Chapter 19
When Ennis woke up at daybreak, the first thing he noticed about the room was that Jack was no longer there. The second was that although the bed was the most comfortable one he could remember sleeping in, the overpowering need to sleep had left him as abruptly as it had arrived. He lay for a moment, mentally stroking and examining the sound of Jack's voice and his last fugitive touches, knowing it would be a long time before he could do so again.
He sat up slowly, muscles stiff from a day and two nights of disuse; but he didn’t feel the lethargy and grogginess that would be expected after sleeping too long. In fact, he was more alert and clear-headed than he’d been in a long time, scrutinizing the room as he dressed in the dim light. It would have been long and narrow except for the archway, flanked by waist-high bookshelves, that divided it in half. On the other side were small file cabinets and more shelves, some holding books and others towels and linens. The sleeping area had only one window, behind the bed and blocked by heavy curtains. The wall was not painted nor papered but covered in light-colored fabric patterned in sketches of leaves and ferns; an oddity that wasn’t extended to the other three walls, painted a more conventional light green. The bathroom, he discovered, was off a recess between the two parts of the room.
The doorway to the hall was in the library part of the room and Ennis stood outside it for several minutes, listening to the silence in the house and uncertain about what to do next. Restless and wanting to explore but not liking the thought of wandering around someone else’s house alone, he followed the hazy memory of two nights ago and headed for the door at the other end of the hallway. It opened to a narrow landing of the stairway, which doubled back down the side of the house; but Ennis stood at the railing for several minutes, too stunned by what he saw to move.
He was looking at an environment almost as alien from Wyoming as a landscape on another planet.
During their telephone conversations, David had mentioned that the house he shared with Maggie was "right on the lake," and he had given Ennis regular bulletins all last winter about storms and ice. Ennis had even stopped at the Riverton library a few times, trying to ignore the curious glances of the two librarians as he looked Duluth up in more than one atlas. But nothing could have prepared him for this vast, undulating plain of water, animate and full of ceaseless, restless movement, extending as far out as he could see until it dipped over the curve of the Earth and out of his sight. It was the closest thing to an ocean Ennis had ever seen and it terrified and mesmerized him at the same time, and he was not even aware of descending the wooden stairs, walking to the end of a small deck and down the steps to a beach.
He had seen lakes in Wyoming all his life, but they all had clearly visible boundaries and were framed and defined by mountains, rocks, trees and hills. Superior dominated every natural or man-made feature within sight, and was defined by nothing but its own presence, with no boundaries that he could see other than the horizon and sky. This early in the day the eastern sky he was facing was a warm pinkish-yellow glow that deepened into dark rose, and the water, a deep bluish purple at the moment, was speckled with tiny ridges streaked with those same tints. The water even looked milky in the spots where it faded into tufts of fog.
Ennis was momentarily in the grip of a tightly-wound exhilaration that was not sexual, but very close to it. He was in the presence of a gigantic force of nature, totally unlike what he’d felt in the Big Horn mountains but equally as powerful, an implacable brew of sensuality and ferocity, lushness and violence. Accustomed by years of ranch work to spotting weather signs, his eyes and skin immediately recognized the cool, moist wind and the slowly-evaporating fog as emanating from the inland sea in front of him: Superior was not subject to the climate around it but rather produced that climate out of itself. He squatted at the edge of the yellow-brown sand, dipped his fingers in the water still icy on this spring morning, and instinctively felt the otherworldly pull of tides. Lake Superior was not "pretty," as he had heard people describe other lakes. It was wild, and mysterious, and savagely, hypnotically beautiful.
In Sage, before his ninth year, Ennis had loved watching the colors changing at sunset; not only the shifting vivid colors near the horizon but the sky’s change from blue to purple to black. He’d often tried, with varying success, to watch for the exact minute that the deepening shadows in his surroundings vanished altogether. It was a pleasure he’d known to pursue in secret; "no time f’r daydreamin around," was all his father had said that first time, but it was enough: young as he was, Ennis had joined his mother, brother and sister in being cautious around his father. But there were always chores to be done toward the end of the day and he made a game out of finding work to do behind the barn, around a certain shed with a western view. For a moment that boy seemed to be squatting beside him at the water’s edge, chuckling, and so was the shy, taciturn but vaguely hopeful young ranch hand who had fallen crazy in love with Jack Twist.
He did not hear footsteps but caught the movement out of the corner of his eye, and he stood up, turned around and watched as David stepped off the bottom of the steps and walked toward him across the sand.
For the past year, both Jack and David had been the great unseen presences in Ennis' life, the two people with whom he did not have to be on guard all the time and by whom he was known and knowable; but they had also been the two people who were safely removed and isolated from everyday life and its hazards. And now, only hours after Jack had told him that he would be close by but unreachable here was David, no longer separated from him by hundreds of miles and just as dangerously attractive as he'd been those two afternoons they'd gone horseback riding. It seemed both years ago and the day before yesterday at the same time, and no small part of his standing still and watching David walk up to him was due to his truly having nowhere to go and a curious inability to even try to think of looking away. The compact but slender body, only a little shorter than his, the dark hair and the arresting gray eyes were no less compelling than the Lake behind him.
"Ennis? You okay?" David's voice sounded happy but slightly puzzled. "Yeah, don't know what happened," Ennis managed. "I finally woke up just now." "You musta," David answered. "I looked in on you just before I went out running, and you still out like a light."
"Runnin?"
"Well,,,," David tilted his head a little and lifted his hands in joking self-deprecation. "Sometimes it's more like trottin. And sometimes it's just walkin, but I keep at it every morning, when the weather's good anyway." The two men looked at each other for another moment and then David turned and headed toward the steps. "Come on and have some hot coffee at least. I'd just started breakfast." Ennis followed, taking some notice of the large but comfortable-looking house with its white paint and wood siding, long balcony and peaked roof on one side; but he found himself more intrigued by David's sturdy back and the outlines of the muscles under the gray trousers as he climbed the steps.
The house was now full of the aromas of bacon and freshly-brewed coffee and Ennis, who rarely noticed what he ate, realized that he was voraciously hungry. The other end of the hall proved to lead to a narrow entryway with the house’s front windows on one side and tables and shelves filled with record albums, cassette tapes, a turntable, tape deck and speakers against the wall. The kitchen and living room beyond were much larger than the sleeping area and with more windows, although Ennis noticed the same heavy curtains: visual evidence of ruthless northern winters and long evening hours of sunlight in the summer.
He sat at the table in a gleaming-white kitchen with woodwork and cabinet doors painted dark blue; the first blue and white kitchen he’d ever seen, and he wondered what Alma Junior would make of it. But mostly he watched David hurrying around the room, sliding half a dozen frozen dinner rolls into the oven, pouring coffee and bringing the plate of crisp bacon slices to the table. He took a carton of fruit yogurt out of the refrigerator and made a quick survey of the rest. "What’re ya hungry for, Ennis? There’s plenty of eggs and I’ve got cereal if you’d rather have that-"
"Yogurt ‘d be okay for me too," Ennis answered. "Blueberry if you got it." At David’s surprised look his mouth widened slightly and his eyes narrowed, a look that David quickly learned to recognize as one of amusement. "Didn’t think I’d ate yogurt before, huh?"
"Well, I didn’t expect it, gotta admit." David set the two cartons of yogurt on the table, then opened the oven and flipped the rolls into a shallow bowl. Immediately the grainy-yeasty scent mingled with those of the bacon and coffee. "Woulda thought you were - you know, a meat-and-potatoes kinda guy."
There was silence between them as they ate that would have made Ennis nervous if he hadn't been so suddenly hungry. He especially savored the coffee, which had a dusky rich taste unlike anything he or Alma had ever brewed. David sat across from him, seemingly absorbed in buttering a roll. "You sure you're feeling all right, Ennis?"
"Course I'm sure. Didn't really feel sick to begin with, just sleepy. An now that's gone."
"Well...." David seemed nervous and uncertain. "I got a kind of problem here, Ennis," he said, talking a little more quickly than he usually did. "One of my workers is on vacation, and I got a call yesterday that another one has a kid sick with the flu. So I'm two people short and I kinda need to go ta work today, since I'm part owner the buck stops at me."
Ennis shrugged slightly. "Why's that a problem? I'm supposed ta start workin there today, ain't I?"
"You were, but I was expectin you to be here all weekend, get used to the place and I don't like to have you start your first day of work when we don't even know what was wrong with you. Besides, if things are crazy there today - well, it won't be a good way to start out."
"Well, go ahead then." Ennis still wasn't sure what the problem was, but an odd memory suddenly flickered by of Alma frantically cleaning their apartment one Easter when she'd invited her sister and brother-in-law to dinner. "I'll be okay here. I hadn't even unpacked yet."
"You sure?" Ennis wondered why David was talking so quickly, as if he was afraid he was going to forget what he intended to say at any moment. "Cause if it isn't, ya know I can stay here - I mean, it isn't like the business is gonna go under if things don't work right for a day--"
"I said I'd be okay." He was getting a little irritated. "Go ahead ta work if you need to."
David sat back in his chair, looking a little deflated, and there was a heavy silence for a few moments. "I'm tryin too hard, aren't I?" he finally said ruefully.
"Well,... no, you're -- uh.... yeah." David started to laugh and Ennis added, "maybe I'm not tryin hard enough." This time both men laughed, and the slight stiffness between them vanished.
David drained the rest of his coffee, spread his hands and thumped them on the table. "Okay. I'll give you some space an not 'hover', like Maggie says. Make yourself at home, unpack, take a walk if ya want. Maggie'll probably be up here before I get home, she was gonna sleep late today but she said she'd look in on you." He opened a narrow door near the far wall of the kitchen, revealing a staircase. "Your room is up those stairs, and Maggie's part of the house is down. I generally use the outside staircase, at least this time a year, she was born and raised in Minnesota so she understands if I need ta use the indoor one during the winter. I'll bring some pizza home tonight, and then drive you around some."
Ennis watched out the front window as David's car disappeared down a street that would have looked quite ordinary except for the rocky shoreline and the water on the other side -- calmer-looking than what he'd just seen outside, he noticed. He walked back into the living room with its bank of curtained windows and doorway leading out to the balcony he'd seen from the beach. The living room, like the others he'd seen so far, was not sparsely furnished but had an aura of quiet, uncluttered spaciousness. For the first time he could remember, he was in an indoor space that seemed to be more than a shelter from the elements, and where he did not feel like he was caught in a space too narrow for him to lie down and stretch out at full length.
"Did I handle that okay, Jack?" He knew that he would get no answer, but strongly suspected that Jack could hear him.
(David's house and its surroundings are based on a bed-and-breakfast house in Duluth. To see photos, go to http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php/topic,3507.msg156232.html#msg156232 or to http://ennisjack.com/index.php?topic=11698.msg648663#msg648663 )
AUTHOR'S NOTE: There's a mysterious glitch that produces a "No Entry" page when you click on the forward arrow for Chapter 19. Click here to go to Chapter 20: http://talkstocoyotes.livejournal.com/6249.html