(no subject)
Part 2: Wedding Night
Previous Chapters:
Chapter 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/392.html
Chapter 2: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/523.html
Chapter 3: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/1066.html
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
David had taken to calling Ennis every few weeks. As with most of Ennis’ rare telephone conversations, they were somewhat one-sided but he had gone from tolerating the calls to looking forward to them, another slight shift on the borders of his enclosed world.
In early September, he listened to the now-familiar voice telling about his first visit back to Georgia since moving to Duluth. Gramma Alex had died unexpectedly. "The way she’d have wanted it," David said, his voice sounding fatigued. "She had a stroke, lingered in the hospital for a few days. I thanked Aunt Carol for bringing her to the wedding, that was the last time I saw her. Saw a lot of her when I was growing up, and I’d missed her since I moved North."
"Sorry to hear ‘bout that," Ennis answered. "I just met her at the wedding but she was a nice lady."
"Yeah, she was my favorite relative, I wish I could’ve got there in time to say goodbye. But it might not’ve made any difference. The last day, they thought she was conscious but she just kept talking to herself, thought her son Kevin was there. I never met him, he died a long time ago."
Ennis recalled the sweet, artless voice, telling him about her family. "She mentioned him when we were talkin’ at the wedding," he ventured. "He was killed in Korea. She said she still thought of him as a young man."
"That so?" David was silent a few moments. "You think maybe she was talkin’ to him? Lotta my relatives at the funeral, they thought she just wasn’t in her right mind but I’d like to think she was. You believe in somethin’ more after you die?"
Ennis thought of Jack’s hand in his at the wedding. "Yeah I do, but who knows how it works. Not much way for us ta tell. Huh?"
"I was raised Presbyterian," David said, "they were all about Heaven ‘n Hell and who was going there and who wasn’t."
"Yeah I was taught that too."
"But it doesn’t make any sense. You could be the most mean, evil bastard in the world and you win the big prize after you go ‘cause you believed the right stuff about somethin’ that happened back in the Roman Empire? And what would you do in Heaven all day anyway?"
Ennis tried to recall his unmemorable Sunday School mornings. "Well, yer supposed ta be spendin’ all your time praisin’ God. That’s what they said anyway."
"Yeah, that’s what they taught us, too. But what sorta afterlife is that? Sounds to me like spendin’ eternity going to church. Would ya really want to spend eternity going to church?"
"Don’t sound like much ta look forward to."
"I have an old school friend, Maggie - she believes in reincarnation," David ventured. "Pretty convinced of it. Never have figured out if I believe that or not, but I gotta say it makes more sense than what we were taught."
"Isn’t that where you come back as a bird, or a cow or somethin’?"
"No, that’s somethin’ else. It’s when you keep gettin’ reborn in another body. People talk about coming back as other people, having a bunch of different lives, but Maggie says it’s all one life, just different times ‘n’ places. I never have decided whether she’s right, but I’d sure rather think of meetin’ Gramma Alex again lookin’ like somebody else than her spending eternity sittin’ around kissin’ some god’s butt and listening to harp music. She’d hate that."
It had been awhile since Ennis had been curious about anyone else’s life. He wondered about the woman David had just mentioned, if David liked both women and men but instead he just asked, "David, uh, how’d ya move to Minnesota? Didn’t like Georgia any more?"
David’s voice suddenly sounded cautious and strained. "Well, I went through a bad time, someone died… Maggie came down to visit me in Atlanta during that time, she lived there a few years but then moved back to Minnesota. Not her hometown though, she’s from a little place in the farm country, Madelia. I told her I was thinking of moving but hadn’t made any decision yet. And she offered me a place to stay in Duluth while I looked around, decided what I wanted to do. I slept on her couch for a month or so, finally wound up buying a share of a house she found that had got turned into two apartments. So she’s still a close neighbor." Nathan died, but without trying to understand it, Ennis knew not to ask about that at the moment. Even just listening to a voice over the phone he could feel a kinship with what he heard in David’s voice, something like a partially-healed wound just liberated from bandages.
"Curt’s home for the week," Junior had told him earlier that day. "He threw his left arm out of joint, can’t hardly move it. Are you comin’ to dinner tonight? Jenny’ll be there." But when he pulled up at the curb, Ennis was surprised to see that Alma was there as well. The table in the undersized dining area was already set and the house fragrant with the aromas of roast chicken and chocolate brownies, and he could hear Alma’s voice in the kitchen.
"Monroe’s working late tonight and Aunt Sue said she’d stay with the kids. I told her she might as well eat with us, it can be a family dinner." There was something anxious and slightly pleading in Junior’s voice. "That’s fine, darlin’," he answered quickly, knowing she was remembering the aftermath of that Thanksgiving dinner, seven years back now but that holiday would never be a good memory. In a way, Alma Junior and Jenny had not grown up with a real family in the way they deserved to, however clear it might be that both their parents loved them. Junior smiled with obvious relief, as Jenny came out of the kitchen with a serving bowl in one hand and a pitcher of tea in the other. "We’re almost ready, Daddy," she said, "don’t you or Curt wander off anywhere."
Curt was already sitting at the head of the table and Ennis took a seat one chair down. "How’s it goin’, Curt? Heard ya hurt your arm."
"Yeah, hard ta move it." Curt looked tired and slightly tense, but as always there was an earnest, stolid quality about him that reminded Ennis of K.E. "Say, I wanna ask ya about something, Mr. del -"
"Ennis."
"Ennis, okay. Junior and me have been havin’ it out about my bein’ away so much. It ain’t any different from before we got married, that didn’t seem ta bother her, but it does now. And I’m gettin’ tired of all this driving, think we oughta make some kinda change? Her mama’s startin’ ta ask me a lot about gettin’ another job."
Ennis felt like he was handling a pot of boiling water that could spill on him at any minute. "Well, I’m not gonna tell you where ta work," he answered cautiously. "But yeah, it’s different now you and Alma Junior are married. She’s tryin’ to make a home for ya, and I guess kids sooner or later. That ain’t somethin’ you can do part time." Curt might not get the irony, he thought wryly, but he might hear from Junior directly how much his father-in-law knew about that.
Jenny was pouring ice tea into glasses while Alma and Junior brought out the rest of the food. "The place looks so nice, Daddy," she said, "Junior says you helped her with painting it." "Not much," Ennis answered. "Just keep her company when she goes shoppin’ in Casper."
Talk flew around the table about Curt’s visit to the doctor, Alma’s new substitute-teaching job and how well it was working out with 6-year-old Todd starting first grade this year; the details of Junior’s decorating project. "Hey Curt," Jenny said with what sounded like rehearsed casualness, "I talked to Luanne on the phone day before yesterday."
"Yeah?" How’s she doin’?"
"One o’ her roommate’s movin’ out, late October," Jenny began, and Alma finished for her: "and she told Jenny she was lookin’ for a new roommate. Now Jenny wants to move to Denver." Her tone almost, though not quite, suggested that she was speaking of an imminent disaster.
"Oh Mama. I wanted to be the one ta tell everybody!"
"That so, Jenny? You’re movin’ down to Denver?" Junior’s face lit up. "Hey, that sounds exciting! We’ll have to start makin’ lists and help you move--"
"Don’t encourage her," Alma snapped. "Casper, or Cheyenne, I wouldn’t mind, but Denver? It’s a big city! And you know how things are nowadays, all those nuts runnin’ around -- Jenny’s just a young girl."
"I’m not a young girl anymore, Mama." Jenny’s mouth was clenched stubbornly, and Ennis suddenly saw a resemblance to his sister that he hadn’t seen before. "I’m 18 now. Daddy, what do you think? I’m tired of Riverton, and I’d already have a place to stay, and with family too."
Ennis knew that everyone was looking at him, waiting for his fatherly verdict but he kept his eyes on Jenny; not wanting to disappoint her but not wanting to cross Alma either. "Luanne, she don’t need ya to move in right away?"
"No, Daddy. Carolyn’s got another month there and she put up a deposit that Luanne and the other girl are keepin’, they’ll put it toward the rent."
"Well - why not take that time to decide, huh? Go down there for a weekend or two, sleep on their sofa or somethin’, see how you like it."
Jenny beamed at him, and he caught Alma’s exasperated look. When he left a few hours later, he wasn’t surprised at her following him out to the truck. "Why couldn’t you take my side, Ennis? You like the idea of her goin’ to live in a city that size, and she’s never lived anyplace outside Riverton?"
"Hell no, Alma. But this way maybe she’ll change her mind, and we can check out the place. An’ since she’s 18, we can’t stop her. I still think of her as my little girl, you do too, but she ain’t never gonna think of herself that way again."
"I don’t know how you got so smart," was Alma’s only response. But to his surprise she smiled at him slightly and he knew that somehow a truce had been struck between them.
Just as Ennis reached the door of his trailer, he heard the door of another trailer nearby slam. "Ennis!" he looked up to see Tanya, a young woman who had moved here a few months ago with her two young children after she and her husband had divorced. He had generally avoided her as she seemed a little too friendly, often showing up to borrow a few scoops of coffee or ask for a ride into town. He didn’t object to helping out a neighbor, but he had no interest in repeating the pointless and sad experience with Cassie. Tonight, however, Tanya had something of interest. "This came for you yesterday," she said, holding out a small envelope. "That mailman, he keeps getting number 12 and number 17 mixed up."
Ennis didn’t need to look at the return address. He recognized the careful, slightly blocky handwriting from the Christmas and Easter cards he’d received. But this one, he noticed as he took the envelope from Tanya’s hand, was too pliable to be another card. After locking the door of his tiny refuge behind him, he fetched a beer out of the refrigerator before opening the letter.
Dear Ennis,
I hope everything is all right with you, and that you and all your family are well. I have thought of you so many times since you came up to Lightning Flat last year to see us. It was such a comfort to have someone visit us who loved my son Jack as much as I know you did.
I had recognized your name when you wrote to us, because Jack mentioned you so often. When I sent you up to his room, I hoped you would come downstairs with those two shirts I’d seen hanging in back of his closet for so many years. I’d always known that one of them belonged to the one he loved best of everyone in the world, and your visit was an answer to a prayer that this man would come for them.
I now have a favor to ask you. My Husband passed away last month, and as I do not want to live here alone, I will be moving to Oregon shortly to live near my sister. You had said that you would be willing to carry out Jack’s wishes and scatter his ashes on Brokeback Mountain like he had wanted. It would be such a comfort to me to know that his last resting place is that special one that meant so much to him and to you as well.
Please know that you are and will be in my prayers every day. I do hope to see you soon.
-- Helen Twist