Bitter & Twisted - Chapter One: Black Coffee Blues.
Author: louisestrange
Subject: 1990 - No one in the world for the old Lightning Flat ranch to go to when John Twist dies except the grandson he never met. Seems, though, that Bobby Twist might have another reason for wanting to go to Wyoming….
Disclaimer: Annie Proulx started it and she's the one reaping the financial rewards. I just do this for fun, or something like it.
Rating: PG-13
Author’s Note: Kind of movie/book canon - this fic had absolutely NOTHING to do with my previous BBM fic, ‘Go Fish’.
Sorry that it’s taken me so long to post the first chapter after the prologue - I wrote two chapters and then had a crisis of confidence and changed my mind about how I wanted the story to go, so I took a break, started on a Go Fish sequel, then came back and started over with this one. Going forward the story will alternate between Ennis and Bobby’s POV- and be warned, this one’s a slow burner.
Feedback: Never enough feedback, never enough.
Prologue: Memoria.
Bitter & Twisted - Chapter One: Black Coffee Blues.
Ennis Del Mar woke at his usual time, always five-thirty or damn close, on a working day or not. The wind rattled grit and dust against the trailer’s tinny frame and he groaned at the prospect of another day before climbing out of his narrow bed and walking blind to the little bathroom in the far corner, hand already on his dick, aiming at the toilet and, by the sound of things, just missing the mark as he let go.
When he opened the closet door to dress his eyes lingered on the dog-eared postcard of Brokeback hanging there beside two faded old shirts - one inside the other, buttoned tight - as was part of his morning routine. The sadness of what those shirts stood for had never left him, but he’d learned over the years to look on them with more fondness than regret, so they served to stoke the fire of good memories he had stored up, memories of times on Brokeback and elsewhere, indoors and out, times he’d been able to forget the whole world and just feel what felt right: him and Jack Twist, together. What he recalled brought a smile to his lips and, more often than not, woke his dick, brought a flush to his cheeks. He knew that after all the time that’d passed he couldn’t be sure if what he thought on was real or imagined, a memory stored or the product of a lonely night and his own dirty mind. He knew it didn’t much matter, either way; those thoughts brought Jack back to him and those shirts, hanging there musty and frayed, were proof that at least some of those times had been real, and that was enough for a man like Ennis.
The mornings in Wyoming had turned cold with a snap and there was a chill in the fall wind that had crept up on him like a cat on a rat’s ass, meant work’d get tough and sure enough, he wasn’t getting any younger, knew he should be looking for something else - a job that’d take him in indoors for at least the coldest months - and even if he didn’t have the sense to know that himself his daughters’d tell him as much soon as he next saw them. That morning, Ennis dressed with a certain memory in mind that’d lingered from his dream and though it was much too vivid to be imagined, he couldn’t remember just where they’d been or when, but he did know that the Jack he had in his head was still young enough to be clean-shaven and full of fool ideas. The memory was a good one - as they mostly were - and though that helped warm him through, still he brewed hot black coffee, let it boil until it bubbled over in the pot and poured it into a small enamel cup. He sat, lit a cigarette and held the cup tight, letting it scald his worn hands as he let his mind linger on the past before drinking half and pouring the rest back into the pot for later. The caffeine worked it’s way through his system, bringing him fully awake, mind and body, and he snapped out of his waking dream, threw on his coat and hat before heading out for a day at the Meadowlark. He’d return to the clutter of the trailer in twelve hours, maybe less if the wind kept up, and that memory, he knew from experience, along with his half pot of coffee, would be right there waiting for him when he did.
******
Once he knew for sure that Jack was gone - when he’s heard the words from his wife and his folks, seen his ashes with his own two eyes, cold and grey like the urn that held them - he felt it was time for him to change, time to stop denying and hiding and hating himself for what he was. That feeling didn’t last, because with Jack gone he knew it was too late. It took twenty years of lies and a postcard stamped DECEASED to make him see sense and the fact it’d taken just that made Ennis hate himself all the more.
Both of his daughters had married, the eldest, Alma Jnr, and her husband Kurt had made him a Granddaddy a little more than a year before when they had a daughter of their own and named her Lily, after Kurt’s Grandma. These events had given him all the life he needed outside of work; he’d made a promise to himself and to Alma Jnr that he’d be there for his Granddaughter and attend the family gatherings for birthdays, holidays and anything else he was invited to. He felt his daughters deserved that much from their Daddy after the little he’d given them over the years.
At first his daughters conspired to find their Daddy a new wife; at both Alma and Francine’s weddings he’d been introduced to divorcee neighbours and single girls from work who’d bat their eyelashes at him coquettishly, but to no avail. He swore to himself long before then that he’d never go through all that again, never do to anyone else what he did to his ex wife, Alma Snr, or to Cassie, a waitress he dated for a time in a vain effort to prove something to himself and those around him, or even to Jack - he’d hurt them all; Alma and Cassie because he couldn’t give them what they wanted, and Jack because he refused to ever try.
To her credit, Alma Snr warned the girls off matchmaking after seeing him squirm like a knotted worm at Francine’s wedding when a girl half his age draped herself across his lap. That time, she’d fixed the young lady with a firm stare that meant business - Ennis remembered it well - and asked that she excuse them both. He’d thanked her for saving him and she told him she knew he wasn’t interested in re-marrying, took that chance to re-broach the subject of Jack Twist - she’d found out, years before their divorce, the kind of friendship they’d shared, though it was years after the divorce before Ennis found out and that particular exchange hadn’t ended pleasantly, too many raw nerves still exposed at the time. When he told her Jack was three years dead he expected anything but what he got from her; a hug, forced and small, but still, and she commiserated, said she knew it must’ve hurt to lose such a good friend. At the time, he wanted the church hall floor to open up and take him straight to hell, so awkward was it to hear those words from his ex-wife, but later he realised how grateful he was for what Alma’d said - she drew a line under their past and gave him the only comfort he’d had after losing all he’d ever had to live for, besides his girls. Since that night, neither she nor the girls had made any mention of finding a woman or getting himself a wife and though he didn’t care to think on what Alma might’ve said to this end, he was grateful to her for that too.
******
It’d been a long day at the ranch - the new owner of the Meadowlark had mostly brought his own crew that resulted in a demotion from stockman to all-round ranch hand for Ennis and his body noticed the change and seemed to care, even if his mind didn’t. He slid out from behind the wheel of the truck and let the door hang before giving a half-hearted push to close it. As he made his way to the trailer door, he stuck his hand in the mailbox and pulled out a flier advertising a Halloween dance and a hand-written manila envelope. Paying no mind to either, he shoved both under his arm, stuck the key in the stiff lock to let himself in. First thing he did was put the leftover coffee from that morning on to heat. He sat down on the bed-cum-couch, dropped the mail at his side, and flicked on the TV, as he did each night, and kicked worn boots from his damp feet as he waited for the coffee to bubble. The evening news crackled with static, on account of the wind, and Ennis stretched his arms up over his head till he heard a faint pop in his shoulder and groaned before his attention drifted back to his mail. The Halloween dance flier was balled up and thrown across the room without a second thought and Ennis already had his thumb inside, tearing at the gummy seal of the envelope before he noticed the postmark - Childress, TX - and stopped, sat there stock-still till the coffee on the stove bubbled over and hissed as it hit the flame. Ennis’s head was spinning like a wheel in mud; the possibilities turned over and over again, getting him nowhere fast. He stood and pulled the coffee from the stove, threw it into the sink and headed for the small refrigerator - whatever news the letter from Childress might hold, he was sure he’d need something stronger than coffee after reading it.