Annie Proulx's brilliant characters, and I make no profit from them.

It was going to be a one-shot, but the bug bit me and I decided to make this a series. I promise plenty of mundane life and a little bit of fluff in the future. But it will skirt slowly into fantasy. Let's see if anyone is willing to follow me there... Unbeta'd.

Chapter 2
"Where we goin?"

Ennis grumbled internally. It was one of those days. Some days, now since they'd talked, Jack chattered on at him incessantly. Other days, he didn't hardly say or do nothin' besides drain Ennis's cigarettes. Both kind a days were infuriating, and Ennis wondered if he and Jack could have made a life together after all, or if he might have killed Jack. But he didn't really mind. The voice reminded him that Jack was there, but also reminded him that Jack wasn't there, not wholly, and burnt Ennis with a pang of pain. The silence was just as bad, as Ennis was starting to suspect there was something haunting 'bout those silences, something goin' on in them he couldn't understand, since they were so unlike Jack ta have.

"Got us a place out on Kruger Pass. Man out there needs someone ta help look after his stock, so I took the job." Ennis didn't even hesitate to use the word us. He had no doubts Jack was coming along.

"Jesus, Ennis, you ought to look for some more decent work than ta be a ranch hand."

"Don't know nothin' else."

Jack made a noise, and Ennis continued packing his single duffel bag, just the old Army kind from a surplus store.

"Well, I think this is a good opportunity." Yup, a talkative night for sure.

"For what, huh?"

"For you to quit smokin'."

"Christ, Jack, will ya lay off a me?"

"That what you want, huh? Me to go away and let you be? Let you smoke yourself to death?"

Ennis exhaled and rubbed his eyes. Jack was insecure on this topic, thought maybe haunting Ennis wouldn't be wanted. Ennis had been haunted by Jack since he was nineteen. It was a relief to at least have someone ta talk about it to. They'd been though this a half dozen times, and Ennis knew Jack wasn't goin' nowhere. "Shit," he muttered.

Jack continued. "Well, I aim to see you get old enough that you don't got the breath to swear at me no more, and in order ta do that, you gotta quit smokin'."

"I been smokin' since I was fourteen."

"Then I reckon you had more'n your share."

Ennis just shook his head and finished packing. The truth was, Jack in this state could make Ennis do just about anything he wanted. Ennis knew that well enough. He got ready for the night, switched those shirts, and laid down against the bed. "Night, Jack."

"Yup."

The place was alright, long and skinny. The door entered into the kitchen, which was divided from the bedroom by most of a wall that went neither to the other wall nor to the ceiling. The small bathroom was at the end of the kitchen. The roof pitched funny and had a few low beams. The floor was concrete, and cold as shit, despite a pretty sturdy-looking kerosene heater pluggin' away full-tilt. The queen-size bed was metal and old, the mattress dented with the shapes of too many bodies. Several windows lined walls on both sides, making it a bright place. One long, tilted table flanked a bench seat in the kitchen. The hallway through the bedroom proceeded to another door, which opened onto a porch and swing on a little grassy area, complete at with a picnic table. It was on the perimeter of the spread, and Ennis kept his truck parked by the main door.

"Not exactly a foreman's place, huh?"

"Well, I ain't exactly a foreman."

Jack had half a mind to talk about Randall's place down in Texas, but there were some topics they never touched, and that was alright by him. Peace was the order of the day. They weren't trying to make this work in any sense of the word. They just were. Besides, hauntees weren't supposed to go giving haunters the third degree on their conquests. Least they didn't in stories. Jack had never had the pleasure of meeting another ghost to know what was supposed to happen at all.

Jack left the subject rest as much because he was havin' one of his bad days as for any other reason. He never told Ennis about them, but he figured Ennis knew. Some days Jack just felt so tired he couldn't hardly lift himself, would lie in Ennis's bed all day and just exist. Didn't waste no energy on words those days. Sometimes went two or three days without saying anything. It seemed to recharge him, though, because he was usually restless as a pup by then.

Stuff proceeded just exactly as it had at Junior's, only now he was alone all the time, he talked to Jack plenty, 'specially on those days when Jack wans't talking. Ennis figured he was talking more now than he ever had while Jack was alive. He also cooked better food.

And he woke up in the mornings sometimes to find all his packs a cigarettes had been flushed down the toilet.

But it was alright, because sometimes he came home from work to find dinner ready, or the grass mowed. That one amused Ennis. It was a good thing they lived in the middle a nowhere on the back of a rural spread, because a mower runnin' itself around his small yard would a sure been a sight to see. Not that Ennis was hankering to see it. he didn' like to see things move, really. Jack has somehow picked up on this, did all the movin' a stuff when Ennis wasn't around.

Truth was, seein' somethin' floatin' through the air was an unbearable reminder a what he didn't have, didn't have Jack proper. What Jack didn't have. Ennis knew Jack was a more social kind, liked drink and food and probably dancin' at a pool hall. And all Jack had now was an afternoon to mow his lawn and a day spent in bed. When Ennis thought on it too hard, it broke his heart. He hadn't blamed himself for Jack's death before, but livin' with him this way, he had no choice but to blame himself about that Jack wasn't really livin' a life.

"Why the hell you do that, huh?" Ennis was grumbling over a bowl a chili. Jack was a damn sight better of a cook than he had been years before.

"What's that I do?"

"You flushed the whole goddamn case in the toilet." Ennis's face flushed a little angry.

"Yeah."

"Well. Well, I paid good money for those."

"Maybe you ought to stop buyin' them, then."

"Like hell. You think you can do whatever you want 'round here. I'm damn near sick a it."

"I'm your ghost, not your housekeeper. I can damn well flush anything I want down the toilet."

"Not my money."

"If I wanted, I sure could, but I didn't make you spend it on cigarettes."

"Twist..." It sounded like a warning.

Jack laughed. "You're somethin' else, Ennis. Lookit you threatenin' a ghost."