Chapter Text
PROLOGUE: LOOKOUT POINT and CHAPTER ONE: SIGNED ON
PROLOGUE: LOOKOUT POINT
I tried really hard not to show Daddy how I felt that day he told me. Sitting there on the sofa next to him, listening, I felt a chill come over me. I managed to keep my hands from shaking until I walked out to the car, and then it felt like the whole world was falling down around me.
I can still hear his voice saying he loved Mister Twist. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget. At the time I remember thinking that it didn’t sound like him, because how was it possible he was saying those words? I knew he loved me, loved Jenny, and I sort of thought he’d loved Mama back when we were young, but to hear him say this thing that made him so different…. I wondered if I knew him at all.
He said that in what was important, he was gay. I scarcely knew what that meant. A man with a man…. What reason did I have to consider it? He forced my nose into it, and I didn’t want to go there. It felt…dirty. What daughter wants to be thinking on the sex habits of her parents? He made me do that.
That was months ago, and now, looking back, I can say that I’m grateful. I feel like I’ve grown up a lot since that day in December 1983. I was still a teenager then, but seven months later I feel like a woman. Facing tough things: I guess that’ll do it for you. That and turning twenty.
Daddy and me, we’ve always got on, even during those long years when I didn’t see him much after the divorce. I got busy with school stuff and my friends, and he never pushed. I’m sorry to think that I was so selfish, when he was living out there in that little rundown dump of a house, with just his horses to keep him company. Too often I said No, Daddy, I’m busy, I can’t see you this month.
It took me a while to see how quiet he’d got over the last years, even quieter than he usually was. Sad. I still don’t know exactly why he was like that, but it had to be something to do with Mister Twist, who lived in Texas. Daddy must have been yearning after him, since they didn’t see much of each other.
I didn’t do anything about Daddy and his loneliness until I graduated high school. Shame on me. I remember how his eyes smiled on me the first time I drove out his way with some fried chicken, not judging that this was so unusual for me to be visiting, just happy to take what I could give him. Maybe that’s part of this growing-up business too, realizing that your parents have their own needs, and maybe you can help them out, give a little of yourself and not just take. It wasn’t a big deal, just dinners on most Saturdays, and he never did say much, as that’s not his way. I’ve heard more of his words on the phone since he went away than I ever heard over beef stew or spaghetti.
Sometimes I ask myself why I love him the way I do. What is it about a mother and a father that makes us love them? Is it our thankfulness? Habit? The way we know they’ll care no matter what? Just long years spent together? I have all those things, except not for the long years with him, but him and me, everybody’s always said how alike we are. And I don’t mind that. I wonder if I have boys, though, what that might mean for their granddad to be that way.
Once he told me, I kept trying to understand it. All those years and all those fishing trips I was scarcely aware of, when something powerful kept pulling the two of them together….
Mister Twist and Daddy, they’re living together in the same house these days, and I guess sleeping in the same bed, too, down in New Mexico. Daddy sounds different and not in a bad way. Too much to say happy, cause I think he guards his words when he’s talking to me on the phone, not wanting to make things obvious, but I can tell. Life is better for him.
And Mister Twist isn’t just some name now, neither. I’ve seen his picture. Daddy came up for Jenny’s play this past March, and on Saturday morning him and me went for a walk before I headed for my shift at the Dairy Queen. He pulled out his wallet without me even asking and said, You wanted to see what Jack looks like, right? Here he is.
It took some courage to look, because I knew looking would make it real. I made up my mind to say something nice even if I had no reason to do so, as I could tell this was important to Daddy. But Mister Twist is a fine-looking man, with dark hair and pretty eyes and a big smile that made a person want to smile back, even though it was just a little black and white picture like you get from one of those booths at a mall. For just a minute, looking, I said to myself that this was the person my daddy kissed, the person he…. For that time it was like the ground under my feet wasn’t steady. A daughter shouldn’t have to face those thoughts, you know? But a grown woman, with a daddy who almost drank himself to death because he was so sad to be parted from the man he told me he loved, she faces those things.
He’s so handsome, I told Daddy as I held the picture up to the sunlight to see it better. You think so? he asked me, all shy like. You know he is, I said, and it was strange saying that, like I was his age and stood on the same footing in the world. He has beautiful eyes. What color are they?
They’re blue, Daddy said, and he looked down to where his feet were finding their way over the cracks in the pavement. The catch in his voice told me he was embarrassed to be saying that, to be knowing Mister Twist’s eye color. But then he went on. The truest blue color, like the sky. He said that like the words meant something special.
I kept looking, wanting to fix his face in my mind, but Daddy held out his hand, and so I gave the picture back to him. He tucked it away in his wallet with care. You think I’ll ever meet him? I asked. I didn’t know that I wanted to, though.
Daddy shook his head and said ah, Junior, there ain’t no need. You’re kind just to be looking on this.
Not so kind. Curious, and worried some, that whether Daddy was happy or not depended on this person I didn’t know. Worried even more over this AIDS thing, but I’ve promised not to let that fill my mind.
Lots of days, I wish none of this had happened and Daddy was still living outside Riverton where I could bring him Saturday supper, but then I stop those thoughts. They’re just selfish, even though I do miss him bad and wish I could see him. If he can be happy working on his little horse business so far away, not trying to drown his pain with liquor but instead smiling shy like he did when he showed me that picture, and even though that means him doing all those things I try not to think of that he does cause he is a gay man, well, then I ain’t got no right to want anything different for him.
I doubt that Daddy asked for this to happen to him, and I won’t give him more grief than he’s lived with already. Looking back, I know it’s caused him a lot of sorrow, but now it seems he’s determined to make something good out of what he is. I remember telling him that there are some things we can’t help feeling, like how I felt when Troy broke up with me or how glad I was when Kurt turned his eyes my way. I figure that’s the way it is with him and Mister Twist. A thing like what they got, it just is, like the breeze in your face on a winter day or the sun shining in the morning. Not one of us can stand against God’s nature.
I love him; nothing will ever change that. And I hope everything’s going all right with Daddy and Mister Twist down in New Mexico.
*****
CHAPTER ONE: SIGNED ON
Ennis woke up slowly. His left hand resting in front of him came aware first. Then the quiver of morning slid across his bare shoulders. The waking went down one leg and up the other as he pushed them both straight and then pulled them back to where he was curled on his side, under the warm covers. Finally he became aware of his ass, alive with a background ache he didn’t mind since it brought last night alive again. He smiled at the memory, but then he squelched that small curving of his lips in favor of a sigh. He was full awake now.
Five days on his own. Not what he’d signed on for. Shit.
He pulled the quilt up, tucking it under his chin, and moved just his eyes to the fancy digital clock on the nightstand, silver and black with a built-in AM-FM radio. The green numbers showed 7:14 a.m. That was way late even for a Sunday, as normally he was out every day with the sun rising or lots of time before then, leaving Jack behind snoring. That clock had been some so-called wedding gift from not-donkey-dong Gary Shelborne, making a joke Ennis didn’t appreciate. Shelborne was the last man who’d had Jack and Jack’s ass before Ennis moved in and claimed them both permanently. Except Jack would take issue with that language. He could imagine Jack’s voice saying that he was his own man and nobody had him, but he would share with who he wanted to share with, and Ennis had better see the difference.
Ennis saw that difference clearly, though it had taken him more than twenty years to get things straight in his head. He brushed his lips against the quilt at that word. Straight was one thing he wasn’t never gonna be, but the result of his thinking and growing and knowing was the last three and a half months in New Mexico living with Jack. Jack was sharing with him. Fine. Mighty fine.
As he thought on Jack in this bed they both slept in, his dick stirred like it was on automatic. All parts of him wanted, cause he didn’t like being left alone. He reached down to take it in hand, half-hard despite last night. They’d gone to bed early knowing Jack had to be up by four-thirty, but they’d kept each other awake anyhow, facing each other on their sides, indulging in long kisses Ennis stored up. He’d run his hands down Jack’s arms. He sure favored the hair on those arms; it reminded him that he was with a man, and he did like running his fingers over that hairy skin.
Never had let himself just indulge like that in the before times, him and Jack in the wilderness, hiding out in open space, but he was different now, had learnt. Jack favored being kissed, and Ennis saw the point. Kissing was some sweet torture in this sweet life they were living, to be so close but not touching in nothing but their lips and hands, over and over, tasting Jack’s sweet taste, sharing whatever his own was that he hoped Jack didn’t mind. Testing the limits, hearing the master bedroom fill up with their breathing getting deeper and more needful, a master bedroom that was odd with no bathroom attached, but it came with two masters, because him and Jack, together, that’s the way it was.
Jack had cracked before he had. He’d smoothed his hand up to Ennis’s shoulder and pushed, whispered, “Will you roll over for me?”
Didn’t mind doing that, more regular than it’d been before but still something special, seemed so for both of them. Ennis rolled from his left side to his right. There were some long moments of slicking up and stretching out behind him, and then he took in a breath cause there Jack was, knocking on the door. A couple seconds later he was pushing in. Ennis grunted, trying to go soft down there and open up for his man.
This last fuck had to last for a while, since they were going down from nights filled up with each other to zero. A phone call might be there for the voice, but that wouldn’t be much help when it came to the body’s need. So they did it slow, no hurry, even though the minutes were ticking away. If they were reasonable, they would be sleeping. Jack’s arm came around his waist, and Ennis held it there. No big strokes, just tiny pushes and pulls, enough so Ennis felt that space Jack was claiming in him but good. Good space.
Jack kissed between his shoulder blades. “How’d I go without you,” he murmured. “Long times apart. How’d we ever….”
Familiar words Ennis had heard before, and he wished Jack would stop saying them. If he could change things, he would. Three and a half months when they could have had this for twenty-one years. That was a pain that wouldn’t ever go away.
More kisses, sucking, and a trail of fire across his shoulders. “Sweetheart,” Jack said. “Honeybunch. Light of my life. Let me….”
His hand dropped to Ennis’s dick, ready to go even with Jack talking nonsense, and in just a few minutes he had Ennis gasping and curling his toes, a stream of relief spurting out, red hot and scalding. It was pulled up from where there wasn’t any cold, not with Jack around.
And then more heat flowed into him to replace what had just left. Jack pushed so hard he shoved Ennis a half-foot across their white sheets, and his forehead pressed tight against Ennis’s back. Like he always said, Jack let out with, “Here I go, can’t stop it. Ennis!”
That’s what Ennis took with him as he fell into sleep even before Jack had gone soft and pulled out, knowing that neither of them could stop it.
During the night he’d warmed himself a good comfort spot under the blue and white quilt they’d picked up from a roadside display on the outskirts of Taos, but the morning air coming through the screen of the half-open window was cool on his face. He let his dick be and rolled up to sit with his legs over the side, feeling like he hadn’t slept at all instead of sleeping too hard and too long. Some of his come from the night before had dried on his stomach and was itchy, so he scratched as the clock seemed to stare back at him. He reached out to wipe a layer of dust off the number display and wished he hadn’t slept in. He felt low about that. That was like some man who had no ambition or thoughts for the future. A man who was working two jobs and needed to have both of them turn out good shouldn’t be sleeping in.
He hadn’t even heard Jack leave, he’d been that worn-out. Those two jobs took some energy, it was true. His work at the Cross B Buckminster ranch had the owners relying on him for way more than he’d ever been relied on before, and he was not gonna disappoint. Even weightier was what he was trying to do on his own early mornings, evenings, and weekends. Training his own horses, getting them ready to sell, that took time and attention.
But the three horses in the old stable out back didn’t know the difference between Sunday and any other day. For sure they were waiting for him right now, hanging their heads over the stall doors and wondering where the hell he was. Samson wasn’t gonna feed himself. Delilah wasn’t gonna get under the saddle on her lonesome. If he didn’t stir himself, he would never make anything of himself and would stay a good-for-nothing, boil-on-a-rat’s-ass Wyoming cowboy. If he wanted to be somebody for John Henry Twist, Junior to be proud of it, he had to get up and do things.
Ennis reached back to put a hand on the other side of the bed. Cold, as he expected.
He found his way to the kitchen, yawning and stretching his arms over his head so his fingertips brushed the ceiling. One look at the brand new coffeemaker with its ready light on told him somebody’d been there before him, making up and leaving a full pot for his purposes. He poured himself some, using his old mug with spiderweb cracks inside, stained brown, a reminder of eight solid years of living alone, and then he leaned over the sink and peered out the little curtained window.
Baldy Peak was in his sight, but he paid it no mind. Instead, his eyes took in the side yard, checking that all was as it should be. They didn’t have any cats to keep the rodents in check, and they didn’t have any dogs to raise the alarm either for predators or any human beasts. That made him uneasy, what with him and Jack living together with no explaining and the nearest neighbor half a mile away. The Sangre De Cristo Chronicle had started up a column from the police blotter, and Ennis had noted one assault of a man for no good reason just off the Angel Fire town center, and then four break-ins at places like theirs, off the beaten track. Food had been taken along with lots of other stuff, which made him think it was done by fellas down on their luck, but even so, it paid to be careful.
All looked like it should this morning. There were no trash cans upended from raccoons or skunks, no coyote sign or mountain lion, not that he expected them to be standing in the yard announcing themselves. Anyway, he figured he could leave Jack’s shotgun where it was under the bed and his own rifle that he kept in the kitchen closet next to the broom. Jack’d stashed his rifle in the stable, there in case of need, though Ennis didn’t expect to come face to face with a bear again in his life. More likely they might someday find a snake in the stable. It was the coyotes and the people he was most concerned about. He dropped the curtain and then wandered to the bathroom to piss, shave, and take a shower.
Fifteen minutes later his thermos wasn’t where he expected it to be at the side of the sink, but then he remembered he’d told Jack to take it so he didn’t fall asleep on one of those curves in the road. He’d taken his truck out in the dark before dawn. Jack’d kissed his knee, which at the time’d been in a convenient spot to do so, and said that he had no intention of making Ennis a widower anytime soon. Ennis shook his head; there wasn’t a superstitious bone in Jack’s body, and he’d laughed when Ennis had tried to shush him. He’d probably react differently if Ennis mentioned a no-hitter that the Cardinals had going in the seventh inning. Talking about a no-hitter in progress was a the big taboo for baseball fans.
Ennis smirked at that thought. Might want to do that if he ever had the chance, see how Jack would squawk about jinxing his favorite team. He went down on his knees searching for the other thermos in one of the lower cabinets, found it, and filled it up. Coffee would keep him through the morning, with no Jack around to nag him about eating.
The side door closed behind him with a bang on this quiet morning, and he scuffed through the yard’s dirt and grass toward the stable. He tucked the thermos under his arm, settled his hat on tight, and then stopped as was his habit right in the middle to take a lungful of sweet mountain air. Still fresh, without the dusty smell it often got mid-afternoon when the heat raised up. Even in this high valley, more than eight thousand feet up, with far Baldy and Wheeler Peaks poking far higher, it got plenty warm in summer. Though not nearly so baked-heat as in Riverton.
He felt the air he breathed go all the way down into him. All those years of going out to the mountains for his one week of breathing at a time, with Jack, and now here they were, at altitude, living out those dreams he’d never even let himself think on. Breathing easy. Sometimes Ennis woke up in the middle of the night, rolled over to see Jack in the bed next to him, and thought this couldn’t be real. Cause how was it possible for a man to have this kind of feeling every day?
The summer-pink flowers of locust bushes caught his eye, and he looked over toward the grove of scrub oak and pine that marked the property line, that they’d taken to calling their forest. It ran a good distance, from the county road, then past the house, and then back a ways beyond the stable, where the track he took the horses on went to the foothills. The acorns of the oaks attracted the deer, but there wasn’t any sign of them now. One of those gray squirrels that so loved the Ponderosa pines that rose higher than the oaks was chittering, and Ennis watched it launch from one limb to the other, looking in mid-air like it was flying.
Standing here staring wasn’t getting the work done. He took himself off again to the stable and outbuildings that had sealed the deal when they’d been looking for a place to live. Town and Country Realtors, headquartered in Eagle Nest, New Mexico just a few miles down the road, hadn’t shown him and Jack anything better for what they were willing to pay, and so they’d closed on a one-year lease. Ennis still wasn’t sure if that’d been a mistake or not.
He turned around and walked backward, his eyes on the one-story house they were living in. The house wasn’t right, and he felt bad about that. Low ceilings, not enough windows so it was dark inside, an odd arrangement of rooms, a general air of being run down so the place showed every one of its forty-five years. Jack had sacrificed, there wasn’t any question, though not one word of complaint about it had escaped the man’s lips since they’d moved here. That was unusual, and Ennis wondered what it might mean. Jack tended to bring complaining to a high art form. If they’d stayed in Amarillo, they’d be in Jack’s fine townhouse, that to Ennis’s mind suited Jack better.
He wished he could fix the house situation for Jack, and he had intentions to do so. Jack had got used to higher living. There was no way that Ennis wanted his man to feel like he’d come down. It was bad enough that Jack had stooped to living with a dumbass ranch hand who only now was able to read cause he’d been so stubborn for years about getting glasses. Maybe, if this training horses thing on the side worked the way he thought it might, by the time next April rolled around they could count on some extra income coming their way. Then they’d look for something better, more like what Jack was accustomed to.
Ennis unlatched and then opened the stable door, clucking in the way he had of letting the horses know he was there and hadn’t forgotten them even though he was hours later than usual. He wouldn’t let that happen again and wasn’t gonna let up just cause Jack wasn’t around to see his efforts. The sharp, kind of sour smell of horses that seemed to have been with him all his life hit his nose, and the yellow morning light followed him inside.
He went up to Samson in his stall, the tall bay gelding he’d bought in the auction over by Cimarron. He’d been mostly skin and bones then, and nobody’d wanted to take a chance on him. Ennis got him for a song. He’d already fattened up fine and was coming along. He had a good gait too and should sell well when the time came, pretty soon. The horse nickered softly and butted his muzzle into Ennis’s hand.
“Hey, there,” Ennis murmured. “Did you think I was some goner? Lit out somewhere and paid you no mind?”
He balanced the thermos up on a post so he could stroke the soft skin and feel horse breath against his fingers. It was like velvet with little whiskers there on most horses, though the softest ever had been Judd, one of those he’d sold off in Riverton so he could make the trip south to Jack. He did regret Judd, it was true, but….
There was some sound from behind him, probably Delilah wanting her share of attention, getting ready to stamp and demand it. Ennis stepped back so he could see Samson’s filled-out form, knowing some pride that he’d been able to save the gelding from the glue factory. But Samson was looking over his head.
And then there was that sound again….
Ennis frowned, and caution stopped him from turning around, kept him pretending he hadn’t heard anything. What the fuck?
Again, some sliding noise….
Not a horse. He knew those sounds with his bones. Not a ‘coon after the feed. This was the scuffle of a foot against the dirt floor.
A two-legged animal’s foot.
Ennis stepped forward again, his mind moving fast, his movements slow as he tried to figure the best way…. The hair on the back of his neck rose. Somebody was behind him, coming closer, and there wasn’t any good reason for it.
“There now,” he said low to the horse that had its eyes fixed on something past him. “You looking for the saddle already?”
The rifle was over in the empty stall he was using for storage. He could either go for it or turn around with his fists ready. Maybe grab the thermos and swing it. He looked into Samson’s eyes, trying to read from them what was going on behind him. Breaking into an empty house and stealing food was one thing, but threatening a man in his own stable was another. He decided he’d better—
Something sharp poked into his back, strong enough to push air out of him and shove him up against the stall door. He went flat against the wood, banging his nose on the post, as the bay pulled back fast, not liking it one bit.
He waited, his heart thumping, expecting to feel the sharp bite of a bullet tearing through him any second, for the gun was pinning him where he was.
A hard voice said, “Don’t move.”
Ennis frowned, thinking he’d heard wrong. “What?”
“You heard me, stay right there.”
What the fuck? Fear turn into anger, but then relief washed through him and made his fingers uncurl, though why….
“Don’t be getting any ideas, I’ve got you covered. Put your hands up.”
He hadn’t played games like this since he was a kid. “Like hell I will,” he growled. He tried to turn around but that metal prodding against him told him otherwise.
“You want a hole in your back?”
Ennis snorted. “You ain’t gonna shoot me.”
“I will if that’s what it takes.”
“What d’you want?”
“Just a little of your time, cowboy.”
“All you had to do—”
“Desperate men take desperate measures. Didn’t you hear me say to put your hands up?”
Ennis straightened away from the stall door and put his hands up high, then just to make a point he put them over his hat. “You been reading again.”
“Nope. I’ve been watching Kojak re-runs because my man works so hard he’s never around. Now turn around slow. No funny moves.”
Ennis considered launching himself at Jack’s feet and taking him down for a wrestle in the hay, but he was pretty interested in what was going on, so he played along. He turned as ordered, hands on his hat, to see the man he thought was halfway to Kansas City by now wearing his best black jacket and an open-necked country club white Izod shirt, that Ennis had ragged him over the week before. Jack seemed fierce, his face drawn tight, though looking hard it seemed there was a twinkle buried deep that glinted for just a second, then was tamped down with more of a frown than before.
Ennis fought hard to keep a straight face when he saw the gun: an old manure shovel they’d picked up at a garage sale. He should have been able to tell the difference between that and a real gun. Then again, it wasn’t like he’d ever had a Winchester 30-30 shoved in his ribs before. Jack was holding the thing like it was a real threat.
“You lost your mind?”
Jack jerked his head in the direction of the door. “March, Mister.”
“Where we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“You’re the boss.”
This time it was Jack who snorted. “Don’t I wish. Come on, get a move on.”
He could have tripped the man as he went past, but he didn’t make that move, just went forward into the open air, the sunlight coming over his shoulder.
“What happened to that flight you were—”
“Did I say you could talk yet? Damn, don’t you know how to keep your mouth shut?”
A jab from the shovel reminded Ennis of how ridiculous that statement was, and also how dumb this must look. He was grateful that they had no neighbors to take in the sight. So he kept his hands up to keep on with the game.
There was a not-so-gentle tap on his left side with the shovel. “Over there, to the forest.”
They’d noted early on the faint trail that went to the middle of the stand of trees. That first day, they’d followed it to explore the property, and it’d brought smiles for them to see the remains of a kids’ tree house that went up the highest Ponderosa pine. Sometime years back, some boy had nailed strips of wood straight up the tree trunk, like ladder steps, and then built a platform a good forty feet up, above the tops of the oaks. He must have had a good view of this offshoot of the long Moreno Valley.
That’s where Jack prodded him to go, and Ennis went. Walking in under the trees was like going into another world. It was the way he remembered it’d been with him and Jack in their trips up the Wyoming mountains, feeling safe because they were separate from what life was for real. The trees had their own sound. In this morning calm, he could hear the branches rustling and the call of a sparrow from on high. Their footsteps was muffled too, lost in something that took the sounds down into itself, and the air was still, waiting for all sorts of things that had yet to happen even as it reminded him of all that had happened before.
Though Ennis was still wondering why they were doing this instead of him working like he should. Was it possible Jack’d been canned from this job, too, like he’d been in Amarillo? Had things gone bad at the Tulip feedlot?
When they’d stepped over and around and under the undergrowth, low-hanging branches, and scrub oaks in their way, that biggest pine came into view. There was a blanket spread under it, and an old log across the back of that, just like they’d looked for on their trips when setting up camp in the back of beyond. Ennis stopped and swallowed. It wasn’t just him thinking of the similarities here. Neither one of them was likely to ever forget those times.
“Hey….”
“Just get on over there, onto your back.”
Shrugging, Ennis settled in, hat off, hands now folded on his stomach, ankles crossed, propped up against the dead tree limb Jack must have taken some time to find and drag over there. He looked up to where Jack was framed against the green leaves behind him, with just glints of yellow sun showing here and there and one streak coming across an arm. “If you’re aiming for my money, you gotta know you make more’n I do.”
“I don’t want your money.”
“If you’re after my ass, you had that last night.”
“I don’t want your ass.”
“Then what’re you after, you crazy man?”
Jack threw the shovel over to the leaves built up in a pile to the side, dry brown oak and pine needles mixed, where he must have shoved them when smoothing off the space under the pine. He shrugged out of his fine tailored jacket, draped it over the log, and then set his best hat on top of that. Finally, with a sigh, he sat down next to Ennis, his arms propped on his drawn-up knees.
“I bet you haven’t had breakfast yet.”
“Nope, but neither have the horses. I’d better—”
“Oh no you don’t.” Jack put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down, though Ennis hadn’t made a move. “I been here more than an hour, and the horses have been fed and watered. I even mucked out the stalls waiting for you to get your sorry self out of bed.”
“That don’t get them their work for today. You know I spend more time with them on the weekend, so I—”
“You’re spending this time with me!”
That came out rough, and Ennis heard some hurt there. He reached out and pressed the flat of his hand on that fancy shirt, on Jack’s back, feeling the warmth of the skin under it.
Jack heaved a sigh, moving his hand up and then down. “So. You think the Yankees will pull ahead of Detroit in time to make the playoffs?”
“What do you know about the American League, you National League fella?”
“I’d have to be deaf and blind not to know about the Tigers.”
Ennis took his hand away to scratch at his nose. “The way Detroit’s playing, don’t seem like anybody can catch them. What about the Mets and that teenage pitcher they got? I think they’re all over your Cardinals.”
“There’s time yet, you see.” Jack leaned over to where there was a brown paper sack sitting on the side of the blanket. “Here, I got us some donuts.” He pulled out a box and opened it to show half a dozen glazed, the sugar melted some now on the papers around them. A couple ants were crawling around, so first he flicked them off, and then he handed one over. There were both thermos too. Ennis noted he must have grabbed his own from the stable. A minute while they each poured a cup into the thermos tops, and there was breakfast.
“You turn kidnapper just to feed me?”
“Nope.”
Sometimes, it was true, Jack didn’t say things right out, though in general he was straightforward. Ennis popped the second half of his donut into his mouth and reached for another.
“You get these from Maudie’s?”
“On my way back from Andy’s, yeah.”
“Some trouble at work that I should know about?” He adjusted the way he was leaning back, wriggling his shoulders until he found a better spot against the wood.
“Besides the fact that I can’t figure the mileage put on that Jeep?”
“That still bothering you?”
“I am manager of vehicular operations for Tulip Feedlot, and I can’t get the numbers straight.”
“Somebody’s joy riding.”
“Two hundred miles the last two weeks? Something’s going on.”
“Without a doubt.”
“Whatever it is, they got to know I’d take note of it. So they’re not hiding it.”
“That don’t explain why you’re here and not at the Denver airport waiting for your flight to KC.”
Jack didn’t answer right away while he poured himself some more coffee. “Want some of this?”
Ennis held out his cup.
“Andy called the Angel Fire airport to double-check about our ride up to Denver. You know how he is.”
“You’ve told me, yeah. Sounds like a nervous Nellie to me.”
“Nervous Nellie and my boss.”
“How old’s that guy?”
“Twenty-six. With a wife and daughter.”
Ennis shook his head and then took a sip. The coffee had kept hot and tasted good. “Doesn’t seem right, him lording it over you.”
“He doesn’t do that, and he’s the one with the college degree, not me. Besides, he’s just the assistant GM. I’ve told you how Corliss treats him like shit.”
“Corliss ain’t worth shit, if you ask me. So about this call to the airport.”
Jack lifted his head, maybe looking for a squirrel on the high branches. “They screwed up on fuel delivery, so there wasn’t any gas to get the Cessna to Denver. It’ll be eleven-thirty before we take off. Andy changed the reservations with American, so we’ll still get in to Kansas City in plenty of time for tomorrow.”
“So how come you didn’t just stay at Andy’s house instead of coming all the way back here?”
Jack had blue eyes that could either freeze a hole right through a person, they’d get so cold, or they could heat a person up so the moment became a part of them.
Or they could make a person feel so warm, cause those eyes talked of things Ennis had few words for, even though he’d been doing his best to talk the last three and a half months cause that was what Jack needed….
Jack came back next to him then, leaning against the log, but Ennis put his arm out, asking without words. So instead Jack re-settled in the crook of his elbow, his head on Ennis’s plaid summer-time shirt, and that felt right and familiar. It’d been a fair number of days, weeks even, Ennis realized, since they’d done the same.
He nuzzled his nose in Jack’s clean brown hair. “You are smelling good today. You put on some of that aftershave?”
“Just some. Don’t want to make the ladies faint, but don’t want to come across as a hayseed either.”
They hadn’t talked much about this trip, the first one that Jack was taking that pulled him way out of his comfort zone. It turned out that manager of vehicular operations wasn’t really what Jack had been hired for. It was just a title, since how much time could be spent managing a dozen trucks and such? Or it was some sort of flexible term for the cattle feedlot, where thousands of cattle were being fattened up before being sent to market, with room for plenty more cattle. Tulip Feedlot was a new operation and hungry for business. Feedlot manager Corliss Hamilton might be some hard-nosed asshole with his hand on the Bible, but it hadn’t taken two days before he announced that he was smart enough to take advantage of Jack’s talents for talking and sales. Since then, Jack’d been sent out regularly to convince ranchers that feedlots could fatten their cattle and their bottom line.
This week Jack and Andy O’Donnell, the assistant manager, were scheduled to make a big presentation in Kansas City at some convention, shouting the benefits of northern New Mexico as a place for the last days of any rancher’s cattle. From what Jack said, it seemed that Andy, while a good guy, was leaning on him for the planning and counting on his sweet-talking abilities for success, too.
Ennis tightened his hold on that man, a hug that brought them together closer for a second, and then he released. “Nobody’d ever take you for a hayseed, not looking so purty and smelling so nice.”
“Don’t you say the nicest things.”
“I’m wondering if maybe I need to be worried about those ladies while you’re gone.”
“Just the ones with dicks.”
“I don’t know that you want to tangle with ladies who have dicks, sounds too peculiar.”
“You’re right, though you’d be surprised what the wide world holds. I guess I better lock myself in my hotel room while Andy drowns himself in beer at the bar.”
That would be the day. Ennis had never met the fella, but Jack’d described Andy as a straight and narrow kind of guy, with no patience for booze, though not a hard head like Corliss. More mild. “Maybe you can have one beer.”
Jack twisted around and looked up at him. “If I’m good, two? Mother may I?”
“You was pretty good last night, so okay, two.”
A moment later Jack moved to flip over on his stomach, and Ennis opened up his arm to let him do that. With one elbow planted, Jack reached toward him, his fingers going through Ennis’s hair and then pulling back with a crackly leaf in hand that must have fallen on him. First kiss of the morning after that, leaning forward, just a touch of Jack’s warm lips against his, and Ennis still wasn’t to the point of taking that for granted. After all their good-byes, the hard partings, and the long times apart, he wondered if he ever would.
“Ennis? You feeling insecure?”
Waking up and just about instantly feeling him being gone, with the five days absence stretching far in front of him. Jack’s history with the damned ranch manager, and Mexican whores, and double-damned coach Shelborne. Him and Ennis together, really together not all that long. Knowing how he’d hurt Jack over the years cause he’d finally felt it in his own gut. Holding on to his stubborn weakness that he’d pretended was strength. Knowing how close he’d come to letting Jack slip away from him, because Jack had been set on healing and forgetting, and he nearly had….
“Naw,” Ennis said, and he tugged on Jack’s earlobe. “If we gotta remind each other to be good boys when we’re separate, then we ain’t got nothing worth keeping.”
“It could be you’re worth keeping,” Jack said with a crooked grin, and then he came closer.
Didn’t think he’d be having the pleasure of Jack’s mouth against his until next Thursday night, so this was a bonus any day of the week. After a minute of serious kissing, Jack hummed in his mouth and pulled away so slow that their lips sort of kept to each other for a moment. Jack smiled that smile of his, swift and bright as the dawn breaking, and then he sat up the way he’d been before.
“Look up there,” he said.
Jack pointed with his chin, as his hands went around the knees of his good Docker pants. Ennis looked up.
“What?”
Jack turned to look down on him. “You ain’t in the right spot. Sit up here.”
Ennis obliged and then could see there was a big patch of blue sky showing through the branches, plus a bank of clouds with dots of birds flying far off.
“You figure those are more vultures?”
Ennis squinted. He could see far distances just fine without his glasses, better than most. “Could be. Yeah, I think so. Damned ugly turkey vultures.”
“The way they roost in that tree out back past the paddock, it’s enough to scare small children. Right out of a bad fairy tale.”
“If they made good eating, I’d take a rifle to them.”
Jack grunted. “And a hundred more would show up. There’s no use doing that.”
After a minute following the flights of the birds and not saying anything more, Jack swiveled around on his butt and laid out flat, his feet by where the log was, his eyes positioned to keep staring up. Ennis watched him watching… and was reminded of a time, a long time ago, maybe back in the first year after Jack had found and rescued him in Riverton, when they’d laid out in some high meadow, his head on Jack’s stomach on a lazy afternoon. They’d watched the clouds roll by, all different shapes and sizes. Jack had tried to make him say what they reminded him of, like he was still a kid, but Ennis even back then had not been inclined to be so fanciful. So Jack’d done it alone, and he’d spent a hour listening and being amused.
“What you seeing?”
Jack’s hand came out and touched his thigh, but without much intent, absent-minded, his thoughts somewhere else. Maybe high up with the birds, flapping their wings.
“Nothing much.”
The minutes passed. Ennis thought of his horses, Delilah and Samson needing to be schooled, and Jigger, his steady training horse. He should be getting to his work instead of sitting there filling up his eyes with the sight of Jack’s dark eyebrows, and the smallest wave in his hair against the back of his neck, and the way he was blinking. He shouldn’t be filling up his ears with the sounds of the leaves rustling against each other, and a cricket chirping, and one of the sparrows twittering, filling up some part of himself that he’d never named. Here he was, sitting like it was the wilderness only it wasn’t, cause though Jack would be leaving soon, he’d be coming back in just five days. And Jack had found some unexpected time on a sunny Sunday morning. He’d come back to Ennis with donuts and coffee.
And a shovel for manure, too, the shithead. Just like Jack.
“What’re you laughing at?”
Ennis shook his head. “I didn’t hear any laughing.”
He reached for the donut box to take the last one. He took a big bite, and then he tore off a piece and held it over the sweetest lips he’d ever kissed. “Want some?”
“Sure.”
“Beg for it.”
Jack chuckled, that little-boy chuckle he hadn’t ever grown out of, and then he stuck out his tongue and panted like a dog.
“You are one ugly mutt,” Ennis declared, but then he dropped the food down and watched Jack swallow. “Want more?” He popped the next-to-last piece in his own mouth to chew.
“I think so,” Jack said low. In a second, he was sitting up and gathering Ennis in his arms, their mouths together. When Ennis opened up, like he always did cause he’d never seen a lot of sense in closed-mouth kisses, damned if that man didn’t steal most of the donut from right out of his mouth.
It was possible to laugh and kiss and eat all at the same time, at least with Jack Twist it was. After some time Jack tried to drive him down to the blanket, but Ennis remembered that scare in the stables and how foolish he must have looked with a shovel leveled at him, so for sure Jack wasn’t gonna have his way this time. They tussled for a bit, playing around and finishing swallowing, too, and when they were done it was Ennis who climbed aboard and put his weight on Jack. Right away he felt the firmness below the belt that reminded him of how he’d woke up.
He smirked down at that traveling man. “So, you want my ass?”
Jack snaked a hand down between them, angling for something Ennis wasn’t too proud to let him have, so he lifted up some to make sure Jack’s aim was true.
“I want your dick, not your ass, you idiot.”
Jack’s fingers had grabbed hold of his stiffness, outlining it through his jeans, and it surely felt good. “Oh, yeah? I thought I was sweetheart, but now I’m idiot. That’s a fighting word, Twist.”
“You told me you don’t like sweetheart, so I’ll keep trying words out until we find one you do like.”
“I should just call you a fuck-up and be done with it.”
Jack stilled and looked at him without laughter. “I am positive that Ennis Del Mar wouldn’t ever be living with a fuck-up, so I’m not worried.”
He didn’t know what to say to that, so like usual he kept silent and let his body do his talking. His dick was anticipating, and that tight feeling in his balls was starting already. But he figured he’d do some giving first. He wriggled out of Jack’s grip and slid down his front, then set to unbuckling and unzipping, to be rewarded with Jack’s dick mostly hard already making its appearance through the seam of his shorts.
“What’s this, huh? Didn’t think I’d be seeing you this soon,” he said low, rubbing his chin against the softness of the pisshole and the flared out part beneath, knowing he liked that himself when Jack got to fooling around. Ennis liked the softness against his face and the hardness under it that told of Jack wanting him. This want they had for each other hadn’t tapered off any. He looked along the length of Jack’s body, past the white shirt and his stretched neck to where he already had his arm over his forehead. “You’re gonna have to change clothes before you leave.”
“After rooting around the stalls this morning, yeah, I think so,” Jack said, addressing the air above him. “You going to get to work there, or are you just out for a stroll?”
The fingers of Jack’s other hand came down to tangle in Ennis’s hair, petting him gently, with sweetness, and then sweeping through from front to back and finally settling right above his ear. It felt just right, and Ennis didn’t object to being directed back to business that way. Set his ear to tingling, truth be told, though he’d never told Jack that. Ennis bent down with an open mouth.
This was different cause they’d not made love out in the open like this since… in more’n a year. He was surprised to realize that as he lapped his tongue up and down the length of his man’s naked, cut dick, holding it at the base to guard it from being scraped by the open zipper. Another thing different was the laziness that came over him. Maybe because he hadn’t woke up all the way yet, or because of the buzzing of the insects coming over him, or maybe it was that him and Jack were back where they’d started — but everything was so different now that he needed time to appreciate.
Seemed Jack felt it too, cause he lay there for a good long while, letting Ennis take his time on the treasure against his tongue, his breathing quiet but getting faster, the fingers in Ennis’s hair moving like he was seeking the perfect hold that was impossible to find. But then with a low hold on there, don’t want to be this selfish he rearranged how they were on the blanket and did some unfastening of his own. Jack’s touch on the bare skin of his stomach as he worked the belt buckle made Ennis’s dick throb, made him catch his breath, and then there was a moment when the world was all waiting…. Then Jack had him exposed to the summer air for a stretched anticipating time that was still only seconds, and he longed for heat and suction that only Jack gave… and finally there it was. There wasn’t much better than the moist warmth of his man’s mouth on him, his own on Jack, as they spread out on their sides, head to toe, giving to each other.
Ennis sighed with the pleasure of it all. In this one moment, everything was good and nothing could harm Jack or him. The world and all its concerns were set apart and far away, and he let himself sink into that earthy feeling of things whole. So fine, his dick being kissed by those sweetest lips and so fine, Jack’s dick finding a home in him. It felt like he was reaching down to the very center of things, a hair’s breadth away from touching the solid core of everything that was. Like he had roots that went deep.
As he sucked like an infant, like a grown man with real feelings, he wasn’t thinking about whether Delilah would sell for six hundred dollars or more, or whether Betty Jo Buckminster had looked on him a little funny the other day, or how the feedlot manager was a hellfire and damnation guy who hated queers and made no secret of the fact so Jack was walking on eggshells, or how he wasn’t too pleased with this whole flying business that Jack’d gotten into, especially the small Cessna that didn’t seem a good idea to him.
And he wasn’t thinking on five days alone while Jack was in the big city, cause what they had was worth keeping.
Instead of thinking any of that, he wrapped his arm around Jack’s ass, over those Dockers, wanting to bring him so close, closer, but that wasn’t enough, so he slid his hand under the waistband to bare skin, and that was better. He spread his fingers wide to capture as much of Jack as he could, opened his throat and took in hardness far down, to the thatch of hair, buried his nose in it, breathing the deep essence of his man, and he just wanted to swallow Jack whole if he only could.
Baby, he thought. Don’t you know I miss you already? Come back to me safe and the way you’ve always been.
Jack hadn’t ever been able to stand too much of Ennis all the way down on him. Ennis kept at it, feeling Jack’s body go tense all over and knowing his legs were straightening out. He drove down again and again, liking this so well, knowing he was pushing Jack to the edge, digging his nails in to his ass, trying to get more, lower, deeper, all the way down to know all of him, to see him complete. Then he pulled up slow as molasses, intent on making Jack reach the breaking point, soon, and suddenly, with a thrill that shot all the way through him, his dick and his balls and into his chest, he knew he’d done it, cause there it was. Jack released Ennis altogether, gasped, shoved forward into him sharp, cried out, “Oh, hell! Here it comes!”
Ennis rode his last-second thrusting, knew the rhythms like he knew his own eyes in the mirror, rode and sucked easily as he swallowed what was offered, hot and salty. He could hardly remember the time when this was something he’d had to work up to and wasn’t sure he liked. Now swallowing Jack’s spunk was natural. He liked it. Liked it the way he’d come to even like some parts of himself.
He waited while Jack panted air back into his lungs, being careful not to apply tongue to the dick that’d done its best and was surely sensitive now. It felt good to be holding Jack’s hardness as it went soft, like he was guarding it, like Jack trusted him to be caring for it in the right way, but he was ready for some action directed to his own needs.
Finally Jack was back on the job. Ennis had a hard time not thrusting in deep right away. Instead he let Jack take control. That man had ideas, and pretty soon Jack was pushing Ennis onto his back and switching around again so he was kneeling between stretched-out legs.
Jesus Christ, Jack was tip-toeing his balls out of his shorts and cupping them, then drawing them into his mouth like they would break if he wasn’t careful. That drove a shiver up Ennis’s spine and pulled out a groan that probably rang all the way down to the stable. He spread his arms wide against the blanket and through the barely moving branches caught a glimpse of some soaring, long-tailed bird up high, not a vulture this time, but a bird that saw too much from its vantage point, like people who wouldn’t let other people just be. People who wouldn’t like what they were doing, but to Ennis this felt so right. Nobody else but Jack, he’d always felt right, the truest thing in Ennis’s whole world, a world that right now was narrowed down to his dick and Jack’s lips all over it.
“Ennis,” Jack murmured.
Just that. Ennis. Ennis sighed, his dick throbbed a warning, and he was close, so close. Jack knew it and went down on him fast.
Jack hadn’t said one of those pansy-ass names that he’d been trying out. This was more heart-felt, like there was something behind his name, like it was something special to a man more special than Ennis could say. He wished he could be in Jack’s mind and hear what wasn’t being said, what caused Jack to be feeling like that, cause he didn’t understand.
Wanted it, needed it, needed Jack, had finally realized that in his dumbass head, but he didn’t understand why Jack seemed to feel the same about him.
But he did.
No bird in the sky now, just white-speckled blue through the green roof over them, keeping them safe from prying eyes. Ennis turned his sight down to where Jack was kneeling, bent over him. That dark head bobbing, those fingers clutched around him, the red lips taking him in, that was enough to do it.
Ennis came with no sound, just one thrust that lifted his hips and sent everything he had pouring out into safe-keeping.
He settled down from trembling and exhaling all his air, down to the blanket, down to the good earth with its pine needle scent, taking with him the touch of Jack’s hand and tongue on him, the touch of Jack on him for these three and a half months and all those twenty-one years they’d known each other.
He brought one hand up, then the other, and buried his fingers in Jack’s dark hair, for he was resting his cheek on Ennis’s thigh. He seemed to be studying Ennis’s dick like it held answers to all the questions there were.
If there was a better place to be, or a better person to be with, Ennis didn’t know it. Even though he felt sleep tugging at him, like it almost always did after lovemaking, he fought it off cause he wanted to say something. “You know those clouds?”
“I do,” came the answer after Jack licked his lips.
“Saw one just a minute ago looked like a hedgehog.”
That brought the sparkling eyes up with one of Jack’s grins that should be registered with the U.S. government. Jack crawled up toward him aiming for his lips, a tough thing to do with his pants falling down around his knees. Jack wasn’t too good a shot in general, but Ennis helped him out by keeping the target steady. The kiss was flavored with his own come, not something he cared for too much as it made him uncomfortable to be tasting himself, but Jack liked it so Ennis obliged.
After that Jack settled next to him, looking up at the Ponderosa’s branches, what was surely a kid’s dream from long ago. A minute later he asked, “You think those steps would take our weight?”
Ennis was busy tucking himself back in, while Jack was just laying sprawled with his dick sticking out of his shorts, but since that was the look of a man happy to be fucked-out, that was okay. “You a mind to go tree climbing now?”
“Just wondering.”
He eyed the short strips of wood that were nailed a foot apart, all the way up to the limbs that still showed the dark of the tree house platform, then lifted up to pull on his pants and zip up. “I doubt it. Don’t go trying it either. You won’t do me no good with a broken neck. Come ‘ere.”
Jack put himself back together first, but then he came over to Ennis’s outstretched arm. He settled in on his stomach and elbows as he’d done before, looking at Ennis with satisfied eyes, far better than the frown that had greeted him back in the stable. Ennis ran his fingers along his moustache, and Jack gave him a smile full of knowing.
He thought about asking what this morning had been all about, him holding Ennis up on their own land, in front of his horses, too. Though Ennis knew they wouldn’t do any telling. He smiled back and decided his man had the right to be a little crazy now and then. Or more often than that, even.
“Glad you came back,” he said, his voice deep since it took some effort to say. He knew that Jack appreciated his efforts in the talking business.
“Yeah, me, too. I didn’t want to waste time when I could be spending it with you.”
“Almost got yourself knocked on the head with the thermos back there in the stable.”
“I’ll be careful next time I resort to kidnapping.”
“Speaking of careful, you stay safe on those planes.”
“I will.”
“Don’t be worrying over the mileage thing. I bet Hamilton has some good explanation.”
“Or maybe the bunk manager’s been courting some girl up in Raton, driving there on his off days.”
“I thought you said the bunk manager had seven kids? Perez?”
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a girl squirreled away somewhere.”
Jack dipped down so he could drop a kiss on Ennis’s neck, right in front where his shirt opened. Felt real good. Ennis hummed his appreciation, then set to work pulling up that Izod shirt from where it had just been put under the belt.
“What are you doing?”
He wrapped his arm around Jack’s back, up under the shirt, and started scratching. He would have thought Jack was in heaven, his face turned so blissful.
“Oh, man. Oh, that feels so good. A little up…. Over to the right. Further…. Right there. Oh, God.”
“I guess I know you’ll be coming back.”
Jack was hanging his head and could scarcely spare the breath to return, “Yeah?”
“Nobody knows where your itchy spots are better than me, and you sure do go on about a good back scratching.”
“Down a little…. Harder. Yeah. Lureen knew when we were first married. We get short of money, I should hire you out for your scratching abilities.”
Ennis let out a humph at that. He set to work more seriously, shifting so he could reach all over from neck to waist. Jack relaxed, came down off his elbows so his weight went down along Ennis’s side and chest, and then he turned his head on Ennis’s shoulder. Ennis slowed the big loops he was making over Jack’s spine until after a few minutes he was barely touching skin. It seemed Jack was on the edge of sleep, his breathing soft and even.
In a little while he would have to stop and wake his drowsy man, because his Timex was showing 9:09. Jack would probably take a shower, change clothes, and he’d be on his way again to pick up Andy, who was leaving his own truck for his wife to drive. Ennis would go back to the stable and apologize to the horses, but there was still plenty of time to take them out in the big field behind the paddock, and maybe even work in a trail ride for Delilah, who needed more attention. He’d spend extra time with them this week, because he had things to prove to himself and to Jack. That nicer house for Jack wouldn’t just happen with no effort. And all through the week he’d work hard at the Cross B Ranch, his thoughts turning at times to Kansas City.
But none of that mattered right now. Right now, his man was dozy in his arms, and Ennis was damned glad he’d signed on for life with Jack Twist in Eagle Nest, New Mexico.
****