Sometimes It Goes the Other Way
By Friday, Alma’s rope was all paid out. November the twenty-second and Ennis still hadn’t stopped by the doc’s for a check-up. No check-up meant no life insurance, and he’d promised he’d take care of it. Her daddy sold policies on the side, swore by monthly premiums, and was not about to let his son-in-law walk around without coverage. By hook or by crook, she said, Alma was going to get her future husband down to the doctor’s office before the weekend or never hear the end of it.
She waited ‘til noon to spring it, didn’t find him eating a sandwich with Jack in the garage, and kept going under full sail right across the scabby back lot to the Bubble. Raised her fist to knock and jumped a foot when something hit the other side of the door with a bang. Ice in her stomach, she called out for Ennis, heard a scuffle near the back, opened the door a crack, and froze for a shutter click, seeing it all in stark flash light. Jack on his knees, Ennis’s fingers wound tight in his hair, spit gleaming on the ruddy rod that poked from the frayed fly, and Ennis’s rapt face, that of a man she’d never met, open and yearning, full of excitement and expectation, happy. She eased the door closed, made it back to the store without ever feeling ground, never once looking back, not caring if they saw her. Day wasn’t half over, but she thought her life might be.
Mr. Beers hollered at her from the makeshift office to get her mama and the boys, hollered again when she was slow to answer. Sinking into the dull comfort of obedience, Alma shouted up the stairs to Mama, sleepwalked back outside as Ennis and Jack disembarked the Airstream like a couple of dumbass tourists rarin to go, delivered her message eyes averted, not wanting to see the shine on them. The family crowded into the cramped room following Mr. Beers' pointing finger to the small snowy screen of the television that helped him stay in touch with the terra incognita beyond the Wyoming border. Jack and Ennis leaned against the bare sheetrock, shoulders close together, looking mighty relaxed against the phone numbers scribbled there in haste. Perched on the battered desk, Alma felt the heat of them at her back, dug her nails into her palms, feeling like the world’s biggest fool. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty more like. At least she knew why Ennis left her alone, why go to the cow when you’re gettin milk at home?
The deep drone of the TV man fragmented into words saying that the President had been shot in Dallas while riding in a car, a motorcade Mr. Cronkite called it, and JFK wasn’t expected to make it. The seconds were motes of dust in a sunbeam as the Vice-President’s basset hound face stared mournfully into a camera, right hand raised, the waxen widow in his shadow, inky splatters on her chic suit, face as closed as a cameo locket. Alma knew how Mrs. Kennedy felt, picked up by a twister and miraculously set down in the same place, but a place forever and irrevocably changed by a fate as fickle and uncaring as the weather.
To be continued…