(no subject)
WRINGING IT OUT
A BBM canon one-shot set in 1964.
The characters and original story
shamelessly ripped off here are
the creations of Annie Proulx,
to whom I am eternally grateful.
"Ennis? .... Ennis? What's takin so long?"
"--minute--"
Biting down on his hand, he shuddered out his vision of Jack against the cold porcelain, sagged, leaned his forehead against the cistern, and couldn't suppress a quiet sobbing moan.
"You okay, honey?"
He made the correct noises, tore off some paper, flushed the toilet, watched the evidence of his dark shame wash away, rinsed the scent of twisted lust from his hand. Then he flicked open the lock and walked quickly past Alma, head down.
"Gut ache is all."
Alma blinked in the bright bathroom light, dragged herself inside and sat down to pee for what felt like the hundredth time that night. Nothing happened yet again. The dull weight deep in her loins stirred and swirled and passed. By the time she crawled back into bed, Ennis had settled, his spine to her as usual, his breathing deep and slow. She wanted comfort, a soft curve to rest within, but nothing yielded in that straight back so at last she struggled over to her own side and fell again into fitful sleep.
Ennis waited, eyes squeezed shut against the darkness, until Alma's soft bubbly snores told him it was safe. Then he slowly rolled into her, hard belly against soft rounded buttocks, laid his arm across the hot swell, felt the child move against his big gentle hand.
Every night the same, every single goddamn night the same.
--I'm a man and men need release, and I can't do it with Alma, her bein so big and awkward, and it don't seem right anyway. Use my hand, I'm doing us both a favor--
--Use my hand and think of him, the long white back, the hard muscles of his ass, the place I had to come to, time and again--
--He was just a friend, we was just havin fun, hell, nineteen year olds gotta have fun, don't they? Don't mean nothin--
--But it felt so good, better'n Alma ever feels, better'n I could've imagined--
--But this is your wife, this is your child, these are the ones you care for, you love. Love your wife, love the child she carries, this is what men do--
Alma had liked his quiet ways, liked the way he didn't push her into things she didn't want to do, liked the friendly warmth of his arm around her, the uncertain bashful kisses. And later, in their marriage bed, he'd been clumsy and awkward but full of enthusiasm, almost manic in his desperate efforts until she had to tell him to slow down, stop shaking her about so much. It took but a few weeks for her to conceive and his face had lit up with happiness and something like relief when she shyly told him. He was so solicitous, so gentle with her, loving to feel the baby move, loving to lie with his ear against her belly, listening to the gurgles and muffled thumps, like a great shifting ocean in which his child swam.
And he stopped the frantic sex too, once they knew the child was on the way. He said he was concerned about hurting her, about maybe causing her to miscarry. It was so sweet of him but she missed the closeness. As the months drifted by he became less like what she thought a husband should be and more like a friend.
Until the night when she woke and found a tacky cold mess of wetness between her thighs, and squealed her disgust, and after that it seemed he carefully slept with just enough distance between them so that they didn't touch.
He was a restless sleeper, and got up at least once a night to go to the bathroom, sometimes two or three times. She worried about his kidneys. Maybe he worked out in the cold too much. She knew he often lay awake, pretending to sleep. She sensed the stiffness of his body. But the coming baby made her so tired and she always drifted off before he relaxed into real sleep. Night after night, there was always the shifting of the bed, the bathroom door, the flush, the dipping of the mattress once again, and sometimes a low, heavy sighing as he settled.
Tomorrow he would drive her over to her sister's place in Worland. The baby had been due three days ago but first babies were always late, so everyone said, and she didn't want to be over there all by herself. She wanted her man to be there at her side as they wheeled her in, to pace the floor and talk in that silly, comical way the fathers always did on the TV comedies. Not that Ennis was ever like those men but maybe he would be when the time came. And she wanted him to come shyly into the room, hiding behind a bunch of flowers, and peering around to look at her and their baby, and tell her what a clever girl she'd been and how the kid looked like ... well, it didn't matter really.
And mostly she wanted him to take her into his arms when her six weeks was up, and gently make love to her. Because this time he would be gentle, and attentive, and strong...
Her guts twinged again, her back ached in sympathy. It passed: she slept.
She dreamed of swimming in a warm sea, just as her baby swam inside her body; she dreamed the waves tugged her this way and that, bore her up, dropped her down; she dreamed of things she had never experienced, the mystic swell of the ocean, the salt wind, no, not that, it was the heady scent of spring, heavy air and the smell of sex.
Her alarmed cry woke Ennis even as the drenching wetness soaked his pyjamas.
"Ennis! Ennis! Ohhh! I've wet the bed! I've wet the bed!"
He was up in a flash, pulling back the blankets, ducking his head and sniffing the pool of moisture that lapped at them both.
"Ain't piss, it's yer waters broke." Three lines appeared between his brows, as if furrowed by a fork. In the dim light from the bedside lamp he could see Alma's eyes, wide and childlike. "You got any other signs?"
"No, I...oh, just some..." She waved her hand across her belly. "And my back aches. I guess---"
Her words disappeared under a rising wail and his arms were around her in an instant, his soothing voice easing her through. No matter that they were the words he'd use to a birthing cow, Come on there, you good girl, easy does it. Fluid gushed again between her legs.
The alarm, clock read 2.17. Everyone on the ranch would be asleep after a week's work or passed out after a night's drinking. It was but a quarter-mile sprint to the ranch-house, use the office phone, was the office locked of a night? He didn't know, figured maybe he'd have to wake the boss, call old Doc Henry. Could stitch up a busted cowboy, probably stitch up a torn woman if she needed it.
“I'll go get the doc, you be okay for a while, yeah?”
“No! No! Don't leave me!” And her fingers tore at his arm as the rippling cramps spread upwards and her belly tightened under his cautious touch.
“Okay, okay. Look, gotta wash my hands. Don't you go nowhere.” He ruffled her hair and forced a goofy smile.
Hot water, plain soap and a good, long scrubbing soon had his hands acceptable; strong, hands, capable hands, hands ready to bring his baby into the world, straight hands. He didn't glance towards the toilet on his way out.
Alma had rolled herself over, found some comfort in being crouched on all fours, head on the pile of pillows, not caring a fig if her backside caught the night breezes, if her husband saw that bit of her which she'd rather keep private, the dirty part, the bit that was no-one's business but hers.
Ennis grunted approval. That was the angle he viewed all his other birthing girls from, and no tail to move out of the way either. His fingers probed gently and met hard resistance.
“Be here soon. You feel like pushin?”
She did. She pushed and groaned and yelled and rested and started again for a good fifteen minutes, and all the while her man soothed and petted and murmured, good girl, you good girl, nearly there, my good girl, and watched the circle of flesh widen and swell out, the tiny dark head surge and recede, until with one last mighty grunt Alma pushed the baby, hot, wet and slippery, into its daddy's waiting hands. A little girl. Right that moment he wouldn't have cared either way, just so long as he could hold his baby, his own kid, his family.
“Hello, Junior,” he cooed softly.
* * * *
An ice circle ringed the low moon, and each star sparkled like diamond in the chill air. Just like the nights on Brokeback, way above the world. From the darkness of his kitchen, he could look out across the open range to the unseen mountains beyond, mountains he'd tried not to think about, memories he'd tried to bury deep inside, where no-one was ever going to find them. Just kids letting off steam, just guys fooling around, making the long, dull days more bearable. That's all it had been, all it had ever been.
Tucked beneath his chin, his firstborn child rubbed her warm, peachfuzz head against his stubble. Only a handful of days old and already little Alma Junior was her own person with her own favorite moments. So what if he had to be up at dawn; he didn't mind the last ritual of the night, just him and this tiny scrap of life, quiet and peaceful together.
He patted her back, bounced a little on the balls of his bare feet, until his baby erupted forth a gurgling burp and spat up some milk onto his undershirt.
“There you go, that's my girl. Now we better get you back to your bed.”
Yet he made no move to go, just stayed looking out at the moonlit ranch and those distant mountains. His daughter mewled, stretched and wriggled, and found her perfect place against her daddy's chest, his steady heartbeat soothing her like a lullaby. Ennis rocked back and forth, willing the baby's eyes to close, half-hummed half-whispered a song from long ago, hush, little baby, don't say a word, papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird, his raspy voice soft and tender, rising and falling and going around the verses one more time and one more time and one more time, until the feather weight over his heart told him his child was fast asleep.
“Time to hit the hay, little darlin.”
His breath puffed up the silky hair as he returned the little bundle to her cane cradle in the corner of their bedroom, gently tucked her in, lingered a while to watch her in the moonglow. In the days since her birth, each separation of a few yards, a few minutes, had tugged at his guts as if a ghostly cord connected father and daughter, one to the other, over time and space. Won't never let you down, won't never leave you, always be here for you..... But there was work to be done in the morning if he wanted to keep on making a home for his new little family; couldn't be spending the night this way, lost in love. He straightened up and the cane creaked against his hip.
“Sssleep?” Alma mumbled through her pillow. Her new-mother scent hung in the air, filled Ennis's nostrils, wrapped him in its righteousness.
“Just takin out this diaper,” he whispered back, although his wife's breathing was already slipping into the heaviness of sleep. In the bathroom he rinsed off the sharp-smelling baby shit and dunked the diaper in a bucket, next to the one which held Alma's soaking rags. Blood and shit, the story of his life.
The room was cold, too cold to be hanging around in for no good reason when a man had a warm bed to climb into, too cold to explain the sudden heat which flared in his loins. He eased the door lock across, switched off the light, then slowly, reluctantly, took himself in hand as forbidden images rose up once again in his mind.
But this time it wasn't the familiar curve of a pale body in the firelight's glow, or the memory of two kids snorting and laughing and rolling and wrestling, their horseplay which, by silent agreement, always ended up the same way. No, this time it was that face, the face he'd tried not to look at on that last day, marked and branded by his own fist; this time it wasn't laughter but his own stilted words, See you around, I guess; and the great hollowness growing inside him, even though they'd shared a silent, uncomfortable meal just a few hours before; and the final wrenching gut pains that had him kneeling and retching and shivering and shaking, and lost and lonely and helpless and abandoned, long after the physical pain had passed and the innards had settled.
Jesus H., Jack, he whispered towards those distant mountains, I should a never let you outta my sights.
A BBM canon one-shot set in 1964.
The characters and original story
shamelessly ripped off here are
the creations of Annie Proulx,
to whom I am eternally grateful.
"Ennis? .... Ennis? What's takin so long?"
"--minute--"
Biting down on his hand, he shuddered out his vision of Jack against the cold porcelain, sagged, leaned his forehead against the cistern, and couldn't suppress a quiet sobbing moan.
"You okay, honey?"
He made the correct noises, tore off some paper, flushed the toilet, watched the evidence of his dark shame wash away, rinsed the scent of twisted lust from his hand. Then he flicked open the lock and walked quickly past Alma, head down.
"Gut ache is all."
Alma blinked in the bright bathroom light, dragged herself inside and sat down to pee for what felt like the hundredth time that night. Nothing happened yet again. The dull weight deep in her loins stirred and swirled and passed. By the time she crawled back into bed, Ennis had settled, his spine to her as usual, his breathing deep and slow. She wanted comfort, a soft curve to rest within, but nothing yielded in that straight back so at last she struggled over to her own side and fell again into fitful sleep.
Ennis waited, eyes squeezed shut against the darkness, until Alma's soft bubbly snores told him it was safe. Then he slowly rolled into her, hard belly against soft rounded buttocks, laid his arm across the hot swell, felt the child move against his big gentle hand.
Every night the same, every single goddamn night the same.
--I'm a man and men need release, and I can't do it with Alma, her bein so big and awkward, and it don't seem right anyway. Use my hand, I'm doing us both a favor--
--Use my hand and think of him, the long white back, the hard muscles of his ass, the place I had to come to, time and again--
--He was just a friend, we was just havin fun, hell, nineteen year olds gotta have fun, don't they? Don't mean nothin--
--But it felt so good, better'n Alma ever feels, better'n I could've imagined--
--But this is your wife, this is your child, these are the ones you care for, you love. Love your wife, love the child she carries, this is what men do--
Alma had liked his quiet ways, liked the way he didn't push her into things she didn't want to do, liked the friendly warmth of his arm around her, the uncertain bashful kisses. And later, in their marriage bed, he'd been clumsy and awkward but full of enthusiasm, almost manic in his desperate efforts until she had to tell him to slow down, stop shaking her about so much. It took but a few weeks for her to conceive and his face had lit up with happiness and something like relief when she shyly told him. He was so solicitous, so gentle with her, loving to feel the baby move, loving to lie with his ear against her belly, listening to the gurgles and muffled thumps, like a great shifting ocean in which his child swam.
And he stopped the frantic sex too, once they knew the child was on the way. He said he was concerned about hurting her, about maybe causing her to miscarry. It was so sweet of him but she missed the closeness. As the months drifted by he became less like what she thought a husband should be and more like a friend.
Until the night when she woke and found a tacky cold mess of wetness between her thighs, and squealed her disgust, and after that it seemed he carefully slept with just enough distance between them so that they didn't touch.
He was a restless sleeper, and got up at least once a night to go to the bathroom, sometimes two or three times. She worried about his kidneys. Maybe he worked out in the cold too much. She knew he often lay awake, pretending to sleep. She sensed the stiffness of his body. But the coming baby made her so tired and she always drifted off before he relaxed into real sleep. Night after night, there was always the shifting of the bed, the bathroom door, the flush, the dipping of the mattress once again, and sometimes a low, heavy sighing as he settled.
Tomorrow he would drive her over to her sister's place in Worland. The baby had been due three days ago but first babies were always late, so everyone said, and she didn't want to be over there all by herself. She wanted her man to be there at her side as they wheeled her in, to pace the floor and talk in that silly, comical way the fathers always did on the TV comedies. Not that Ennis was ever like those men but maybe he would be when the time came. And she wanted him to come shyly into the room, hiding behind a bunch of flowers, and peering around to look at her and their baby, and tell her what a clever girl she'd been and how the kid looked like ... well, it didn't matter really.
And mostly she wanted him to take her into his arms when her six weeks was up, and gently make love to her. Because this time he would be gentle, and attentive, and strong...
Her guts twinged again, her back ached in sympathy. It passed: she slept.
She dreamed of swimming in a warm sea, just as her baby swam inside her body; she dreamed the waves tugged her this way and that, bore her up, dropped her down; she dreamed of things she had never experienced, the mystic swell of the ocean, the salt wind, no, not that, it was the heady scent of spring, heavy air and the smell of sex.
Her alarmed cry woke Ennis even as the drenching wetness soaked his pyjamas.
"Ennis! Ennis! Ohhh! I've wet the bed! I've wet the bed!"
He was up in a flash, pulling back the blankets, ducking his head and sniffing the pool of moisture that lapped at them both.
"Ain't piss, it's yer waters broke." Three lines appeared between his brows, as if furrowed by a fork. In the dim light from the bedside lamp he could see Alma's eyes, wide and childlike. "You got any other signs?"
"No, I...oh, just some..." She waved her hand across her belly. "And my back aches. I guess---"
Her words disappeared under a rising wail and his arms were around her in an instant, his soothing voice easing her through. No matter that they were the words he'd use to a birthing cow, Come on there, you good girl, easy does it. Fluid gushed again between her legs.
The alarm, clock read 2.17. Everyone on the ranch would be asleep after a week's work or passed out after a night's drinking. It was but a quarter-mile sprint to the ranch-house, use the office phone, was the office locked of a night? He didn't know, figured maybe he'd have to wake the boss, call old Doc Henry. Could stitch up a busted cowboy, probably stitch up a torn woman if she needed it.
“I'll go get the doc, you be okay for a while, yeah?”
“No! No! Don't leave me!” And her fingers tore at his arm as the rippling cramps spread upwards and her belly tightened under his cautious touch.
“Okay, okay. Look, gotta wash my hands. Don't you go nowhere.” He ruffled her hair and forced a goofy smile.
Hot water, plain soap and a good, long scrubbing soon had his hands acceptable; strong, hands, capable hands, hands ready to bring his baby into the world, straight hands. He didn't glance towards the toilet on his way out.
Alma had rolled herself over, found some comfort in being crouched on all fours, head on the pile of pillows, not caring a fig if her backside caught the night breezes, if her husband saw that bit of her which she'd rather keep private, the dirty part, the bit that was no-one's business but hers.
Ennis grunted approval. That was the angle he viewed all his other birthing girls from, and no tail to move out of the way either. His fingers probed gently and met hard resistance.
“Be here soon. You feel like pushin?”
She did. She pushed and groaned and yelled and rested and started again for a good fifteen minutes, and all the while her man soothed and petted and murmured, good girl, you good girl, nearly there, my good girl, and watched the circle of flesh widen and swell out, the tiny dark head surge and recede, until with one last mighty grunt Alma pushed the baby, hot, wet and slippery, into its daddy's waiting hands. A little girl. Right that moment he wouldn't have cared either way, just so long as he could hold his baby, his own kid, his family.
“Hello, Junior,” he cooed softly.
* * * *
An ice circle ringed the low moon, and each star sparkled like diamond in the chill air. Just like the nights on Brokeback, way above the world. From the darkness of his kitchen, he could look out across the open range to the unseen mountains beyond, mountains he'd tried not to think about, memories he'd tried to bury deep inside, where no-one was ever going to find them. Just kids letting off steam, just guys fooling around, making the long, dull days more bearable. That's all it had been, all it had ever been.
Tucked beneath his chin, his firstborn child rubbed her warm, peachfuzz head against his stubble. Only a handful of days old and already little Alma Junior was her own person with her own favorite moments. So what if he had to be up at dawn; he didn't mind the last ritual of the night, just him and this tiny scrap of life, quiet and peaceful together.
He patted her back, bounced a little on the balls of his bare feet, until his baby erupted forth a gurgling burp and spat up some milk onto his undershirt.
“There you go, that's my girl. Now we better get you back to your bed.”
Yet he made no move to go, just stayed looking out at the moonlit ranch and those distant mountains. His daughter mewled, stretched and wriggled, and found her perfect place against her daddy's chest, his steady heartbeat soothing her like a lullaby. Ennis rocked back and forth, willing the baby's eyes to close, half-hummed half-whispered a song from long ago, hush, little baby, don't say a word, papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird, his raspy voice soft and tender, rising and falling and going around the verses one more time and one more time and one more time, until the feather weight over his heart told him his child was fast asleep.
“Time to hit the hay, little darlin.”
His breath puffed up the silky hair as he returned the little bundle to her cane cradle in the corner of their bedroom, gently tucked her in, lingered a while to watch her in the moonglow. In the days since her birth, each separation of a few yards, a few minutes, had tugged at his guts as if a ghostly cord connected father and daughter, one to the other, over time and space. Won't never let you down, won't never leave you, always be here for you..... But there was work to be done in the morning if he wanted to keep on making a home for his new little family; couldn't be spending the night this way, lost in love. He straightened up and the cane creaked against his hip.
“Sssleep?” Alma mumbled through her pillow. Her new-mother scent hung in the air, filled Ennis's nostrils, wrapped him in its righteousness.
“Just takin out this diaper,” he whispered back, although his wife's breathing was already slipping into the heaviness of sleep. In the bathroom he rinsed off the sharp-smelling baby shit and dunked the diaper in a bucket, next to the one which held Alma's soaking rags. Blood and shit, the story of his life.
The room was cold, too cold to be hanging around in for no good reason when a man had a warm bed to climb into, too cold to explain the sudden heat which flared in his loins. He eased the door lock across, switched off the light, then slowly, reluctantly, took himself in hand as forbidden images rose up once again in his mind.
But this time it wasn't the familiar curve of a pale body in the firelight's glow, or the memory of two kids snorting and laughing and rolling and wrestling, their horseplay which, by silent agreement, always ended up the same way. No, this time it was that face, the face he'd tried not to look at on that last day, marked and branded by his own fist; this time it wasn't laughter but his own stilted words, See you around, I guess; and the great hollowness growing inside him, even though they'd shared a silent, uncomfortable meal just a few hours before; and the final wrenching gut pains that had him kneeling and retching and shivering and shaking, and lost and lonely and helpless and abandoned, long after the physical pain had passed and the innards had settled.
Jesus H., Jack, he whispered towards those distant mountains, I should a never let you outta my sights.