Chapter 31 Part 2
Ennis and David spent that evening sorting through ads in the Duluth newspaper and David made what seemed to Ennis to be endless phone calls looking for leads. Ennis spent the next morning following them after dropping David off at the store, ruling out more than a few trucks on sight. After picking David up in mid-afternoon he drove straight to a small parking lot behind a car repair shop, stopping in front of a ten-year-old Ford truck: red and white with a solid red roof and truckbed. “Hadn't seen you goin in for red much,” David remarked in surprise. “Yeah, but I like red trucks.”
The owner, a muscular man in overalls whose mostly unlined face contrasted oddly with a completely bald head, joined them and introduced himself as Glenn Smith. “Lookin for a good car?” “Just this one,” Ennis answered and Glenn immediately opened the hood for their inspection. The three men leaned over it and thoroughly discussed the condition and age of every visible part. The battery was new, Ennis and David were informed; as were the starter, fuel and water pumps and the hoses. “Just got this one in last week, it won't last long,” the owner told them. “Twenty-two hundred cash, you won't find a better deal anywhere and I can service it here at the shop. Go ahead, take it for a test drive.”
With David beside him, Ennis drove the truck for several miles, choosing roads with steep grades and curves and deliberately braking quickly at a few empty intersections. “Looks good,” he said; then remembered how busy the store had been when he'd picked David up. “Sorry this'll mean you're gonna be short one. At the store, I mean.” David briefly raised his hands, palms forward. “Don't think anything of that, bro. School's out, I c'n hire a few kids. And I know workin in a store wasn't exactly what you'd had in mind for your next job.” Their shared interest in the search for a vehicle had dissolved the intangible awkwardness between them for the time being and Ennis' concerns retreated again. This had been the best day he'd had in awhile. It would be all right.
They got to the bank just before closing time, and Glenn gave Ennis the paperwork and a temporary tag. When they got home, the driveway was full of cars and they had to park the car and truck at the very edge of the driveway. “Might as well stop an tell Maggie,” David said. “She's dyin to know about the job.” Maggie flung the front door open before they'd quite reached it. “A new truck! That must mean you got the job! “C’mon in and tell us about it, a few people from work are here.”
The table in Maggie’s normally disordered kitchen was strewn with fast-food bags and wrappers plus a number of empty beer bottles and two half-empty wine bottles. Ennis recognized Sam as well as Jeff, sitting next to a petite blonde woman, who Maggie introduced as “Jeff’s fiancée Leslie”, and the other man and woman at the table as “Liz and Rick. We’ve been workin’ the same shift at Grandma’s for awhile. More beer in the refrigerator, help yourself, “she added.
“Get another for me, will you?” Rick asked as Ennis opened the refrigerator. He took two bottles and sat down next to David, pushing the second bottle across the table.
“Sam, your tip panned out! Ennis has a new job,” Maggie announced proudly, with the air of a teacher commending a prize pupil. “Takin care of horses and givin riding classes.“ There was a murmur of approval around the table; “that's great, Ennis,” Sam said, and “yeah, but I'll bet they'll miss ya around the store” from Jeff.
David filled a styrofoam cup with wine. “So what’s the occasion?”
“Year 9 for the Marathon comin up next weekend,” Liz answered. “It’s gonna be a busy week so we thought we’d just spend a few hours hangin out while we could.” She glanced over at Ennis. “I remember seeing you at Grandma’s last week. You know about Grandms’s Marathon?”
“Heard a little about it,” though he couldn’t remember what David had told him.
“You’ll hear more about it this month,” Jeff said. “Les finally talked me into volunteering, it takes a lot of people to pull off now. But the first year it was just a handful of people from the running club, decided to take on a marathon, from Two Harbors down to Duluth. They needed $600 and went around looking for sponsors. Grandma’s took ‘em on when they said they’d name the race after it. And it’s grown every year.” “Like a fungus,” Rick growled. “Grandma's is a madhouse the whole day and it takes us about three days after that to clean up.”
The talk quickly turned to debates over which Marathon had been the best so far, discussions of who was expected to win this year and speculations about the weather for the event. Ennis only half-listened: he now recalled David telling him what a marathon was, and thousands of people willingly running 26 miles sounded to him like mass insanity. He was content for the moment to sip the cold beer, inhale the scents of hamburgers and fried chicken and recall the sights of the horses in the pasture, of Merlin and Morgana and the cabin back in the woods. A sudden burst of laughter brought him back to the kitchen table, where they were now exchanging stories about co-workers who’d been fired.
“You’re kidding. He got fired how?”
“Friend o’ mine in Atlanta told me about it,,” David said. “This guy, the office goof-off, he’d been catchin naps up on the fire escape and getting away with it, who knows how long and he didn’t know the boss had moved his office. So the boss looks out the window and here the guy’s sleeping just above the window with his legs hanging over the ledge, just a pair of legs from the knees down.”
“I got fired from my first job the second week,” Rick put in. “I was workin on a loading dock and the boss gave us this lecture about some safety rules, everybody already knew about ‘em but he loved to hear himself talk. Just as he was walkin away, I turned to the guy next to me and said ‘don’t ya hate being lectured by a moron?’ Except - well, I should’ve waited till he got a little further away ‘cause he heard me.”
“That’d do it.”
“Hey, that reminds me,” Jeff put in, “I didn't see Sandra around this afternoon. She get fired?”
“Didn't you hear?” three voices said at once.
“She got another job in St. Paul,” Liz said. “Workin at a store where rich old men buy their suits. That's what she was after all along, a sugar daddy, and she'd have to get one fast while she still had her looks. My guess is she's gonna be collecting some fat alimony checks in a few years.”
“Either that or fighting with some heirs who know a gold digger when they see one,” Maggie added. “Whatever, we're just glad she's gone.”
“Yeah, I guess Duluth wasn't rich enough for her,” David added.
“I'd thought she'd had her eye on you for awhile but I guess she was lookin' for the big time,” Rick said.
Maggie turned to Liz. “If she did, she gave up after she met Ennis. Sandy was smart enough to know when she was beat.”
She'd spoken a little louder than she intended, and both Liz and Jeff laughed. Leslie looked a little puzzled before she glanced at Ennis and then glanced away, and Rick pushed his beer bottle to one side without a comment.
Ennis felt as if he'd been gut-punched, and for a split-second his view of the room jerked as if an earthquake had occurred that only he was aware of. The conversation at the table moved on, but he found himself on his feet, pushing his chair back so abruptly it almost fell over. He had no memory of saying anything as he left the room but he did see David following him and had a glimpse of Maggie's suddenly stricken face. She whispered something inaudible to David, who shook his head and put his hand on her shoulder briefly.
On his way up to his attic room, his only thought was of escape, but as he began to throw his clothes and toothbrush into a garbage bag the memory flashed by of telling Jack about his sense that everyone on the streets of Riverton “knew,” and now it had resurfaced in Maggie's kitchen.
Nobody had known, he realized now, other than Alma and probably Monroe; and he would have heard about it long ago if either had told anyone. What was there for anyone to see? But here, now, anyone who'd known David more than a few months knew that he was gay, and that had extended to himself as well.
Gotta get outta here was his only thought, and the memory of Rick pushing away the beer Ennis had handed him, as if it were contaminated, made him unwilling to wait even long enough to find the suitcase. He had often feared being attacked, and imagined Jack's death in nightmares; but in a way this was just as bad. It was one thing to defend yourself, successfully or otherwise, against an attacker coming at you openly; quite another to repeatedly turn your head just in time to see the same assailant disappearing around the next corner.
He hadn't thought of David's reaction until he came to the foot of the stairs and saw him standing in the middle of the living room. David's face had an expression that would have looked impassive to a stranger but to Ennis, it looked like a face from which an exuberant smile had just been abruptly stripped.
The other man said nothing, but Ennis knew he had to at least try to explain. “Sorry Doc. I, uh, I got a lot ta do on that new job. Might be a good idea for me ta stay at the cabin for awhile.”
He'd known before he'd spoken that David knew why he was leaving. “It was what Maggie just said, wasn't it?” His voice sounded flat and resigned.
“I'm sorry,” Ennis repeated weakly. “Doc, I just can't handle this, bein... everybody knowin. Maybe we c'n meet here once in awhile, or you can come out --”
David shook his head. “Not again,” he said, with unexpected vehemence. “Been there, done that, and I shouldn't 've done it in the first place.”
“Doc, please don't be mad. It ain't you---”
“I know it isn't. And anytime you wanna come back, make something of this, you're welcome. But no more makeshifts. Not ever, I'm through with that.” He took both of Ennis' hands and gave him a brief, dry kiss on the lips. “Good luck, Ennis.”
There was nothing more to be said. He went down the back stairs and backed the truck out of the driveway. Just before heading for the Aerial Bridge, he remembered driving off in another truck and not glancing back and looked up at the second-story front window. Sure enough, he saw David profiled against the light in the living room, watching him as he drove away.
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
Chapter 31 Part 1: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/10870.html