, as you understand the term.” She waved a distracted hand. “I’m not anything you are equipped to understand, not really.”
“That so. Tell you what, honey, I may be half sloshed, but I ain’t stupid.”
At last she focused on him completely. “Half sloshed. Yes. You are.” She gave what appeared to be a sigh of relief. “That, at least, I can do something about.” Once again, she threw her hands up and out in the curious gesture that seemed half warding, half summoning.
Jack blinked and staggered back a step with an outrush of breath. He blinked again, and searched inside himself. “Damn!” His eyes met hers, puzzled.
“You’re sober,” she told him. “Cold sober, I believe you would say. For the first time in—well, we both know how long.” She shook her head. “The amount of alcohol in your blood was remarkable.”
But Jack was no longer listening. With sobriety came much greater awareness of his surroundings, and himself.
“Shit!” he gasped, and covered himself with his hands.
The angel, or whatever, shook her head and rolled her eyes. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“You got some damn nerve.” They were just words, really. Now that he was sober, whatever was going on here was suddenly much more real, rather than less so, and Jack Twist began to understand that it just might be that he had more to worry about than the fact that he was starkers in front of a strange woman.
“You were already naked,” she reminded him coolly. “And I assure you, it’s completely irrelevant to me.”
“Well, it ain’t to me, honey.”
“If you insist.” Again, the gesture, and Jack was not only sober, but fresh, clean, wide awake, and dressed.
It was now that Jack’s mind began to wrench itself back to his own reality. This could not be happening; therefore, it was not. “I’m dreamin,” he muttered. “A course. Just a stupid damn dream.”
This statement appeared to re-focus the stranger’s attention on whatever had been bothering her. She looked very troubled. “No, Jack, I’m sorry, it’s not. What it is, is a problem. A very serious problem.”
“Shit.” He’d had another thought. “It’s the damn DTs. Damn Lureen been sayin I would get em.”
But his abductor shook her head again. “No. You’re sober. I assure you. Every last alcohol metabolite is gone from your system.” She crossed her arms in front of her, clearly worried.
And then another idea struck him, and this one sent a cold rush of fear through him. An angel? Did that mean…
“I’m dead,” Jack whispered. “Am I dead?”
She hesitated, struggled. “Ah…well. I’d have to say, you’re not alive, at the moment.”
Jack’s sky-blue eyes widened in horror. “Jesus.” And then, in soft anguish: “Ennis…”
The name brought her head up, and suddenly, to Jack’s surprise, her large green eyes filled with tears. She took a step toward him, lifting a hand as though she were going to touch his face, and then lowering it. “That’s you all over, isn’t it, Jack?” Her voice was suddenly hoarse. “You think you’re dead, and your first thought is for him.”
He stared at her, catching at the word. “Think? Am I dead or not? And how do you know…” he shook his head. “You couldn’t know.”
“About Ennis Del Mar?” Her eyes were sad, and compassionate. “I know everything you do, Jack Twist. And everything you don’t.”
“Christ Jesus, what the hell is goin on here?” he shouted. “Where is this? Who are you? What have you done to me?”
“Let’s go outside,” she countered. “We need to talk, and I need to think.” Without waiting for him to answer, she turned and just walked right through the glass doors.
Taking a step to follow here, Jack pulled up short. She turned back. “Come on. It’s not really glass. Just a symbol for a doorway, for the sake of your sanity.”
“Too late for that,” Jack muttered, but he followed her through.
He felt as though something were pulling gently but firmly at him, holding him back, but then she made the gesture, one-handed this time, and he stepped through.
Immediately he knew. He was somewhere…different. Whipping around, he saw no sign of the doorway he had stepped through, or the dark hallway with the dark carpet beyond. Now he stood on what seemed to be a pier, but a pier out in the middle of a shallow lake or sea, no land in any direction. The turquoise sea steamed gently, but though the sun was bright overhead it was not hot, only pleasant. Here and there rising above the water, but only in the immediate vicinity of the short pier, were curious rock formations, rounded and flattened reddish boulders of different sizes piled up on each other. Hoodoos. Yeah. Almost like sculpture. They had some a them in Colorado, he thought. Devil's Marbles. He’d seen pictures. And then he saw the three moons.
The woman, angel, whatever, was standing a little way from him, next to a curved seat set into the pier, a seat with a back and sloping arms, made from the same bleached wood that made up the pier.
“As I said, we need to talk, and this is better than the hallway,” she said, in that same perfectly reasonable tone that was beginning to seriously piss Jack off. He stayed right where he was.
“No.” He nodded, deciding. He had reached his limit. “You need to talk. To me. I ain’t never done no LSD, so this ain’t no drug trip, and it don’t seem like the DTs neither. You gone talk, honey, and tell me just what in THE HELL is GONE ON HERE!”
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she answered, as though they were agreeing about something. “The problem is that I don’t quite know what ‘the hell’ is going on. And I don’t know what to do.”
“What?” There was no mistaking her sincerity. “What?”
“You shouldn’t be here,” she told him desperately. “You should not, under any circumstances, have been able to see me at all, let alone call me, let alone come with me. Not unless I wanted any of those things to happen, which I assure you I did not. I don’t know how you did it. You have no power of your own, and yes, you are Irish, Celtic, yes, but I’ve never felt any Sight in you, though it is true you had some distant ancestors who did have it.”
“What? Sight?” It was all gibberish. Jack was just thrashing through the underbrush at random.
“Please. Sit down.” She gestured at the bench, her manner worried and urgent. “We have a very serious problem, and your species seems to find sitting less confrontational than standing. And it is essential that we move beyond confrontation. I’m in very serious trouble, and so, by extension, are you. I have to find a solution, and I can’t do it while you’re yelling at me.”
“I ain’t movin till I get some answers.” Jack folded his arms.
“Sit down,” she begged, “and I’ll tell you what I can.” All of a sudden it came to Jack that she was beyond worried. She was frightened, and at last, her repeated insistence that “they” had a problem began to make an impression on him. Frowning, his face grim, he approached her slowly and sat down deliberately, letting her know he did so only to humor her.
Letting out a breath, she seated herself beside him. “You asked about the Sight. It’s the ability, a mutational ability, apparently, that allows certain of your species to see beyond your limited concept of reality, into other…realms, I suppose, including the future.”
Jack shook his head. “Tell you what, honey. The only time I ever been able to see the future was when my old man used to come at me with the belt.”
To his surprise, his companion looked…ashamed. “I’m sorry.” And it was an apology, not a commiseration. “I’m so sorry it had to be like that for you.”
“What for? Ain’t your fault my old man’s a fourteen-k plated bastard,” he admitted, grudgingly.
“Maybe not,” she answered chillingly. “But yes, it was my ‘fault,’ as you would have it, that you have suffered, and will always suffer, because of him.”
“What?” Jack was incredulous.
She pushed at her forehead with both hands. “I don’t know how to tell you this in a way that it will make sense to you, Jack. Your species is still so primitive.”
“Hey! I don’t know who you think you are…”
“No, you don’t know who you think I am,” she corrected him. “I’m not human, I’m not an angel, I am nothing you are capable of understanding.”
“Tell you what, lady, or whatever you are,” he replied with simmering anger. “I may not have no fancy college degree, but I ain’t stupid. Just you try me.”
“It’s not a question of education, or intelligence, either, Jack,” she said impatiently. “It’s a question of the limitations of the brain of every mortal species. I am showing you a form you can understand. I have no form myself as such. I am not male or female.”
“You look a hell of a lot like a woman to me.”
She gave him a cool look. “That was for your benefit, Jack.” Seeing that he didn’t understand, she added, “You aren’t attracted to women, after all.”
He flushed, and resentment tightened his mouth as he glared back at her. Instantly regretting her momentary arrogance, she added, “It doesn’t matter to me. I can be a man if you prefer it. Or something non-human, or even non-corporeal. I have no limitations as you understand them.”
“Then how come you got this big problem you keep hinting about?” he shot back, still angry, and then he was sorry he had asked, because once again into her large green eyes came the flash of fear.
“Because in my existence I am bound by the laws of my kind,” she answered reluctantly. “And they are as immutable as the laws you understand. Not the ones you humans impose on each other, but the laws of physics, of time and space. Gravity. Action and reaction. Inertia. Well, the laws I answer to are just as strict. And just as unforgiving. I have disturbed the balance, the particular part of the balance I was enjoined to keep. And I have no idea how to set it right, within the strictures that I understand. And I must. I must, Jack. It’s so important. For so many of you.”
Jack gave up. “How bout you just answer my questions? And quit with this stuff I 'don’t understand' about?”
She looked up. “I don’t know where to start.” It came to him that her problem was real enough to her that she felt boxed into a corner, desperate and trapped. That, at least, was something Jack Twist could understand, intimately. For the first time, he felt a stirring of the compassion that was native to him, and he reached out and brushed her face with the back of two fingers. Her green eyes flashed at him, and she jerked back as though she had been burned. Startled, Jack was suddenly, inescapably reminded of someone else who always instinctively resisted, at least at first, and he felt a sudden confusion.
“You shouldn’t have been able to see me,” she said, seeming almost as bewildered as he was. “Perhaps it was the alcohol, perhaps it broke down some of the barriers in your mind. Your nature is receptive to other possibilities, that much is true. I don’t suppose it matters, not to you anyway.” She shook her head. “But I think I’m just avoiding the issue. This is my fault. You could never have seen me, held me, followed me, unless I…unless I wanted you to. Damn. What am I going to do? –Look.” She faced him directly, and Jack had a troubling awareness that she seemed more familiar to him than there was any reason for her to.
“You’re not dead. Okay? But you are…trapped, and so am I. It’s so hard for me to explain. I was told it was time I grew up, you see. And so I was bound by a set of rules, and given an assignment, I guess you might say, something of real importance to the species, and now I’ve endangered it. Through my own carelessness.” There were tears in her eyes again, and her face was eloquent with frustration. “You have to go back. It’s so important. To so many people.”
“Important?” Jack shook his head cynically. “How you figure that? I mean, I meant to be somebody someday, but it don’t seem much like that’s gonna happen. I sell farm equipment, for Christ’s sake. I got a wife and a kid.”
“And a lover,” she said softly.
Jack’s anger flared again. “Now you listen. I don’t know how you know what you know, but it ain’t none a your damn…”
“Yes it is!” She insisted. “That is the one thing I must make you understand, Jack. It is my business. It is my special task to bring all of this to pass, as it was meant to pass. It is the path you agreed upon, in the beginning, and it is my task to see that it happens.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Of course you don’t,” she agreed. “It’s a real pity you aren’t a Buddhist. This might be simpler to explain if you were. They do have more of a grasp of the more evolved planes than your religion does. Let me try. You were chosen, Jack, chosen for a certain task, and so was the life force you have always known as Ennis Del Mar. There was a need in the world for you, and you were asked, and you agreed. But it was elsewhere, and elsewhen.”
“Chosen? For what?” Jack had no protest left in him. Whatever the ride was, he was on it now.
“Do you know of a man named Ghandi?” she asked.
“Yeah. Indian guy, wasn’t he, starved himself because he didn’t want people to fight wars anymore. Good idea, if it had worked. Somebody shot him, I think. One a his own people.”
“And you are familiar with the one whose name you invoke so often. The one your religion calls Christos, the Anointed One.”
“What!” Jack exploded. “Oh, no. Nope. Ain’t huntin that one. You ain’t tellin me I’m Jesus or somethin. I ain’t no god.”
“He was a life force who took on a task,” she explained. “Like Ghandi. Sacrifice of the self for a higher good. He didn’t literally expunge anything in agreeing to let his human life be taken from him. What he was trying to do was show those who would follow him that no sacrifice is too great if it leads to a world of kindness and tolerance for every being. And that, Jack, is the task that in your own time, you and Ennis have taken on.”
Jack Twist just stared at her.
“Your world is full of hate,” she told him sadly. “Full of what you would call evil, and sin. But the sin is this: that members of your species cannot seem to grow beyond the simple animal impulses of your primate ancestors who persecute others of their kind in order to satisfy simple animal needs for food, mates, and social certainties. In some ways your species shows progress, and promise. But the progress always seems to be followed by a backlash, and the promise is often dimmed and tarnished. You are a voice in the darkness, Jack Twist, a candle in the wind.”
“Candles in the wind blow out,” he pointed out.
“And so will you do,” she replied, and once again the tears were there.
“What?” This was soft, and scared.
“I told you: like Jesus, and Ghandi. A voice for the dispossessed, the denied, those who live in fear, without rights. Sacrifice of the self for the greater good.”
“Sacrifice? You mean…”
“Yes. You will die for what you are.”
Jack stared, blinking rapidly, his breath coming quickly, tears starting. “What I am? You don’t mean…you don’t mean…not like old Earl. Jesus. Jesus God. Not that.”
She was staring off into the distance, and he saw tears run down her face. When she turned to him again, he saw the answer in her eyes.
“Oh, my God,” he breathed, his voice high. Another thought hit him. “Ennis! Not Ennis too. Not Ennis.”
She shook her head. “No. Ennis won’t be anywhere near. And he will curse himself for that for the rest of his life.”
“Thank God,” Jack breathed. At least Ennis would escape. “Thank God. --Why me?” he cried in the next breath. “That’s a horrible way to die! Why’s it have to be like that? I can’t help the way I am! Ain’t my fault!”
“That’s the whole point,” she said, her voice breaking. “Don’t you see? That’s the whole point. Your culture is relentlessly savage toward men and women like you, toward anyone who doesn’t obey the laws imposed by those who believe, like the chimpanzees do, that there must be dominants and subordinates, a social structure of conformity, cemented by oppression, fear, and violent punishment. Listen: the path was laid out, and you agreed to follow it, even though you don’t remember now. And because you did, one day a writer of great gifts, a woman from your own birthplace, will be sitting in a bar in a town there, and she will see a man about sixty, a man who will be the germ of a character she will name Ennis Del Mar. She will see him staring not at the women in the bar, but at the young men playing pool, staring at them with a sad, hungry expression on his face, and it will set her mind working. Of all the sub-cultures in your political union, the one from which you come is the very least tolerant of men like you, and she wonders, what would happen, if two men from the ranch culture fell in love with each other? And she will write a story about it, a very sad story with great power. And several years after it is published, having affected many thousands of people, it will be translated into what you call a film, which will have even more power. It will affect millions with the sadness of your story, of two people who just wanted to be allowed to be in love, and were punished with death for it. And so you must be allowed to live that life, and betray Ennis, and pay the price.”
“Betray!” Jack was startled into speech. “Ennis!”
“Yes. Ever since the beginning of your love, you have wanted only to be with him. And he has refused. He’s already hurt you greatly once. He will hurt you again, and you in your loneliness will accelerate an affair you have not yet begun, with a neighbor, who will approach you with the first serious offer you have ever had of a full-time, nearby romance. You won’t accept right away, but you will accept, and then, after Ennis hurts you, you will intensify your new romance, and you will be careless, and someone meaner than Joe Aguirre will see you, and act upon what was seen. And you will die, and Ennis will be left alone.”
Jack sat rocking, nodding, with one arm wrapped protectively across his stomach, and one fist against his mouth, as the tears ran down.
“And I…will be the cause of it,” his companion whispered. Jack’s head whipped around.
She was crying freely. “It is the law. The path must be followed, the story must play out. It is the only way. It is the only way, that the fiction can become the truth, and change can come. I didn’t want this, Jack. It’s too hard. I didn’t count on this. I didn’t count on caring. It was just an assignment. Watch the progress. Make the small pushes. Make Ennis an orphan to make him stoic, self-reliant and independent, give him the indelible memory of Earl to keep him at arm’s length. Give you the pretty face your father would hate and the sweet nature he would beat you for, and the mother who loves you to make you long for security. Bring you together when both are vulnerable and let nature take its course. He won’t say it and you’ll be too shy to ask, and you will part. And then the next push, the easy one, that brought you back together. And then the next, the hard one, the one where it stopped being interesting and started hurting, the push that made him write to tell you he was divorced, and sent you to him, to be flung away, to make a decision that put you where you were tonight. And the next push, that will make you stop to help a couple with a flat, and will bring another man into your path. And the last push, that will cause you to take pleasure with him outside the cabin at the lake, where you will be seen. And I must cause that too. And I…hate it. Hate it. I don’t want this.”
“Can’t you do something?” Jack cried. “You got all this magic, power, whatever, you say you…caused everything that’s happened…”
“Not caused. Only pushed, pushed a little to encourage you both to act within the laws that bind your natures.”
“Then help our natures!” he begged. “Change it! I don’t want whores, and I don’t want somebody else! I want Ennis! I just want Ennis to take me in his arms and tell me he loves me more than his life and let us be together.”
“I can’t,” she whispered. “That is not the path. You must follow the path.”
“Bull shit!” he said. “You changed that, didn’t you? You brought me here. That sure as hell ain’t on no damn path.”
“I didn’t change it, Jack. I damaged it. I became too involved.” The words were reluctant. “Look at me. Look at me. Really look, and tell me what you see.”
He looked. She was a slim youngish woman with long braids, nearly his own height, wearing a simple straight white dress that fell from her shoulders to her bare feet, a sort of Greek look, maybe. Her face at first glance might be called rather masculine, her brow straight and high, her nose prominent, her jaw square. Save for the large green eyes, and the curved mouth—and then he saw it. She looked like Ennis, kind of, in the shape of her face, and her coloring. Her hair was exactly the same color as his. But Ennis didn’t have eyes anything like that.
But I do, he thought. And that’s my mouth too. Jack wasn’t much of one for looking in the mirror, his father had told him too many times he was pretty, and girly, and sissy-lookin, and you best get out there and muck them horses, do your man’s work or I’ll beat the livin hell out’n you and don’t think I won’t. But Jack knew what he looked like, and he saw that her face was an eerie blend of his own and Ennis Del Mar’s. A strange thought occurred to him: if we could ever a had a kid, it mighta looked like this. And then—not bad.
“You see it,” she said, in a subdued voice. “You see what has happened to me. I have become too involved, gotten too close, and it has changed me.”
“You tellin me you look like me and Ennis because you…” Jack was shaking his head. “I don’t know. What?”
She didn’t answer, just shook her head and looked out over the unchanging turquoise waters, tears trickling down her face.
Another man might have been at a loss, but Jack had spent the better part of his life loving a man who said little, and denied as much as he said. Jack knew what he was seeing.
“It’s all right,” he said softly, and reached for her. Just as he expected, by now, she resisted. And in accord with his own nature, he persisted, until all at once, she let go and embraced him fiercely. But only for a moment.
“It’s okay,” he added, when she tried to pull away. “Really. I…I…it’s okay.”
“I don’t want you to die,” she whispered.
“I don’t want him to have to live without me,” Jack told her.
She stared at him for a small time, not really seeing him, and he could see her thinking hard. At last, she said, “A push, in accordance with your natures. Perhaps I can do that for you. Perhaps I can do that much. You must die, and Ennis must live with the fact that he is partly responsible, I can do nothing about that. Lureen will have you cremated, but she knows nothing about the mountain, and when she understands, when Ennis tells her you herded sheep there together, and she knows at last, she will send him to Lightning Flat to retrieve your ashes and scatter them. Your father will refuse.”
“Son bitch,” Jack muttered.
“It is his nature,” she said softly. “And he will, half-understanding, strike out at Ennis, telling him you spoke of bringing him to the farm, but that then there was someone else you were going to bring.”
“Motherfucker,” Jack growled, with real venom.
“And Ennis will know, but your mother will see that he hurts, and send him to your room. And there he will find…”
“Our shirts,” Jack whispered. “Mine and his, from Brokeback.”
“Yes. And your mother will let him take them away. And he will keep them together, his outside of yours now, for the rest of his life. That much I cannot change.” She took a deep breath. “But I can shorten his suffering, and I can shorten yours. It will be quick, Jack, for you. It is not necessary that you linger.”
Jack shivered. “Thanks,” he muttered sarcastically.
“And for Ennis…” she took another deep breath. “I can bring to him a night, and a listener, who will cause him to bare his soul, and in that night you will come to him again, and you will bring him home to you, and she will scatter your ashes together on the mountain. That much I can do.”
Jack was silent for a while. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “But it’s cold comfort, is all it is. You mean we’ll be together after we die, like in heaven.”
“Yes. Not in the forms you know now, but together in a way you cannot possibly imagine.”
“Well, that’s the whole problem, ain’t it?” Jack threw up his hands. “I can’t imagine it. And frankly it don’t make me feel a whole lot better right now. You tellin me, me and Ennis is gone to go on like we is now, seein each other couple times a year, and in the future we gone hurt each other, and die apart, and I’m gone get beat to death, but I’m gone come back as a ghost or somethin and he’s gone die and be with me. Whooee. Sounds like fun. Meantime, eventually you gone figure out how to get me back to Juarez, stinkin drunk and miserable, and not gone see Ennis till July. That about cover it?” Jack looked away, shaking his head. “And I bet that bastard’s never gone tell me he loves me. I’m gone sacrifice myself for the greater good, but I don’t even get to know if he really cares.”
Jack didn’t see her straighten up beside him, but he did hear her intake of breath. She met his eyes with those so like his own, and the look in hers was fierce and determined.
“There is a way,” she said deliberately. “I believe there is a way that I can give you something of what you desire. Within the laws that are binding on us, is that your wish, Jack Twist? Do you ask that you know how much you are loved? Is that what, within the strictures of your existence, which I cannot alter, is most important to you?”
Jack hesitated, trying to be sure he understood her. “Yes. I think so. If you can’t change what you say has gotta be, and I can’t neither, then yeah, knowing that Ennis loves me the way I love him would be a help. I guess.” His voice was still a little bitter.
“He does,” she said softly, and her eyes shone with tears and love. “Ennis loves you with a strength of feeling that is greater than time, greater than any distance, greater even than death. You will see. You will know. And I know how it may be done.” The fierce look came back into her face. “Yes. I know. You are not the only one who may make a sacrifice for the greater good.”
“What?” Jack could see it in her face, understood on a gut level what she intended to do. He shook his head, rapidly, but she was going on.
“Yes. It will work. Sufficient energy, expended at the event horizon, causes even the singularity to release captured energy. It can be done.” She pulled him to his feet, making no attempt to explain her last words. “You thought me an angel, Jack Twist? So I am then. The Angel of Death.” And suddenly she did have wings, and they were spread, and she was both embracing him and shoving him back, and they went over the side of the pier and into the water together.
For an instant, for an eternity, it was all white, a maelstrom of pure white energy with Jack Twist at the center. For an instant, for an eternity, he knew the most perfect love he had ever dreamed of knowing, emotional, physical, intense, complete and eternal. For an instant only it was her, the angel, and then it began to change, and became someone else, someone he knew a lot better, someone who mattered, the only one who ever had, or ever would.
“Jack! God damn it Jack, wake up! Don’t you dare go way, don’t you dare!” The voice was hoarse and ragged. Jack became aware of being shaken, being slapped. “God damn you, don’t you dare go! You stay here with me, Jack fuckin Twist, you stay here, you hear me? Jesus, Jesus, make him wake up, make him wake up.”
And then Jack did wake up, at least he got his great blue eyes open, and found himself staring up into a sky that mirrored them. Not Juarez, he thought. Thanks for that, anyway.
“Jack!” The face of Ennis Del Mar swam into focus over him. “Jack!”
Jack’s vision cleared, and then, he could see it. There were tears in the intense dark eyes, tears that threatened to spill, and terror, and yes, love. And for an instant, Jack understood it all, everything that had been said to him. And then it was gone, leaving only the love, the all-consuming, blazing, uncontainable love.
“Greater than time,” Jack muttered under his breath. “Greater than distance, and death.” For the rest of his time there, he would know. It would not always be enough, it would not always comfort him, but he would go to his grave knowing that he was the beloved of Ennis Del Mar.
“What?” Ennis said, half hearing Jack’s very odd words.
But Jack had already forgotten them. He sat up. “Shit. What happened? –Ow. –Damn, I’m all wet,” he discovered. “--So are you, Ennis. What happened?”
The passion in the dark eyes was shuttered immediately, replaced by anger. “What happened? What happened is you slipped in the damn creek, hit your fool head on one them damn rocks and near fuckin drowned before I hauled your sorry ass out, is what happened.”
For a moment Jack just stared at him. He opened his mouth to say something, but it slipped away.
“Come here,” Ennis said abruptly. “You too damn much trouble, know that? Huh? Jack fuckin Twist? Damned if I’m gonna let you get away with scarin the shit outta me.” As he pushed Jack down into the sweet grass, and followed him, the great laughing blue eyes told Ennis that he wasn’t getting away with anything, either.
And then it was Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist and a love that was, and had always been, would always be, greater than time, distance, or death, and stronger than anyone or anything that would try to deny, damage, or destroy it.
And it was wild and amazing and beautiful under the sky.
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| The Time Between, Part One: Freefall 1 |
[Jun. 27th, 2006|04:25 pm] |
The Time Between
Part One
Freefall, 1
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine; they are the creation of Annie Proulx. They are not intended to represent real persons living or dead.
Rating: R, language, mature themes.
August 1963.
He drove on into the lengthening evening, staring ahead grimly, his eyes hot and dry, smoking steadily, wishing he had some whisky. From time to time, his right hand crept toward the canvas bag on the seat beside him, now freighted with a precious cargo, but each time he drew his hand back before it actually made contact. He did sometimes touch the dark bruise under his left eye, and shake his head. Why? Why had Ennis hit him? It was not a conscious question. It was a sad, weary refrain in an endless dirge of busted dreams, a cry of despair that knew there would be no answer. He touched the bruise again now, hardly knowing that he did so, and it came rushing back yet again, the sick fluttery feeling high in his belly, right under his ribs, the same one that had poured into him when Aguirre had ridden into camp again in his slow, deliberate way and told him to bring the sheep down. It was a disaster, and Jack knew it. Jack had stood there for a long time after Aguirre had ridden away again, unable to move. Finally, mechanically, he’d begun to strike camp. A month early. A whole month stolen from them, from what they had found in each other. But he hadn’t despaired, not then. He hadn’t allowed himself to. What he and Ennis had meant something, and it wasn’t going to end here. There was next summer, Alma or no Alma, and every summer after that… Jack clung to that one idea. It was all that kept him from crying out. But Jack couldn’t stop a tiny voice inside down deep, and little yittering claws of fear made sharp little tracks in his gut. What was Ennis going to do, when he knew?
What Ennis had done was go silent in the face of the news, silent like he’d been in the beginning, after that first startled protest about the money. But Jack had seen the shock, had heard the quiet panic in his voice, was pretty sure money had nothing to do with it. Seeing his friend sitting far away in the meadow, staring at nothing, Jack had thought he understood very well indeed, and his heart had filled with something almost like joy even as it filled also with pity. Carrying his message of hope, he had gone to the silent grieving one to remind him that all was really not lost, they still had each other and the future.
And then Ennis had smashed a fist into his face, and destroyed everything, leaving Jack moaning on the ground as he swung into his saddle without a backward glance and rode away with the mules.
And that night…what the hell had happened that night? The sheep had flowed over the landscape as always in fits and starts, drifting where they would, the progress irritatingly slow, and they’d finally had to halt a long way off, still a half a day from the pick-up point. They had made a primitive camp, just a fire for cooking and to keep the coffee hot, and Ennis had taken his gun and walked off into the gathering darkness at the first opportunity without any apparent intention of coming back. He had, though, a few times, for coffee and whisky, pointedly ignoring the blankets Jack had arranged hopefully, stepping right on them as though they weren’t there. Jack had borne the insult, blinked back tears more than once, but when Ennis had come in the last time, maybe two hours before dawn, Jack hadn’t been able to stand it any more. With no more volition than the smoke, he had risen from his seat and come up behind Ennis as he stood on the blankets staring into the fire and drinking coffee. Ennis hadn’t even seen the movement, so completely had he shut Jack out, and the first he knew of it was when one arm slipped around his shoulders and neck, as the other snaked between his arm and body. It was a risk, it was a considerable risk, but Jack Twist rode bulls, and he dared greatly now in his despair.
Ennis had noticed him then, all right. For a moment he’d stood stock-still, even as Jack slipped a hand to his face, and then he’d turned, abruptly. Jack had started back, not willing to suffer another punch, not even from Ennis Del Mar, but Ennis had grabbed him by the shirt front and flung him down on the blankets. Even then Jack wasn’t sure which direction this was going, Ennis’ face in the firelight was as unrevealing as it had ever been, but then he had felt the hands on him, and responded with joy.
The joy had been shortlived. They had pulled most of each other’s clothes off in those first desperate moments, and the sound of Ennis’ harsh breathing and the feel of rough hands on him, smooth skin against his and the stiff cock ready was enough to overwhelm the disappointment that Ennis would not allow himself to be kissed. And then it had all gone wrong. Jack liked it rough, loved Ennis to be powerful and forceful, but even that first time had not been like this. The startled Jack had even tried to get away, which had made it worse. Done, Ennis had flung himself down with his face turned away, pulling a blanket over his nakedness with a jerk, and Jack had collapsed in misery, his face burning. After a time he pulled his clothes back on, knowing there was no point in not putting them back on, knowing Ennis would only shame and insult him further when he woke up if he did not. As he started to pull on his shirt, however, the memory of the blood on it, Ennis’ blood, made him shudder, and he reached for the bag containing his other shirt. It didn’t help. Struggling into sleeves and legs, Jack could hardly bear the rasp of fabric over skin that did not want to be covered, concealed. He glanced at Ennis, unable not to, wanting Ennis to see what he was making Jack do. But Ennis never moved.
He had only dozed after that, too sick to sleep. Ennis had apparently passed out and didn’t stir once, but as the sky began to change, Jack had awakened, and sat up, shivering in the predawn chill, trying not to look at the man beside him. The sky was lightening now, and in the gray air he saw at his feet a light-colored pile of material with one sleeve flung out. In the poor light he could not see the blot on the sleeve that was Ennis’ blood, but he knew it was there.
As Jack drove into the night, staring back into the memory, he wondered again why he had done it. Again it seemed he had acted without any will of his own. His hand had closed on Ennis’ shirt, and he had pulled it to him, his eyes closing. In the next instant, he was up off the blankets smoothly, reaching for his own bag, and stuffing the shirt deep inside, his heart pounding. He had felt a flash of guilt then, and felt it again now, to be taking something from someone who had so little, but he’d had to do it. And he wasn’t sorry.
But Ennis would miss the shirt at once, and Jack knew he would never be able to hide or explain it. And Ennis in the mood he was in now would never let him keep the damn thing. Thinking with the speed and clarity of a bull rider who’d just been thrown, he caught up Ennis’ bag, pulled out the other shirt, and put it half under Ennis’ coat. Now. Now he had to make it work.
“Ennis!” he cried, grabbing up their bags, and pulling at the blankets. “Shit, Ennis, we got to get goin! Aguirre’ll be there soon! Shit, man, get up! Bastard might dock us some more pay, we don’t show on time!”
Ennis, stupid with lack of sleep and the sudden summons, did exactly as Jack had prayed he would: came to hands and knees, started grabbing at the clothes scattered around him, and, standing, started pulling them on without looking closely at them. Jack had one last searing view of Ennis Del Mar’s naked body, and then he turned away, sick at heart, working hurriedly to get the camp cleared up and Ennis out of there before the deception was uncovered.
And it had worked. It had been almost two hours before Ennis had pulled off his coat. It had been touch and go for a moment then:
“Hey! This my other shirt!”
Jack had affected indifference, though his heart was in his mouth. “Yeah?”
“Ain’t the one I was wearin yesterday.” Ennis waved the unbloodied sleeve at Jack, who offered him a frown and a shrug.
“No. Must be in your bag.” Jack moved his horse a little further away.
“I was wearin it last night!” Ennis insisted. “Only got one clean shirt.” He turned to look back over his shoulder. “Damn! Cost me three-fifty-nine. Can’t just leave it there.” He started to turn his horse.
“Ennis! Don’t be an idiot! I can’t get these sheep down by myself, and I can’t wait for you to go lookin for your damn shirt. Must be in your bag. You’d a seen it otherwise.” This last was especially risky, but Jack knew if he didn’t ride it the whole eight seconds, he’d be gored for sure. “Now come on.” Jack rode forward, and Ennis, sleep-deprived and deep in his own maelstrom of confusion, anger, guilt and loss, had followed his lover’s retreating back for no better reason than because he couldn’t bear to ride off in the opposite direction. And the shirt had stayed where Jack had put it.
Until now. Finally, as dusk gave way to true night, as the miles and the years began to open between Jack Twist and the dark-eyed, dark-voiced man with the lonely soul who had cleaved unwillingly but completely to him, his fingers closed on the coarse canvas, twitched the cord loose, and slipped into the neck, seeking, searching, finding, and drawing Ennis Del Mar’s bloody shirt once again to his nose and lips.
He had sought comfort. He was in no way prepared for the visceral body blow, as hard and unexpected as the punch that had laid him out as he sought to give comfort to the wounded. The shirt was Ennis, all that he had left of Ennis, maybe all he’d ever had of him, cigarette smoke and wood smoke and whisky and earth, cooked food and sheep and body scent. In an instant Jack was pulling the truck over, falling out of it, retching, and when the need had passed, crawling back inside, turning the truck off, and curling up on the seat, winding himself around the precious, hurtful thing, pressing the bloody sleeve to his lips as sobs wracked his body. The night-line met the far horizon and the stars blazed in the vault of heaven, but Jack knew nothing of it, a prisoner of his own heart, the memories tormenting him in flashes of lightning: Showing off on the mare. Ennis shooting the elk. The first time Ennis had smiled at him, and even laughed. How hard it had been not to look at Ennis washing himself. How much he’d enjoyed watching, later. How much they’d both enjoyed washing each other, never knowing if it would end in tenderness, silly roughhousing, or stark passion. The roaring in his ears, the fever in his body as he waited for Ennis to take him the first time. The fear the next morning, and the despair when he had thought Ennis was telling him it would not happen again. The inner shout of joy when Ennis had come to him, the pity and aching tenderness he had felt seeing the torment in those dark eyes as Ennis had crouched before him. How completely he had been overwhelmed to have Ennis in his arms, to feel him writhing in agony and touching clumsily, with no more control or understanding than a baby. And the way everything had changed forever when he pushed Ennis onto his back and kissed him, and saw the decision made, the guilt and fear sponged away, and the peace and happiness that replaced it. Jack had felt a terrible deep stab then, like nothing he’d ever felt before, and he had felt in the same moment that he was dying and that he would live forever. Brief noisy tussles. Prolonged, careful, sensual explorations. Hard work and wild play, alpenglow and starlight and hot sun and stale beans and smoked elk and dirty sheep and sweet balsam and the acrid tang of sweat and cigarettes and woodsmoke and male musk and spent seed. Joy. Understanding. Fulfillment. Friendship. Companionship. Completion. Ennis.
And then the memories turned dark, as the dark eyes went flat and a fist like a rock slammed into his face. And worse would follow.
And then, at last, at the truck:
I could give you a ride. --Not goin the same way. --I could take you… --Nope, got some places I gotta go. Lemme give you a hand with this, gotta get goin. Fighting, fighting the inevitable. Keep talking. Say anything: You gonna do this again next summer? --Well, I might not. Like I said, me and Alma’s gettin married… You? --Might go back to my daddy’s place, give him a hand. I might be back. It’d worked about as well as suggesting he might be drafted. Oh, yeah, that’d rattled Ennis big time. Please. Please, Ennis. Look at me. It ain’t too late. But it was, and he knew it. Ennis Del Mar was gone. His body still leaned against Jack’s truck, sure, as he kept pawing around in the bag, looking for the shirt he wasn’t going to find, but he was gone. It was his ghost who stood there. Guess I’ll see you around, huh? But Jack Twist knew what that meant. He had dropped his head, and then looked up again right away, afraid that Ennis might vanish between one blink and the next. It hadn’t mattered anyway. Ennis had turned away, for real this time, and Jack had gotten numbly into his truck and driven off in a spray of gravel, knowing he would never see Ennis Del Mar again.
With Brokeback Mountain black against the stars at the edge of the world, Jack Twist sobbed for Ennis Del Mar until unconsciousness was merciful enough to overtake him.
* * *
If I ever live to be a hundred, it’ll feel like this, Jack thought, groaning as he tried to lever his body out of the truck in front of the house early the next afternoon. He was starving, really wanted some beer or whisky and knew he would get neither here, and felt stupid with fatigue, numb both outside and in. He felt dead, and pretty much wished he was.
He managed to get both feet on the ground, and the laundry bag with its secrets back inside was swinging off the seat when the door opened and his mother came across the dusty parking area almost at a run, brushing at herself, still wearing her apron. Seeing the joy in her face, Jack forgot everything else and dropped the bag as his mother swept him into her arms.
They were natural allies, these two, against the cold and sometimes calculated cruelty of John Twist. In later years, when his mother greeted him at each too-distant return with the same unashamed fervor, Jack came to have some appreciation of what his visits meant to her. She, too, lived a bleak and empty life amid the ghosts of dreams gone sour. But unlike him, being in the middle of nowhere meant only punishment and not escape. He was the one bright spot in her whole life, and there were times in after years when he sorrowed for her, that she had only a son, and not a lover, to shower caresses on her and give her a brief respite of soft rain and wildflowers from the dead gray dust of her life.
At this moment, Jack was too wrapped up in his own troubles to understand the unexpected fierceness of her embrace, but he did not fail to notice it. His arms wound around her in greeting as they had wanted to wind in parting around another, but had not been allowed to, and Jack Twist and his mother clung to each other. In the absence of her husband, Eileen Twist was granted the rare luxury of being able to hold her son close without counting the seconds before she would be told to stop fussing with, or spoiling, or pestering the boy. And then Jack thought, Ennis never hugged me this way, not once.
His mother felt the change in his body and relaxed her hold, though, heart full, she didn’t let go at once. “You’re skin and bones, little bird,” she murmured into his chest. “Just skin and bones. Just like last year. They don’t feed you right.” The mention of food made Jack’s stomach growl, drawing from his mother a soft “oh, Jacky.” She patted his back. “Now kiss your mama, and come get something to eat.” This was the moment he had been dreading, and sure enough, as he obediently stooped to her, she started back, eyes widening in dismay as she saw the bruise on his face.
“Jacky! You haven’t been fightin! Please tell me you haven’t been fightin.”
“Wasn’t no fight, Mama,” Jack said sullenly. “Ennis…” The name escaped him before he could stop it. He pulled away from her.
“Ennis?” She tried to peer into his face, to see how badly he had been hurt.
“I’m hungry, Mama,” he said loudly. “I ain’t had nothin to eat since…” it occurred to him that he didn’t know, couldn’t remember, and he felt suddenly faint. “I’m starvin,” he pleaded. “What you got? I could eat a horse and two mules.”
The distraction worked, of course, at least for the moment. “You come on in and sit down, baby. I haven’t finished dinner, but I’ll get you somethin.” She linked her arm through his as he caught up the canvas bag. “Wish I’d known you were comin home, birdie. I would’ve done you a cherry cake.” Jack slipped an arm around her and kissed her hair in answer.
A blissful silence reigned as Jack, slouched athwart a stool in the kitchen doorway, devoured most of a loaf of bread, several glasses of milk, and four thick slices of ham and cheese. His mother, though busy fixing dinner, managed nonetheless to watch him with great contentment, often brushing his hair or shoulders or face with her fingers as she moved about the small kitchen. She tried, too, at last, to touch the bruise, but this he would not permit.
“Does it hurt, sweetheart?” she asked.
“Not anymore,” he mumbled, his mouth full. Angry dark eyes flashed in memory, and he flinched a little. His mother noticed the involuntary movement.
“How did it happen, Jacky-bird?” Her eyes were sad with love and worry.
“Mama, please, I done told you. Don’t call me Jacky. I ain’t five.” Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Jack stood, retrieving the bag. “Where’s Daddy? Guess I ought to go help him.”
“Sit down a bit, Jack. You just got home.” This was as close as Eileen Twist could ever dare come to helping her son avoid his father.
But Jack did not want to sit down, not when it was sure to mean his mother continuing to question him about the mark Ennis Del Mar had left on him. “Tell you what, Mama, I ain’t had a real bath since I left here.” Other images flashed into his mind that were ruthlessly shoved aside. “We got’ny hot water?”
“Maybe a little,” she answered doubtfully.
“Don’t matter,” he decided. “Soap’s good enough. Gone take me a bath, Mama. Then I got to help Daddy. He’ll get mad, if I don’t.”
That was true enough, but Eileen shook her head, though she said nothing. Then she noticed the bag, reached for it.
“Let me take your washing, birdie,” she offered.
To her surprise, the innocuous request seemed to startle and alarm her son. “Huh-uh! --I mean, ain’t hot water enough right now for me and the clothes. Waited this long, tomorrow’s soon enough.” In his panic at not having anticipated this obvious problem, Jack was clutching at the bag.
“Well, all right.” His mother was mystified, but she had been married to John Twist too long to argue, and Jack escaped up the stairs with the last remnants of Ennis Del Mar and Brokeback Mountain.
It did not much surprise her, though, when he came clattering back down the stairs—that godawful racket, his father called it--only a few minutes later. Eileen Twist would have given much, for her son’s sake, to have kept the two men apart as long as possible, but she knew it was inevitable that Jack would strive, as ever, to prove himself and to please—and it was equally inevitable, that he would fail. It might be just as well, to get it over with, though Jack’s mother feared that there would be penalty for the delay she had already caused. John Twist rode hard, always. That he knew his son was home, however far off on the property he might be, was nearly a certainty. He wouldn’t come looking for Jack. He would scorn to show himself that eager for the conflict. But somewhere in the outbuildings, Eileen was sure, he was lying in wait. Shaking her head, reproving herself for such a thought, she sought within herself for forgiveness, reminding herself of the rough and the smooth, the coming reward, the vows, and that the meek would be the inheritors. Some days, peace and love flowed into her naturally and easily, His love like a mountain stream just and righteous. Other days, it troubled her that even inside, the comfort seemed strained and hollow.
Today, as Eileen Twist tried hard to lose herself in the baking and cooking, she was very troubled.
* * *
“I’m back, Daddy.” Jack found his father hard at work under the open hood of the tractor.
John Twist took his time straightening up. Jack tried not to shrink away at this clear evidence that his father had already known he was home, but the pattern of a lifetime was not easily shed, and he found himself ducking his head and nodding nervously.
“Got fired.” The older man spat to the side. “Not surprised.”
“I wasn’t fired!” Jack actually did take a step back when the words came out louder than was wise, but his father was already bending back to his repairs. “No, sir,” he said more quietly. “It was bad weather. Some a Brokeback’s above tree line. Get snow in August regular. Aguirre done told us, bring em down.”
His father didn’t even look up as turned his head to the side and spat again, telling Jack exactly what he thought of this as an excuse. Jack opened his mouth to protest, to repeat the weather report Aguirre had given him that day, but the explanation never got past his teeth. Even in his nervousness, he knew he was invoking Joe Aguirre for proof and protection, and it irritated him. Once again, in another lightning flash, he saw Aguirre raising his big glasses to look at Ennis high above them on the flank, and saying, “Nothin you can do down there neither. Not less you can cure pneumonia.” Remembering what he and Ennis had been doing, outside the tent no less, only a short time before, with Aguirre apparently not all that far away at the time, Jack would have been uneasy anyway. Something in Aguirre’s manner, and the deliberate way he’d raised those 10x45s, had never quite stopped bothering him, the more so as he hadn’t dared mention it to Ennis.
Change the subject. “How’s Uncle Harold?”
His father took his time again answering. “Ain’t dead. Not that you care.” Another punctuation mark off to the side.
“I do care,” Jack protested as strenuously as he dared. “But Brokeback’s over three hundred miles, and the roads is mostly bad. Nothin I could do, could I?” He hated himself for the plea in his last words.
“Coulda come be with your Mama. She was worried sick.”
This was outrageous, and Jack knew it. If he had come home, his father would have berated him for abandoning his responsibilities, for not putting his back into it and swallowing his feelings like a man. For the first time, Jack Twist saw his father with the eyes of an adult, understood as he never had before that there really was no pleasing him, knew that his father was not so much hard as hateful, and hated him in return.
But he was only nineteen, and while it was in his nature to risk, the power to rebel openly did not belong to him, and there was in his nature none of the feral combativeness that had both scared and fascinated him in Ennis Del Mar. Jack Twist had his own strength, but it was the strength of the willow, and not of the oak. And once again, he bent, and allowed the harsh fury of the wind to pass over his head.
“I come right back here, Daddy,” he said. “Right as soon as we got back to Signal. Didn’t stop for nothin but gas once. Only left Signal yesterday noon. Wanted to help you out, best way I can.”
“You know what needs doin. What, you waitin for me to hold yer hand or something? Christ, when I was your age…”
Jack made a mistake. He had heard this story too many times, and he tried to short-stop it. “I’ll get goin on it, Daddy.”
This brought his father’s head up and the chill stare fixed him in his tracks. “One thing you ain’t learned is how to respect your elders.” And then, without warning, the slap, hard and open handed, as though Jack were a child, right on top of the bruise that he had given no sign of noticing.
“When I was your age, I was ridin bulls every weekend and doing jobs on two ranches together,” Twist said relentlessly, as Jack tried not to cry from the pain. “That’s a man’s work, not screwin around in the mountains with no damn sheep. You was raised a cattle man. I’d a starved before I’d a spent a day starin at the back end a those filthy things.” He bent back to the tractor. “You stay here, you’re gone work. Now get goin.”
And that was Jack Twist’s reunion with his father. Mighta been worse, he thought, as he moved away on shaky legs. Mighta shot me on sight. And then: screwin around… Jesus. Despite his best efforts, the face and the name returned, from that first day in Signal: You from ranch folks? –I was. They run themselves off. One curve in the road… Ennis was the lucky one, he thought. Except for Mama, of course.
As he set to work, it might have seemed he had already shrugged it off, but his mother, at least, would have seen the set of his jaw, and the tears in his eyes.
The Time Between continues in Freefall, 2…
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| The Time Between, Part One: Freefall 2 |
[Jun. 26th, 2006|04:41 pm] |
The Time Between
Part One
Freefall, 2
Disclaimer: These characters are not mine. They are the creation of Annie Proulx, and are not intended to represent any persons living or dead.
Escaping upstairs after a tense, silent dinner, Jack spent a long time in the bathtub, sitting in the lukewarm water, watching it turn gray as he slowly and deliberately washed away every last trace of his second Brokeback Mountain summer. For a long time after he dropped the washcloth into the dirty water, he simply sat staring at the battered and lime-etched overflow valve as he had done a thousand times before. He couldn’t remember what he had been thinking about the last time he had sat here. About the money he had stood to make? About Joe Aguirre and his crap? About bull riding? There had been a social, he remembered suddenly. About two weeks before he left. He’d danced with JoMay Abernethy. And then they’d necked for near half an hour behind the hall. He’d gotten his hand on both tits and was about to get under her blouse when someone had interrupted them, but there had definitely been promise of more. So most likely he’d been thinking about that. Well, probably not just thinking. He shook his head. And now he sat in the same bathtub, but nothing was the same. He couldn’t say he’d ever been that hot for JoMay, but the idea of taking up where they had left off… Jesus. He’d thought he knew so much because he’d kissed a bunch of girls and fooled around some. He’d thought it was all about going all the way. He hadn’t known what just a kiss could do, all by itself, that it could blast you apart from the inside out and put you back together all different, weak as a sick lamb and strong as a mountain thunderstorm all at the same time. No. He hadn’t known. Not until…
Jack rose smoothly out of the tub, kicking up the plug with his toe the way he always did, and tipped the pitcher of clean water over his head. It was chill as it sheeted down his body, but that did nothing to dampen the sudden fever that had arisen. He ignored it, and continued to ignore it as he refilled the pitcher and rinsed a second time.
The clean but elderly towel, once blue and white but now more gray with age and many washings, rasped uncomfortably on his skin, and Jack wondered how long he’d been sitting there. It was starting to get dark, but that didn’t really help. The days were drawing in noticeably now, and he realized he had no idea what time it was. He hardly even knew what day it was. His head dropped. In truth he hadn’t cared. Why should he, when every hour was golden like the evening sun sliding down the flanks of Brokeback? He had a sudden, visceral image of Ennis standing naked at the edge of the camp clearing, relaxed and easy, lifting his hat briefly to scratch his head, his whole lean body on unselfconscious view as he studied the sky for the weather, the late afternoon sun gilding the long supple lines…
Jack sat down heavily on the closed toilet, forehead dropping into his right hand. “Shit!” The curse was quiet but anguished. He pushed his thick hair back from his forehead, wiping at the sweat that had broken there, and then the hand clapped over his mouth. For a little time he sat there, very still, hunched over and wrapped around himself, wondering what in the fuck he was going to do now.
His room felt small and confining. That was nothing new. Jack had been itching to move on for as long as he could remember, and returning to this room again, with nothing more to show for it than a couple hundred dollars, would have been bad enough. But there beside his desk was the open laundry bag, on the back of the chair hung his fleece-lined coat—and under the mattress lay the two shirts.
The room felt stuffy and hot after the clean cold of Brokeback, and after he hung up his bathrobe on the back of the door and pulled on his ridiculously short pajama bottoms, he went automatically to the window and propped it open. It was nearly as automatic to pull the bench closer to the window and sit down, but he was up again in a moment. He was going to have to do something with the shirts. He didn’t know when “Ennis’ shirt” had become “the two shirts” but when he had pulled Ennis’ out for the second time, his had come with it, and as he had stared at the sleeve of his own shirt, the blood on it too already fading to brown, he had known that he wasn’t going to let his mother wash it. Not yet, anyway. That meant he had to hide both of them, and without a thought, they had gone under the mattress.
But they couldn’t stay there. No. It just wasn’t right, somehow, to stuff those two shirts under his lumpy old mattress like a girlie magazine. Hell, he’d even had a girlie magazine under there for a while, until it occurred to him that his mother made his bed up every week, and then the magazine had gone into the hayloft.
It wasn’t a conscious decision he made, to retrieve the two shirts, or to sit with them in the darkening room, or to draw them against him and press the fabric again to his nose and lips as he rocked silently. The scents were the same as before, and just as powerful an invocation, but this time they did comfort, in a sad, aching kind of a way. Jack didn’t know either that he was humming the lullaby Ennis had hummed to him once. He wouldn’t have said he remembered it, but it came to him now as he rocked and
stared unseeingly into the dusk.
“Jack, honey? Are you all right?” Looking at her only child in silence while she waited on his father at the table was hardly enough to satisfy Eileen Twist’s longing to cosset and caress her little baby, but expecting, hoping to find him in bed, asleep or nearly so, she was taken aback to find him hunched over next to the window, rocking as he held something in his arms. In that moment her concern bloomed into full worry. He’d lost weight on that Farm and Ranch job last summer too, to be sure, but he hadn’t come home like this, hollow-eyed and evasive and beaten down. Something had happened. Something, she knew, to do with the bruise on his face and someone named Ennis. She wouldn’t pry. It was not, had never been her way. If he wanted to tell her, he would. But her only child was hurting, and she was his mother.
Jack leapt up at the sound of his name. Bunching up the cruel mementos together, he twitched the roll of cloth lightly behind him onto his pillow and deeper into the shadows.
“Mama,” he protested. “I ain’t got a shirt on.”
“I just wanted to sit with you a minute before you go to sleep, birdie.” Eileen Twist ignored both the patent evasion and the action that had accompanied it.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Mama, I’m way too old for you to be callin me pet names.” But he didn’t really mind it. What he minded was her being in the same room with his raw turmoil.
Approaching him, his mother ran her hand along the unbruised side of his face. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ll never be too old for that. You’ve spread your wings now, Jack, and you’ll fly away, but you’ll always be my little bluebird of happiness.”
Jack’s chest tightened painfully, his throat closed up. Flash. A strong arm slipping around his neck from behind, a hand sliding between his arm and body. You’re sleepin on your feet like a horse. He could feel the living breath against his face. He could hear the gentleness in the soft voice. The words were different, the caresses were different, but the sweet music in each voice was the same. It was exactly the same. Unable to speak, not knowing what to say, not knowing what could be said, now or ever, Jack did the only thing he could: he threw his arms around his mother and enveloped her in a fierce hug of both gratitude and grief.
* * *
That night, Jack slept with the two shirts in his arms. After his mother left, he slumped down on the bed, weak with reaction, and found himself drawing the dirty relics to his breast out of sheer necessity. He was suddenly tired beyond reckoning, more tired than he could ever remember being in his life, and though he knew he should put the shirts somewhere safe and secret, he couldn’t bear to let them go.
In the morning he discovered this had been a mistake. Ennis wove himself through dreams both happy and painful, and the result was as inevitable as it was embarrassing. Cursing a blue streak under his breath, knowing he had to hurry to get down to breakfast in time, Jack cast around the room for a better hiding place for his secrets. In the end, there was just no better place for clothes than the closet, and he put Ennis’s shirt on the nail behind the wall that at various times had held a winter coat, lassos, and other odds and ends. For now, it would do. He stood with his own shirt in hand, hesitating. He really ought to let his mother wash it. He only had a few shirts that fit. But even as the practical thought came, so too did a sudden choking panic, and Jack found himself drawing the bloodied sleeve to his lips. It was Ennis’ blood. Ennis’ blood that he had stanched, his heart sore with concern. Yeah, and what did that get me? I was trying to help him, and he punched me in the face. And then he used me. He didn’t even say goodbye. Wash the damn shirt. And then another thought, at once, crystal clear and absolutely certain: I will never wash this shirt. I will never wear it again. Ever. He hung his shirt over Ennis Del Mar’s and left the room to wash up.
* * *
John Twist looked up from his battered copy of “Farmer and Stockbreeder” to see his son collecting dishes from the table.
“Let your mama do that, boy.” His tone was peremptory. “That’s women’s work.”
“You’re right, Daddy,” Jack said without heat, and carried his collection into the kitchen. “Mama fixed us a real nice dinner, and I just thought it would be Christian to help her a little, that’s all.”
It was perhaps the one thing he could have said that was unanswerable, but that didn’t sweeten his father’s temper. He glared back down at his magazine, awaiting his next opportunity.
“Sit down, Jack.” His mother glanced nervously in the direction of the other room, trying as always to defuse the situation before it got worse. “I’ll finish the clearing up.” In hearing of her husband, she used no endearments to her son.
“Thanks for makin me a cherry cake, Mama.” Jack blithely returned with another handful from the table. “It was real good.”
Mrs. Twist tried to smile. Seeing that his continued defiance of his father was upsetting her, Jack gave it up and perched on the stool in the kitchen corner as he had done countless times before.
“I’m glad you liked it, Jack,” she told him, unable to hide her relief as she ruffled his hair. “I know it’s your favorite. I’m always glad to make it for you.”
He smiled up at her, a small but genuine smile, though still his eyes remained shadowed and sober. “Too bad we didn’t have you to cook one for us, Mama. Would a gone real good with the elk.” The light dimmed again.
“Elk? When did you ever have elk?” Eileen hated to see him close up, tried to keep him talking.
From his redoubt in the other room, the senior Twist returned to the fray. “Elk? You was shootin elk on Forest Service land? That’s against the law, boy.”
Jack faced him from the kitchen doorway. “It was that or starve, Daddy.” And then the words were tumbling out of him, and the name with them. “Ennis came on a bear on the way back with our supplies one time, horse and mules dumped him and the food, took off, by the time he got hold of em again I guess the bear got what hadn’t been dumped on the ground. We couldn’t a lasted a whole week on three cans of beans.”
Ennis. Eileen Twist hardly heard the story that followed the mention of the name that had escaped her son in the first moments of his return, the name of the one who had hurt her child.
John Twist made a cogent comment into his empty coffee cup. “I was hungry, I’d a shot one a them damn sheep.”
Jack allowed himself just the tiniest bit of triumph. “That’s what I wanted to do, Daddy.” Suddenly a real grin, his first real smile since…well, since, spread over his face. It did not come from his awareness of the irony that his father had agreed with him about something, or from his remembered pleasure in eating the elk. Jack had just realized that there was really no reason he couldn’t talk about Ennis. His parents knew nothing. He could tell them anything—as long as he didn’t tell them everything. It was like a river in thaw. With a rush, Jack Twist came back to life.
“But Ennis wouldn’t let me.” He turned to his mother, still smiling. She blinked. The change was that dramatic. “He’s a real good shot, too.” He nodded, his pride in Ennis coloring the smile now. “One shot, and he took down a five-point buck. We ate off’n it for more’n a week.” Eileen’s heart skipped a beat as her tall son beamed down at her with all his love for her warm in his amazing eyes. “All was missing was a piece a your cake, Mama, finish it off with.”
Jack turned back to his father, who had paid no apparent attention to his story. “I think you’d like Ennis, Daddy,” he now made the mistake of saying. Eileen would have interrupted him if she could have, seeing him duck his head and nod, always the sign of Jack at his most vulnerable. His eyes searched his father’s averted face anxiously. His mother shook her head, willing her child to stop, her heart bleeding for him. Still trying, Jack added, “He’s a good, steady, hardworkin man. Honest. Dependable.”
John Twist didn’t even bother to spit, letting his words do it for him. “Sounds like a gen-u-ine Eagle Scout. Even finds time to shoot elk on public land when he gets tired a doin all this hard dependable work.”
“It was only cause we had to, Daddy.” The elder Twist didn’t show the surprise he must have felt at this rare, though quietly delivered, defense, but Eileen’s head turned sharply toward them as she stood at the sink. “I tried a shoot one myself, but I missed. So Ennis shot it.”
This time Twist did spit. “Figures. Probably did yer damn work for ya too.”
“Jack?” It was time to put an end to this. Both men’s heads turned to her. “The dishes are in the sink, and I’ve put away the food.” This information was for her husband’s benefit. “Before it gets dark, I’ve a mind to visit Mary Ann. Won’t you come with me?”
“Of course, Mama.” And there was nothing John Twist could let them do but go. His wife had taken care of her immediate responsibilities. He could therefore have nothing to say when she expressed a wish to visit the grave of the seven-month-old girl, now dead almost seventeen years, who would have been Jack’s little sister.
Once they were clear of the house and Jack had taken his mother’s arm in his, she said, “Tell me about this friend of yours, birdie. What was his name?”
“Ennis,” Jack said softly. The smile returned, spread. “Ennis Del Mar.”
Though the light was grading toward twilight, there was no missing the way his face changed, was transformed, almost transfigured, as he said the name. If Eileen Twist had been ready to understand, she would have known it all then, in the soft, reverent way her son let the name escape him, almost like a meadowlark’s song ascending to heaven. It was there in his smile, in the way his lips curved, in the way he clearly savored the sound of the words in his mouth.
But Jack Twist’s mother had no understanding in those days that would allow her to put a name to exactly what her son, all unknowing, had just revealed to her. She did know now, for certain, that her son had made a real friend over the summer—and also, that this same friend had sent him home with a bruise under his eye. All her thoughts over the last few days were thrown into confusion, but she had no time to sort them out. Jack was speaking again, from a heart so full it could barely be contained.
“I know you’d like Ennis, Mama,” he said. Here at least he had no fear of rejection, or contradiction. His father had been a lost cause before the first word had been spoken, and he already regretted trying to ingratiate Ennis to him. But his mother would approve, would like Ennis for her son’s sake. He was free to sing to her any praise he liked of Ennis Del Mar.
The words spilled out of him like the river over a rocky bed, quick and joyful of its release: Ennis the orphan at 13, unable even to continue school once the family truck had died. Ennis, respectful, thoughtful and yes, hardworking and dependable. Ennis and the bear encounter, in greater detail. Ennis trading places to be nice to him. Ennis, who’d hardly spoke in a year, joking about the harmonica breaking in two, about running the sheep off again. It was suddenly so easy to talk about him, to quote him, to say his name as many times as humanly possible. If the rain hadn’t stopped entirely, the sky was definitely lifting. Jack didn’t know the saying that a burden shared is a burden halved, but on that late-August evening, he learned the truth of it.
They paid their visit to Mary Ann, and the other Twists buried in the small plot, and lingered long enough by the fence that it was nearly full dark before they started the half-mile back to the house.
“I’m so glad you made a friend this year,” his mother said, when her son seemed to have run out of Ennis stories, at least for the time being. “You didn’t much like the man they put you with last time.”
A beat, and then Jack burst out laughing. “Simon! I’d forgot about him!” Another snort of laughter. “Old Simon was okay, I guess. Just wouldn’t never shut up about his wife and kids, is all.” Reminded, Jack couldn’t help himself. “Marilyn. And Louise, Walter, Robbie-Ann, Richie, Tom, and Pee-Wee! --I never did know Pee-Wee’s right name.” Even after a year, he could recall the six names in order without stopping to think. “I think if I’d heard one more story about Walter and his bike or Richie shootin sparrows with his .20-.20 or how many diapers Pee-Wee messed in one day I’da strangled the bunch of ‘em. Put me off kids for life.” Jack laughed softly again. “Simon. –Yeah, Mama. Spendin the summer with Ennis Del Mar was way better.” His voice softened, and again, it was there, if only Eileen Twist had known what it was she was hearing. “Yeah. A lot better.” The last words were almost a whisper.
“One thing I don’t understand, Jacky-bird.” At last his mother felt the time was right for the question she longed to ask. “If the two of you was good friends, why were you fighting?”
“Fighting?” Jack was startled, and for a second, alarmed. He had completely forgotten, until now, that Ennis’ name had escaped him, in those first minutes of homecoming, when his mother had asked him where he had come by the mark on his face.
“It wasn’t no fight, Mama,” he said automatically, nearly the same words he had used the first time. And it hadn’t been. He still didn’t know what it had been, though, if not a fight, and the story that came out of him now was as much his own soul-searching as explanation for his mother.
“Wasn’t no fight,” he repeated. “Just…see, Aguirre done told us, bring the sheep down. And it was a whole month early, you know. It was just…Ennis…was real upset, see? I mean, I was too. I could really a used that two hundred dollars, get the truck fixed, entry fees and all, but Ennis didn’t have nothin.” Jack’s voice was suddenly breathless, his words rushed and almost nervous, as though he thought he would not be believed. “I told you, he didn’t even get none of that twenty-four dollars in the coffee can. Brother and sister got it, like I done told you. He got to Signal, he had the clothes he was standin up in and one more shirt and jeans in a paper sack. Sides that, he didn’t have nothin. Nowhere to live till he gets married, even. He was…real upset, you know, cause Aguirre was cheatin us outta whole month, you know? Whole month’s pay. I…I tried…kinda tried a joke him out of it, see. We was always foolin around, you know, pushin each other and stuff, didn’t mean no harm, so I…kinda tripped him, see, with my lasso?” Here there was a short pause, and Jack’s voice slowed, grew quiet. “Was a dumb idea. Ennis was real upset. Shoulda left him alone. ‘Swhat I shoulda done. But I didn’t like to see him like that. So then he…pulls me down by the rope, and…we was…kinda wrestlin or somethin, you know, we done it before, just playin, and he gets mad again and I clocked him, not on purpose or nothin, with my knee, you know? Got his nose all bloody. Didn’t mean to. Was an accident.” Jack was breathless again, trying to explain it to himself, not even aware that had stopped in the middle of the darkened road as his mother tried to make sense, not so much of his words, but of her son’s clear agitation.
“Blood was goin everywhere. He tried to wipe it up, didn’t stop, I tried to help him…and he busted me one.” For a moment, resentment, or something like it, colored Jack’s voice. His mother put her hand on his arm, and he was recalled to the present, to the defense of his friend.
“It wasn’t like he beat me up or nothin,” Jack said, almost protesting. “Wasn’t like that at all. Ennis…he was…frustrated, is all, just…pissed off cause he needed that money so bad. And I shouldn’t ever have tried to mess with him. Stupid. Deserved what I got.” This time, the last soft words were thoughtful, and carried conviction. “And then he just gets on his horse and rides off. But we was still friends.” There was less conviction in these words. “I mean, we still talked to each other and stuff.” And stuff. Jack shook himself, realized he was standing in the road. “Hey, Mama, guess we oughta get goin. Daddy be wonderin where we are.”
His mother allowed him to take her arm and they made their slow way up the road. She hardly knew what to say to this last story. Only one thing was clear: Jack was far more troubled about it than he would admit, and she knew that he was not being completely honest with her. She remembered her first conclusion, that something bad had happened over the summer, something to do with this “Ennis.” Then he had spoken of Ennis as a friend, and the pleasure in his face had been so great that she had doubted herself. Now all was confusion again. It did not occur to her, not then, that her son was equally bewildered, that he did not know what to think. Or to feel.
“So you’re still friends with him,” she said tentatively.
“--Oh, sure,” Jack said, after enough of a pause to make obvious that it was very much in doubt. “I mean, we didn’t kiss goodbye or nothin” this, delivered sarcastically, was a careless enough thing to say that Jack flushed scarlet, and was grateful for the dark to hide it “but sure, we was friends.” His mother didn’t fail to notice that while she had used the present tense, her son had used the past. He was lying to her, but she had no idea why. Normally, she would not have pressed it, but it was unlike her son not to confide in her when he was troubled.
“I hope I’ll meet him sometime,” she essayed.
This time the pause was even longer. “I don’t know, Mama.” She didn’t have to see his face to know the light had dimmed again. “I mean, Ennis is sposed to get married, come November. I don’t even know where they gone live.” He felt a wash of despair. No. He didn’t know. Ennis had never said. Maybe he hadn’t known himself. But now Ennis was gone, and Jack Twist didn’t know where to look for him. “Likely he’ll be too busy workin, and then he’ll likely have a family to raise.”
His mother squeezed his arm. They were nearly at the house now, just outside the halo of light cast from the front room and the kitchen, and she hadn’t time to say much more, but she could hear her Jacky-bird’s unhappiness.
“Well, if he ever does come by, he’ll be as welcome as you are,” she said, and she meant it. Whatever had happened to sour their friendship, they had been friends enough that it made her baby happy to talk about him, and friends had been rare in his life.
The next thing she knew, her son was hugging her tightly. “Thanks, Mama,” he said into her hair. “I know Ennis would like you. I hope you do get to meet him sometime.”
“Meantime you can always tell me about him,” she said, and they ascended the stoop together.
* * *
July 1964.
It was a breathless hot day. She hoped there would be a thunderstorm later, cool things off, but in the meantime, the house was an oven. It didn’t really help much to open the windows, not when it was dead still like this, but she did it anyway, going from window to window, hoping for a breeze, mostly because it was just too hot even to work.
She almost didn’t go into Jack’s room, which she had not entered since he had left in May. Jack had announced in March that he was going back to Signal for the summer, the money was good, and then maybe down to Texas for the rodeo season. He had never said a word about Ennis Del Mar, but his mother knew well enough that was his real reason for going, the hope that his friend from the previous summer would be back. For eight months she had been listening to him talk about the young man from Sage, seen the way his face lit up whenever he spoke of Ennis, heard the way his voice wound its way around the name, noticed the way that for a long time he often brought Ennis up at random, as though he couldn’t stand more than a certain number of minutes to go by without mentioning him. His father hadn’t missed it either, had begun to imitate him, saying things like “This roast is kinda tough. What do you think, Jack? Probably wouldn’t be good enough for ‘Ennis Del Mar,’” lilting the name, imitating the way Jack always hit the last syllable just a little more.
But Jack hadn’t found Ennis in Signal. Eileen didn’t know exactly how she felt about that, but the letter she had gotten from Jack had made her sad enough for a while. It was dated three weeks after he left, and the moment she had it in her hand she knew her son was very unhappy. It had read, in its entirety:
June 10, 1964.
Dear Mama,
There was no work on Brokeback this summer and anyway
Ennis was not there so I would of left anyway. I am on my
way to Texas but the truck keeps braking down. I will write
you when I win somthing.
I miss you.
Your loveing son.
Jacky Bird Carroll Twist Junior.
It wasn’t the slim content of the letter that told her her son grieved at not finding Ennis in Signal. It was the fact of the letter itself. It was almost the only letter Jack Twist would ever send his mother, and she knew well enough he was not much of a writer. But he had needed to tell her he had failed, and that told her how much the failure mattered to him. She had not gone into his room before getting his message because there was no need to, and not afterward because it made her too sad, knowing that her one chick was far away, and unhappy, and there was nothing she could do to help. Today, though, she turned the handle and went in. Suddenly the very fact that she would be reminded of him made her want to do it, rather than to avoid it. She missed him, and she wanted to look on those things that most reminded her of him.
The room was gaspingly hot, but things did improve a little once the window was open. Having come in, Eileen found herself at something of a loss. It struck her for the first time how dead everything was without Jack. Moving from window to desk to bureau, she realized how futile it was to try and get some sense of her son from the few belongings he had left behind. She didn’t want his things, she wanted him. For the first time, Eileen Twist looked down the long years ahead without the one person in her adult life who loved her and made her smile. She bowed her head and asked for strength, and then for forgiveness for asking for the strength.
She never knew why she opened the closet. It must have been that in her loneliness, with a bleak new awareness of her future, she was desperate to make some connection with Jack, to find something that would make him seem a little closer. As she entered the closet, however, she was distracted. It was very stuffy, more than she would have thought, and she put her nose to the old denims and jackets that hung on the rod. They were clean, though. Why did it smell so stale in here? Something had certainly been hung up that had been worn hard and not washed. Following her nose, with no more thought than that of doing something nice for her son, Eileen peered around the little partition and found the shirts.
They had hung as Jack had first left them, his draped over Ennis’, for the better part of a year. At first he could not bear to revisit them, and after a time, it contented him to simply let them be, but when he was ready to leave for Signal, there had come a time when he had to decide what to do with them. Jack knew that he was leaving this room for the last time. Whatever happened, he was not coming back, not to live. It had been a bad winter with his father. Things had been hard enough when Daddy had only had him and Mama for targets, but once he’d made the mistake of championing Ennis Del Mar, his father had welcomed the fresh source for his venom, and every sneer was like acid. No, whatever happened, he was not coming back to Lightning Flat to live. He would visit, help out a little, see his Mama and put up with his Daddy, but he was moving on.
For a long time, he thought he would take the shirts with him. But there were a lot of arguments against that, the chief of which was that he wasn’t sure he wanted those very equivocal reminders of his time with Ennis staring him in the face all the time. And what if he did see Ennis again? What would he do with them then? What if Ennis didn’t want things to be the way they were before? Would the shirts still mean anything? And if he went to Texas, as he fully intended to, at some point? If they were left in his truck, they would probably be stolen. People would steal anything. The very thought panicked him. No, they were safest here. This was where they belonged. But he didn’t want to leave them on the nail. Mama had told him not to hang his coat on the nail without a hanger, it wasn’t good for the fabric. When Jack thought of this, he cursed, wishing he had remembered this before. He was in the closet and retrieving the shirts almost before the thought was completed. Sure enough, the dirty shirts had gotten stiff and pulled out of shape in the intervening months, but to Jack’s relief, they mostly stretched back easily enough. It wasn’t until he was standing with his draped over one shoulder that he realized he was holding his one link to Ennis Del Mar again for the first time in the better part of a year, and he stared down at it, frozen. The memories came rushing back, and he didn’t know whether to feel sad or glad that they didn’t have as much impact as they had at the end of that summer. But suddenly he didn’t want to be touching the shirt anymore, not when he might be seeing Ennis again soon, but without knowing what would happen, or not happen. The relic still had a lot of power. He hung it quickly on a hanger and reached for his own shirt.
But there was only the one spare hanger, and getting another meant he had to double something up. He put one of his shirts on a hanger with a jacket, and started to hang up his bloody shirt when the thought hit him. For a moment he stared at the hanger with its jacket over the shirt as the idea grew. Slowly, he drew the blue shirt off the second hanger and draped the shoulders over those of the shirt that had belonged to Ennis, the shirt he had been wearing the night when he had come afraid and ashamed into Jack’s gentle embrace, the shirt he had been wearing when he had broken the bond between them, the fear and shame claiming him once again. He almost hung the shirts up again on the nail when a further thought occurred to him, and taking the shirts out into the room where he could lay them on the bed, he carefully and with complete quiet absorption worked the sleeves of Ennis’ shirt down inside his. He studied the result. It pleased him. Ennis’ shirt was now almost entirely hidden from prying eyes, and, stroking the shoulder of his shirt, he realized that in a way, he was once again embracing Ennis Del Mar. They had meant something to each other once. No matter what happened after this, he did not ever mean to forget it, or to discard these hard-won mementoes of the most powerful thing that had ever happened to him. He wondered, for a moment, what Ennis would think, if he could see the way Jack had put the two shirts together. He had to think Ennis wouldn’t really mind.
Going back to the closet, Jack hung the two shirts together on the nail. Slowly, he sank to one knee beside them and lifted the bloody sleeves together to his lips.
“See you around, huh?” he whispered, praying that it would be so, but it was not his own voice he heard in his mind. Drawing a deep, shaky breath, he stood and left the closet.
He told me he’d thrown it away, was her first thought. Jack had told her the blue shirt had gotten badly torn when he’d caught it on some brambles. The feeling of foreboding, the one that had haunted her ever since her son’s return from Brokeback Mountain, rose high in her throat. Not liking to think her son had lied to her, she lifted the shirt from the hook, thinking to make sure it was the same shirt, though she knew it was. And that was when she saw that there was another shirt hanging inside it.
Suddenly a little unsteady on her feet, Eileen Twist brought the shirts out the closet into the full light of the room so that she could study the mystery more carefully. The shirt did not belong to Jack. And even as she knew that, she knew to whom it must belong. She remembered too, that Ennis Del Mar had arrived in Signal owning only the clothes he was wearing and one change. And now Jack had one of his shirts. He had stolen it. Her son had stolen a shirt from someone who owned almost nothing, and then lied and concealed it. Suddenly she drew in a sharp breath. This—this was what Jack had been holding; no--what he had been cradling, that first night, when she had found him sitting by the window. Sitting and rocking, with these two shirts held to his chest.
The truth, the frightening, dangerous truth, was growing rapidly inside her, but even yet she did not understand it. Shaking her head, deeply troubled, Eileen moved to the window and sat on the bench, letting the shirts fall across her lap. As though it had been meant to happen, it was the right sleeve that draped across her, the left that fell from her knees. She would have seen it soon enough anyway, but it was as though the sleeves revealed themselves, and Jack, deliberately to her. Eileen Twist caught her breath at the sight of the dark stains she now saw for the first time.
Of course she remembered his story about the non-fight between Jack and his friend. She hadn’t forgotten either how much it had sounded like he was lying, or at least, changing the truth as fast as he could speak. But this much had actually happened: Ennis had been bleeding, and Jack had tried to make it stop. She lifted the sleeve and saw the other inside it. There was blood on it too. Ennis had tried to stop the bleeding himself, Jack had said. She could imagine him wiping his arm across his nose. But he had continued to bleed, and her concerned son had stepped close and offered the back of his own sleeve as a handkerchief. And then Ennis had punched him. It all made a certain amount of sense, by itself. Ennis had already been irritated by the blood and the pain, and punched Jack. But she knew that wasn’t all there was to it. Ennis had let him help, had let him stand there for some seconds: there was much more blood on Jack’s sleeve than his. Trying to work it out, Eileen tried to remember how Jack had explained it. Ennis had been very upset because he stood to lose money, Jack had said, and Jack had tried to joke him out of his funk and annoyed him further. Suddenly, she remembered the exact way Jack had said it: he was real upset, because Aguirre was cheating us out of a whole month. A whole month’s pay. Yes. That was what he had said. She could nearly hear him, and knew why she remembered it: it was the way he had added a whole month’s pay, as though he were correcting himself. With complete clarity, she understood: Ennis hadn’t been upset about the money. Ennis had been upset about the time. The boss was cheating him out of a whole month. A whole month with her son. Eileen didn’t even notice that her hand had stolen to her throat. Other snatches of Jack’s agitated recital now came back to her: we was kinda wrestling…we was always fooling around…we done it before…Ennis was real upset…I didn’t like to see him like that…
“Oh, Jack,” Eileen whispered, her eyes filling. “Oh, my little baby bluebird.”
She lifted the twinned sleeves, imagined her son slipping the inner sleeves inside the outer ones. It was like an embrace. It was an embrace: silent, secret, and infinitely tender. Eileen Twist sat on the bench for a long time, staring out the window, the two shirts in her lap. As the slow tears slipped down her face to fall on them, she prayed to the God she loved but did not always understand to help her son on the lonely and perilous road he had been set to walk upon.
And, after a while, for the love of her only child, and remembering the light that had come into his face whenever he had said the name, she timidly asked her Lord to allow Ennis Del Mar to meet him again on his journey.
The Time Between continues in Learning Curve…
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