Sometimes It Goes the Other Way
Jack Twist shook hands with Alma’s ailing daddy and was drawn in to a new life like a man dragged into a whirlpool. By dinnertime, Riverton’s newest pump jockey had the keys to the cash register and all the doors and had filled his first two tanks. Ennis went directly to the garage to tinker and it was easy to see how smooth it could go with Missus Beers and Alma in the store, the mister in front of the ledger and adding machine, nursing his gout.
And so it went as Fall fell. Kids went back to school, and grownups went on about their business while the rest of the natural world got ready to sleep through the cold. Shadows grew long legs and an orange October rolled around with a bright jack o’ lantern grin. Trade was good and Mr. Beers reckoned it was his home team as he called them that accounted for the increase, said maybe he ought a just stay out their way if this was how things run without him. Showing his gratitude, he moved the boys out of Laura’s room and into a trailer parked behind the station up side of some dispirited cottonwoods choking on road dust. They call it a Bubble, Mr. Beers informed them, built in ‘58, costing at that time the stratospheric sum of two thousand dollars, but the one they were lookin at acquired in trade for an engine block Ennis rebuilt. She was sixteen feet of living space with a gas/electric refrigerator, a toilet, a thirty-six inch bed and privacy. It occurred to Jack and Ennis at about the same moment that this meant an end to the sneaking around, the long looping drives to nowhere, buying fresh fish to fill the bucket on the way home. It was an end to the pervasive fear of being caught when the dreaded moment came that they could no longer control the thing that possessed them sometimes. That the moment would come, Ennis did not doubt, but when he saw the Airstream his balls still tightened in a joyous little spasm.
They made the move in record time, requiring one trip only to shift all their worldly belongings. Alma wished Ennis could stay in the house and Jack would move into the trailer by himself, but her mama’s last nerve was starting to fray from the stress of having the boys in the house so soon after Laura’s trouble. Mama knew Alma was a good girl, but men got riled up, as she put it; wasn’t their fault, of course, just the way God made ‘em, except for Daddy, but good girls didn’t put themselves in situations where somethin like ‘that’ could happen. Alma had kept her legs crossed, but she was getting married in December and she couldn’t wait for ‘that’ to happen. Lately, she’d been thinking that it wouldn’t hurt anybody to get a coming attraction like they did at the movies. Ennis respected her, never pushed too hard when she flagged him down at second base, but she thought she might like it if he did.
November waned to the thin rind and the new routine established in the expanded Beers household held good as Winter wedged its way into the year. Deer season was over and as far as Missus Beers was concerned, wedding season had begun. Ennis got corralled into all manner of decisions that he had no opinion on, and his lack of enthusiasm was likely to turn Alma’s waterworks on without warning. Didn’t matter to him if the flowers were pink, or yellow, or every color in the rainbow. This was her show and it ought to be just how she dreamed it. Wasn’t right to fool her this way, carrying on with Jack every time they were out of her sight, but he couldn’t stop. Had to be some way to make it up to her for doing her wrong, even though he never intended it to be this way. Her love was a lighthouse that ceased to shine for him through no fault of her own. He had been to a far shore and could no longer see the way home.
And so it went as Fall fell. Kids went back to school, and grownups went on about their business while the rest of the natural world got ready to sleep through the cold. Shadows grew long legs and an orange October rolled around with a bright jack o’ lantern grin. Trade was good and Mr. Beers reckoned it was his home team as he called them that accounted for the increase, said maybe he ought a just stay out their way if this was how things run without him. Showing his gratitude, he moved the boys out of Laura’s room and into a trailer parked behind the station up side of some dispirited cottonwoods choking on road dust. They call it a Bubble, Mr. Beers informed them, built in ‘58, costing at that time the stratospheric sum of two thousand dollars, but the one they were lookin at acquired in trade for an engine block Ennis rebuilt. She was sixteen feet of living space with a gas/electric refrigerator, a toilet, a thirty-six inch bed and privacy. It occurred to Jack and Ennis at about the same moment that this meant an end to the sneaking around, the long looping drives to nowhere, buying fresh fish to fill the bucket on the way home. It was an end to the pervasive fear of being caught when the dreaded moment came that they could no longer control the thing that possessed them sometimes. That the moment would come, Ennis did not doubt, but when he saw the Airstream his balls still tightened in a joyous little spasm.
They made the move in record time, requiring one trip only to shift all their worldly belongings. Alma wished Ennis could stay in the house and Jack would move into the trailer by himself, but her mama’s last nerve was starting to fray from the stress of having the boys in the house so soon after Laura’s trouble. Mama knew Alma was a good girl, but men got riled up, as she put it; wasn’t their fault, of course, just the way God made ‘em, except for Daddy, but good girls didn’t put themselves in situations where somethin like ‘that’ could happen. Alma had kept her legs crossed, but she was getting married in December and she couldn’t wait for ‘that’ to happen. Lately, she’d been thinking that it wouldn’t hurt anybody to get a coming attraction like they did at the movies. Ennis respected her, never pushed too hard when she flagged him down at second base, but she thought she might like it if he did.
November waned to the thin rind and the new routine established in the expanded Beers household held good as Winter wedged its way into the year. Deer season was over and as far as Missus Beers was concerned, wedding season had begun. Ennis got corralled into all manner of decisions that he had no opinion on, and his lack of enthusiasm was likely to turn Alma’s waterworks on without warning. Didn’t matter to him if the flowers were pink, or yellow, or every color in the rainbow. This was her show and it ought to be just how she dreamed it. Wasn’t right to fool her this way, carrying on with Jack every time they were out of her sight, but he couldn’t stop. Had to be some way to make it up to her for doing her wrong, even though he never intended it to be this way. Her love was a lighthouse that ceased to shine for him through no fault of her own. He had been to a far shore and could no longer see the way home.