Gift of Exile - Chapter 10
Ennis never knew how much time had passed before he half-awoke, but thought afterward that it must not have been long. It seemed to be first light, the territory between dark and dawn when the sky and landscape are still a pale blue-gray and shadows nonexistent but shapes and differences of light and dark colors are clear. He could not hear the coyotes singing now nor, he realized with a start, could he hear the sound of the wind or the stream at the edge of the campsite.
There seemed to be no sound in the world at all at the moment but Ennis was briefly aware of a plait of scents: sweat, leather, scents of pine and wild sage and wood smoke.
He didn’t hear the familiar voice until the instant before he came fully awake and saw Jack kneeling beside him.
"Wake up, cowboy. Time’s wastin’."
Jack was all that he saw that seemed to have three dimensions. The interior of the tent, and what could be seen outside, had a flat, painted-on look and ended abruptly just at the end of his range of vision, with a whitish-blue glow escaping from the edges. Another dream, he thought, but knew it was not.
Ever since cave dwellers started burying their dead with garlands of flowers, the same chorus had gone up from grieving lovers, mates, parents, "if only I had him back, had her back, just for a day." Ennis had long since added his voice to that; but with no more reason than all his predecessors to think he would get his wish, and his first reaction was blind shock. In the next second, all the grief and guilt and the bitterness of the might-have-beens that had tortured him over the last year came rushing back. "Oh God - Jack…." And though he’d told himself that he was through with that, no matter how persistent the pain was, he found himself repeating what he’d done the last time he and Jack had touched each other: kneeling, sobbing and hanging onto Jack as if he were drowning.
Ennis heard Jack’s unmistakable voice, a younger and lighter one than at their last meeting: "it’s alright - it’s alright - I’m sorry I gave ya such a shock, bud - it was a surprise ta me, too… couldn’t think of any good way to wake ya…. " This was not the insubstantial shape Ennis had felt in his dreams, nor even what he’d felt when they’d silently repeated the vows at Junior’s wedding. It was as solid and warm as Jack’s body had ever felt in life, and the fingers that gently lifted his face up a little were the same.
"God, how I’ve been wanting to do this.…" Jack whispered. His lips grazed the outer contours of Ennis’ left ear and strayed into the patch of slightly curled hair just above. "I can see you sometimes, never could touch you, not till that day in the church….." His fingertips traced across his lover’s forehead and down the side of his jaw to his neck, while he kissed the closed and tear-splashed eyelids. Then Jack’s mouth moved down and Ennis tasted his own tears, his own lips parting automatically in recognition.
Then he opened his eyes and looked into the beloved face he had expected never to see again. Not the embittered man of their last meeting, with 20 years of disappointment and loneliness behind him, but Jack as he had been when Ennis had sent up a prayer of thanks for his return after four years; Jack as he’d looked by the firelight offering the life they could have had: a little cow and calf operation, could be a sweet life.
He reached up with his right hand to Jack’s face, then his left shoulder and chest, and everything was as he remembered it in life: the face’s contours, how the beard stubble grew, the exact width of the ridge at the top of the shoulder with the hard bone at the top and softer fleshy part underneath, the tapering muscles of the arms. "I thought you were dead." It was a hoarse whisper.
"I am dead as far as anybody on your side is concerned," Jack answered. "But I’m as alive as you are. I couldn’t quit ya, Ennis, not before, not now. Couldn’t just leave after that last time - I decided ta stay around just on the other side, wait for you."
"I don’t get it - how is it you’re here? Where are we?" Ennis pulled back a little but kept his hands on Jack’s knees, terrified that he would disappear in the next moment.
"I’ve gotta pretty good idea." Jack stripped his coat off, the same one, Ennis now saw, he had been wearing that summer. "Later. We’ve got a weddin’ night ta get to."
Ennis suddenly didn’t care what had happened, or how. All he could think of was having Jack close to him, being inside him, pressing every inch of bare skin either of them had together, and he began to unsnap his own shirt and unbuckle the belt of his jeans. Jack pulled off the bright blue shirt he was wearing and Ennis heard a loud hissing-ripping sound.
"Told ya the Velcro was a good idea." Jack grinned, pulling his shirt off with one motion and Ennis started to laugh, "you crazy sonofabitch," pulled off his boots.
They both gasped as they rolled onto the bedding, the whole lengths of their bodies pressed together; mouths, entwined legs, both their dicks already hard. Jack put one hand down and closed over both of them as Ennis’ hands moved down his lover’s back to his buttocks, feeling the outlines of every familiar muscle like hard flat ropes. It only took a few moments for the dam to burst for both of them and Ennis felt the warm, sticky vital fluid run onto his belly, as he had not felt in two years except in the dreams that never satisfied.
Then they replayed their first night together, Jack rising to his knees and Ennis plunging into him; not with the drunken haste of that night but with a slow, passionate glide. As he started to move, he became aware of another difference: he could feel not only his own sensations but a shadow of Jack’s as well. A surprised grunt from Jack told him that Jack had not anticipated this either. He didn’t wait for Jack to grab his right hand as before but wrapped it around Jack’s cock and felt a faint tracing of fingers around his own as well.
They made love tirelessly, more than they had even as very young men. Ennis saw the blue gleam of Jack’s eyes in the odd half-light as Jack lay beneath him; then a little later felt the heat of Jack’s balls cupped in his hand as he lipped and sucked the velvety surface of Jack’s still-hard member, something he’d only done a occasionally before and only when Jack had asked him. There were no barriers tonight.
Finally they collapsed temporarily in each others’ arms and Ennis was gasping, shaking as if he was facing a flattening wind, his blood pounding in this ears, his throat, even his feet. He was not weeping but his breath came in jerky, gulping sobs and he had an odd feeling of something detaching, being pulled outward.
In the next instant he was suddenly looking at a transparent horizon that stretched in all directions, something with no boundaries that was not part of the mountain or even the world he lived in any longer. And he was suddenly weightless, a being that was joyous and fearless and far-seeing. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this way, with all his inner wounds and bruises and scars vanished along with the body’s heaviness and fragility; but at the same time he knew that he was more himself than he had ever been.
Then he was close to something he saw as a giant river in flood, rushing between stone cliffs the funneled it into a moving wall. He understood that his mind was doing its best to make ordinary sense of what it perceived: unimaginable power, infinite love, perfect justice: something so far beyond the ambition, heroism, love and evil of all flesh that these evaporated before It like a handful of water thrown into a blazing brush fire. There was nothing beyond It, nothing that was not part of It, and he could feel It where it had always been; the source of every breath he took. It wasn’t within him like an organ of his body, or food or drink that he swallowed; but rather like the rushing mountain streams were within each of their drops of water. He knew within an instant what he and Jack had always been to each other, how long they had loved; and wondered how either of them could ever have forgotten.
It lasted only a few moments and Ennis knew, as he felt himself being drawn back into Jack’s arms, that he would remember none of this the next day; but it didn’t matter. His regrets over the blasted years, what they could have had together but that he had thrown away, would remain as long as his body did; but so would the memory of this night with Jack, these hours of grace he had never expected and even now wasn’t sure he deserved.
He was back in the tent, sitting up but still shaking. With his arms still around him and supporting him, Jack leaned over and whispered, "not what they talk about in Sunday School, is it, cowboy?" and he knew that Jack had already seen what he had.
The memory was already losing focus and dissolving, but lingered long enough for Ennis’ desire to be back in the world he had glimpsed to be as vehement as his desire for Jack had ever been; and he blurted out something he hadn’t even considered before no matter how bad his pain got. "I don’t hafta go back," he gasped. "I can get myself wet in that stream an’ go to sleep on the bank. It’s cold tonight, it’d be quick and look like an accident…"
Jack sat back just far enough to look him full in the face. "Don’t even think about that," he said with unusual firmness. "I wanta be with you all the time more’n anything, but if you stick it out, you might be able to finish what we planned an’ we’ll be free and clear. Besides," he watched Ennis’ face closely, "you know someone or other’d go looking for you when you don’t come back. And someone will have to identify your body, and maybe the buzzards’ll get at it before they find you. Someone’ll have to bury you. You wanna guess at who that’ll likely be?"
Ennis could see Alma Jr. in her wedding dress, her eyes glowing at him through the veil -- who gives this woman -- and could feel the hug she’d given him as he’d stepped away toward the waiting pew. And he suddenly recalled a long-ago church picnic Alma had talked him into attending, hearing Jenny’s 6-year-old voice calling "Daddy, look!" from far above his head. He’d looked up and had seen her perched triumphantly in the branch of an old shade tree, a good 15 feet off the ground. Alma had been horrified; but he’d just stood underneath her and called "here, darlin’!" and she’d trustingly dropped right into his waiting arms.
"No," Ennis said bleakly, feeling what he imagined was the full weight of the coming years on him. "You’re right, I can’t do that. Don’t know why I thought a doin’ it."
"I do but that don’t matter," Jack answered. "What matters right now is we got our weddin’ night." He lay down on the quilt and bedding, stretched out and smiled up at Ennis. "But you gotta understand, cowboy, it might be just here and just tonight."
Ennis lay down next to him, ran his hand over Jack’s face, then his left shoulder and chest; everything as he remembered it in life: the face’s contours, how the beard stubble grew, the exact width of the ridge at the top of the shoulder with the hard bone at the top and softer fleshy part underneath, the tapering muscles of the arms. "So we’ll make the most of it, like we always have," he said, though without bitterness now. "But where exactly are we?"
"Nearest I can tell we’re in some in-between place, not quite on my side an’ not quite on yours. It happened ‘cause of a whole lot a things, mostly what you did."
"Ya mean comin’ up here?"
"Partly that but partly other things. You went up ta see my folks in Lightning Flat, sat there across from my old man and faced everything you had ta face. I thought you’d never find those shirts in the closet but I finally did get ya to look toward it, that was the first time I made any kinda contact and believe me, I’d been tryin’. And then after you got home, all them things you swore in that shrine you put up-"
"My closet door ain’t no shrine."
"Sacred is as sacred does, bud. You think those shirts are special ‘cause one a Santa’s elves sprinkled some magic dust on ‘em when they were bein’ made? They’re special because I kept ‘em all those years, away from where anybody but Mama could see ‘em, and the same with that church where we said the vows. It’s a special place ‘cause the people there believe it is. And all the things you said - swearin’ ain’t just words, bud, it’s like throwin’ a rock. It’s gonna hit something, even if it’s just the ground. And you went through with your daughter’s wedding too, even though it wasn’t easy for ya, and right in the middle of it we did what we never did and should’ve - said to each other you’re mine and I’m yours and we want it that way. And your talkin’ with my mama, that wasn’t easy neither but you went ahead an’ did it. Tell you what, cowboy, you’ve been givin’ me some surprises lately."
Ennis was beginning to feel slightly drowsy but quickly shook it off, suspecting that Jack would be gone when he woke. "I can’t believe you waited. After all that - all them things we shoulda had…." All those years of the man Jack had loved treating him as a shameful secret.
"That was just a detour we took, one we shouldn’t ‘ve. But there’s another reason you can’t go with me just now. You’ve got things ta do, maybe find somebody else to pitch a tent with."
Ennis knew that his face had suddenly reddened, and that Jack saw it. "Jack, I don’t even wanta think about that." Be out of town for a few days, got a favor to do for a friend his exact words from the last phone call from David. Liar, even on your wedding night. But Jack smiled knowingly, and Ennis wondered how much Jack could read his thoughts and didn’t want to ask. "Remember what you swore a few months ago? You were lookin’ at those shirts but talkin’ to me, sayin’ you weren’t gonna waste the rest of your life, I’m holdin’ you to that. Don’t hafta be somebody else, you gotta decide yourself what that means."
"But you said this was our wedding night -that means we’re married."
"Sure we are," Jack answered. "An’ not just because of words we spoke when you were sittin’ in a church either. You and me’s forever. But we can only be together when we’re both on the same side. As long as I’m on one side and you’re on another, you’re a widower. You ain’t gonna be cheatin’ on me livin’ a sweet life with somebody who cares about you and needs you, an’ if that’s what you want. But you will be if you let yourself dry up. And what the hell, you were unfaithful to me for 20 years, you knew it but ya didn’t stop."
"Jack, I never-"
Jack’s voice was not angry or accusing but his words were both painful and puzzling. "Ennis, what we’d planned was, we were gonna be different - people some folks don’t want ta even exist. And you were gonna go ahead and be what you were, have what you oughta have, without waitin’ for people to be standin’ around applaudin’, and I was gonna do that with you, I owed you that.
"But your fear, it came first with you. Always, you put that first, every time, it took my place in our bed, put us in a box where we could hide away from everybody -- includin’ you. So when I wasn’t right there with you, you could pretend it never happened, wasn’t real life. And my part, I just tried to grab what I could here an’ there, from you, from other guys. Didn’t stand up to you like I would’ve, if I hadn’t wanted ta do it the easy way too. That’s the other reason not ta just end it now, it’d be like our fishing trips - together for awhile but if you don’t finish what we started we’ll just hafta go through some of the same crap again."
In one part of his mind, Ennis was still puzzled but the other part made him shake his head and smile. "You ain’t changed a bit have you, Jack Twist? Still don’t wanna settle for beans."
"Well, when all’s said an’ done I did settle for beans and that was a mistake. Don’t you do it now."
Ennis hated the pleading sound of his voice but he couldn’t resist asking. "Before I’m back with you on your side - I’ll see you again?" "When I can reach ya," Jack answered. "I’ve done it once or twice, ya know, not just in that church but while you’re asleep." But I’m never very far off, almost as close to you as you are. No matter where you are, and if it takes years." If it takes years, oh God. "I still don’t understand, Jack," he said bleakly, feeling what he imagined was the full weight of the coming years on him. "But I’ll try an’ do what you say, live my life."
Jack pulled him closer. "You gotta do more than that for us, cowboy," he whispered gently. "You gotta learn to hold your life. Like I’m holdin’ you."