Jack at 25
June 30, 1969
The motel sign opposite the diner was flashing VACANCIES again this morning. When Jack had stopped here for a late dinner on the way back from Kansas the previous evening, the red neon NO was lit up as well. He'd driven this road before and stayed in that nothing-special motel. Now it was a Best Western. He'd taken a booth by the window and leafed through a local newspaper left behind while he waited for his food. As he was flipping past the TV schedule his eye had been caught by the title of the movie on CBS at 9:00. Baby the Rain Must Fall starring Steve McQueen. The very moment he'd looked up and through the diner window at the motel the NO flickered off. A sign for sure. So he'd checked in, the desk clerk pleased to fill the canceled booking so quickly. He had been expecting nothing, just a night in, maybe jerking off to Steve McQueen. Which is why it had been so shocking to go from sitting on the edge of the bed staring at the television to seeing the fire and himself pacing in the twilight, waiting for Ennis.
Now he was back in that same booth looking out at the heat-blasted plain beyond the motel. LD had sent him on the road again but Jack didn't mind. Lately Lureen's mother had been hinting around that she would like another grandchild, preferably a girl, as if one could be served up like a plate of beans. Ennis had once told him that with the second baby the work more than doubled. Jack had passed this insight on to Lureen who agreed that she'd heard each additional kid increased the load "exponentially." Whatever that meant — sounded like big numbers, which she would know about. Not a single thing about the whole prospect appealed to him. As far as Jack was concerned, one was enough.
He turned back to the Dallas Morning News as the waitress breezed past his booth, topping up his coffee by an inch with hardly a pause in her step. On the very bottom of page 10, in the left corner in the Other News box, he spotted the tiny, black headline. NY Queers Riot. The gulp of coffee burned his throat and he coughed while glancing around to see if anyone in the diner was watching him, as if they could tell which article he was reading. Christ, am I turning into Ennis? He turned back to the paper, setting the heavy white mug down on the newsprint just above the two column inches, and bent his head close to the Formica top to read the paragraph.
Like putting his eye to a chink in a stone wall and seeing a world he'd never imagined existed.