Disclaimer: The characters belong to Annie Proulx, and I make no profit.
Summary: AU. Sometime in 1982, Jack divorces Lureen and moved to Durango, Colorado. He continues seeing Ennis, but when Ennis's ranch closes and Junior moves to Texas, Ennis is left with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. Against all expectations, he drives down to Colorado to sleep on the couch of a 'friend'. Set in 1997, this story picks up fifteen years later. It's mellow, J&E already living together in domesticity and forever, and contains a lot of OCs.
AN: This story was originally inspired by the song Yanksgiving by Carolyn Mark. Many thanks to my beta, judybluecat, who also inspired me to share it. I can't promise any kind of regular updates, so be advised. If that's something you need as a reader, you may want to hold out until later.
Chapter One
Jack scratched his nose. "Yeah." He injected it with false enthusiasm, keeping to himself the fact that he rather liked the country-western singer, and that he felt a deep sting of pride at the patriotic lyrics. But he knew that wasn't what Amy wanted to hear. He loved her to death and didn't really have the know-how of a college education to fight her new-age liberal notions.
Still, there was a part of him that did agree with her, at least about how tacky his outfit was, how blindly loyal his fans were. The women were wearing skimpy little clothes that Lureen wouldn't have been caught dead in at that age, and he had to imagine that maybe there was something a little bit embarrassing about this shameless display of commercialized patriotism. He shook his head a little bit.
Amy's attention had wandered, though. In the intervening moments, the little firecracker had sprawled across the old, orange carpeting next to Jason. Jack wouldn't say it where anyone could hear it, but he thought Amy and Jason were perfect for each other. Jason was chin-height with the Monopoly board, glaring at Kenny across it. Amy was right up against Jason's shoulder, making fun of his dearth of railroads, kicking her legs in the air.
Jack leaned back against the couch, tryptophans, or more likely simple quantity of food, catching up to him. He dozed off to the sound of television commercials, Amy, Jason, and Kenny bickering on the floor, and Jennifer and Susan hard at work in the kitchen cleaning up from dinner. Jennifer's high-pitched voice floated easily over the clanking of dishes.
He was mostly asleep, Guy sprawled along his leg on the couch and purring up a storm, when his ears pricked up and he focused them on the kitchen, still feigning sleep. They were talking about Ennis.
"Yeah."
"I just don't think Jack likes it."
"Yeah, probably not." Susan had never been a conversationalist.
"Hey, what are you getting them for Christmas?"
"Um. Well, I thought I might pay my rent."
Jack couldn't stifle a smile at that. Susan hadn't paid her rent in six months.
Jen laughed. "Want to go partway in on something I have in mind?"
Jack had heard more than he wanted to. He woke and stretched, calling, "Hey! Ladies! When are we going to get some dessert?"
Jen came into the living room doorway, swiping wet hands on her jeans. "When your stupid lughead comes in on fucking Thanksgiving, Jack."
"Hey, watch your language," Kenny muttered.
"Sor-ry." Jen rolled her eyes, but then re-fixed them on Jack.
"Yeah, what the hell you want me to do about it, Jen? I don't control him."
"Well maybe someone should."
Amy snickered.
"No, I'm serious." Jen's temper was rising, The smell of it wafted through the house, and Amy immediately stopped her giggling to turn on the floor and look at Jen. Jen's temper was formidable.
"Su and I cooked this huge Thanksgiving meal, and he's working today. We offered to move the meal, but you know what, he's always working. What the hell? That's rude."
Jack frowned demonstrably. "That how you feel, huh?"
"Well I think it's rude," Jen repeated.
"Yeah?"
"It is a little rude," Kenneth muttered. Jack looked from Kenny back to Jen, rolling his fingers through the cat's fluffy belly hair.
"It is rude." Susan spoke from the kitchen door, eyebrows hitched up. She didn't talk much, but she could be even more fiery than Jen when she was worked up. It took more to work her up, though. She'd developed a tough skin over the years.
"Are you going to talk to him about it?" Jen's voice was sharp. "He can just be such an ass."
Jack leveled his gaze back at Jen. He counted to three. "Good to know how you all feel. If you think he's such an ass, maybe you shouldn't be living with him."
Now Jason was turning from counting his meager Monopoly winnings. Jack's words had caught everyone. But Jen didn't ever back down.
"Jack. You know he's an asshole. He won't say five words to any of us. He tries to avoid meals with us. I've heard you call him an asshole yourself. Hell, I don't think he even knows Amy's name. He calls her 'you damn hippie' like that's ok. Someone has to do something about him."
Something in Jack snapped. "Yeah, you know, you're right. He does skip meals with ya'll. To work one a his three jobs, so that we can let ya'll go on the rent for as long as you want. And he doesn't talk much, probably doesn't have the energy after he's done building you a three-car garage and a front porch and a back porch and fixing your plumbing and cleaning out the gutters so your roof don't leak and replacing the hot water heater with the money he earned from one of his three jobs when he'd just as soon take a cold shower just 'cause Amy complained one time. You're right. He doesn't give a fuck about any a you. Now I meant what I said. You can leave if you don't like it." Jack stood up from the couch and stormed out onto the back deck.
He draped his arms over the railing, itching for a cigarette, but they were in the kitchen, and he'd have to run the gauntlet to get them. He hated times like this, but he had to admit that all families had them. Hell, most families had it worse. Jack had come to grips already with the way they all were, the awkward tilt of people who knew each other and still didn't quite understand each other. He knew he'd made Jen feel like shit, and frankly, he was a little embarrassed about that. She'd touched a nerve, probably only just miffed about Ennis missing dinner. It didn't mean Jen had the right to accuse Ennis of anything with regards to Amy, though. That had been the last straw. Ennis loved Amy like the daughters he never got to see, daughters he was estranged from. If he had heard what Jen said... but he hadn't, and he wouldn't. Everyone knew that. Jack stared out into the leafless trees that marked their yard, peppered as it was with lawn furniture that was somehow still in its summer configuration.
The door behind him slid open.
"Yo, Jack."
Jack spun just in time to catch his pack of cigarettes sailing towards him. The lighter on its heels dropped to the deck, and he bent, grunting a bit as his beer belly deprived him of air, to pick it up. He really ought to do some exercises, get rid of this spare tire. If he made it his New Year's resolution, it'd be the fifth year in a row. He must have lost a pound or two in all those years, right?
"Jason. What brings ya out here to my lovely abode, el doghouse?"
Jason laughed. "Jen feels like an ass."
"Yeah, I know. Shit." He lit his smoke, took a drag, offered the pack to Jason.
"No way, man. You have to stop offering. I'm never going to accept."
Jack shrugged. "You have a mysterious lack of vices, Jason."
Jason laughed again. "Then maybe you don't know me very well."
"Try me."
"Well..." Jason draped his arms over the railing as well, watching the cool night and the fading sunlight of southwest Colorado. "Did you know that Amy and I..."
Jack turned his head to catch Jason's eye. "'Bout fucking time."
"Kenny doesn't even know yet."
"Well it ain't my place to tell him."
"Is it your place to tell Ennis?" Jason sounded nervous.
Jack blew out a long stream of breath, sighing. "Ain't much I don't tell Ennis."
"I know."
"Well, son, I don't see how I can not tell him. If he finds out later that I knew, it'll be my hide."
"I know." Disappointment, now.
"Aw, don't worry so much about it. He ain't gonna kill you."
"Are you so sure?"
"...Nope. Jus'... don't hurt her." Jack laughed.
Jason's laugh was decidedly more nervous.
Jack exhaled again, smoke mingling with steam in the cool air, when he heard the truck rumble up the driveway. It was too soon after that little fight. Jack wasn't ready. Jason cleared his throat and went back inside without preamble.
Jack was nearly done his cigarette when the door slid open again.
"Jack?"
"Yup."
"Y'alright?"
"Yup."
Jack passed the pack of cigarettes over his shoulder, and Ennis lit one, leaning next to him against the railing, carefully arranging the pack between them, idly lining it up with the edge of the railing. "Somethin' wrong?" Ennis pointed back inside.
"You noticed?"
"They all actin' like they seen a ghost when I came in."
"Jen and I jus' had a little fight."
"Oh. She an opinionated gal."
"Yup."
"Nothin' too bad, I hope?"
"Nah." Jack stubbed out the cigarette on the railing. "I just made her feel like an ass, and I feel like an ass myself about that. How was your day?" Jack swung his head to face Ennis.
Ennis looked back, smiling from lips to eyes. "Well, I'll tell you bud, I am beat."
"Come on in. There's plenty a leftovers." Ennis followed Jack inside and straight into the kitchen.
Jason was hunched over his guitar, tuning. Jack swore whenever Jason was hunched over his guitar, he was tuning it. "You ever play anything on that thing?"
Jason speared Jack with a glance. "I tune because I care."
"No reason to care if you don't play anything."
Jen was standing quietly by the sink. Su was sitting next to Jason, watching his fingers in an after-dinner glazed stupor that could have been the sign-post for this particular holiday.
Jack walked right up to Jen where she was staring into the sink. He laid one strong hand on each of her slender shoulders, squeezing. "We alright, Jen?"
She nodded dejectedly toward the sink.
"Nah, come on now." He pried her carefully off the sink, noticing her knuckles clenched red. She kept her head down.
"Jenny, I didn' mean half of what I said, an' I know you didn't either. Let's have us some desert, ok?" Jack was the only person who had called her Jenny in her life. They all knew that. She nodded towards the floor.
Jack, renewed, turned towards Su. "What'd ya'll make?"
"There's pecan, apple, and pumpkin." Su's glazed eyes smiled up at Jack's. Another evening restored.
"Great, I'll make some coffee. Meet ya'll at the dining room table in five." Jack started filling the coffee pot with water.
"What'll you have, Jack?" Jen was looking a little more herself, smile back on her lips, and when he turned to answer, she was handing Ennis a beer.
Ennis had used these intervening moments to quickly and impiously unwrap Jen and Su's carefully-foiled leftovers. He was piling the food high on a plate. Noting that multiple people were looking at him all of a sudden, he nodded. "This all looks mighty good. Thank you, ladies."
Su chuckled.
"Jack?" Jen was poised with a knife over the array of pies.
"Aw, hell, it's Thanksgiving, right? Give me some of each."
Su chuckled again.
"Whipped cream or ice cream?" Jen asked
"Uh, yes, please, ma'am." Jack noticed Ennis shoot a forked glare in his direction. "Oh shut up, you. Like you got any right ta criticize. I see your plate. Could feed eight people!"
"You the one sayin' I need to put on weight." It was barely mumbled before Ennis shuffled on clearly-sore feet towards the dining room.
"Hey Jay, go get the kids." Jack pushed the button on the coffee maker, and started assembling cups. "An' find out who wants coffee."
Three minutes later, the seven of them were seated around the eight-person oak table that stood like a sentry of all things proper in the center of the large, Victorian dining room. It was used two or three times a year, but when they used it, they used it well.
They were an unlikely group, and Jack never expected... well, he never expected anything like this. Years ago, now-- almost fifteen years ago, when things between him n' Ennis had really fallen apart, Jack had left Lureen and lit out for Durango, Colorado, where he'd found a scrubby little apartment, and started work for a rental company. They did rentals of anything, from popcorn poppers to large backhoes. Jack was their number one sales guy to this day, and now general manager. It beat working for LD, and most of the people around RCS, as it was called, kissed the ground he walked on. Not to mention that most of them called him friend.
After a year of that, and his trips to visit Ennis becoming more emotionally stunted, Jack decided to put down roots, began looking for houses. That was about the time that Ennis's oldest, Junior, got married, and she moved off with her roughneck husband to Texas, following the oil as he had to do. Francine and Ennis hadn't never been close, and Alma kept that girl under lock and key emotionally as well as physically. The ranch where Ennis worked closed down, and Ennis had found himself homeless, family-less, and friendless.
And that was how Ennis'd come to be pretending to be sleeping on a friend's couch in Durango. Jack knew Ennis'd had to bend his pride more than double to show up there, all his belongings in the back of a truck that had barely made it, but it was a gamble with a sure payoff. No way Jack could turn him away, and he hadn't.
Jack continued the house search, silently, no agreement whatsoever made between them with words, understanding that this was for them now and not for him. He'd settled on an old Victorian well outside the town limits. A rare find for sure. It looked like it had been yellow once, with white trim. Five bedrooms, two and a half baths. It was about as beat up as an old house could get, but it had five acres and a barn. Ennis'd had to sell his horses in a last-ditch attempt to keep his trailer before the bank had foreclosed on even that piece of crap (though Jack thought it was humorous they probably hadn't got more than ten dollars by repossessing it. Not that he'd seen it, but he knew Ennis, and Ennis wouldn't live anyplace worth anything without prodding).
Jack knew Ennis still carried financial scars, in addition to the emotional ones that went with being bankrupt and homeless and middle-aged and alone. Ennis didn't want the kind of time and money commitment the house represented.
Jack closed on it two days later.
They'd worked their asses off to put it back together. There wasn't much that didn't need to be redone, or done for the first time, and it was a level of work they had never really slackened off on, even when the floors were mostly level, and the toilets all flushed, and the bats stopped showing up in the spare bedrooms.
Ennis had worked full time on the house for the year he was unemployed. Jack knew he felt useless, purposeless, and some days Jack had gotten home to find Ennis hadn't done any work on the house, had just gotten drunk somewhere. Those were the worst days. Jack didn't know what kind of bruise Ennis's ego was sporting, but he didn't think it was just skin deep. Sometime that next year, though, he'd come home to see Ennis smiling and drinking, a new occurrence. He'd passed Jack a beer, and announced that he was now the new head wrangler at the Bar J.
The Bar J was a guest ranch about forty miles away. The drawback was that Ennis was going to have to lead some trail rides, give some lessons. He wasn't a people person, but it was a job that involved working with three junior wranglers, great pay, and mostly just horses. Ennis was glowing. It turned out they didn't even need their own barn, since the Bar J let him use one of their best mares anytime he wanted, for work or pleasure. Jack and Ennis had never gone riding again. Jack missed it badly, but he didn't think Ennis wanted him anywhere near his work, and truth be told, he didn't want to jeopardize Ennis's job. That jobless year had been a tough one for Ennis, and Jack was not eager to relive it. Maybe someday they'd get around to fixing up that old barn.
As far as Jack knew, anyway, no one at the Bar J knew about his and Ennis's living situation. It was common enough knowledge in Durango, now, he bet, though he had no proof of that. But the Bar J was pretty far in another direction, near another city, and no one there would get the town gossip from Durango.
Ennis had gotten some other jobs: an emergency maintenance position, also at the Bar J, weekends and evenings, and in downtown Durango, as an employee of this general contracting business owned by an ex-truck-driver named Magnus. The combination kept him busy all the time for fifteen years. But Jack never once complained, because he remembered that one year, and anything was better than that.
Well, even with the four jobs, the house came to be too much. The maintenance work was too daunting for the size of their bank account (a joint one by the simple fact that Ennis kept his money in a billfold in his bedside table, from which Jack stole liberally to deposit into the bank), and Ennis was too tired to even work on it any more, though he tried against all reason.
It was Claire who first found out about Ennis. She was the tiny Chinese-American wife of Magnus. They made an unlikely pair, Magnus standing well over six feet, and Claire not an inch over five. He liked to declare how Scottish he was at every opportunity, though he was born in New Jersey.
At any rate, Ennis had forgotten his paycheck there one day, so she'd driven over to deliver it. She either didn't notice, or didn't mind, that Ennis was living with another man, but given the sheer number of bedrooms in their house, it probably wasn't too hard to imagine that they had separate ones. She'd marveled at the house, the newly-refurbished hardwood floors, the Victorian detailing in the kitchen, the faded white gables, the faded yellow paint. "You know, you really should paint this thing, rent out rooms. You could have a little bed-and-breakfast."
Jack, more privy to just exactly what their balance was in the bank account, had listened with both ears. When all was said and done, it wasn't any kind of bed-and-breakfast or anything, just a boarding house. Or that's what it was meant to be.
Jeremy'd been first. Jack put an ad in the paper for roommates. Jeremy lived with them for six months, and every day of those six months, Ennis had slept in a separate bedroom. Jeremy paid half-price on the rent, and in exchange helped them fix up the place. He'd moved on, but on his heels came Sharon.
Ennis hadn't wanted to rent to a woman, and the ad said men only, but Sharon'd had some troubles with her ex-husband and had pleaded with them, said she felt safer under a roof with a couple of men. Ennis, seeing her naked fear and knowing it was true that she would be safe here, had accepted her. And what's more, noticing her jumpy nervousness even around them-- had come out to her.
Thinking back on that sent thrilling shivers down Jack's spine. Ennis had moved back into the master bedroom that day, at Sharon's sweet insistence, and hadn't moved back out in all these years, not even for one night.
Sharon had lived there a couple of years, and while she was there, her friend Susan had moved into another one of the bedrooms. Susan, it turned out, had also had troubles with her ex-husband. For a while, Su took every opportunity to explain how Sharon's courage had given her the strength to steal away in the middle of the night, leaving her two teenage children in the clutches of the person known only to Jack and Ennis as "that man." Su hadn't heard a peep from her ex-husband or kids since the divorce and restraining order had gone through. You could see it dancing in her eyes, like how sometimes Jack caught Ennis thinking about Francine or Junior, could tell what it was by the color of the gaze, even if he never said anything. And he never, ever did.
Sharon'd eventually married a schoolteacher and moved to Fort Collins. Su was still there. Her emotional recovery had been rocky. She had always had trouble making rent, trouble keeping a job. Sometimes she would stay at home a lot. Jack had caught her crying when she thought no one was around to see her. Guy, the fat yellow tabby cat, was Jack's heroic attempt to help Su, and he had, but she was still working to get to where she needed to be. It'd been ten years, and now at least she had a steady job as a coffee-shop waitress. It wasn't much, but she'd made the rent a couple times this year. Su helped out around the house a lot to make it up to them: laundry, dishes, cooking, that sort of thing.
Well, but Su hadn't been helping them make ends meet. They couldn't kick her out, and didn't want to, but they'd needed a real tenant. That'd been Joanna, for a while.
Joanna was a rancher's daughter, but she'd run away from home with a boyfriend, and landed with very little to her name near to the reservation where her parents lived. She'd lived with Jack and Ennis for a year before getting up the nerve to go back home. But she was smart, and held a steady job at the library. She'd never been late on rent once.
A few more tenants came and went, a few months here, a few months there, one man who'd even spouted out some foul language about Jack and Ennis's lifestyle before storming out a month into his stay. Ennis'd taken it like a man, though.
It was about six years ago now that Jack had found out that the newest employee at RCS, a Canadian teenager, was living in her car about two blocks away from his work.
Amy had been a runaway too, like Joanna. Jack and Ennis seemed to attract house guests who didn't want people asking too many questions, because Jack and Ennis never asked, in exchange for having none asked of them. Joanna was smart, but Amy was... she got her GED without them even knowing about it, while working two jobs to pay rent. She ended up going to CU Boulder, putting herself through college, probably with another eighteen jobs, although maybe she had scholarships. Jack had never asked. But every school break, summer vacations, you name it, she didn't go back to her parents that she'd never spoken of, she came back to Durango, and to Jack and Ennis.
She'd graduated with a degree in journalism. Jack had to miss her graduation for work, but Ennis took off from two jobs to drive across the state of Colorado and spend money on a motel to see Amy cross a stage.
Amy'd been working and living since then, two years, in Denver, in an apartment with three other smart young ladies. Jack knew an awful lot about them because Ennis had gone nosing into everything about their lives. She still came home to Durango for holidays.
Kenny and Jason were brothers and community college students. Kenny was one of those born-again Christians, which had spooked Ennis right off the bat, but he'd turned out to be alright. He was known to avert his gaze when Jack and Ennis climbed the stairs together. Jack secretly suspected the reason Kenny was uncomfortable with this situation, but forcing one man out of the closet was more than enough for his lifetime, and he wasn't in the habit of sticking his nose where it didn't belong.
Jason was more into music, or whatever it was you could call what he was into. He had a couple acoustic guitars, a couple electric guitars, and he'd re-wallpapered his room in posters. He wore black clothes, but he was a sweet kid. He reminded Jack of Bobby.
Bobby ended up as a financial advisor, he had a wife named Lynn, and a little girl named Edith. Jack heard from him in Christmas cards, but hadn't seen Bobby since Edith wasn't even two. Since he'd told Bobby he was gay.
As for Ennis and his girls-- well, Ennis was too proud to contact Alma, too scared to contact Francine, and didn't know any other way to find Junior. Jack got the feeling Ennis was waiting around for them to find him, secretly hurt that they hadn't yet, that they didn't miss him as much as he missed them with every moment of his day.
Jen was a friend of Su's and had moved in about a year ago. She was the newcomer here, a lawyer in the town who handled mostly civil cases. Surely she could have afforded her own place, but she hadn't wanted the hassle of a house, or the congestion of the town, so here she was. Jack liked her in some fundamental way. Maybe she reminded him of Lureen when Lureen'd been young and eager to make her way in the world, full of sugar and vinegar both.
"Yo, John-boy!"
"Jack?"
Jack shook his head to clear it. "Huh? What?"
"I've been asking for the sugar for like ten minutes over here!" Amy had her brow furrowed.
"Well, maybe if you didn't call me 'John-boy' I'd pass it to you."
Amy frowned. "Hey, that wasn't me." She pointed at Jen with her fork.
Jen had a 'wanna take this outside' grin on.
"Well, Jenny-benny and I jus' might have ta have a little talk about that." Jack threw a wink at her, glad to see Jen back to her normal self.
"Well," Ennis sighed, standing, his own tiny slice of pumpkin done before Jack had even finished one massive slice of any of his three. "I'm beat an' a half. I'ma go ta bed."
Jack heaved a sigh. "Yup. An' this is comin' with me." He balanced his plate of pie in one hand, swiping the leftover cheap bottle of some red wine with the other, turning to follow Ennis out of the room. He heard playful titters and jocularity behind him. It had been a good Thanksgiving, though it wasn't over yet.
Ennis was leading up the stairs, head bent down towards the floor like he was too tired to use his neck. "You're a fool, you know that?"
Jack, struggling to balance the desserts and wine, laughed deep and pure. He had no defense against the truth.