for Texas instead -- and Joe Aguirre's in the office and he says to
me, he says, 'You boys found a way to make the time pass up there,
didn't you,' and I give him a look but when I went out I seen he had a
big-ass pair a binoculars hangin off his rearview." He neglected to
add that the foreman had leaned back in his squeaky wooden tilt
chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs
baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to
rehire him. He went on, "Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised
me. I never figured you to throw a dirty punch."
"I come up under my brother K.E., three years older'n me, slugged
me silly ever day. Dad got tired a me come bawlin in the house and
when I was about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a
problem and you got a fix it or it's gonna be with you until you're
ninety and K.E.'s ninety-three. Well, I says, he's bigger'n me. Dad
says, you got a take him unawares, don't say nothin to him, make
him feel some pain, get out fast and keep doin it until he takes the
message. Nothin like hurtin somebody to make him hear good. So I
did. I got him in the outhouse, jumped him on the stairs, come over
to his pillow in the night while he was sleepin and pasted him damn
good. Took about two days. Never had trouble with K.E. since. The
lesson was, don't say nothin and get it over with quick." A telephone
rang in the next room, rang on and on, stopped abruptly in mid-peal.
"You won't catch me again," said Jack. "Listen. I'm thinkin, tell you
what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf
operation, your horses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'm gettin
out a rodeo. I ain't no broke-dick rider but I don't got the bucks a ride
out this slump I'm in and I don't got the bones a keep gettin wrecked.
I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do it, you and me.
Lureen's old man, you bet he'd give me a bunch if I'd get lost.
Already more or less said it -- "
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain't goin a be that way. We can't. I'm stuck
with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can't get out of it. Jack, I
don't want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I
don't want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together
down home, Earl and Rich -- Dad would pass a remark when he seen
them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds.
I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation
ditch. They'd took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him
around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire
iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose
tore down from skiddin on gravel."
"You seen that?"
"Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad
laughed about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive
and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his
tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get
together once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere -- "
"How much is once in a while?" said Jack. "Once in a while ever
four f*ckin years?"
"No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. "I goddamn
hate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back
to work. But if you can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "sh*t. I
been lookin at people on the street. This happen a other people?
What the hell do they do?"
"It don't happen in Wyomin and if it does I don't know what they do,
maybe go to Denver," said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him,
"and I don't give a flyin f*ck. Son of a bitch, Ennis, take a couple
days off. Right now. Get us out a here. Throw your stuff in the back
a my truck and let's get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call
Alma up and tell her you're goin. Come on, Ennis, you just shot my
airplane out a the sky -- give me somethin a go on. This ain't no little
thing that's happenin here."
The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he were
answering it, Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialed
his own number.
A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble,
just widening water. She was working at a grocery store clerk job,
saw she'd always have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what
Ennis made. Alma asked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded
another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he would be happy to
leave her alone if she didn't want any more of his kids. Under her
breath she said, "I'd have em if you'd support em." And under that,
thought, anyway, what you like to do don't make too many babies.
Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had
glimpsed, Ennis's fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist
and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step
out and have any fun, his yearning for low paid, long-houred ranch
work, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the
bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or
the power company, put her in a long, slow dive and when Alma Jr.
was nine and Francine seven she said, what am I doin hangin around
with him, divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not getting
much ahead but glad enough to be around stock again, free to drop
things, quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice.
He had no serious hard feelings, just a vague sense of getting
shortchanged, and showed it was all right by taking Thanksgiving
dinner with Alma and her grocer and the kids, sitting between his
girls and talking horses to them, telling jokes, trying not to be a sad
daddy. After the pie Alma got him off in the kitchen, scraped the
plates and said she worried about him and he ought to get married
again. He saw she was pregnant, about four, five months, he
guessed.
"Once burned," he said, leaning against the counter, feeling too big
for the room.
"You still go fishin with that Jack Twist?"
"Some." He thought she'd take the pattern off the plate with the
scraping.
"You know," she said, and from her tone he knew something was
coming, "I used to wonder how come you never brought any trouts
home. Always said you caught plenty. So one time I got your creel
case open the night before you went on one a your little trips -- price
tag still on it after five years -- and I tied a note on the end of the
line. It said, hello Ennis, bring some fish home, love, Alma. And
then you come back and said you'd caught a bunch a browns and ate
them up. Remember? I looked in the case when I got a chance and