Gift of Exile, Part 1 Chapter 4
It was still early but Ennis had known the Black and Blue Eagle Bar would be busy. As he got out of his truck and watched David close the door of his anonymous-looking rental car, Ennis wondered how the hell he’d gotten into this: two men walking into the bar together and wearing suits at that. And one of "them….
"Queer. Say it. David’s cousin Charlene might not be anyone he’d want to spend even a few hours with but she’d made it clear in just two sentences. And he’d never been that, never had anything goin’ with any man but Jack. But Jack had…. You been to Mexico, Jack? … another one’s goin a come up here … some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He walked through the bar making an effort to not look at anyone but threw a longing glance at a table in the corner, wondering if they’d attract less attention there or just look like they wanted to be alone with each other. David slid onto a barstool before he had a chance to find out, too late. Sitting at the bar, Ennis felt like a car dealership spotlight was only ten feet away and shining directly on them.
"Hey Ennis, lookit you - almost didn’t know ya wearin’ a suit. Who’s your friend?" it was Vickie, owner of the place since her husband had died, she’d been here more than one Saturday night lately; sometimes out here talking to employees and customers and sometimes going through the tiny office in back, drawer by drawer. "Not friends, ma’am, cousins, as of a couple a’ hours ago anyway." David answered before Ennis could even react, and it seemed like his Southern accent was suddenly stronger. "Ennis’ daughter got married this afternoon, prettiest bride I’ve seen in awhile. Things were startin’ to wind down, and we just needed somethin’ stronger ta drink than punch with lime sherbet."
Vickie laughed and called to Roy, washing glasses at the other end of the bar, for two beers. "First ones on the house, nobody’s daughter gets married every day" she said. The searchlight had at least dimmed, more quickly than Ennis had thought it could. "So you’re from out of state?" she asked David.
"Yes ma’am, I live in Minnesota now but I’m a good ol’ boy from Georgia. Macon," David answered. "Never been this far west before." He pulled a few dollar bills out of his pocket. "Would you have some change? I’d like some music with the beer, don’t seem to have any quarters."
His drawling voice sounded affable and a little coaxing, but not blatant or aggressively salesman-friendly. He was leaning a little toward her, smiling slowly, eyes narrowed a little and focused on her face, but not getting too close, staying a respectful enough distance so that the impression was more of sociable interest than a conscious attempt to charm. Ennis found it oddly familiar, remembering his short conversation with David’s grandmother earlier. She’d had the same trick in conversation of seeming to pull the other person closer to her, briefly drawing an invisible and private circle around both of them. Pocketing the change Vickie gave him, David nodded to Roy as he put their drinks on the counter, went over to study the selections on the jukebox. He dropped some coins in, punched in a selection, and Lynyrd Skynyrd started with "Sweet Home Alabama."
"Skipped the roundup, Ennis?" Ken Heiman was sitting on the other side, his usual place now that he was on disability and it seemed hardly worth it to look for anything else, not with the economy the way it was; so little to choose from for a ranch hand as far removed from being young as Ennis was. "Yeah, it was that or miss my girl’s wedding," Ennis answered as David came back. As if giving him a reminder his lower back gave him a slight nudging ache and he shifted on the stool slightly.
"In Birmingham they love the gov’nor
Now we all did what we could do
Now Watergate does not bother me
Does your conscience bother you?
Tell the truth"
"D’you say you were from Macon?" Roy asked. "Man, I went through high school listenin’ to Skynyrd, and the Allmans too. Did you know them in Macon? Any a’ those Capricorn people?" "Nah, they got there just as I went off to school, learnin’ the family business," David answered. "But we hung out in a lot of the same places." He glanced toward Ennis but down at the counter for a few seconds.
"So you do ranch work?" He glanced back up at Ennis before the evasion was fully noticed. Both Ken and Roy laughed. "For as long as I’ve known him!" Vickie answered. "How long, Ennis?" "Since I was 14," Ennis told David. "Worked at just about every ranch around here, it’s startin’ ta catch up with me, too. Back, legs, shoulders, you name it."
"More ‘n that catchin’ up with all of us," Ken remarked glumly, just as two of the pool players came to the bar for refills. A spirited discussion started about the number of ranches closing down, the increase in absentee owners, the capriciousness of rainfall. On the jukebox, Ronnie Van Zant started singing about Curtis Low.
"Play me a song Curtis Loew, hey Curtis Loew
I wish that you was here so everyone would know.
People said he was useless, them people all are fools
‘Cause Curtis Loew was the finest picker to ever play the blues."
"Hardly remember the first time I was ever on a horse, Ennis told David. "You ever ride?" The three generations of David’s family that had been at the wedding, the suit not secondhand like Ennis’, his ability to casually fly across several states just for a cousin’s wedding; all spoke of a cavernous gap between their backgrounds; so he wasn’t expecting David’s affirmative answer. "Oh yeah. Haven’t been on a horse in awhile but I rode a lot growin’ up. My best friend’s parents, they had a place north of Atlanta. Used to spend weekends up there, go up a lot in the summer." He hesitated and then gave Ennis a slow, amused smile as if anticipating the reaction. "Not the kind of saddles y’all use out here, though. I learned on an English saddle, and the way you ride with those is way different."
"You mean those little leather pancake things? Shit, what kinda ridin’ is that?" said one of the pool players. "Actually, I always d’ rather ride bareback." David glaced from the pool player back at Ennis. "But when you’re a kid, well you hafta learn what they teach you, and that was English."
"Well, that’d be a shame, your first trip out West and you don’t get to do any ridin’," Vickie said suddenly. "Ennis could probably give you a few lessons. You goin' back home right away?" "No ma’am, got a few days yet," David answered her, "thought s’long as I was comin’ all the way out here, I’d do some sightseeing."
"Ennis, you’ve got a couple a’ days off, right? An’ you did a great job teachin’ my boys to ride a few years back," Vickie continued. With five pairs of eyes suddenly on him, Ennis nodded, unable to think of a way to say no to the suggestion and not altogether sure he wanted to. "We c’n do that. You said I owed ya one."
Vickie started telling David about her two sons, both of them now working down near Casper, and Ennis was half-listening, but the other half of his attention turned to the third song David had punched, this one an Allman Brothers song:
"Crossroads, would you ever let him go? ...no, no.
Oh will you hide the dead man's ghost?
Or will he lie beneath the clay?
Will his spirit roll away?
But I know that he won’t stay...
..without Melissa."
He was suddenly back in the hardscrabble family cemetery at Lightning Flat, holding the brown paper reliquary that Jack’s mother had just given him. Looking down at the small plaque they’d ordered - no heavy carved headstones for people struggling just to hang onto their land another season. Thinking of what ashes were left of the body he’d escaped to and browsed through so many times imprisoned in this desolate place, occasionally lit up by flashes of the frequent lightning that had provided its name. Or, for that matter, the other half, crushed beneath a slab of stone in Texas. He’d last heard that song in this same bar, the day that Cassie had first approached him, when there had still been time, when he could have avoided these agonized inventories of time and place and words spoken or unspoken that could have meant salvation.
Absorbed as he was in the now-familiar pain, he almost though not quite jumped when David touched his arm lightly. "It’s been a long day, you about ready to leave?" The voice sounded neutral, if slightly wary; but there was an awareness in the gray eyes, something that had seen his change of mood.
"Hey," he said once they were out in the parking lot. "I know you hadn’t been plannin’ to spend tomorrow giving somebody riding lessons. If you have something else you were gonna do…."
"No, it’s a’right, you wanna come over in the morning?"
"It’ll have to be afternoon", David answered. "I’ve gotta duty breakfast tomorrow morning with those ladies you met, they’ve got a plane back to Atlanta in the afternoon. Gramma Alex is gonna expect a full report. How ‘bout noon?"
Ennis gave him directions to the trailer, which David wrote down. "Give me your phone number too, willya? Just in case I don’t get away in time, or get lost." Ennis hesitated, his lifelong habit of letting people know as little about him as possible kicking in automatically but also almost forgetting he had a telephone. He rarely used it, but Alma Jr. and Jenny had both insisted he get one not long after he got back from Lightning Flat, "just in case." "Sure", he said reluctantly, giving the number and adding "see ya tomorrow then. You got somethin’ ta put on to ride in?"
Back at the motel, David made a number of quick phone calls, and then dialed a number he knew by heart,
"Hey, Doctor D. How was the wedding?"
"Interesting in spots. Some of the Augusta clan showed up, Gramma Alex, my aunt Carol, Charlene."
"How festive. Did the bride tear Charlene’s hair out?"
"Never got close, but no wedding’s perfect."
"That’s the truth. What’s up?"
"Gotta ‘nother favor to ask you, Maggie, I’m staying over a few days. Can you pick me up Tuesday night instead? 9 o’clock? Somebody offered to take me horseback riding tomorrow. Never used a Western saddle before, that’ll be new."
"No problem. So…. what’s he like?"
"What’s who like?"
"Your new guy."
"There’s no new guy, just somebody giving me a few riding lessons."
"A few puns come to mind, but I won’t use them. So, this is an old guy taking you riding? Sorta like Walter Brennan with a horse trailer?"
"Well, no…."
"About your age, right? Tall, light hair?"
"Maggie, there’s nothing like that goin’ on."
"Yeah, you’re probably telling me the truth, too bad. You’re only 36, for God’s sake. Are you waiting for it to shrivel up and fall off so you can have it bronzed?"
"Oh Maggie, quit." They were veering into a conversation repeated more than a few times the past two or three years.
"Ah, you know I can’t resist you when you go all Southern on me, Doctor D. ‘Quee-yut!’ "
David laughed, knowing that she’d taken her shot. "So you don’t mind Tuesday?"
"Of course not." There was a brief silence at the other end. "You okay?"
"Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?"
"I can think of lots of reasons but not right now. Give the horse a kiss for me. An’ I wanta know all about this guy you’re staying over for but aren’t interested in."
"See you later, Maggie."
The trailer seemed different, barer somehow, than when he’d left it hours ago although nothing was missing. Ennis hung the suit in the closet, ready for another wedding or funeral whenever that might be, picked up one sleeve of the shirts on the door and held it for a long time, his thumb rubbing the worn cuff of Jack’s blue sleeve underneath his own. The close feeling, the sensation that Jack was just out of his sight but close beside him, came back. Nothing could or would explain away what had happened earlier that day.
It wasn’t even 11 o’clock yet but he was suddenly exhausted. Undressing and then stretching out on the narrow, chaste bed, he was almost not surprised to feel the contours of a back and shoulders next to him, not as definite as in the church that afternoon, hardly more than a stillness or denseness in the air. But it was enough, and he turned on his side to move closer.
"Good night, Jack," he murmured as sleep crept over him.