Why would I want him,
Just to lose him again?
—The Scarlet Tide, Alison Krauss
Ennis del Mar lays himself on the bed, shirt and jacket and boots full on, clothed and ready to go like he's a man on the run, though everything on him speaks of a man run down. His eyes flutter once before they shut into fine slits, mouth falls slack, the lines on his face relax and a hard round pebble of dust, nearly invisible to the naked eye, falls out of the crease, trapped all the day long in his hard squint. He's loosened, but not loose, asleep, but not at rest; he is a man propelled through life by inertia, no force left, all run dry.
In the sky, the first stars peek from behind the blue, and the moon departs the horizon.
"Beans? Shit, thought we were done with these." Jack poked the spoon into the can hard, metallic clang against the bottom.
"Ordered soup," Ennis said, setting down his own can, emptied almost as soon as he'd heated it up. He propped himself back up against the log, stretched out his right leg in Jack's direction, fire hot against the inseam of his jeans, sky opened up dark and wide above him. The trees, wary sentinels, stood as a long mass, blended by the trickery of the night and forged in the bellows of black.
Jack grunted and set the can down next to him, hooked his left arm around Ennis's boot and settled into the ground, tipping his hat down over his face.
"Near went crazy on that shit last summer," He said, voice rustling like dirt and hay.
"Bet you didn't get no elk that summer, though." Ennis wished his boot weren't so thick.
The smile was more sound than shape. "Got that right. Damn nuisance, that gun, won't never shoot right for me."
Ennis's eyes narrowed, happy folds. "Nothin' ever did go right for you, now did it, Jack?"
Jack tipped the hat back with one finger, turned his face, white on black, blue on white. "Nothin' 'cept you, Ennis. Nothin' 'cept you."
Ennis reached his fingers out, and he felt the soft of a feather along Jack's cheek, the cold of the rushing river in his own eyes.
The moon saw it all.
Ennis del Mar's fingers curl inward, seeking the texture he isn't ready to let go, but his eyes do not open, the moon has disappeared, and this morning, for the first time in fifty-nine years, he does not wake before five.