Chapter 16
Jack’s world
At least Jack was past those doubts that it was worth it.
The end of his physical life had come so unexpectedly and in such confusion. The truck had pulled up only a few moments after he realized that the flat tire hadn’t been accidental. He’d fought like hell, hit one of them in the mouth hard and kicked another in the crotch, he knew; but mercifully one of the heavy pipes his assailants had used had broken his neck early on. Right afterward he’d tried to look back at the scene, wondering if any of his attackers were men he knew; but it was like he was looking through dark-tinted glass.
"You don’t need ta look at that right now," said a familiar voice behind him.
Jack recognized the speaker as an old friend in just a few moments, though he was still retrieving his memories only little by little. They were suddenly in a roadside park, sitting at a picnic table and looking across at each other, and Jack was the first to speak, the first thought that came into his head: "well, that didn’t go the way we expected did it?"
"That it didn’t. We shouldn’t a split up, that was our first mistake." The other man looked into his eyes searchingly. "You’re stayin to wait for him, aren’t you?"
"Yeah. I shouldn’t have let him drive away that last time. Hell, I shouldn’t have let him drive me away all those times." Jack somehow wasn’t surprised that his friend had put his intent into words at the very moment it became clear to him. "
His friend sighed. "I’d a done the same myself but the way I went, didn’t have that choice. You didn’t really do so bad, I screwed up big time. Havin ta go through all kinds a review and not done yet."
"Review?"
His friend ignored the implied question. ‘It’s not so unusual, what you wanna do, you’ll find that out. But there’s a few things you have to see first, you can’t really decide before you know what it is you’re waitin for. That’s just how it works."
Jack didn’t know exactly when his friend left his side, just that he was alone in this strange border country afterward. He did remember the parting words, said sadly but with a kind of pleading hopefulness: "I’m glad you’re stayin Jack, but please -- look after both of ‘em."
He quickly learned that he could view whatever he liked back in the physical world, but at first he seemed to be looking at people through some kind of remote viewing screen. It was awhile before he learned to be any kind of presence. Some of it, Lureen’s face when she answered the phone and heard her mother’s voice, Bobby when he came home from school in the last few moments when his father was still alive in his consciousness - it was rough going not looking away, but he’d already learned that he could not. And then he shifted his attention to look for Ennis.
It was a street that he’d only seen a few times but recognized as being in Riverton. Looking over Ennis’ shoulder at the postcard with the cruel red stamp over the address: "DECEASED", he heard his lover’s anguished whisper: "bud….." He could see both Ennis’ and Lureen’s faces, hear the outline of their thoughts, as Ennis stood in the phone booth and then the scene suddenly shifted to Lightning Flat. Ennis sitting at the kitchen table, gazing at The Old Bastard with uncharacteristic directness and listening to the idly cutting words: "and then this spring, some other fella gonna come up here with him…."
Damn. Damn. Why had he kept chattering to The Old Bastard all those years, as if a miracle would happen and he’d actually be listened to? He watched Ennis’ face flush, the eyes narrow and then fill with tears, but count on Mama to rescue the situation. He found himself in the narrow makeshift closet, Ennis sitting at the window and gazing out briefly. Ennis. Over here.
Ennis didn’t hear him but turned his head, the first sign he’d seen of anyone being even unconsciously aware he was nearby. It seemed to take forever for Ennis to look through the meager possessions still in the closet, including the old shoes, with Jack standing behind him repeating patiently, no, don’t bother with that, look up. But he finally did, pulled the two shirts out of the place where they’d been hidden like a seed inside the layers of an onion - in a recess within a closet within a room within a house - and he embraced the two shirts as if Jack was inside one of them, and he knew. Oh yes, he knew.
There were boundaries to Jack’s world, not defined by rule or threat of penalty but he wasn’t tempted to go beyond them. He was aware of people nearby who’d also died in some shocking or unspeakable way, but unlike him they weren’t there by choice. First year he’d been in rodeo, there had been a young bronc rider who wore a strange-looking medallion around his neck and who was the first Catholic Jack had met. Denny had always been sure to go to confession when he could find a priest, especially before a ride or after Saturday night.
"You think you’d go ta hell if you don’t keep confessin’?" Jack had asked him.
"No, Purgatory maybe. Supposed ta be kinda like hell cept it don’t last forever." Theology hadn’t been what interested either of them about each other, so Jack never heard any more about it but he figured that was something close to where these others were. He felt a great sadness for them, that wasted suffering but Ennis occupied his thoughts most of the time.
The other people where he was didn’t talk much. They all had a serious purpose for staying, and there was no need here to fill tiny spaces in time, to search for something to engage your attention. Everyone could manipulate time even more easily than they’d usually maneuvered through space in physical life.
At first he’d revisited that summer on Brokeback, the best of their trips together, even some of his better bull-riding forays, although as with the present world he could be only a spectator. He revisited his favorite time again and again - that long ride together across the steppes, just the two of them and their shaggy, big-boned horses and the gods of wind and plains and sky. A few of those times, he could have sworn he saw Ennis looking over at him.
Ennis was stubborn for awhile, as he’d always been: even those first thought pictures of everyday life with another man, he fought that hard enough to remind Jack of a couple of the broncs he’d seen Denny get thrown from. But Jack had been able to contact him in dreams, even touch him to some extent, ever since he’d made that vow in front of the two shirts he’d hung just inside the closet door - not hidden in the back, as they would have been even a few months before. Jack had watched and waited, was still doing that, as he never knew when an opportunity would appear. It was a measure of the solemnity of that moment in the church that he didn’t laugh out loud at Ennis looking around behind him, but seeing the realization in his face a moment later, that was the closest Jack came to tears since that last drive back down to Childress. And he’d waited up on Brokeback, the messenger crow occasionally perching on his shoulder and tilting its head as it gazed at him with an ironic eye.
He now found himself sitting on a very real and earthly beach, his back against a log. He’d been here before, it had sure changed since then though the fog and the sound of the birds was the same. This time, one of the few people he talked with, looking like an old man at the moment, who’d recognized Jack before Jack’s old recollection of him had become clear. The tilt of the old man’s eyes and the wrinkles formed around them reprised the smile he gave Jack as he sat down beside him.
"You are one persistent feller, that’s for sure. The rest of us try not to be jealous of you."
"Jealous? What for?"
"Well, all of us are watching and waiting for somebody, you know. Can you imagine dawdlin’ around here just for the hell of it? But most of us, the most we get is a talk here and there in a dream, mosta the time the person doesn’t even remember it, get to tell ‘em to go this way, don’t do that and they don’t even know why. Oh, we get to help all right, I don’t regret waitin’. But you an’ your man, you go back so far you’ve got ta do a lot more than that."
Jack smiled, remembering their wedding night.
"But you know," his mentor warned, "you’re gonna hafta cut back soon." He nodded in response to Jack’s anxious, questioning look. "Think about it, the reason you stayed ta begin with. You told me about what you two wanted to get done to begin with, even if you’d done better there’s just so much you coulda done. And if you two are gonna pull it off now, he can’t just be doin what you tell him. Don’t worry about that, Jack," he added. "Think where he was when he saw that postcard and where he is now. You just gotta keep watchin."
Jack nodded and lit another cigarette, looking out again at the familiar scene. When he glanced back, the old man had vanished but he wasn’t startled. He was used to his temporary world by now.
He was a bit nervous, but not worried. It hadn’t taken him long to get all his optimism back. That was, after all, what Ennis had always loved about him the most.