Four years. It was four years today, and that meant something to him. It shouldn't have, because he wasn't sentimental, or too good with dates, numbers, stuff like that. But with Jack all bets were off. That was something he learned a long time ago.
Ennis stared at the ceiling of the spare bedroom at Junior's from the depth of a mattress that could not hold his weight. He sagged onto the bed frame, felt the cotton close around him.
Maybe people would have said he didn't live much of a life, stuck to himself. But he was hedging his bets on an uncertain future, on the words of his mother when his grandfather died. It was all he had, and whether he went down to lie beneath the plain, to see the fertile place where sky met prairie grass, or if he was to know that sky for what it was in blue and black and red at morning, or what, he didn't know.
It was a hymn his mother used to like to sing to him, always stuck with him, and it seemed right to remember her at a time like this.
I know not when my lord may come, at night or noonday fair, nor if I walk the vail with him or meet him in the air.
He'd made it four more years, and that had always been his goal, because he knew he had been able as a young man, and needed to prove he could do it again.
He'd never intended to see a fifth. He'd been planning some sleeping pills, that sort of thing. But when the moment came, he hadn't taken anything. He found he didn't need to. Like the morning chased the night, he slid across the horizon with a peace and calm, hearing a calling bird that might not have been there.