Chapter 31 - Part 1
Chapters 31 and 32: Ennis faces some hard realities about coming out; Jack helps him reconsider a bad decision.
“We'll have to go car shopping,” David said.
“Hunh?” David was leaning against the door jam of the bathroom, where Ennis was squinting into the mirror while combing his hair. He thought he somewhat needed a haircut, but there wasn't time for that now.
“Get you a vehicle. We could probably carpool but that'd be a hassle after awhile and they might want you to run errands too. Wouldn't work for you to be there without a truck. Or a car at least.”
“Yeah, well, I don't have the job yet.” Ennis straightened the bolo tie on his best shirt.
“But you will. What'd they not hire ya for? Takin care of horses, teachin people to ride - and you've been workin with horses on ranches all along.”
Sam had kept his promise to look into horse rentals, and had described a job opportunity with his usual terseness. “People I was tellin about don't rent horses it turns out,” he'd said on the phone. “They've been boarding 'em, leasing a few. It's an old place, plenty of extra room in the barns and now they've bought some stock to start up a breeding operation. Nothin big, still just a family business. They bought some extra riding horses too and they're lookin for somebody to give riding classes. And just help out with the rest since they've got more stock now.”
Maggie had been a better source of details about Ennis' prospective employers, Jerry and Rachel Corkran, and the Corstaff Horse Ranch; mostly mined from the inexhaustible lode of gossip and local lore at Grandma's. “Oh, it's such a romantic story!” she'd said over breakfast a few days before. “The Staffords bought the place sometime around 1890, 1900 and started raising horses right before Tom Stafford, that's the wife's father, was born, that was sometime in the 19-teens. Jerry started working for Tom when he was 17, the mother'd died years before that but there was a daughter, Rachel, she was 7 at the time.
“Jerry taught Rachel to ride, how to take care of her horse, and everybody knew she had a big crush on him. Nobody took it seriously, young as she was, and when Jerry was 20 he got drafted. That was in the 1950s, peacetime draft and he got sent out to a base in California. Everybody'd wondered already why he'd kept workin for the Staffords after high school, never even looked for another job and when he left for the Army Tom Stafford told him, you're welcome back anytime but no one figured they'd see him again. But two years later, here he is, back again for his old job. Rachel was 12 years old by then, and three years later Jerry drops a bomb on the old man: he wanted to marry her when she was 18.
“Well, of course Tom freaks out, orders him off the place, and then asks Rachel if Jerry ever put the moves on her. No, she says, and what's more she'd already agreed to marry him. Jerry was the only guy she'd ever wanted. Tom didn't believe that at first but what could he do? His wife died when Rachel was a baby, he didn't have any other kids or any other family he was close to other than a few cousins in Virginia. Rachel was about all he had and once she was 18 he couldn't stop her. So he calls Jerry, asks him to come back over and asks one favor of the two of them, that they wait till Rachel is 21. And they did. Had their wedding in the garden behind the house. That was back in 1968, and they've been married ever since.”
“So,” David had asked, “Tom left the place to Jerry and Rachel?”
“Oh, no. Well, he will, I guess but he's still around. Ennis, you'd be workin with Jerry, not Tom - he had a series of strokes five, six years ago. Still lives there, though.”
Driving up Rice Lake Road toward the northeast, Ennis was rather relieved to get away. It was a brief escape from the slight tension that had developed between him and David in the past week.
It hadn't been present during the delayed weekend after Ennis' return from Andrea's, when they'd even eaten their meals in bed. He'd luxuriated in the smell of their bodies on the sheets, the intervals where both of them dozed off and he'd awakened to see David next to him, the feeling of being in their own secure world where everything was possible and nothing other than cruelty, was forbidden.
They'd dozed from time to time, and after waking ate improvised meals of sandwiches, canned soup and frozen pizza, washing the food down with beer and small tumblers of wine, with the sheets and blankets flung around the edge of the bed or twisted into long knots around them. They'd explored each others' bodies lazily, Ennis sitting up with outstretched legs and David sitting between them, his own legs clasped loosely around Ennis' waist with their cocks nestled against each other. “You've got such long legs!” David had said. “How do ya balance on 'em?” David was still occasionally anxious when, after several couplings, he lagged behind Ennis somewhat. But his anxiety gradually faded after a few delays that were only slight; and even occasionally demonstrated a kind of elegant perversity that shocked and amused Ennis in almost equal measure.
At one point he'd just gotten his breath back, luxuriating in the feel of David's hands lightly wiping the ooze from his dick and belly, when he opened his eyes to see the other man rubbing it across his cheekbones and down his neck. “What the hell 're you doin?” “It's great for your skin,” David explained serenely. “Let it dry, wash it off with warm water, your skin feels like velvet for awhile.” After David's return from the bathroom Ennis had tested this with his lips and fingertips and couldn't dispute it, but “I never heard a anybody tryin that.”
“Yeah, well, you weren't in Atlanta during the '70s.”
But things had changed as soon as they went back to work together. It was nothing that Ennis could have identified for sure; as subtle as a change of light when a tiny impertinent cloud moved in front of the sun. He hadn't given a thought previously to their arriving at work together and Kelly and Jonathan greeted them as usual but now he imagined that he heard a certain artificiality in their friendliness, and even that he saw them exchange quick glances from time to time.
Certainly David didn't give them any clues as to their changeover from host and house guest to lovers. If anything, Ennis saw less of him, helping Kelly and Jonathan with customers and stock while David went over the work space in back with Jeff, the two of them calculating what equipment would go where and whether any rewiring was needed. Vic called regularly for updates, and Andrea showed up with drafts of contracts to look over. She'd thanked Ennis again for his help Saturday morning, “and I'm so glad you got to visit with Jonathan. That collection of his, what's left of it since he left home, he hadn't had anybody to show it to.” “Glad ta do it,” was all Ennis said; but he was recalling the conversation in the van: guys like you and Dave...”. For his part, Jonathan had same fey mannerisms and flippant, ironic humor as before; although now he seemed a little more eager to seek Ennis' advice and help him with unfamiliar work, and less inclined to tease him. But somehow his references to David as “your cousin”, which had only annoyed Ennis previously, now caused a little stab of anxiety.
The slight tension, acknowledged by neither man but felt by both, followed them home. Ennis knew that the problem was his own and not of David's making, and that caused a defensive impatience with things he'd quickly gotten used to. David's attention to comforts, both Ennis' and his own - making fresh coffee when the old sat on a burner long enough to get bitter, offering him dry socks when he'd been out walking on the beach - seemed smothering and overdone.
He missed the uncluttered quiet of his room at the top of the house, roomier and more comfortable though the bed in David's room was, but since the change in their relationship the weekend before he felt obligated to sleep there. Not that this was a burden; but he felt he no longer knew what was expected of him and the occasional silences between them were no longer quite as companionable as they had been. He knew that David felt the change and was puzzled by it, but had no answer or explanation to give him.
By the time he turned off Rice Lake Road and then onto a country lane that was paved in spots and gravel in others, he was in a truly rural setting for the first time since he'd left Wyoming. The air was a little more dry this far from the Lake but it had rained briefly that morning; and the breeze blowing through the open car window smelled of warm earth, the slightly astringent smell of leaves and a hint of resin from the evergreens. Spring had already exited and Duluth's brief summer had arrived. Ennis inhaled the scents with quiet enjoyment and his anxiety about David moved slightly off to one side, like an item stored on a shelf but in clear sight and within easy reach.
Ennis turned into a long gravel drive that led through what seemed to be half forest and half garden. He spotted what looked like a tiny rock-lined pond with a decorative bench with a view of artfully haphazard patches of flowers in the cleared sunny places here and there, and glimpsed a small back yard with flowers confined to neat beds.
David had encouraged him to wear his cowboy hat, boots and bolo tie to meet his prospective employer: “the full cowboy megilla”, as he put it. Ennis had no idea what a megilla was; but an intuition told him it was a good idea. But now, when he drove by the two-story house he wondered if this had been a mistake. It was made of brick whose muted colors and dark patches here and there indicated age, with slight arches over the tall, somewhat narrow windows and a glass fanlight over the front door, whose position in the center of the house added to its squarish look. In reality it was slightly smaller than David and Maggie's beach house, but in Ennis' imagination it appeared somewhat larger than it was and had an intimidatingly formal look. The house's very simplicity added to an air of serene permanence, an aura of proprietorship; as if its dominion of everything around it was so indisputable as to be not worth mentioning.
Ennis saw no one at the house and continued down the driveway. It curved to the left and sloped down to a wooden bridge over a small creek; and then the woods opened up on his left to form the tree-lined end of a long, narrow pasture. The creek meandered down to another treeline on the far side, where it joined another to make the small river that formed the pasture's longest boundary. The low rocky ridge he'd just descended continued next to the driveway and beside the two horse barns at its foot.
He parked in front of the first and larger barn, which was old but well-kept with no loose boards or peeling white paint to be seen. About a dozen horses were nearby in the pasture, and Ennis leaned over the gate to get a better look at them. Quarter horses, he could tell, though these were slightly taller than the stock horses he was used to. He looked at the broad green thoroughfare with its borders of trees, inhaled the fragrance of fresh grass, listened to the faint watery whisper of the nearby stream and savored the warm patch of sunlight that seemed to have settled on the back of his shoulders; and for the moment was utterly content.
“You must be Ennis del Mar.”
He turned and saw a stocky, bandy-legged man who wouldn't have looked out of place in a steel mill or working on the waterfront of Duluth's harbor. He saw a broad face and sun-faded hazel eyes underneath a straw hat broad-brimmed enough to resemble a sombrero; a habit, he later learned, acquired after a bout with skin cancer.
“Yessir, I heard you're lookin for some help.”
“Not 'sir'. Jerry Corkran, just Jerry'll do.”
They shook hands, a quick, straightforward handclasp. Jerry asked Ennis several questions, though not as many as he'd expected. He nodded after each answer, and had an odd habit of pausing on the uptake before moving his head downward as if mentally looking at Ennis' answer from every angle and finding it satisfactory. “Sam said you worked on ranches - out in Wyoming, was it?”
“Yeah, all my life, my dad was a rancher. Worked cattle ranches mostly but I spent a lot a time on a horse, all day sometimes.
“What about breeding? Ever help with foalin?”
“Some a that. Birthed a lot a calves.”
Again the nod. “I'll still be managing the breedin, but I'll need your help with it here and there, mostly when they get ready to foal. I generally stay with the mares overnight in case somethin goes wrong, up till now m' wife Rachel's been spellin me but there'll be more nights like that now we're startin up as a breeding operation.. Before it was just a few foals every year or two. What about teachin riding?”
“Taught both my daughters ta ride. One a the places I worked, the foreman had two kids comin up and he had me teach them too.”
Jerry gave him a quick tour, starting with the first barn and its office and tack room; all stamped with the symmetrical orderliness that he'd noticed more than once since arriving in Minnesota. Most of the stalls were empty. “We keep the boarders and the lease horses in here,” Jerry explained. Most of 'em are further down the pasture, I have a high school kid come in afternoons to muck out the stalls. You won't be doin much of that, just check behind him to make sure it's done.”
Behind the second barn where the breeding horses were kept was a paddock currently occupied by three mares and foals who looked to be only a few weeks old. In the two box stalls at the end, guarded by an amiable Dalmatian who sniffed Ennis' feet and decided he was acceptable, were a bay mare and a stallion of a color he had never seen before. Technically the horse was a chestnut, one color all over; a deep mahogany with a deep red undertone that reminded him of the dry red wine that David often drank with dinner. At the sight of a stranger he swung his head up and down, snorting; but quieted when Jerry stroked the side of his face. “This is our stud, Merlin, and that's his favorite mare Morgana. We bought her last winter so she's just now been bred, Merlin took to her right away so we keep 'em close together.” Ennis liked her too, noticing the long forelock that barely cleared her eyelids and gave her the look of a young girl with windblown hair. It reminded him of Sincie, hundreds of miles away now on a Wyoming ranch.
On the other side of the barn were a mare and gelding that looked slightly different from the others, everything about them noticeably longer and more slender than the others. Jerry introduced them as Molly and Sherlock, adding with a wry smile that “m' wife Rachel names 'em all. The breedin stock, of course they've got fancy registered names but we just use the stable names.” The two horses were Thoroughbreds. “When Tom was runnin the place, he was breedin them for racing, but I decided to go with quarter horses awhile ago. The ones that aren't up to show standards we plan to sell or lease as riding horses.”
They ended up standing at the gate to the pasture, both with arms crossed on the top bar and one boot resting on the bottom one. Ennis counted eight of them, but “we wanna limit classes to about six,” Jerry explained. “Pick out whichever one you want, and we'll still have an extra for when a horse is sick or has an injury. Just one class on Saturdays to start, we've got four prospects so far.” Ennis had noticed the saddles in the tack room: two well-maintained flat English saddles and almost a dozen Western saddles that were well-used but in good shape. “I learned English saddle from old Tom, and that's still what I'm used to,” Jerry had remarked. “We've got a daughter Karen, she's five now, and we want her to learn both too.”
“So what're your plans for the class?” he asked now. “The ones we've signed up so far are beginners, one of 'em's had experience but hasn't been on a horse for awhile.”
Ennis had noticed what looked like a show ring further down the drive. “I'll start 'em out in the ring ta get used to it, and some trail ridin after that. There trails here we can use?”
“Yeah, on that runs along the river and another one. Goes up the hill and loops around back down to the barn. What about when it rains? Around here that's bound to happen.” Ennis had dealt with rainy days when Alma Junior and Jenny were his pupils. “Use those days for classes in the barn,” he answered. “Teach 'em how ta saddle, put on an take off bridles, how ta groom a horse. No sense learnin ta ride if ya don't know any a that.”
Jerry had been acting as if Ennis was already hired, which was all right with him. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed working around horses and being in a saddle regularly. And Jerry, he could tell from years of experience with foremen, would be a good boss to work for. He would have high standards and tolerate no excuses but he would be fair and totally clear about what he wanted; none of that surprising in a man who'd worked and waited for so many years to get both the land and the woman he'd wanted. So he wasn't surprised when Jerry took his boot off the rail, turned around to face Ennis directly and asked, “so, when can you start?”
Right now, Ennis thought but “soon's I get somethin ta drive. I borrowed the car I drove here, shouldn't take long.”
“So let's say beginning next week. Now, your schedule. Tuesdays to Saturdays to start. There'll be a lot of extra days later, just a few sometimes in winter so it won't be the same every week. And when a mare's foaling, I'll want you to stay the night. So I'd rather pay you a salary, that makes less work for Rachel with the payroll anyway. Say fourteen thousand a year; that sound okay?”
“Sure.” Damn right, it was more than he'd ever made. “Good,” Jerry nodded again; this time a brisk nod with no hesitation. “One other thing. You said you've got daughters, your family gonna have a problem when you need to work extra hours? Or spend the night?”
For an odd moment Ennis recalled the brown and dark green dining room of Monroe's house. “M' wife and me, we split up years ago, and my daughters are grown. The youngest turned 18 just last year.”
“Okay. Then I've got one more thing to show ya.” They headed up a short, terraced trail through a wooded area next to the main barn.. “Like I said, times when mares are foalin, I'd like you to stay over.” At that moment, Ennis spied a small, well-kept wooden cabin in a clearing, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up for a few seconds. It was about the same size, and in the same kind of setting, as the never-built cabin at Lightning Flat that last year had occupied so many of his imagined memories about the life he could have had with Jack.
Jerry wordlessly handed him the key, and he pushed the door open. The cabin had the vaguely dusty aroma of a dwelling that hadn't been tenanted for awhile, though clean. A double bed occupied one corner, flanked by a tall, slightly battered armoire that evidently served as a closet. A wood stove stood in an old fireplace in another corner, with a sink and small refrigerator nearby; and the fourth corner, on the same side of the cabin as the bed, was blocked off to form a tiny bathroom with a coffin-like shower stall. “We put in water and electricity awhile back,” Jerry said. “No heat but that stove keeps it pretty warm and we'll bring in a cord or two of wood. And there's plenty of sheets and blankets we can let ya have.”
(continued in Part 2)
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.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: 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/9498.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