Gift of Exile, Chapter 22
Source: Fanfiction based on Brokeback Mountain, slightly more influenced by the film than the short story.
Rating: mostly NC 17, some slash; a metaphysical subplot, which may bother some readers.
Synopsis: At Alma Junior’s wedding, Ennis discovers that while Jack may be dead, he isn’t gone or even very far away. Over the next year Jack stays in contact with Ennis and encourages him to rebuild his life, with the two of them even sharing a wedding night when Ennis returns to Brokeback to carry out Jack’s wishes. After some drastic changes in his circumstances Ennis accepts and offer of employment far from Wyoming and with Jack still close by, takes one step at a time to adjust to a completely new world.
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Disclaimer: Ennis, Jack, all the other characters appearing in Brokeback Mountain and its storyline are the creations and property of Annie Proulx, and of Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana who authored the screenplay. I am deriving no income from this work.
Author’s Notes: I have made no effort to imitate Annie Proulx's style; her style is her own. "Dialect" passages are not intended to be dialect as such, but standard American colloquial pronunciation. Some Southern idioms are also used. This is a very first fiction attempt so it's more than a little autobiographical.
Ennis leaned carefully off the edge of the ladder, using pliers to maneuver the remaining tacks off a second-story window frame before he pulled the plastic off the last window. He tossed the plastic sheet toward the already-mountainous pile on the ground before starting down the ladder. David caught it, tossed it aside and held the ladder’s base as Ennis climbed down, though it was sturdy enough and had shown no wobbling symptoms. "Earliest the house has gotten un-winterized since we’ve been living here."
The invented memory of the Lightning Flat cherry orchard flickered by as he glanced down, although the view from the top of the ladder was not of a wind-worn prairie but rather an extended view of the road and glimpses of the calmer water off the harbor side. By the time he’d reached the ladder’s bottom rung, however, his attention shifted back to David’s broader face, and to the dark hair that somehow looked better in persistent disarray from the wind always blowing off the Lake than it did when neatly combed. Together they gathered and folded the sheets of plastic and Ennis stacked them in one corner of the garage while David pulled several grocery bags out of his car. In Ennis’ first week working at the Northwest Passage Outdoor Supply store, both had already discovered that they worked together seamlessly, each doing what needed to be done with little comment and each wordlessly sensing when the other needed assistance.
"Easy dinner tonight," David tossed over his shoulder as they started up the stairway. "I got some takeout fried rice and a few boneless pork chops, all we’ve gotta do is cut up the meat. Maggie’s back, I see."
On the first day, Ennis had been apprehensive that Maggie would spend all her free time upstairs, but had since discovered that she was around either all the time or not at all. "New boyfriend probably," David had remarked last night; and had then mentioned something that Ennis recognized as the subject she’d evaded. "Maggie’s never been what you’d call predictable. When I’d first met her, she was waitin for her boyfriend to come back from Vietnam. He came down to Georgia on a scholarship, was gonna get into the Vet School at the university and he ‘n’ Maggie were full of plans to move back to Minnesota and be the country vet and his family. I met her not long after he disappeared, he was one of those MIAs that never turned up, and she seemed pretty busted up about it, but Maggie’s like one of those blow-up clown balloons. You know, those life-size ones that you punch and they go splat for a second and then bounce back up again?" Maggie apparently kept busy enough after her shift at "Grandma’s," which functioned as a community center as much as a bar and restaurant, that at times her car did not appear in the beach house’s driveway for two or three days on end.
He was already cutting up the pork into chunks and piling it on a plate, while David assembled plates, cutlery, a deep frying pan and oil, when Maggie brought up a bowl of carrots and onions to add to the pork. "No broccoli this time," she assured Ennis as she sat down across from him and started chopping the vegetables, using a battered plate as a chopping board. In the past week, David had discovered that even the smell of broccoli nauseated Ennis, just as Ennis had learned that David not only drank expensive coffee but required heavy cream in it, not milk or "Coffee Mate, God help us. I make allowances when I eat out."
She looked at Ennis quizzically across the table. "Has David made his famous cheese grits for you yet? He musta brought em to every Sunday brunch back in Atlanta." "Yep, we had em Sunday night. Late," Ennis answered without looking up. "Didn’t know it took so long ta cook." His own experience with hot cereal was limited to the occasional bowl of oatmeal, and he’d watched with interest as David had simmered the hominy cereal for two hours until it became a parchment-colored paste, had then stirred in beaten eggs, butter, grated cheese and garlic and had baked the mixture in the oven. "He ate over half of it," David told Maggie with an air of accomplishment, and Ennis gave a noncommittal grunt in reply, but it was true. The subtle baked-popcorn taste mixed perfectly with the cheese and it had proved difficult to stop eating; although the preoccupation with food that other people so often had always mystified him.
"When I first lived in Georgia, at the University, I never would’ve eaten pork in fried rice," she remarked, tossing a plateful of carrot peelings in the trashcan. "That was the early Seventies, lotsa people into bein’ vegetarian. I even worked at a veggie restaurant in Athens for awhile, not much of a restaurant but it was in this great old building."
"The Morton Building," David supplied. ‘"Yeah, it was some place. There was an abandoned theatre upstairs, an old vaudeville house, I doubt many people in Athens even knew it was there. Still don’t. I’d visit once in awhile but after that first time all I’d order was tea. I mean, that veggie cooking can really do a number on you. The one time I ate dinner there, I swear I shat things I ate in grade school."
"Well, Ennis might wanta take off for parts unknown on New Year’s Day," she countered. "Unless he wants to eat black-eyed peas with hog jowls."
"And neither of us had better spend Christmas at your family’s house. We’ll wind up havin’ to eat lutefisk, and who knows what’d happen after that?"
"I never eat lutefisk!"
"Lutefisk?" Ennis wondered if he wanted to know what it was, but it was too late. "I believe," David said with a straight face, "that the name derives from an ancient Norse word. It means ‘cod soaked in sulphuric acid.’ "
Maggie threw a dishtowel at him. "It’s cod soaked in lye."
"Oh, that’s very different. No respectable seafood restaurant would run out of lye to soak fish in."
Maggie gave Ennis a brief but graphic description of the Scandinavian delicacy. "You start with dried cod, some other kinda whitefish if you can’t get that. First you soak it in water for 5 or 6 days, change the water every day, till it gets really saturated, then you change the water again and add lye to it and soak it for another few days, and it really swells up and gets kind of jelly like."
"And if you soak it too long," David added as Ennis visibly flinched, "it turns into soap." Maggie ignored him.
"People have different ways of cooking it. Some people parboil it an some people bake it. My family’s always insisted on having it on the table at Christmas Eve dinner, one of my aunts always brought it. And there’d be a dozen or so side dishes - bacon and cheese and meatballs, and they’d always have akavit or beer too, so by the end of the dinner I’m not sure anybody knew what they were eating. I had to eat it when I was a kid - you know how some people think their kids will like anything as long as they put cheese on it? And they’d always threaten you with no dessert. Now, they’re happy if I just show up."
She handed David the bowl of diced vegetables and a fragrant crackling rose from the pan as he stirred them in the hot oil. "Well, now it’s your turn, Ennis," he said. "You an’ your folks eat anything strange?"
Ennis thought a moment. "My brother ‘n’ me went ta cookouts when we was both workin’ ranches," he recalled finally. "They always had mountain oysters." Maggie looked puzzled. "Mountain oysters?" but David smiled knowingly. "Calf testicles, right?"
"Maybe we’d better talk about something else," Maggie suggested. "Or none of us are gonna want to eat."
Their good-natured bickering intrigued but puzzled him. Until he’d met Alma, the only females he’d seen regularly were his mother and sister, and over the years he had come to think of women as life’s police force: always alert for a slacking in responsibility, a foot that strayed off the approved pathways, a breach of the unwritten rules that women all seemed to instinctively know. The only exception, of a sort, that he could think of was Vickie at the Black and Blue Eagle Bar. Recalling the night he’d demolished the bar’s trash can in rage and frustrated grief, he wondered what she had actually seen in him. For that matter, he didn’t let himself dwell on the conclusions David's downstairs neighbor had undoubtedly drawn about the "cousin" who had come to stay with them.
* * * * *
It hadn’t taken even a week for his new household to fall into a routine. An early riser all his life, Ennis now regularly made his way down the stairways and platforms that separated the house from the strip of beach to watch the sun rise over the Lake. He’d found a beached log, still dense and sturdy but weathered enough to be silvery, and would sit with his back against it and Jack’s quilt wrapped loosely around him. On some mornings the colors were intense enough that they overflowed and splashed onto the Lake along the horizon; at other times the sky seemed to leach so much color from the water it was left the color of dark blue or even black ink.
But in a way his favorite kind of daybreak was when wraiths of fog hovered and glided here and there over the water, rendering it a kind of odd milky blue and blurring the horizon altogether. It always jogged the stubbornly reclusive awareness of those few moments during his wedding night with Jack that he could never recall. It was less like a blank space than the kind of dark-colored impression left on a wall after a long-resident picture is removed and it continued to puzzle Ennis; but he felt closest to Jack on these mornings and that was enough for now.
The solitude he had a few days a week, with the house mostly to himself, was a relief. In a little over a week he’d had to adjust to more changes than in the past four decades and not surprisingly, it was enervating. He’d surveyed the upstairs apartment and the whole outside of the house, noting a leaky faucet here and a cracked windowpane there as well as the plastic sheets still on the windows from last winter. "You’re working more’n full time just your first week," Maggie had commented, but seeing the house become more sturdy and whole under his hands in these small ways made it seem a safe and unmovable shelter in the midst of a cyclone of unfamiliar scenes and unknown territories.
On four mornings a week, Wednesday through Saturday, Ennis sat across from David over coffee in the blue and white kitchen, and then they rode together under the latticework of the Aerial Bridge and through town to David’s North Shore Outlet store, which he’d bought, he told Ennis, shortly after moving to Duluth. "Not all of it; the people who’d owned it wanted a partner to take over the everyday runnin’ part." The front of the store was made to look like an old cabin through a combination of wood beams and log siding; but behind the front was a no-nonsense, decidedly un-rustic building that would have been longer and appeared narrower than it was except for the back part that was partitioned off for what appeared to be some kind of repair shop. "We lease that to out a couple of guys that repair and service snowmobiles," David explained. "Not much goin’ on there this time of year, but it’s steady income and I don’t mind mentionin’ it when we take out ads."
During their telephone acquaintance of the past year, David had often mentioned both the store and the family hardware business he had inherited right after college. "How long ‘v’ you been runnin a store?" Ennis asked on the way to work the first day.
"Since I was a kid, really," was David’s answer. "I started working there weekends when I was about ten. Runnin errands, workin in the back, I’d never thought I was good at much but I learned early about havin your own money in your pocket. It’s freedom and it’s protection - well, maybe not a guarantee of those things but it helps.
"You know," he added with seeming irrelevancy, "how some families have it all figured out what kinda roles everybody plays, like they’re writin their own story? My brother Dean, poor kid, he was real sick with measles when he was little, damaged his eyes some and along the way they discovered he had a heart murmur, very slight one, but that was all she wrote for him. He was actually pretty healthy the whole time we were growin up, it was our mother and daddy who never recovered. Dean got cast as the sickly one in the family, he still lives in my mother’s house. Probably will till he dies. Me, I was the kid who was supposed to take over the family business, marry some nice girl an never move further away than about eight blocks. And I took over the family business all right, guess one out of three is better than nothing."
To Ennis’ relief, he did not have to wait on customers, as David put him to catching up on long-neglected inventories and sorting out mail order forms and invoices, checking to see if the stock had arrived, order shipped and payment received. As big as the store appeared, he discovered, many of the sales were through a small catalogue and much of the stock was either ordered periodically from suppliers or fetched in the store's battered cargo van from a modestly-sized rental storage unit. But it was more paperwork than he’d ever done at one time and by the end of the first day he had a slight headache from squinting so much. And it did not escape David’s notice.
"Gotta get you some reading glasses right away," was his immediate diagnosis. "You’ll be goin home with headaches every night before long if we don’t."
Ennis was beginning to appreciate Maggie’s nickname even better. "Don’t go ta doctors much," he protested. "Never could afford it," but "you’re farsighted - you can probably get by with just reading glasses and you don’t even need to see a doctor for those. We’ll stop at a drugstore or K-Mart on the way home." Having been a workingman since the age of 15, Ennis was acutely aware that he was David’s employee as well as houseguest, so he swallowed his annoyance. "Okay, Doc," he shot as David was walking away.
David stopped and looked back at him in mock astonishment. "I see Maggie told you about the potato salad," was his only comment. Ennis was surprised at how different everything looked with things in focus at close view, although he wore the glasses only when he really needed to. They made him feel as if he were looking at the world from behind a glass wall.
* * * * *
David technically worked five days a week and took Sunday and Monday off; but Ennis quickly discovered that regular hours were only theory for a person who owns a business. While the store was closed on Sunday, David usually went in for a couple of hours to make sure everything was ready for Monday morning, and often spent an hour or two after dinner totaling up accounts and invoices. But the sun set late in the summer at that high latitude, and they would regularly spend an hour or so sitting on the narrow deck watching the Lake’s colors darken and the city’s lights expand from little sharp punctures of light here and there to a softer glow that illuminated the hillside.
"You done some great work on the house," David commented as they sat on the deck after dinner. "But you gotta another day off this week, why don’t you do a little exploring? If you want, you can have my car for the day, just pick me up at the store close to dinnertime." Ennis had already discovered that Duluth, although a much bigger city than Riverton or Casper, was small enough for nothing to be very far away from anything else.
"T’s already taken care of," he answered. "Maggie told me just as she was leavin she’d be sleepin in tomorrow and probably not goin anyplace ‘n’ I can use her car if I want. She said there’s some kinda nature trail down near the end a the Point, maybe I’ll see what it looks like."
"Oh yeah. I’ve heard there’s a park down that way, know there’s a good-size public beach."
"I’d a thought you’d know about it, since you go out walkin every morning."
"I should know about it." David reached over and refilled his wine glass, took a long swallow and stared out at the Lake for a few silent moments. "When my daddy useta take me an’ Nathan an’ Dean on camping trips, ‘least Dean went when they’d let him, we’d take hikes, short ones. But since I’ve moved here, putting the business together is all I’ve had time for. But hey, check it out and tell me about it. There’s a lotta trails, nature areas around Duluth, If I’m walkin every day anyhow, maybe it’s time I started exploring them."
Ennis didn’t comment on that. He’d heard of jogging and running becoming fashionable over the years, but his work had always provided him with enough exercise that the idea of anyone walking just for the sake of walking was still an oddity.
"Anyway," David went on, "you’ve spent your first few days off here working on the house. Spend at least one day takin a break, not that we don’t appreciate it. These old houses, they always need something done to em... and you did good with those inventories at the store, I know there was a lot to do all at once."
"Yeah, it’s been okay. But there’s sure a lot more ta camping than there useta be."
Remembering the canvas tent, heavy bedrolls and battered cooking equipment he and Jack had used so long ago, he was amazed at what David’s store offered: legless canoe chairs with padded backs and seats; heaters that attached to propane tanks, mosquito head nets that looked like headgear from an old Mars-invades-Earth movie, sleeping bags with so much fill they seemed like thin mattresses. He even noticed things that couldn’t even be used for tent camping but were useful for camper vehicles, such as portable refrigerators and electric heated travel mugs with plugs to fit cigarette lighters. "You even got an order for a refrigerator ‘bout the size of a packin box. What’s the point of goin camping if you’ve got a refrigerator with ya?"
"I don’t see any, myself, but we stock what customers want. Some really do get into the wilderness thing: backpack everything, portage the canoes between lakes, the whole bit. Other people, they just drive these RVs the size o’ Greyhound buses wherever they want to go, set up in a campground. Me, I like something in between. But they’ve all got money to spend on it."
Ennis saw his point and the thought of this kind of fantasy camping amused him. "Jack was just like that. Every time we met, had a new tent or some gadget that didn’t work half the time. He prob’ly woulda shown up someday with one a them RVs---" he lurched to a stop, suddenly realizing that he’d not only mentioned Jack but had even laughed at the memory. His instant feeling of betrayal and guilt was hardly surprising to him but a not-too-distant memory insistently pushed back: next time you think about me, try an’ remember somethin’ ta laugh about.
There was a short silence, but David continued to look at Ennis steadily, showing no surprise. "So his name was Jack…. How long were you together?"
Could a been 20 years, but "together… It was just one summer, we was both 19. Summer job herdin sheep - that’s how we met. After that summer I got married, Jack did too…" he was suddenly uneasy, as if admitting to some kind of long-concealed transgression, but David nodded as if Ennis had confirmed something.
"I’m not much younger ‘n you, I remember how it was. You were with another man, you were supposed to have somethin mental wrong with you, either that or your daddy wasn’t around enough and your mother was around too much. If you or your Jack ‘d managed to tell anybody, they’d probably ‘v said do just what you did. You know, marry a nice girl, have kids, you’ll forget it."
Ennis hadn’t thought of that. "Kept thinkin I had forgot, guess he did too but we got together again, it was when our kids was real little. And we kept seein each other on campin trips - we called em fishin trips, two, maybe three times a year after that."
His head was spinning and he was a little short of breath. Up till now, Ennis had not talked with Jack with anyone other than Mrs. Twist and that brief agonizing call to Lureen. Hearing someone who hadn’t known Jack mention him, especially as your Jack, wasn’t as frightening as he would have thought but it was still an odd feeling, like something newly acquired that surely had its place in the house but at the moment was still sitting in the middle of the floor in a half-unpacked box. "But you ‘n’ Nathan - you lived together didn’t you?"
"We did in my parents’ house when we were both growin up. After that - well we lived not too far apart so it wasn’t just a couple of times a year." They looked at each other for a few silent moments, both of them thinking the same thing: far enough for now.
"What we want an’ what we get," David finally said, and Ennis needed no explanation but his left hand was resting on the small table between them and David’s fingers came to rest on his briefly.
Later, as the night remained unusually warm, Ennis left the window of his attic room open and lay awake for a long time listening to the far-off harbor sounds and the closer wolf-like wails of a loon: where are you? As his thoughts gradually dissolved into sleep, he was more aware than usual of David sleeping in the bedroom of the floor below.
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