A Better Idea
Chapter Seventeen
Riding out to the herd, Jack told Ennis the history of the ranch. "This land has been in my mother's family for three generations or more. The house where I was raised was the original family homestead." he said.
Jack's tale revealed that his mother and her two brothers, Harold and Walter Bell had been given parcels of land when they were old enough to set up housekeeping for themselves. They each married, had children, and stayed close. They each work their own herds and land, and help one another throughout the year. None of the three sections are the same shape, but they are all equal in acreage.
"Where'd your grandparents go, Jack, when they gave all the land to their kids?"
"Oh, let me show you, Cowboy. My grandpa Bell, Will was his name, got too old, or lost interest in workin' so hard by that time, so he and my grandma 'Dessie, built'em a little house out back here on 10 acres or so. They retired and lived out their days on this land, tended their own garden till they was both up in their nineties, too."
"Jack, whatever happened to your uncle Harold? Did the pneumonia finally get him?" Ennis asked, remembering when old Aguirre had ridden out to Brokeback in '63 to say his uncle was in the hospital and not expected to live. He had survived that time, Ennis knew. But he didn't never know the rest.
"No, Love got him, and at the age of 48, too. Harold had married Lilah Jean when they was kids, lived together all them years, raised a family. Then she died of cancer the year Harold turned 45. He moped around, and his health failed him badly. The summer that me and you met up there on Brokeback, he took sick and was in the old hospital that used to be here, Crook County Medical, where I was born. Anyway, he was in there for almost two weeks. During that time, his nurse was a pretty little widow lady, name of Margaret, and they hit it off right away, been married ever since."
"Well, why don't anyone ever talk about him? I been up here quite a bit now and he hasn't been mentioned, I thought sure he'd died."
"Nope," said Jack, "They retired about 3 years ago, and they started goin' to Las Vegas. Spend a month down there, 'bout twice a year. They've got an RV they travel in, they visit friends, visit their kids. Well, him and Margaret never had kids, o' course, but Margaret had two grown daughters from her first marriage, Cheryl and Stephanie, both with families of their own; still in Albuquerque, where they was raised. Then there's Harold's kids; Christy and Steve both moved down towards Denver, for the jobs, you know. Both are married, Christy and her husband have two kids in high school now, Jacob and Maggie. Yeah, same as your older sister's name. Steve and Kelly do not have kids. But they have horses and dogs aplenty. They seem real happy. They get up here for Thanksgiving every year, and one other time, usually in the spring."
Ennis Del Mar, who had never had two relatives to rub together, was getting the full treatment here, finding out about just a portion of Jack's family. It was overwhelming, and something else. It felt nice to think that Jack had all these people he belonged to. Ennis was glad for him.
He looked at Jack as if he were someone he'd never met before; all these new sides of himself that he was now revealing, made Ennis see that Jack had grown up with a lot of good people in his life. No wonder he talked a lot. No wonder he was outgoing, open to seeing folks as friendly first, until they proved otherwise. Expected folks to like him, until they proved otherwise, too. Just the opposite of Ennis, who didn't expect anyone to like him, or value him and was pleased and surprised every time someone did.
Something Jack said brought out envious feelings in Ennis, though, truth be told. How does that seem fair, he thought? Harold and Margaret had met the same summer as him and Jack, and they had a right to marry, live a life together, have family, travel, see and do things as a couple without invoking ugly comments, disgust or threat of violence from outsiders. It's a damn double standard, he thought, where's the justice in that? It ain't right!
Ennis didn't realize it, but he was changing. Always before he had accepted that he and Jack were in the wrong somehow. Two men who accidentally fall in love with each other while working alone one summer on a mountain. What were they thinkin'? He knew somehow they should not have . . . what? Could they have stopped their joy in seeing the other's face every morning and night when the sheep had been tended? Could they have resisted sharing the jokes about the rodeo or the scary stories or the experiences of growing up poor in rural Wyoming? Should they have walked off from the best companionship of their young lives, or the happiness it brought them?
Could Ennis have turned his back on the first person who ever pulled words out of him; real words, not just polite answers? Or the first person he'd felt free to tease about his cookin' or his harmonica playin'? Or the first person who'd made his heart melt by wantin', no needin' to kiss him and love him?
I am a good honest person, he thought, a hard worker, and the best daddy I know how to be, and Jack is a fine man with the same good qualities. We each have faults, but we are good people. We are two people who love each other faithfully, and that is something to be recognized and respected, too. It's not true that our love is less true or valuable than that of a man and a woman. It's just not true.
Lost in his own thoughts, it took Ennis a couple a seconds to hear what Jack was saying. "Here we are, this is it!" Jack pointed ahead about fifty yards, to a small white house surrounded by a rail fence and a riot of wildflowers. The sight of it took Ennis' breath away. It looked for all the world like an enchanted cottage from his daughters' storybooks. He had read to his girls every night when they were little. This house could have been lifted from those fairy tale pages. Ennis was speechless.
Upon closer inspection, Ennis had to laugh at his own first reaction. It was hardly a fairy tale cottage. The crudely built four room house had all the necessities: walls, floors and a roof. But that was as far as it went. The rail fence was falling down, and the weeds outnumbered the wildflowers. Still, it was a house, ready built.
He hated that his imagination was running away; far ahead of his circumstances. Ennis tried to tamp down that new thing in him, that he still couldn't identify. Might be called Hope, Excitement, or even Possibilities! Whoa, he thought, trying to get a grip on himself, Whoa there, Ennis Del Mar!
"Uh, Jack, are we still on your mama's place?" asked Ennis quietly. "Whose land is this house settin' on?" He couldn't hardly look at Jack, couldn't hardly breathe waiting for the answer.
Jack's eyes flew open, even larger than usual, and his heart 'bout jumped into his throat. "Yeah, Cowboy, this house is on my mama's property, and it's waitin' for someone to care for it again. My god, she don't have to move herself and daddy out of their room for us, unless she just wants to. We could move out here for the time that Bobby's here, or for however long."
There was a creek running along the back of Claire's property line, where Jack and Ennis let the horses refresh themselves, while they sat against a tree talking over what might be, what just might be.
"Jack, what were you saying about your mother moving out of her bedroom for us?" Ennis asked while chewing a stalk of sour grass.
He told Ennis about all the commotion, how mama had thought and thought of what to do about everyone's sleeping arrangements when Bobby arrived. "She'd decided to put daddy and herself in the front parlor, nearer to the bathroom, she claimed. And put me in their room down stairs. Then you where you are now, and Bobby in my old room." explained Jack.
"She even had us digging around in the attic for this thing she called a curtain stretcher, a bitch of a contraption, all fulla nails."
Ennis laughed, he remembered his mother's curtain stretcher getting him good every time he had to get it out or put it away for his mother. "What in the world did she want with that, Jack?"
"A right mystery, at first!" teased Jack. "But she has put an old bedspread on it. Stretched out, it looks real pretty. She wants to use it as a privacy screen, since the parlor don't have no proper door. That way, daddy's sick room will not be in plain sight. He still don't like people looking at him."
"She made me get up at the crack of dawn on Monday, rarin' to go and wantin' to dig around in that attic. I couldn't figure it out, at all. Then on the way to the hospital, she told me, Ennis. Wants us to be able to sleep together without causing any surprises for Bobby. That's what's been behind all a her planning. It's been on her mind all this week."
"You know what, Twist?" asked Ennis. "Think I'm gonna dump your sorry ass, and steal off with your mama. She's my idea of a real good woman."
"Don't blame you." Jack confessed. "When she told me that, it got me so bad, I had to pull over into a vacant parking lot and just hold her. You and me have not had any breaks, nor reasons to think that we could be accepted as a couple, but if my mama has anything to do with it, we'll have our chance."
"Let's git now; we still have to check the rest of the herd, and I have a million things to show you, Ennis. Hey, wait a minute there, boy. Have I told you today how glad I am that you're here with me?"
"Hmm. Nope, close as I can recall, you ain't said a word about it." said Ennis. "Or was that you, real early this morning, called me "baby" and said you been waitin' for me for a long while to admit that I love you and need you. I remember t'was a real good lookin' fella that said it. Was that you, Jack Fuckin' Twist?"
"You bet." said Jack. "You bet your sweet ass, it was me, Ennis Del Mar. And, now you've said it, you can't never take it back."
"Ain't aimin' to, little darlin'. crooned Ennis as he turned Jack around backwards, and held him against his chest. The way they were standing, facing the creek, Ennis' arms wrapped tight around Jack, swaying a bit, with his chin on Jack's left shoulder, was just how they had stood at the fire all those long years ago. This closeness satisfied that shared and sexless hunger, just as it had the first time. Ennis even hummed the same tune. Jack leaned back into Ennis and closed his eyes. Nothing mars this moment of complete happiness. "Please don't let this be another dream." he thought.
End of Chapter Seventeen