Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue - Chapter 14
Title: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue
Author: gwylliondream
Genre: AU
Pairing: Alma/Ennis, Ennis/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Words: 60K in 16 chapters
Warnings: Major character death (not Ennis or Jack), child abuse, religious persecution, homophobia, under-aged non-consensual kissing and groping, indecent exposure, attempted rape, unreliable narrator.
Summary: Ennis and Jack thought they had seen the last of each other when they parted ways on a windy day in Signal. They were wrong. Some people thought Alma would have remarried after her divorce. They were wrong, too.
A/N: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue was written for NaNoWriMo 2012.
“Calling Me Back to the Hills” was written by Earl Shaffer, poet and friend.
Some text in this chapter was taken from this short film.
Thanks: My deepest thanks to morrobay1990 for answering my veiled pleas for a beta over on DCF. She provided incomparable support during the 30 days of NaNoWriMo, from brainstorming, to cheerleading, to prodding, and to writing a passion-filled scene in her own inimitable style, which I happily included. Thanks to my wonderful DCF co-mod lawgoddess for audiencing this fic and giving it a thorough beta job. Thanks to soulan both for traveling to Salida to research the terrain at the foothills of the Rockies and for vehemently disagreeing with me years ago when I insisted that Alma Beers-Del Mar would never have remarried after her divorce from Ennis. If not for that spirited argument, this fic never could have been.
Dedication: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue is dedicated to Andy, for whom the hills called.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
I’ll just travel blind and scout out the range and trust my luck to come through
When Laurie returned from walking Lisa to school, she and Alma puttered around the house for the morning. They eventually decided to bake sugar cookies, letting them cool into the afternoon.
“When Lisa gets home from school, we can decorate them with icing,” Laurie said. “How does that sound?”
“Okay,” Alma said. She began to roll out the dough on the flour-covered countertop.
“You know,” Laurie said, “that new restaurant on Squaw Creek Road is going to need some help.”
“What do you mean?” Alma asked.
“Well, they’ll be hiring waitresses,” Laurie said, taking a few cookie cutters from the drawer. “They won’t expect their customers to get the food for themselves. Maybe you ought to give them a call?”
Alma bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t much for catering to the whims of others, hoping they’d feel bad for her and leave her a sizeable tip. She didn’t know what to say to Laurie’s suggestion.
“Just think about it,” Laurie said.
“Okay,” Alma said, choosing a metal cookie cutter to press into the dough, “I will. In fact, if you can give me a ride to the restaurant tomorrow, I’ll fill out an application.”
After all, Alma couldn’t expect to stay at K.E. and Laurie’s forever. Alma needed to get a job. How else would she ever be able to have the kind of lifestyle that her former sister-in-law had, with the appliances and household aids that would make her life as a housewife so much easier?
The only thing that was missing from Alma’s life was the husband.
“It’ll be fine,” Laurie said, brushing a strand of her hair from her face with flour-covered fingers.
Alma would be lying if she said she wasn’t jealous of K.E. and Laurie. Laurie had all the things that Ann Beers had hoped her own daughter would have. It was why she raised her the way she did-to be kind and respectful, chaste and obedient. Alma couldn’t believe how far she had veered from all that her mother expected she would become.
Ann was furious when Alma took the job at the Laundromat just before her divorce was finalized. Angry about the time Alma wasted, Ann believed her lessons on how to be a good wife had all been for naught. She had always made it clear that she expected Alma to have a husband, children, and a house that she could visit. No daughter of hers should need to work outside the home. To do so would mean that Ann herself was a failure. Of course that was before Alma broke the news to her that she and Ennis were no longer going to be together.
A housewife. That was the only future for which Alma was equipped. It was all that she aspired to be. She didn’t think she was capable of doing anything else, and she was probably right. Alma was never good at the subjects they taught in school and she wasn’t smart in the way that some women were.
She watched Laurie arranging the cookies expertly on the baking sheet.
No, sorting the laundry at the Riverton Laundromat was the best job Alma could ever hope to have. Ennis, of all people, had heard there was an opening there, complete with an apartment that could be worked into the deal for the right woman.
Alma supposed that Ennis did care about her to some extent, even if it was just the basic human decency to not leave her penniless after he decided to end their marriage.
Alma sifted the powdered sugar into a bowl to make the frosting. A sprinkle of it coated the countertop like snow on a winter’s day. She sighed as she remembered her first date with Ennis. He was every bit as kind and respectful then as he would later try to be during their divorce proceedings. They went to the movies at the Riverton Cinema and saw Bye Bye Birdie, a musical about a young man who was sent off to war after he had already become a famous performer.
Alma had feared what would happen if Ennis were sent off to war. That would surely ruin her chances of marrying him. It had taken her a few months to entice him into asking her on a date. She hated to see all that work going to waste. She was already so fond of him, and her hopes were high.
For their date, Alma had chosen to wear a white blouse with a pretty eyelet pattern. She stood at the mirror admiring her reflection. She blushed deep with embarrassment when she recognized that she had thoughts about the blouse’s texture and how the little eyelet flowers might feel under Ennis’s hands.
She suspected no such thing would happen on her date with Ennis. He was far too much of a gentleman.
And she was right.
He picked her up right on time and took her to the movie. When he offered to buy her popcorn, Alma was delighted because no boy had ever bought anything for her before, unless she counted those French fries from Colin Woods. If she could have kept the brown paper bag that the popcorn came in, tattered and soggy with butter, she would have. It would have been a cherished souvenir of her first date with Ennis.
They sat beside each other in the crowded cinema, their elbows and knees slightly brushing every once in a while when Alma covered her mouth to laugh at Paul Lynde and Dick van Dyke. After the movie, Ennis dropped Alma off back at her house. He walked her to the front door where her parents had left the porch light on for her. They said goodnight and made plans to see each other again.
The next day at work, Laurie teased Alma, asking her what she and Ennis did on their date.
“Of course he didn’t kiss me goodnight!” Alma insisted, her cheeks turning red. “What kind of boy do you think he is?”
One of the reasons she agreed to go to the movies with Ennis was because he was so respectful. She sincerely hoped that Laurie was being sarcastic about the kissing part. Still, she couldn’t help feeling unsettled by Laurie’s tone. What if she wasn’t kidding?
Alma wiped the counter at the soda fountain and hoped K.E. was as respectful of Laurie as Ennis was of her. Alma had a hard time telling when she was being duped by someone. Especially when it was about something as serious as kissing on the first date.
Alma had good reason to believe she didn’t always understand things the same way her peers did.
When Alma was in ninth grade, she proudly showed off the new purse that Santa had left for her at Christmas, telling all the girls how she found it beneath the Christmas tree with a glittery tag addressed to her. She shifted her hip from side to side, to show off the purse.
“Surely you don’t still believe in Santa?” Debbie asked with a laugh.
Alma tucked the purse tightly under her arm and pointed her chin in the air. “Of course I do,” she insisted. “Why wouldn’t I? He comes to my house, as well as yours, every Christmas Eve.”
The girls who stood in the hallway howled with laughter.
“Don’t tell her,” came a whisper from the crowd.
“I can’t believe she doesn’t know,” said another.
“Such a baby,” another girl laughed.
The bell had already rung and Alma was worried that she would be late for class, but this was one argument she wasn’t going to lose.
“Alma,” Debbie began with a patronizing touch to Alma’s shoulder, “there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”
“I know you might think that,” Alma said, straightening her shoulders, “but you’re very wrong.”
A burst of laughter rose from the crowd of girls, followed by their whispers again in the hallway.
Alma would set them straight. Her mother had warned her that some girls might try to get her to stop believing that Santa Claus existed. But Alma knew better than that. They were wrong, and she could prove it so.
Every Christmas Eve, Santa Claus came to the Beers’ house. George and Ann believed they were doing their children a favor, preserving some of the magic of the season in their daughter’s young minds for as long as possible. Mel Morgan, a friend of George’s from work, would don a red Santa suit, complete with a soft white beard and shiny black boots. On Christmas Eve, George and Ann would make a show of pretending not to wake the girls, while all along they did their best to rouse them from their sleep so that they might catch Santa in the act of leaving toys and gifts under the Christmas tree.
Ava and Alma would creep out of bed, lured by their parents to see the miraculous sight in their living room. Ann had whispered cautiously for the girls to keep quiet, lest they disturb the visitor to their house and he leave them nothing but a lump of coal.
Alma’s eyes grew wide when she observed the man who cheerfully removed gifts from his big brown sack and placed them beneath the tree. If she listened carefully, she could hear him breathe the names that he read off the packages as he arranged them. “This one is for Alma, and this one for Ava. Ho, ho, ho, here’s one for Ann.”
When Santa was finished, and his sack empty, the girls ducked to avoid his gaze. The girls knew Santa would be very disappointed if he caught them looking. The girls snuck back to their bedroom, thrilled that they had caught a glimpse of Santa as he carried out his job of leaving gifts for the good children of Riverton and the world beyond.
Alma was very convincing when she insisted that Santa existed to her high school friends. After all, she had seen him with her own eyes. How could they possibly think that he was a fake? Alma had this argument many times in her teen years, and it always ended the same way. Alma ran away in tears, convinced that she was right, while everyone else was wrong.
She’d get home and if she was lucky, Ann would notice her red eyes and her tear-stained cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Alma?” she would ask, concerned that her daughter had failed a test or gotten into trouble with a boy.
“They said it again,” Alma cried, the tears clinging to her eyelashes.
“What are you talking about?” Ann asked, her voice soothing.
“Santa,” Alma sobbed. “The kids at school tried to say there was no such thing as Santa again.”
“Oh, honey,” Ann said, rubbing Alma’s shoulders. “Of course there is such a thing as Santa.”
“I know,” Alma sniffed loudly.
“Did you tell them that you saw him at your house?” Ann asked.
“I did,” Alma said. “But they didn’t believe me.”
Alma wouldn’t wonder until many years later if Ann knew the damage she had done to her older daughter, by perpetuating a myth for Ava’s sake. The six years that separated Alma and Ava had proven a detriment to Alma’s maturing into a rational adult. But Ann would not be swayed. She valued preserving Ava’s sense of wonder more than she cared about Alma’s growth as a young woman.
Ava was always her favorite.
Just as she avoided Laurie’s questions about Ennis’s goodnight kisses when they were teens working at the soda fountain, Alma couldn’t bring herself to talk to Laurie about she and Ennis’s sex life when they were alone in Laurie’s kitchen.
Some things weren’t meant to be discussed with others.
Some problems were so uncomfortably personal that it was easier to wish them away and cling to a simpler understanding, no matter how naïve.
It was easier for Alma to believe that Santa was real, than to believe that her mother had betrayed her trust for so long. Ann’s influence remained strong in everything Alma did, and she never questioned what her mother taught her about Santa or about sex. After all, she had been taught that it was a sin to disobey her mother. To question Ann meant that Alma would burn in an eternal Hell with Archangel Michael’s spear jabbing her in the ribs.
~~~
Sex education begins with the study of the human reproductive system.
The female sex organs, as seen from the outside, consist of several folds of skin or tissue called the labia. These labia cover the urethra, through which urine is passed, and the entrance to the vagina. The vagina has a moist lining called the mucous membrane. Its walls lie in folds, which can be easily stretched. A membrane partly covers the entrance to the vagina. This is the hymen, also known as the maidenhead.
The uterus is a small pear-shaped organ, normally only about half the size of a fist. Below it is the vagina, and connected to it at the top are two tubes-the fallopian tubes, and two ovaries. The cervix is the narrow neck of the uterus and it extends into the vagina. The walls of the uterus are very thick, but may be stretched so that the uterus can enlarge to many times its original size during pregnancy. One end of the fallopian tube is open so that eggs, also known as ova, from the adjacent ovary may easily enter and be carried to the uterus.
The ovary is a gland in which eggs are constantly being born. Each almond-shaped ovary is about an inch and a half in length. Besides producing eggs, these glands secrete fluids into the blood which are responsible for the development of female characteristics in the other parts of the body, such as breasts, hair, and skin. But from puberty on, the primary function of the ovaries is the production of eggs. Usually only one egg reaches maturity every twenty-eight days. After reaching full development, it breaks through the ovarian wall and passes into the fallopian tube.
The fully-developed egg is only one two-hundredth of an inch diameter. When mature, each egg is capable of being fertilized and developing into a baby. Moreover, each egg carries all of the hereditary characteristics of the mother.
Since the function of the uterus is primarily that of receiving the fertilized egg, and nourishing the developing child, the walls undergo a regular cycle of preparation for this job. The lining of the uterus becomes soft and spongy, and engorged with blood and fluids. This progresses during the final stages of the development of the egg, its extrusion from the ovary and its passage through the tube.
If fertilization of the egg does not occur, the uterine wall lining breaks down and is discharged from the body as the menstrual flow. If we call this onset of menstruation the first day of the menstrual cycle, we can watch the same development as it occurs during each twenty-eight day period. After the menstrual flow stops, on about the fourth day, the uterine lining begins to build up again. Meanwhile, eggs are being formed in the ovaries. In the normal cycle, ovulation occurs on about the fourteenth day and an egg is extruded into the fallopian tube. It starts its slow passage toward the uterus, but if not fertilized, it starts to dissolve or disappear in the tube. After the twenty-eighth day, menstruation occurs again and the cycle is repeated. This is the structure and the function of the female reproductive organs.
The external male reproductive organs consist of the penis and the scrotum. The scrotum contains the testicles. The penis and testicles are connected by a long tube. This is the urethral canal. It extends from the penis past the prostate gland and the seminal vesicles, to join the tube leading from the testicles. The bladder also empties into the urethral canal.
The testicles in men correspond to the ovaries in women because they both are glands where the reproductive elements are formed. The testicle is composed of small compartments filled with two kinds of cells. One kind produces an internal secretion which is carried in the blood and results in the development of male characteristics such as skin, beard, voice, and body structure. The second, or lining cells are constantly being changed into spermatozoa. Spermatozoa are the male sex cells. These spermatozoa, or sperm cells, are microscopic single cells, which are propelled by the lashing motion of their long tails. Like the ovum, or egg of the female, each sperm cell contains all the hereditary characteristics which are passed from the father to the child.
Spermatozoa are constantly being formed in the testicles and are stored in the massive curled tubes there. If not emptied during sexual intercourse, they are periodically emptied during sleep in nocturnal emissions. Millions of spermatozoa are stored, ready for ejaculation.
During intercourse, the penis is in a state of erection. This is caused by the spongy tissues of the penis becoming engorged with blood. The penis is inserted into the vagina and the sperm passes through the ducts where fluids from the glands are added to form the semen. The semen then flows through the urethral canal, and is deposited into the female vagina.
Male sperm are deposited at the upper end of the vagina, near the cervix. They begin moving up into the uterus. Sperm may remain active here for several days. The sperm move into the tubes and approach the egg. Normally, fertilization takes place while the egg is in the tube.
After one spermatozoa enters the egg, no others can enter. The tail drops off. The nuclei of sperm and egg merge and human development begins.
~~~
There was nothing Ennis could salvage from the wreck-nothing.
After ascertaining that the body lashed into the litter was Davis Wentworth, he got on the walkie-talkie.
“Come in, Jeff. This is Ennis,” he said, depressing the button on the transmitter.
The speaker crackled and popped.
“Come on,” Ennis pleaded, tapping the device. “Now’s not the time to lose the signal.”
Ennis sat in the snow outside the chopper and took some of the pressure off his feet. He had been going strong, breaking trail for more than half a day and he was utterly exhausted. He looked at the snowy landscape at the head of the ravine thinking maybe if he were at a higher elevation, he’d get a better signal.
Just then, the walkie-talkie burst into life.
“Ennis? This is Jeff. Ennis, come in,” Jeff’s voice crackled through the wintry air.
Ennis jumped to his feet, in hopes that the additional height would make Jeff’s voice come in clearer.
“Jeff,” he said. “I’ve found the chopper. Over.”
“I’m sorry, Ennis,” Jeff tripped over his words. “Are there bodies?”
“No, no,” Ennis said, his eyes scanning the arrow tamped out by footprints in the snow that led from the chopper. “They’re not here.”
“What do you mean? Where are they?” Jeff asked.
“The chopper’s wrecked-more than wrecked. It looks like an avy pushed it down the ravine. There’s nothing here, just part of the cockpit and pieces of metal. Wentworth’s body is here. He’s dead,” Ennis said, kicking at a length of plastic that was once an integral part of the aircraft, but now was nothing more than a piece of scrap. “I see their tracks. Jack and Brian. They must be trying to hike out. There’s some blood.”
“Hang tight, Ennis,” Jeff said. “I’m almost to the top of the second ridge. Where are you at?”
“I’m over in that narrow valley that comes off the main peak, between the ridge that I last talked to you from, and the third ridge to the south, the ravine that empties out near The Mount Elbert Lodge,” Ennis said.
“Okay, that probably explains why Jim and the spotter haven’t seen anything,” Jeff said.
“It’s pretty clogged with pine. A bad place to be if you want to be seen from the air,” Ennis said looking through the trees to see the glint of narrow sky between the branches.
“I’ll tell Wayne that he can call off the air search. I’m almost to the top of the last ridge you went over. I’m making good time following your tracks. If you want to wait for me to catch up, you can,” Jeff said. “It shouldn’t take me more than an hour.”
“I can’t do that,” Ennis said. He knew he had to go find Jack. Waiting for Jeff would kill him. “Not when I’m this close.”
“I hear ya,” Jeff said.
“You’ll catch up soon enough at this rate,” Ennis said, his breath fogging the display on the walkie-talkie.
“Okay, I’ll radio Wayne and have him dispatch a team to the highway. They ought to be able to set up a staging area between the Mount Elbert Lodge and La Plata Gulch,” Jeff said. “That’ll get them in a good position to meet us with a team.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you when you catch up,” Ennis said.
Ennis clipped the walkie-talkie into its holder on his pack.
“I’m coming for you, Jack,” he said as he descended into the ravine, following Jack and Brian’s trail of footprints and blood.
Although he had rested some at the chopper, the muscles in Ennis’s thighs burned as he plunged through the track of softening snow made by Brian and Jack’s footprints. The work of breaking trail on snowshoes was almost as difficult as it would have been had the men’s postholes not been there, guiding Ennis’s way toward them… toward Jack.
Ennis’s ski poles kept him steady as he took measured strides. His arms ached from holding himself back, keeping himself from tumbling down the valley, out of control in a blur of snow and ice. He hoped Jack would still be alive when he reached him. As a ranger, he had seen what exposure to extreme conditions could do to a body. It could wear even the most physically fit person down real fast. He followed the two sets of tracks, hoping that the blood wasn’t Jack’s.
He needed to tell Jack everything that had happened to him after they left Signal.
Jack needed to be alive. He needed to hear it.
After Jack drove off that awful day when they came down off the mountain, Ennis had nearly puked his guts out in an alley, his paper bag clenched in his grip, just like the grip Jack had on Ennis’s insides. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do then, just like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do now. At least he was a little closer to finding out the answers today. Ennis wondered if maybe all those years had to pass by for him to change and choose a different path than the one he had taken when he threw that punch. Maybe the lost years were a necessary evil.
He was angry that Aguirre had ordered them to come down early, but it wasn’t the money that bothered him most. His time with Jack had been cut short. He didn’t realize it then, but fucking Jack was better than it would ever be with Alma.
He broke his downhill stride and took a few breaths to calm his heart rate. He needed to cut himself some slack.
How was he supposed to know how things would be with Alma when he squatted in the alleyway heaving up the contents of his stomach?
Before he went up to Brokeback, before he met Jack, one date had led to another. First, the movies, then a double date with K.E. and Laurie. He had met Alma’s parents. They seemed like fine upstanding folks, not that Ennis had much to compare them to, having lost his own parents when he was still a kid. Before he knew it, his stint at Richardson’s Dairy had ended and it was time to report to Farm and Ranch employment for a summer job. He figured he had a good thing going, so he got down on one knee and asked Alma to be his wife. No ring in his pocket, he kissed her on the cheek to seal the deal.
Ennis dug in with his poles and caught himself from tumbling headlong down the slope. Instead, he fell back onto his ass in the snow. He was moving so fast, his heart pumping like a jackrabbit’s in his rib cage. If he hadn’t quit smoking, he’d think he was going to have a heart attack.
If he had known then, what he knew now, things would have been different.
They’d have to be.
He never would have let himself get that far with Alma. He would have at least kissed her on the mouth, instead of treating her like she was a fragile piece of glass, worthy of protecting and shielding from the whole wide world. If he had only admitted the truth to himself then… then he would have known the difference between what he felt with Jack and what he felt with Alma. He convinced himself that he had a good excuse for avoiding those feelings before he went up to Brokeback. But afterward? No, sir. Ennis was a first-rate failure at coming clean to himself.
For the first time, since believing John Twist about Jack being dead, he had a chance to do things right… the way he should have done them in the first place. After four long years of regretting his choices, Ennis had a second chance waiting for him somewhere down this slope of freshly fallen snow. A clean slate waited, snowy white as a plain sheet of paper, and he could write the rest of his story on it.
Maybe it was time for Ennis to stop blaming Jack for what had happened between him and Alma.
Ennis got to his feet and started moving again. Each step through the snow was more excruciating than the last because the rest had allowed his muscles to relax for too long. He had to get his blood flowing again.
He moved downhill with a new determination. He wanted to reach Jack so he could try to put the blame where it belonged. He still wasn’t certain that he knew for sure where the fault lay, but he was ready to find the answers to the questions that had plagued for the years after they left the mountain.
Ennis followed the footsteps through the snow, a long winding trail of white, sandwiched between the walls of the ravine. Up ahead, the ravine looked like it would drop off into nothingness. The footprints Ennis had been following seemed to stop. If not for Ennis’s farsightedness, he might not have noticed something odd in the distance. He initially dismissed it, telling himself that it was simply a broken spruce branch that had been tossed by the wind into the snowbank at an odd angle. But as he got closer, he recognized it as an article of clothing. He squinted into the afternoon light that had finally made it into the ravine.
It was a green Forest Service hat.
~~~
Author: gwylliondream
Genre: AU
Pairing: Alma/Ennis, Ennis/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Words: 60K in 16 chapters
Warnings: Major character death (not Ennis or Jack), child abuse, religious persecution, homophobia, under-aged non-consensual kissing and groping, indecent exposure, attempted rape, unreliable narrator.
Summary: Ennis and Jack thought they had seen the last of each other when they parted ways on a windy day in Signal. They were wrong. Some people thought Alma would have remarried after her divorce. They were wrong, too.
A/N: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue was written for NaNoWriMo 2012.
“Calling Me Back to the Hills” was written by Earl Shaffer, poet and friend.
Some text in this chapter was taken from this short film.
Thanks: My deepest thanks to morrobay1990 for answering my veiled pleas for a beta over on DCF. She provided incomparable support during the 30 days of NaNoWriMo, from brainstorming, to cheerleading, to prodding, and to writing a passion-filled scene in her own inimitable style, which I happily included. Thanks to my wonderful DCF co-mod lawgoddess for audiencing this fic and giving it a thorough beta job. Thanks to soulan both for traveling to Salida to research the terrain at the foothills of the Rockies and for vehemently disagreeing with me years ago when I insisted that Alma Beers-Del Mar would never have remarried after her divorce from Ennis. If not for that spirited argument, this fic never could have been.
Dedication: Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue is dedicated to Andy, for whom the hills called.
Disclaimer: I did not create these characters. No disrespect intended. No profit desired, only muses.
Comments: Comments are welcome anytime, thanks so much for reading.
I’ll just travel blind and scout out the range and trust my luck to come through
When Laurie returned from walking Lisa to school, she and Alma puttered around the house for the morning. They eventually decided to bake sugar cookies, letting them cool into the afternoon.
“When Lisa gets home from school, we can decorate them with icing,” Laurie said. “How does that sound?”
“Okay,” Alma said. She began to roll out the dough on the flour-covered countertop.
“You know,” Laurie said, “that new restaurant on Squaw Creek Road is going to need some help.”
“What do you mean?” Alma asked.
“Well, they’ll be hiring waitresses,” Laurie said, taking a few cookie cutters from the drawer. “They won’t expect their customers to get the food for themselves. Maybe you ought to give them a call?”
Alma bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t much for catering to the whims of others, hoping they’d feel bad for her and leave her a sizeable tip. She didn’t know what to say to Laurie’s suggestion.
“Just think about it,” Laurie said.
“Okay,” Alma said, choosing a metal cookie cutter to press into the dough, “I will. In fact, if you can give me a ride to the restaurant tomorrow, I’ll fill out an application.”
After all, Alma couldn’t expect to stay at K.E. and Laurie’s forever. Alma needed to get a job. How else would she ever be able to have the kind of lifestyle that her former sister-in-law had, with the appliances and household aids that would make her life as a housewife so much easier?
The only thing that was missing from Alma’s life was the husband.
“It’ll be fine,” Laurie said, brushing a strand of her hair from her face with flour-covered fingers.
Alma would be lying if she said she wasn’t jealous of K.E. and Laurie. Laurie had all the things that Ann Beers had hoped her own daughter would have. It was why she raised her the way she did-to be kind and respectful, chaste and obedient. Alma couldn’t believe how far she had veered from all that her mother expected she would become.
Ann was furious when Alma took the job at the Laundromat just before her divorce was finalized. Angry about the time Alma wasted, Ann believed her lessons on how to be a good wife had all been for naught. She had always made it clear that she expected Alma to have a husband, children, and a house that she could visit. No daughter of hers should need to work outside the home. To do so would mean that Ann herself was a failure. Of course that was before Alma broke the news to her that she and Ennis were no longer going to be together.
A housewife. That was the only future for which Alma was equipped. It was all that she aspired to be. She didn’t think she was capable of doing anything else, and she was probably right. Alma was never good at the subjects they taught in school and she wasn’t smart in the way that some women were.
She watched Laurie arranging the cookies expertly on the baking sheet.
No, sorting the laundry at the Riverton Laundromat was the best job Alma could ever hope to have. Ennis, of all people, had heard there was an opening there, complete with an apartment that could be worked into the deal for the right woman.
Alma supposed that Ennis did care about her to some extent, even if it was just the basic human decency to not leave her penniless after he decided to end their marriage.
Alma sifted the powdered sugar into a bowl to make the frosting. A sprinkle of it coated the countertop like snow on a winter’s day. She sighed as she remembered her first date with Ennis. He was every bit as kind and respectful then as he would later try to be during their divorce proceedings. They went to the movies at the Riverton Cinema and saw Bye Bye Birdie, a musical about a young man who was sent off to war after he had already become a famous performer.
Alma had feared what would happen if Ennis were sent off to war. That would surely ruin her chances of marrying him. It had taken her a few months to entice him into asking her on a date. She hated to see all that work going to waste. She was already so fond of him, and her hopes were high.
For their date, Alma had chosen to wear a white blouse with a pretty eyelet pattern. She stood at the mirror admiring her reflection. She blushed deep with embarrassment when she recognized that she had thoughts about the blouse’s texture and how the little eyelet flowers might feel under Ennis’s hands.
She suspected no such thing would happen on her date with Ennis. He was far too much of a gentleman.
And she was right.
He picked her up right on time and took her to the movie. When he offered to buy her popcorn, Alma was delighted because no boy had ever bought anything for her before, unless she counted those French fries from Colin Woods. If she could have kept the brown paper bag that the popcorn came in, tattered and soggy with butter, she would have. It would have been a cherished souvenir of her first date with Ennis.
They sat beside each other in the crowded cinema, their elbows and knees slightly brushing every once in a while when Alma covered her mouth to laugh at Paul Lynde and Dick van Dyke. After the movie, Ennis dropped Alma off back at her house. He walked her to the front door where her parents had left the porch light on for her. They said goodnight and made plans to see each other again.
The next day at work, Laurie teased Alma, asking her what she and Ennis did on their date.
“Of course he didn’t kiss me goodnight!” Alma insisted, her cheeks turning red. “What kind of boy do you think he is?”
One of the reasons she agreed to go to the movies with Ennis was because he was so respectful. She sincerely hoped that Laurie was being sarcastic about the kissing part. Still, she couldn’t help feeling unsettled by Laurie’s tone. What if she wasn’t kidding?
Alma wiped the counter at the soda fountain and hoped K.E. was as respectful of Laurie as Ennis was of her. Alma had a hard time telling when she was being duped by someone. Especially when it was about something as serious as kissing on the first date.
Alma had good reason to believe she didn’t always understand things the same way her peers did.
When Alma was in ninth grade, she proudly showed off the new purse that Santa had left for her at Christmas, telling all the girls how she found it beneath the Christmas tree with a glittery tag addressed to her. She shifted her hip from side to side, to show off the purse.
“Surely you don’t still believe in Santa?” Debbie asked with a laugh.
Alma tucked the purse tightly under her arm and pointed her chin in the air. “Of course I do,” she insisted. “Why wouldn’t I? He comes to my house, as well as yours, every Christmas Eve.”
The girls who stood in the hallway howled with laughter.
“Don’t tell her,” came a whisper from the crowd.
“I can’t believe she doesn’t know,” said another.
“Such a baby,” another girl laughed.
The bell had already rung and Alma was worried that she would be late for class, but this was one argument she wasn’t going to lose.
“Alma,” Debbie began with a patronizing touch to Alma’s shoulder, “there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”
“I know you might think that,” Alma said, straightening her shoulders, “but you’re very wrong.”
A burst of laughter rose from the crowd of girls, followed by their whispers again in the hallway.
Alma would set them straight. Her mother had warned her that some girls might try to get her to stop believing that Santa Claus existed. But Alma knew better than that. They were wrong, and she could prove it so.
Every Christmas Eve, Santa Claus came to the Beers’ house. George and Ann believed they were doing their children a favor, preserving some of the magic of the season in their daughter’s young minds for as long as possible. Mel Morgan, a friend of George’s from work, would don a red Santa suit, complete with a soft white beard and shiny black boots. On Christmas Eve, George and Ann would make a show of pretending not to wake the girls, while all along they did their best to rouse them from their sleep so that they might catch Santa in the act of leaving toys and gifts under the Christmas tree.
Ava and Alma would creep out of bed, lured by their parents to see the miraculous sight in their living room. Ann had whispered cautiously for the girls to keep quiet, lest they disturb the visitor to their house and he leave them nothing but a lump of coal.
Alma’s eyes grew wide when she observed the man who cheerfully removed gifts from his big brown sack and placed them beneath the tree. If she listened carefully, she could hear him breathe the names that he read off the packages as he arranged them. “This one is for Alma, and this one for Ava. Ho, ho, ho, here’s one for Ann.”
When Santa was finished, and his sack empty, the girls ducked to avoid his gaze. The girls knew Santa would be very disappointed if he caught them looking. The girls snuck back to their bedroom, thrilled that they had caught a glimpse of Santa as he carried out his job of leaving gifts for the good children of Riverton and the world beyond.
Alma was very convincing when she insisted that Santa existed to her high school friends. After all, she had seen him with her own eyes. How could they possibly think that he was a fake? Alma had this argument many times in her teen years, and it always ended the same way. Alma ran away in tears, convinced that she was right, while everyone else was wrong.
She’d get home and if she was lucky, Ann would notice her red eyes and her tear-stained cheeks.
“What’s wrong, Alma?” she would ask, concerned that her daughter had failed a test or gotten into trouble with a boy.
“They said it again,” Alma cried, the tears clinging to her eyelashes.
“What are you talking about?” Ann asked, her voice soothing.
“Santa,” Alma sobbed. “The kids at school tried to say there was no such thing as Santa again.”
“Oh, honey,” Ann said, rubbing Alma’s shoulders. “Of course there is such a thing as Santa.”
“I know,” Alma sniffed loudly.
“Did you tell them that you saw him at your house?” Ann asked.
“I did,” Alma said. “But they didn’t believe me.”
Alma wouldn’t wonder until many years later if Ann knew the damage she had done to her older daughter, by perpetuating a myth for Ava’s sake. The six years that separated Alma and Ava had proven a detriment to Alma’s maturing into a rational adult. But Ann would not be swayed. She valued preserving Ava’s sense of wonder more than she cared about Alma’s growth as a young woman.
Ava was always her favorite.
Just as she avoided Laurie’s questions about Ennis’s goodnight kisses when they were teens working at the soda fountain, Alma couldn’t bring herself to talk to Laurie about she and Ennis’s sex life when they were alone in Laurie’s kitchen.
Some things weren’t meant to be discussed with others.
Some problems were so uncomfortably personal that it was easier to wish them away and cling to a simpler understanding, no matter how naïve.
It was easier for Alma to believe that Santa was real, than to believe that her mother had betrayed her trust for so long. Ann’s influence remained strong in everything Alma did, and she never questioned what her mother taught her about Santa or about sex. After all, she had been taught that it was a sin to disobey her mother. To question Ann meant that Alma would burn in an eternal Hell with Archangel Michael’s spear jabbing her in the ribs.
~~~
Sex education begins with the study of the human reproductive system.
The female sex organs, as seen from the outside, consist of several folds of skin or tissue called the labia. These labia cover the urethra, through which urine is passed, and the entrance to the vagina. The vagina has a moist lining called the mucous membrane. Its walls lie in folds, which can be easily stretched. A membrane partly covers the entrance to the vagina. This is the hymen, also known as the maidenhead.
The uterus is a small pear-shaped organ, normally only about half the size of a fist. Below it is the vagina, and connected to it at the top are two tubes-the fallopian tubes, and two ovaries. The cervix is the narrow neck of the uterus and it extends into the vagina. The walls of the uterus are very thick, but may be stretched so that the uterus can enlarge to many times its original size during pregnancy. One end of the fallopian tube is open so that eggs, also known as ova, from the adjacent ovary may easily enter and be carried to the uterus.
The ovary is a gland in which eggs are constantly being born. Each almond-shaped ovary is about an inch and a half in length. Besides producing eggs, these glands secrete fluids into the blood which are responsible for the development of female characteristics in the other parts of the body, such as breasts, hair, and skin. But from puberty on, the primary function of the ovaries is the production of eggs. Usually only one egg reaches maturity every twenty-eight days. After reaching full development, it breaks through the ovarian wall and passes into the fallopian tube.
The fully-developed egg is only one two-hundredth of an inch diameter. When mature, each egg is capable of being fertilized and developing into a baby. Moreover, each egg carries all of the hereditary characteristics of the mother.
Since the function of the uterus is primarily that of receiving the fertilized egg, and nourishing the developing child, the walls undergo a regular cycle of preparation for this job. The lining of the uterus becomes soft and spongy, and engorged with blood and fluids. This progresses during the final stages of the development of the egg, its extrusion from the ovary and its passage through the tube.
If fertilization of the egg does not occur, the uterine wall lining breaks down and is discharged from the body as the menstrual flow. If we call this onset of menstruation the first day of the menstrual cycle, we can watch the same development as it occurs during each twenty-eight day period. After the menstrual flow stops, on about the fourth day, the uterine lining begins to build up again. Meanwhile, eggs are being formed in the ovaries. In the normal cycle, ovulation occurs on about the fourteenth day and an egg is extruded into the fallopian tube. It starts its slow passage toward the uterus, but if not fertilized, it starts to dissolve or disappear in the tube. After the twenty-eighth day, menstruation occurs again and the cycle is repeated. This is the structure and the function of the female reproductive organs.
The external male reproductive organs consist of the penis and the scrotum. The scrotum contains the testicles. The penis and testicles are connected by a long tube. This is the urethral canal. It extends from the penis past the prostate gland and the seminal vesicles, to join the tube leading from the testicles. The bladder also empties into the urethral canal.
The testicles in men correspond to the ovaries in women because they both are glands where the reproductive elements are formed. The testicle is composed of small compartments filled with two kinds of cells. One kind produces an internal secretion which is carried in the blood and results in the development of male characteristics such as skin, beard, voice, and body structure. The second, or lining cells are constantly being changed into spermatozoa. Spermatozoa are the male sex cells. These spermatozoa, or sperm cells, are microscopic single cells, which are propelled by the lashing motion of their long tails. Like the ovum, or egg of the female, each sperm cell contains all the hereditary characteristics which are passed from the father to the child.
Spermatozoa are constantly being formed in the testicles and are stored in the massive curled tubes there. If not emptied during sexual intercourse, they are periodically emptied during sleep in nocturnal emissions. Millions of spermatozoa are stored, ready for ejaculation.
During intercourse, the penis is in a state of erection. This is caused by the spongy tissues of the penis becoming engorged with blood. The penis is inserted into the vagina and the sperm passes through the ducts where fluids from the glands are added to form the semen. The semen then flows through the urethral canal, and is deposited into the female vagina.
Male sperm are deposited at the upper end of the vagina, near the cervix. They begin moving up into the uterus. Sperm may remain active here for several days. The sperm move into the tubes and approach the egg. Normally, fertilization takes place while the egg is in the tube.
After one spermatozoa enters the egg, no others can enter. The tail drops off. The nuclei of sperm and egg merge and human development begins.
~~~
There was nothing Ennis could salvage from the wreck-nothing.
After ascertaining that the body lashed into the litter was Davis Wentworth, he got on the walkie-talkie.
“Come in, Jeff. This is Ennis,” he said, depressing the button on the transmitter.
The speaker crackled and popped.
“Come on,” Ennis pleaded, tapping the device. “Now’s not the time to lose the signal.”
Ennis sat in the snow outside the chopper and took some of the pressure off his feet. He had been going strong, breaking trail for more than half a day and he was utterly exhausted. He looked at the snowy landscape at the head of the ravine thinking maybe if he were at a higher elevation, he’d get a better signal.
Just then, the walkie-talkie burst into life.
“Ennis? This is Jeff. Ennis, come in,” Jeff’s voice crackled through the wintry air.
Ennis jumped to his feet, in hopes that the additional height would make Jeff’s voice come in clearer.
“Jeff,” he said. “I’ve found the chopper. Over.”
“I’m sorry, Ennis,” Jeff tripped over his words. “Are there bodies?”
“No, no,” Ennis said, his eyes scanning the arrow tamped out by footprints in the snow that led from the chopper. “They’re not here.”
“What do you mean? Where are they?” Jeff asked.
“The chopper’s wrecked-more than wrecked. It looks like an avy pushed it down the ravine. There’s nothing here, just part of the cockpit and pieces of metal. Wentworth’s body is here. He’s dead,” Ennis said, kicking at a length of plastic that was once an integral part of the aircraft, but now was nothing more than a piece of scrap. “I see their tracks. Jack and Brian. They must be trying to hike out. There’s some blood.”
“Hang tight, Ennis,” Jeff said. “I’m almost to the top of the second ridge. Where are you at?”
“I’m over in that narrow valley that comes off the main peak, between the ridge that I last talked to you from, and the third ridge to the south, the ravine that empties out near The Mount Elbert Lodge,” Ennis said.
“Okay, that probably explains why Jim and the spotter haven’t seen anything,” Jeff said.
“It’s pretty clogged with pine. A bad place to be if you want to be seen from the air,” Ennis said looking through the trees to see the glint of narrow sky between the branches.
“I’ll tell Wayne that he can call off the air search. I’m almost to the top of the last ridge you went over. I’m making good time following your tracks. If you want to wait for me to catch up, you can,” Jeff said. “It shouldn’t take me more than an hour.”
“I can’t do that,” Ennis said. He knew he had to go find Jack. Waiting for Jeff would kill him. “Not when I’m this close.”
“I hear ya,” Jeff said.
“You’ll catch up soon enough at this rate,” Ennis said, his breath fogging the display on the walkie-talkie.
“Okay, I’ll radio Wayne and have him dispatch a team to the highway. They ought to be able to set up a staging area between the Mount Elbert Lodge and La Plata Gulch,” Jeff said. “That’ll get them in a good position to meet us with a team.”
“Sounds good. I’ll see you when you catch up,” Ennis said.
Ennis clipped the walkie-talkie into its holder on his pack.
“I’m coming for you, Jack,” he said as he descended into the ravine, following Jack and Brian’s trail of footprints and blood.
Although he had rested some at the chopper, the muscles in Ennis’s thighs burned as he plunged through the track of softening snow made by Brian and Jack’s footprints. The work of breaking trail on snowshoes was almost as difficult as it would have been had the men’s postholes not been there, guiding Ennis’s way toward them… toward Jack.
Ennis’s ski poles kept him steady as he took measured strides. His arms ached from holding himself back, keeping himself from tumbling down the valley, out of control in a blur of snow and ice. He hoped Jack would still be alive when he reached him. As a ranger, he had seen what exposure to extreme conditions could do to a body. It could wear even the most physically fit person down real fast. He followed the two sets of tracks, hoping that the blood wasn’t Jack’s.
He needed to tell Jack everything that had happened to him after they left Signal.
Jack needed to be alive. He needed to hear it.
After Jack drove off that awful day when they came down off the mountain, Ennis had nearly puked his guts out in an alley, his paper bag clenched in his grip, just like the grip Jack had on Ennis’s insides. He didn’t know what the hell he was going to do then, just like he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do now. At least he was a little closer to finding out the answers today. Ennis wondered if maybe all those years had to pass by for him to change and choose a different path than the one he had taken when he threw that punch. Maybe the lost years were a necessary evil.
He was angry that Aguirre had ordered them to come down early, but it wasn’t the money that bothered him most. His time with Jack had been cut short. He didn’t realize it then, but fucking Jack was better than it would ever be with Alma.
He broke his downhill stride and took a few breaths to calm his heart rate. He needed to cut himself some slack.
How was he supposed to know how things would be with Alma when he squatted in the alleyway heaving up the contents of his stomach?
Before he went up to Brokeback, before he met Jack, one date had led to another. First, the movies, then a double date with K.E. and Laurie. He had met Alma’s parents. They seemed like fine upstanding folks, not that Ennis had much to compare them to, having lost his own parents when he was still a kid. Before he knew it, his stint at Richardson’s Dairy had ended and it was time to report to Farm and Ranch employment for a summer job. He figured he had a good thing going, so he got down on one knee and asked Alma to be his wife. No ring in his pocket, he kissed her on the cheek to seal the deal.
Ennis dug in with his poles and caught himself from tumbling headlong down the slope. Instead, he fell back onto his ass in the snow. He was moving so fast, his heart pumping like a jackrabbit’s in his rib cage. If he hadn’t quit smoking, he’d think he was going to have a heart attack.
If he had known then, what he knew now, things would have been different.
They’d have to be.
He never would have let himself get that far with Alma. He would have at least kissed her on the mouth, instead of treating her like she was a fragile piece of glass, worthy of protecting and shielding from the whole wide world. If he had only admitted the truth to himself then… then he would have known the difference between what he felt with Jack and what he felt with Alma. He convinced himself that he had a good excuse for avoiding those feelings before he went up to Brokeback. But afterward? No, sir. Ennis was a first-rate failure at coming clean to himself.
For the first time, since believing John Twist about Jack being dead, he had a chance to do things right… the way he should have done them in the first place. After four long years of regretting his choices, Ennis had a second chance waiting for him somewhere down this slope of freshly fallen snow. A clean slate waited, snowy white as a plain sheet of paper, and he could write the rest of his story on it.
Maybe it was time for Ennis to stop blaming Jack for what had happened between him and Alma.
Ennis got to his feet and started moving again. Each step through the snow was more excruciating than the last because the rest had allowed his muscles to relax for too long. He had to get his blood flowing again.
He moved downhill with a new determination. He wanted to reach Jack so he could try to put the blame where it belonged. He still wasn’t certain that he knew for sure where the fault lay, but he was ready to find the answers to the questions that had plagued for the years after they left the mountain.
Ennis followed the footsteps through the snow, a long winding trail of white, sandwiched between the walls of the ravine. Up ahead, the ravine looked like it would drop off into nothingness. The footprints Ennis had been following seemed to stop. If not for Ennis’s farsightedness, he might not have noticed something odd in the distance. He initially dismissed it, telling himself that it was simply a broken spruce branch that had been tossed by the wind into the snowbank at an odd angle. But as he got closer, he recognized it as an article of clothing. He squinted into the afternoon light that had finally made it into the ravine.
It was a green Forest Service hat.
~~~