A Better Idea - Chapter 49
Genre: BBM A/U
Pairing: Ennis + Jack
Disclaimers: main characters were created by A E Proulx
no money being made here, nor fame nor fortune.
Rating: The basic premise of ABI is that two men love each other. If you
don't like m/m slash, you won't like ABI either.
A/N 1 – I'm happy you are still reading and enjoying our boys. This story is unbeta'd. Please let me know of any typos or errors. Thank you!
Dedication: To the Memory of Heath Ledger; He will never be forgotten.
Feedback: You bet. I hope my story brings you peace.
Chapter 49 - Loveland
Ennis' eyes were tearing up, and he was coughing from all the sawdust in the air, even though he was wearing one a those little white masks that painter boys wear. He and Jack had been working since daybreak to finish sanding the new oak plank floors in the elder Twist's kitchen.
"Time for a break, bud!" he called to Jack.
"Way ahead a you, cowboy!" Jack responded, carrying in a tray of baloney sandwiches, apples, cookies and milk from Iris' house.
Pulling off his mask, Ennis said, "Not here, let's eat outside where a man can breathe."
"Your wish is my command, Oh Master."
"Oh yeah? Well, I have some more wishes to . . .hmmm"
Jack continued to balance the tray with one arm, while nibbling Ennis' neck and trying to pull him closer by his belt loops.
Ennis interrupted their nibbling and kissing, just long enough to douse his head in the wash basin out on the porch. There was also a pail of cool drinking water and a dipper. He took a good drink, but just enough to wet his whistle . . well. Whistling wasn't exactly what he had in mind.
Twenty seven minutes later, they came back into the kitchen and again picked up the lunch tray and headed out to the shaded back yard.
"Christ, Ennis. I hate warm milk. You know how bad I hate warm milk!"
"Now whose fault is it that your milk is warm, Twist? Nobody forced ya to get busy with my neck and then undoing my buttons, and then . . ."
By this time Jack was grinning again, in happy remembrance.
"Mine's warm too, ya know!"
Jack got up and took both glasses of milk to the large cooler they were using till the new appliances arrived. Normally, he would have poured the milk over the animal feed, but they hadn't bought new stock yet. They planned a trip to the stock show, soon as the homes were completed,
He grabbed two long neck bottles and tipped the caps off with a church key hanging from the cooler handle. He brought one a the cold, dripping beers to his man, waiting under the tree. While they ate the food, they talked about life in general, stock prices, and how their kids were doing.
Lunch and lovin done for the moment, Ennis stood up and brushed the crumbs and sawdust off his pants and shirt. He leaned over to cup Jack's jaw and pull his face up for a kiss. "Sure do 'preciate the lunch, bud. And you wadn't too bad either." He twinkled a grin at his love and said "guess it's time to get back to work."
That evening, all the work parties had a communal supper at the home of Walter and Iris. The workers were all done except for the interior painting and they did have a deadline. The furniture was arriving on Saturday.
Roger had equipped everyone with tape, brushes, paint, sprayers, masks, rags and turpentine. The trim was already painted in each house so it would be dry enough when they went back to tape it. There was no choice, everyone got white semi-gloss trim. Then they all came together at Walter and Iris' house, and taped everything that wasn't nailed down. While the walls of this first house were being sprayed a soft blue-grey, other crew members went from house to house taping off windows, doors and baseboards.
Mom had always had sterile white walls but Ennis worked on convincing her to put a little color in her life. She chose a subdued, buttery yellow for their new home.
Jack and Ennis decided on a muted moss green for their house. It looked outstanding with the shiny white trim.
The money from the gas and oil company didn't make them all millionaires, but in addition to their land, homes, outbuildings and road grading, it did allow every family to purchase some new furniture if they liked. Most had family pieces that were handed down from two or three generations that they kept and cherished. New furniture just could not hold a candle to the much loved old stuff. Years of polishing and dusting imparted a soft glow that could not be duplicated. Nor could anything match those memories of days gone by that were attached to each piece.
The only items that had been left in the old Bell place, when the boys claimed it as their home, were the old wooden kitchen table, four mis-matched chairs and a side-board or buffet. Jack wanted to keep them in the family, so they brought them to Loveland along with the furniture from Jack's old room. Ennis spent hours rubbing wax into each of the dining pieces and buffing them to a soft warm shine. They did not have high gloss finishes when new, so he kept the preferred matte finish on the old pieces. Jack was pleased with this surprise Ennis had worked on for him in secret.
The little bed, chest, desk and stool from Jack's childhood room were waiting, covered in the barn for the painting of the rooms to be finished.
At their first home together, they'd had no actual bed, just a lumpy old mattress on the floor, so a bedroom suite was ordered through the Sears catalog, and was to be delivered on Saturday with everyone else's purchases. They looked forward to the plain Mission Style bedstead, the matching nightstands and chests of drawers. Nothing fancy, purely functional, but all theirs. Most of all they looked forward to sleeping on a bed together, that had never been slept in by anyone else.
They had bickered for 30 minutes over whether to order one a those new-fangled water beds, or to buy a traditional mattress and box springs. Normally, Jack would be all over the newest gadget out there, but he said him and Lureen had bought one when they first come out, and he did not care for the water sloshing around with every little body movement. He winked at Ennis and revealed that he wasn't planning on curtailing any body movements in their marriage bed. Jack won the argument.
The work of building was drawing to a close, the weather was getting crisper by the day; Thanksgiving was in the air. Ennis had never been so happy in his life. He had grown up with no one but KE and Maggie, and even they hadn't been around much as they were all three working at separate jobs to keep food on the table. These weeks of working with Jack and his cousins and uncles was a priceless experience. Even the wives and children looked on Ennis now as one of the family, and he was content.
Unlike the old Bell place, their new house had plenty of closet space, storage for camping gear, and room for trophies and mementoes from the children. It would shape up as a real home. As they lay entwined before sleep took them on Thursday night, the work wrapped up for the most part, they talked about how they missed mama and daddy and how glad they'd be when everyone in the family was back together.
On Friday morning, the day before the furniture vans arrived, Ennis walked upstairs to make sure all the masking tape had been removed from the trim. If it dried there, t'would be a devil of a time ever gettin the sticky stuff off. He heard a strange little noise; he went into his and Jack's room to see his man standin at the window.
"Whatcha lookin at out there?"
"Nothin."
Ennis walked over, put his arms around Jack and leaned his chin on his shoulder.
"Jus' look at this Ennis! I can raise this window to any height I want, and it jus' stays there. Don't need to put a stick under it to hold it up!"
Remembering his time living at Mrs. Goebel's on Walnut Street where all the windows were painted shut, he responded, "I know. And the windas all open willingly, and they don't make that shuddering sound when ya close'em."
"Didja ever think we'd have such . . .?"
"No, and we got a whole houseful just like it. . . . . . .but, Jack, surely you had nice workable windas when you was married to Lureen, din't ya?"
"Prob'ly Ennis. They were not something I thought about back then. But here, I actually helped to install every window and door, so I know what it takes. I appreciate everything about them."
"Ya know, Ennis, we lived in three different houses during our marriage, each one bigger and shinier than the last. Every time one a her fancy friends got a new house, we had to buy a better one. Same with cars and trucks. . . she was not about to let the Jones outshine us. . . think she got that from her daddy. Irene don't seem to care about stuff like that."
They walked downstairs and scanned the empty house, noting where the new furniture was going to be placed tomorrow. They poured and drank one more cup of coffee, and then grabbed their gloves and scythes and went out to trim the grass, widening the area that would be used for lawn.
Ennis was working over by a sycamore tree, gently swinging the scythe in a natural rhythm; the effort it took was not enough to cause him to break a sweat. Jack had his back to him, working in a similar pattern. The quiet swish, swish, swish of the scythes lent a satisfying music to their work. All at once, Jack sensed that Ennis had stopped. When he turned he saw that his man seemed to be listening. Jack straightened his back and took a step in Ennis' direction. "What is it?"
"Shh, somethin's whimperin." As he said this, Ennis saw the grass rustle at the base of the tree. He got down on his knees and reached out with cupped hands. When he stood up he was holding a tiny little ball of golden fuzz. "Well, looka here, Jack."
Ennis held the tiny pup against his chest and stroked it with one finger.
There was another small sound from that sycamore tree, and Jack investigated this time. He knelt and reached, but Jack didn't come away with a puppy . . . he came away with two little golden bundles.
After this, Ennis walked around the base of that tree to make sure there were no more surprises. Jack took off his light jacket and put all three shivering pups in it's folds, as the day was chill and breezy.
Ennis took hold of Jack's chin and turned his face for a quick kiss. With a broad smile, he said "seems like something you always wanted, bud, and now we got room for them."
Jack began to walk back to their house, cuddling the wiggly pups to his chest. "Guess I know right where I can find them some milk, Ennis."
"Good idea, babe, I'll be there in a minute; I'm going to check around for their mama."
Ennis had only walked twenty yards or so down toward their property line when he found her. She was dead. Coulda been starvation, or possibly something went wrong giving birth, maybe three or four weeks previous. But animals or birds had been at her since she died. . . it looked recent enough. A matter of hours, perhaps.
All of Jack's and Ennis' household goods, personal belongings, tools and equipment, including the horse tack and trailer was packed away and covered, in their new barn. It looked as if their lives were on hold, but nothing could be further from the truth. Each day brought new opportunities, and new surprises.
He went to the barn and got a shovel. He buried her at the base of the sycamore tree and spent a quiet moment over her grave. After he put away the shovel and the two scythes, he walked to the house to find Jack and their new family members. When he came in, he shivered. Hadn't realized how chilled he'd become.
He found Jack sitting on the kitchen floor with the pups. They were lapping at the bread soaked in warm milk. Looked like just the act of eating had tired them out and they were nodding over their food saucers.
"We're going to have to get some real food for them, Ennis, this bread and milk'll do for tonight. I can cook up some oatmeal for them in the morning, maybe soft boil an egg before we get serious with actual dog food."
"Yeah, sounds right, they're still awful young."
"You were out there awhile, find their mama?"
"Yeah. I buried her at the base a that sycamore where we found'em. Whaddaya think we oughta do with'em?"
"We got no shortage a movin cartons, cowboy. Figured we'd fix up a box for them, put in a blanket and let'em keep each other warm and cozy till they outgrow the box.
"You sure you're up for this, Jack? T h r e e dogs? All at once?"
"You bet, Ennis. I even got'em named. . . well, if you agree."
Ennis laughed at that. Chuckling, he said "it ain't up ta me, Jack. You can name your dogs anything you want. So what're you gonna call'em?"
Jack grinned sheepishly, and pointed. "This boy here is Bailey. This little girl is Barley, and the small one, I'm callin Bobo."
Ennis smiled, rubbed Jack's shoulders and said, "I love you, Jack Twist.
Jack smiled up at his Cowboy; the look of wonder and amazement on his face a testament to the fact that sometimes he couldn't believe how lucky he was to have found this man.
The mirror image of that look was also on Ennis' face.
"Why don't I take the pups outside while you find that box for'em?
They've just eaten; no time like the present to begin their trainin."
"Sounds like a plan, be right back."
"And then I'll see you in our bed, Mr. Twist."
"But the sun ain't even set yet, Mr. Del Mar."
"Ever heard a afternoon delight, bud?"
"Sure sounds good to me, our last time in our mattress on the floor."
"Yeah, and our last day truly alone. Tomorrow the furniture delivery vans show up and hopefully, the folks arrive."
This new life in Colorado was something none of them could know for sure how it would turn out, but they were excited about the future nevertheless.
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End of chapter 49