(no subject)
Chapter 35
Source: Fanfiction based on Brokeback Mountain, slightly more influenced by the film than the short story.
Rating: mostly NC 17, a metaphysical subplot.
Summary: Faced with several unattractive choices, Ennis chooses self-imposed exile and discovers that exile can sometimes lead you to the people you belong to.
Disclaimer: Ennis, Jack, all the other characters appearing in Brokeback Mountain and its storyline are the creations and property of Annie Proulx, and of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana who authored the screenplay. I am deriving no income from this work.
Author’s Notes: I have made no effort to imitate Annie Proulx's style; her style is her own. "Dialect" passages are not intended to be dialect as such, but standard American colloquial pronunciation. Some Southern idioms are also used. This is a very first fiction attempt and as such is more than a little autobiographical.
Over the past three weeks, early summer crept in to replace late spring before Ennis noticed. The soft, vibrant greens of the countryside had been replaced with deeper shades, and the water in the stream and river moved a little slower. The forest around the cabin was sprinkled with the tiny white stars of trillium and the petaled bowls of bloodroot; and here and there Ennis spotted pink lady's slipper with its innocently erotic blooms. While riding in the pastures and the open fields above them, he saw masses of daisies and the lobed spikes of lupine, whose vivid pink and purple reminded him of the boiled eggs that Alma Junior and Jenny had once dyed for Easter baskets. He was used to seeing lupines in Wyoming, but "they're not from around here", Jerry remarked laconically as he put a handful in a jar of water to take to Rachel. "Neither am I," Ennis answered.
The Corkrans had a van equipped to handle a wheelchair; but Jerry regularly took his father-in-law out to inspect the property and horses in an ATV that could take them as far as the upper pasture if Jerry took the back way. On Sunday afternoon, they were accompanied by Rachel on horseback, and by five-year-old Karen, who perched on Jerry's lap. Karen had Jerry's wiry auburn hair but her mother's steady brown eyes, and she watched Ennis solemnly as he led Molly back to her stall. “Dinner'll be ready in about an hour, why don't you come on up?” Rachel called over her shoulder as she continued up the drive on foot behind the ATV. “Sure thing,” Ennis called back, knowing that this was as much a summons as an invitation.
Dinner was a casual affair in a dining room whose dim portraits and tall windows gave it an incongruously formal air compared with the lupines and other wildflowers decorating the table. Tom had a shrewd-looking, straightforward farmer's face, large-boned and hawk-nosed, softened a little by the short, light gray beard that Rachel kept carefully trimmed. He was unable to walk and could use only his left hand; but his questions to his son-in-law and Ennis about recent developments in the family business were sharp and thorough. Jerry reported that he'd looked into the idea of advertising hayrides for the fall. “Surprisin' how many accidents happen on those. Everybody I called, anybody who answered that mailing Rachel sent out, almost all of 'em had at least one near miss one time or another. Just wouldn't be worth the extra insurance. Trail rides 'd be a better bet.”
Jerry had taken off his sun hat and made an attempt to tame his wiry auburn hair, and the strictly-business manner Ennis was accustomed to had also changed slightly. He was in a relaxed, talkative mood during dinner, relating a few well-chosen and well-edited anecdotes from his Army days and bringing Tom up to date on the progress of Karen's spring colt, Lighthorse Harry. He was generous in his assessment of Ennis' role in the new riding classes and last week's successful leasing of two horses; and Tom nodded approvingly to Ennis though he said little to him.
“Ennis is a good teacher,” Rachel confirmed. “We’ve heard such good things from his students already. Another year and Karen will be in his class. I’ll be teaching her too, we want her to learn Western and English saddles both.”
“And I’m gonna learn to ride standin’ up,” Karen told Ennis. “You know how to do that?”
“Standin’ up?” Ennis thought briefly of David’s description of posting. He listened to the child chatter about seeing a woman in “a red dress with sparkles, and the horse had ribbons on its mane and she stood on her hands too”. Rachel’s smile was the first sign of amusement Ennis had seen. “We took her to the circus a few months ago and she’s still talking about the horses and the circus riders. That’s what she wants to be when she grows up, and she’s got her mind made up. Right, Karen?”
“Runs in the family,” Tom put in dryly. "On both sides," Jerry added. Ennis only nodded, thinking how different the world looked to the other people at the table. While David had observed that upper class people all seemed to be connected like a mobile small town, this family seemed to have done the opposite, creating a self-contained world for each other. His own family had done much the same; but out of isolation and the harsh necessities that had effectively blocked most childhood flights of imagination before they saw the light of day.
After dessert, Rachel pushed Tom's chair back to the living room, with Karen scurrying alongside, grasping the fingers of her grandfather's good left hand. “Dad likes you,” Rachel assured Ennis right before he left to walk back to the cabin. “He said 'glad he's back.' I don't know what he meant by that, but he does get confused sometimes.” Ennis found the deference given to the older man familiar: prosperous landowners, he'd long ago noticed, were given special respect if they retained ownership and control of their lands into old age.
He had already told Jerry he'd be gone on Thursday afternoon and evening, assuring him that he'd have no problem finishing the morning chores. “We'll all be here Thursday anyhow,” Jerry had responded. “Plan to cook hamburgers and hot dogs, Rachel always makes ice cream, and then we usually go to watch the fireworks over the Lake. There's a spot on Skyline Drive we park and watch from the car; it's easier for Tom that way. If you're gonna be out on Minnesota Point, you'll see a great show from there.”
Since his dinner with David, Ennis had observed the days passing with neither dread nor anticipation. He’d never been one to speculate about the future and he was content to wait the brief time until Independence Day, watching the summer season mature and following the work routine that had now become a familiar one. The peaceful interlude was interrupted on Wednesday morning, when Maggie’s car pulled up at the main barn.
“Oh Ennis, what a beautiful place! It looks a little like home around here, except that house. Minnesota or no, a lotta people'd believe it if they put up a 'George Washington Slept Here' sign.” She spread her arms and turned slowly, taking in the barns, pasture and the tree-covered his with its now well-worn path toward Ennis' cabin.
Maggie looked somewhat different from just the last time he'd seen her. Her reddish hair was tied back and its curls retrained by a scarf, and the colorfully patched jeans or broomstick skirts and suede vests and he was used to seeing her wear had been replaced by dark blue tailored slacks and a cotton blouse. “Thought you'd be in Madelia right now, Maggie.”
“Oh, we're leavin' later this afternoon. We both figured if we're gonna be with the family a four-day weekend we might as well not rush it. I just need to tell you about a few things, didn't want to wait till Monday. You gotta few minutes?”
Ennis led her up the path from the barn. He listened to her exclamations over the forest, creek and footbridge and the cabin with detached interest, since the way his surroundings looked to him had changed subtly in the way sights that have become familiar and expected inevitably do.
While he heated the coffee and retrieved milk from the refrigerator, she sat at the table and chattered about the upcoming four-day weekend in Madelia, her own and Sam's nervousness about his meeting her family, and their expected skepticism based on her mercifully brief earlier marriage. Ennis was accustomed now to her garrulousness but there was a certain tenseness about the way she aimlessly twisted a ring on her right hand and swung one leg up and down a little, lightly tapping the floor with the back of her heel. Her usual cheerfulness sounded, not forced exactly, but somewhat deliberate.
"I know you're wondering why I'm here," she said. “I thought of waiting till I get back, just had a feeling I shouldn't. So okay, I've gotta get something out of the way that I don't tell many people about, God, I hope you don't think I'm nuts. David knows about it, just a few people do. Sometimes I.... see things other people don't.”
She paused and he knew she was waiting for a response. “Okay. What're you talking about seein?” he answered, thinking how uncharacteristic her caution was. His own experiences over the past year weren't something he wanted to share with her - or anyone - but on the other hand, his own experience overshadowed any of the skepticism she was expecting.
She gave him a surprised look and went on. “When I was little, I had a friend named Barbara. She was around the house a lot, and we'd play out in the woods. She didn't wear jeans like I did, she always had on this long cotton dress that fit her like a nightgown. But I'd see other people out in the woods who didn't look much like the people I knew at home and at church. Once in awhile I'd see a man who was really tall, and I knew he was wearing animal skins - plenty of hunting around there so any kid could recognize that. And a couple of times I saw a man who was little, I mean just a foot or so tall. I guess you could call him an elf, but he sure wasn't anything like the ones you see with Santa Claus at Christmas. This guy was raggedy and he looked kinda rough, and I could tell he didn't like it at all that I could see him.
“So at dinner sometimes, I'd talk about Barbara and what we'd see out in the woods. My dad and my sisters would smile and joke about my imaginary friend, and at that age - what did I know from what “imaginary” meant. I just thought it was more boring grown-up talk, I didn't know they couldn't see her. My mom was the one who didn't laugh about it, she'd kinda frown and once in awhile she'd shush my sisters when they'd tease me about it.
“Barbara left when I was about 8, I guess. Or maybe it was a little before that. There was this one day, when I saw an accident out on the highway.
The memories were disjointed by now, like scenes from a mostly forgotten movie. Recognizing the battered pickup truck that belonged to their near neighbor, Mr. Voight, as he absent-mindedly ignored a stop sign at the highway, and the bus that couldn't stop in time, plowing into the truck broadside. Running into the house shouting about Mr. Voight, mom, mom, I just saw a bus run into him....
Already at the kitchen door holding a dishtowel, Mom making a strangled noise and running up the stairs without answering, towel over her mouth, the bedroom door slamming just as Aunt Amy, visiting for the week, bearing down on her like a ship running over a stray scrap of driftwood. Broad face looking squarer than usual because of her set jaw, abundant brown hair flying every which way as usual, gripping her arm and pulling her into the kitchen.... For the last time, stop upsetting your mother with this nonsense about seeing things. After all we went through with your grandmother.... She had to be sent to a hospital...
“Turns out my grandma had the same kinda thing; my aunt said she just called it The Sight. They finally decided she was crazy, had her locked up in a mental hospital. She got electroshock therapy - gave her shocks to the head was how my aunt put it. And awhile after that, they did some surgery, a lobotomy I found out later. When they went to visit her, she'd recognize my mom and Aunt Amy, but she didn't seem to care if they were there or not, didn't seem to care about anything. I guess my mom never got over that.”
Ennis put a mug of coffee on the table and sat down across her her. “Did you ever meet her?”
“No, she died before I was born. About ten years. My aunt just scared the hell out of me, all I could think about for days was somebody giving me shocks in the head. I was afraid to even plug in a lamp a long time after that. And I stopped seeing extra things. That musta had a lot to do with it, but I think it woulda happened anyway, I'd started school by that time. So.... I thought it was gone, something I just grew out of, till Mike got killed.
“When he got a scholarship to the vet school, I went to Georgia with him, that was pretty daring in those days. My parents thought I'd turned into a regular loose woman. After he got drafted, I stuck around and got a job.” Far away from him for a moment, she smiled a little and shook her head. “I thought we'd just pick up where we left off when he got back. Went he went missing the Army didn't notify me since we weren't married, but my oldest sister heard about it. I got back from my shift at the Pizza Inn and there was a note, stuck in the door, I didn't have a phone but our next door neighbor let us use hers and all it said was call your sister. When I went back out, there was Mike standing on the sidewalk.”
He wore, not his Army uniform but the jeans and the red-checkered shirt he'd been wearing when he'd told her about the scholarship and they'd made plans to go to Georgia together. They'd had everything figured out then, a time and feeling now lost forever. But his smile was just the same with that slightly crooked tooth and that flyaway brown hair that always stuck out in the wrong places.... She took a step toward him and he smiled, lifted one hand palm out as if waving at her. And then he was gone.
“So when I made the call and my sister told me about Mike, I already knew, I knew he'd stopped to say goodbye, but it would have been a waste of time to tell her what I saw. Or tell anybody. She said they hadn't sent his body back for burial yet, but he never was found. So.... seeing him helped in a way, you know, at least I knew he'd died and didn't feel like he'd just disappeared. Woulda tried to tell his family but I was so used to keeping the Sight a secret - I just couldn't.”
She looked much younger for a moment, her oval face paler than usual and the dusting of freckles on her cheeks much more noticeable and he knew she was recalling a single moment where an anticipated future had vanished for good. “I'm sorry, Maggie,” he answered, and the rest had to remain unsaid.
It was a moment and then she came back to the present. “It'd been in my mind all along that could happen, but I hadn't let myself think about it. At least he said goodbye, I really think that's what it was. That way it didn't seem....” she rummaged for a word. “Not finished,” he heard himself saying, and felt the slight ache of an old wound.
She nodded. “Well anyway, that's when it came back. The Sight, I mean. Happens once in awhile ever since, and I met some people in Atlanta later on, they helped me understand it better. But - that's not why I came to see you, to tell you all that. It's the other night, when you and David came back to the house. While you were leaving. . . I saw a man following you, right in back of you.”
He was feeling his face go hot and his hands and feet go ice cold. “Did he say anythin'?”
“No, I never do hear anything, other than Barbara when I was a kid and even that, I can't quite remember if we actually talked. But he looked like he was yelling. Not yelling like he was mad, more like you'd yell at somebody who's having a hard time hearing. Then he kinda sighed and lifted his arms up and dropped 'em.” She lifted her hands just above her head, arms bent at the elbows, followed by a motion that suggested flinging something down on the ground. “I looked over at you for a minute and when I looked back, he'd disappeared. It happens that way sometimes.”
There was no mistaking Jack's familiar gesture of frustration. “What'd he look like?”
She was no longer looking at him, seemingly studying her half-emptied coffee mug. “About as tall as you, maybe a little heavier. And younger, in his twenties I guess. Real dark hair, almost black it looked like, and these blue eyes, they looked like you could just swim in 'em.
Ennis wasn't sure what alarmed him more, that Maggie had seen Jack or that Jack had been trying to reach him and was unable to. He'd heard no whisper inside one ear, hadn't sensed Jack nearby. The room seemed to narrow until it contained only a dime-sized reflection of morning sunlight on the window that he was staring at without really seeing.
“Ennis.” Her voice had changed a little, and he looked over at her. She was leaning forward, seeming to study his face, her head tilted a little. “All this. It isn't... strange to you, is it? You have the Sight too?”
“No --” he shook his head. “Uh, not like what you're sayin'. It was just twice.”
“That man I saw - last week, I mean. That was him you saw? Those two times?”
He nodded, memories quickly crowding in of waking up, first on Brokeback and later in Duluth, and seeing Jack's impossibly youthful face looking down at him; Ennis, do you love me?.
She nodded, as if satisfied by his nonexistent answer. “Okay. I didn't come out here just to tell you about that. It's something else, and I didn't feel like it'd wait - you remember that afternoon at Grandma's when you were tellin' us about that animal you saw near the beach? Sam was gonna ask around about it. Well, he didn't come up with anything, nobody's reported even a bobcat around here lately. But he did talk to a guy who said it might be something people report seeing in the water once in awhile. People have been claiming to see it a long time. Like a hundred years or so back. It might be one of those animals you hear about that were supposed to be extinct but then a few of them turn up. And then he said the Indians around the Great Lakes might've seen it and thought it was a god."
Thinking of the day beginning behind the windows and the work to be done, Ennis was getting impatient. “Uh, Maggie, I don't see--”
“Wait,” she broke in, holding one hand up, palm out, as if she were directing traffic. “I'm getting to that. What you saw might've been what the Indians saw, it's supposed to be the spirit of the Lake. They called it Mishipeshu.”
Ennis' mind had wandered a little, as he was wondering why she would make a special trip right before an important visit home to tell him what sounded so far like a rather pointless story. The name - sounds like a sneeze - produced an instant recollection of a rocky beach, the sound of childish laughter and the sting of the water against his skin that brought his attention back like a quick slap from an icy hand.
“Yeah, it's a funny-sounding name, isn't it?” He hadn't realized that he was speaking aloud. “Mishipeshu was both good and bad; a lot of those old nature gods were like that. He brought food and fresh water, and a pretty good way to gt around. But he brought the big storms too, wait till your first winter here. And shipwrecks, and fog people get lost in. When people drowned or went out on the Lake somewhere and didn't come back, Mishipeshu took 'em, and a lot of people who die on Lake Superior, their bodies never turn up. People wanted to stay on his good side, but they didn't want him to notice them much.
“So anyway, the other night - when you were headin' out, I saw this strange-lookin' animal at the corner of the house. Looked just like you were tellin' people you saw, I'm not even sure if I was using the Sight or not. It stayed there till you drove away and then it turned and headed toward the beach and it was too dark to see it anymore. Ennis - now I'm worried about you. David said you two were going to the beach party out on the Point...”
“Worried? What's there ta be worried about?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe what I saw was just a rare animal, like that man said. But seeing your friend at the same time, trying to get your attention - Ennis, sometimes I get hunches, I guess you'd call 'em, when I see things like that. Whatever it was he wanted, I know it had something to do with my seeing that animal. I know you'll think this sounds crazy, but please - stay on the beach tomorrow. Be careful.”
“Sure.” As shaken as he was by what she'd just told him, it seemed a small matter.
“You promise?”
“Yeah, I will. But --” he glanced out the window again. “I got work I got ta get to. . . .”
“She pushed back her chair and stood up. “. . . and I told Sam I'd be back by nine o'clock. I won't keep you any longer.”
“Did you tell Doc about this?” he asked her as they walked back down to the barn.
“No, I figured you're the one your friend was tryin' to warn, it was you he was lookin' at, and I don't really have anything to go on but hunches, I guess you'd call 'em. Not that Dave wouldn't believe me, I told him about having the Sight a long time ago. It's just a few other people who know, most of 'em are in Atlanta.”
Demonstrative though she was she had never embraced him, and he found himself returning the unexpected hug she gave him before leaving. “I'm so glad you 'n' Doctor D are gettin' back together. Just don't forget what you promised.”
“I won't forget,” he assured her again and thought, as he watched her car drive away, that whatever she was worred about was of little concern compared with the other surprises her visit had given him. Staying on the beach at a beach party sounded easy enough.
Index to chapters:
Chapter 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/392.html
Chapter 2: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/523.html
Chapter 3: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/1066.htm
Chapter 4: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/1485.html
Chapter 5: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/1704.html
Chapter 6: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/2038.html
Chapter 7: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/2358.html
Chapter 8: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/2635.html
Chapter 9: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/2947.html
Chapter 10: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/3130.html
Chapter 11: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/3356.html
Chapter 12: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/3655.html
Chapter 13: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/3934.html
Chapter 14: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/4154.html
Chapter 15: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/4591.html
Chapter 16: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/4685.html
Chapter 17: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/5094.html
Chapter 18: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/5140.html
Chapter 19: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/5546.html
Chapter 20: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/6249.html
Chapter 21: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/6434.html
Chapter 22: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/6843.html
Chapter 23: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/7306.html
Chapter 24: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/7646.html
Chapter 25: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/7723.html
Summary, Chapters 1-25: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/8106.html
Chapter 26 Part 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/8417.html
Chapter 26 Part 2: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/8634.html
Chapter 27: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/8869.html
Chapter 28 Part 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/9090.html
Chapter 28, Part 2: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/9371.html
Chapter 28 Part 3: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/9498.html
Chapter 29: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/9953.html
Chapter 30: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/10733.html
Chapter 31 Part 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/10870.html
Chapter 31 Part 2: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/11153.html
Chapter 32: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/11480.html
Chapter 33: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/11931.html
Notes/Index, Chapter 33: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/12217.html
Chapter 34: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/12435.html
Index post: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/12557.html