AN: Unbeta'd.
Iodine
For a while he expected some word-- from Alma, though he didn't speak to her; or from the girls through her; from the postmaster; from Cassie-- someone to notice or say something, but no one did. He expected and dreaded it so badly that he was disappointed with the absence of that finality. He never was called out publicly. All those years of sneaking off with Jack and no one noticed but Alma, and Alma wasn't going to talk.
So it was a real shock a full three years later when Clark came up to him in the horse barn. Ennis was seeing to Clover. She'd stuck a leg through the fence and it was his experience that even the smartest horses with the best fences would find a way to do it. She was Claire's, the owner's daughter, and sharp as a marble.
Clark punched a thick hand into a dry-rotted beam. "Hey Ennis."
"Yup?" Ennis didn't look up from the mare's wounds as he felt the heat of them, the newness. He poured iodine onto a cotton ball, watching it stain his fingers.
"How come you don't take time off no more?"
Ennis stroked the iodine into Clover's cuts. The mare flinched.
"You used to go fishing, that right? They stop bitin'?"
Ennis stroked the dirt from Clover's cuts with little movements of wet, stained cotton. The smell of iodine tingled in his nose. He did not answer.
"You went with a friend. He die or somethin'?"
Ennis pulled himself up, joints popping, a leap of pain springing from one. He'd raked his hand up the weathered wood of the stall divider, grounding himself as he stood, so quick he gave himself a splinter.
"You got work to do or somethin'? Willard pays you to stand around and flap your trap, does he?" Metal bars separated them, and they were the only thing that held in Ennis's need to beat on something. He wouldn't hurt a horse, and couldn't afford to scare her.
Clover's ears twitched and she tensed, understanding without words the anger in the air.
"Jesus Christ," Clark muttered, walking away. "Just makin' small talk."
"Yeah, well, you're not bein' paid to do that neither!" Ennis called after him. Somewhere down the line Rio snorted protest at raised voices on a warm Saturday morning.
He'd never expected to come back, didn't keep the verbal invitation, didn't have a need. As it was, three years on, late and unexpected, he could only hope the invitation stood and wasn't made for politeness' sake alone. He shamed himself with this trip and couldn't say why he made it. He hoped it would be the last.
The truck stirred gravel and dust once again as Ennis pulled into the very same spot his truck had known three years before. The old man stepped out of a shed and walked halfway across the drive before Ennis slid out into the hot summer sun.
Jack's father, the man who'd made him and should have done right by him but hadn't, paused, spit, and spoke. "Del Mar." He turned and dropped back into the darkness of the shed, a ghost less alive than his dead son, not half the man is boy grew to be. Ennis's jawline and footsteps hardened as he turned towards the house.
He had to knock this time. He hesitated and almost didn't, but he knew he had no choice. The door was slow to open, but Mrs. Twist's half-hidden smile was genuine enough when she invited him in without the need to be reminded of his name.