Resurrection: Chapter Two

Resurrection
Pairing: Jack/Ennis AU
Rating: NC-17 for the story
Summary: This picks up right at the moment in the canon that Ennis receives that infamous post card informing him of Jack's death ... but this is not a Jack!Dead story. This idea is not completely original, but I believe that my interpretation of it is something fresh, uncliche-ed, and enjoyable. Please feel free to leave fair and honest feedback.
Disclaimer: Inspiration for this story and all characters (except for Tom) belong to Annie Proulx.
Chapter Two

Ennis made it through the rest of Thursday, went to work early Friday, as always, and went through his morning like it was any other.  Twenty-four hours: that’s how long it took for his world to fall apart.  It started during lunch on Friday, was sitting with the other workers in the grass behind the stables because it was a nice day.  The others were messing around, as usual, and Ennis was sitting in silence, as usual.

Greg Carson, who was young and thought he was real funny, was riling up the other guys by singing at the top of his lungs.  The man had a horrible singing voice, and the others were telling him to shut the hell up, but were laughing too.

“I know I will meet you on that fine old day …” Greg bellowed.

“Give it a rest, Carson!” Steve yelled, tossing a pebble lightly at him.

“…Water Walking Jesus, take me away!”

The rage hit Ennis all at once, and there was no more room for thinking.  He was on his feet and had the front of Greg’s shirt in his grip in one swift movement.  “Think you been told to shut your fucking trap, Carson!”

Greg managed to lift his arms in a sign of surrender.  “Whoa, Del Mar, I didn’t mean any harm.”

“Well, yer acting like a fucking fool, and you better knock it off.”  He released his grip and let Greg drop to the ground, then he walked off in the direction of his truck, fists clenched, and muttering words that not even he could understand.  By the time he was in the driver’s seat and had the door slammed shut, he couldn’t remember why he’d been angry in the first place, only knew that he wanted to destroy something and down a bottle of whisky right then, work be damned.  He reversed out of the drive and sped off down the road, leaving the ranch behind him.  He’d deal with that foreman when he damn well felt like it—the foreman could go fuck himself, for all Ennis cared.  He’d been putting in all kinds of crazy hours for that son of a bitch, and now what the hell good had it done?  He was back in the middle of Riverton in half the time it usually took him, and went straight into Larry’s, knew the bar owner would give him a bottle on credit when he needed one.

Larry wanted to talk, but Ennis wasn’t having any of it, and would have punched the asshole if he didn’t need the liquor so bad.  As soon as the bottle touched his fingers, he turned around and was back in his truck in a moment.  He sped to his shack just outside of town, sat where he had the night before, broke the seal on the whisky, and downed four ounces in a gulp.

“Fuck!” he yelled to no one for no reason.

He took another gulp, hardly feeling the burn.  He stood up, then sat back down again.  He felt a need to do something, but he didn’t know what.  That rage was still there, but he didn’t want to destroy anything anymore.  He could feel tears wetting his cheeks, but didn’t really feel like he was crying.  Was more like something had let go inside of him and all of a sudden, everything he’d been keeping there, pulled close so no one could see it or touch it, was starting to surface, to pour out of him, and he didn’t understand even half of it.

Jack.  He was gone.  The concept still hadn’t settled, and Ennis didn’t know what to do with it. 

You’re just sad, a voice in his head told him, and why shouldn’t you be?  Jack was a real good friend and you got a right to grieve when a friend dies.

Oh yeah, an angrier voice said, Jack was a real good friend.  That’s what you’ll tell ’em at work, that you lost a buddy and you’re a bit beat up over it.  But what did you really lose, Ennis?

“Shut up,” he mumbled, drinking more whisky.

You know what you lost and you know why, you sorry fuck.

But then the first voice came back: All right, so Jack was …well, there ain’t no word for what Jack was, but yeah, ’course he was different and what you and him had was the best thing you’ll ever have, even though you’ll never tell another living soul about it, but sure, I can be sad about losing that too.

And so he let the tears fall, and closed his eyes.  For the first time since seeing that postcard, he allowed Jack’s image to surface.  He saw him as he was twenty years ago: grinning, laughing blue eyes, shock of smooth black hair, showing off his big buckle—

But you’d rather think about him showing off his big something else.

“Fuck!” he said again, but the fight was seeping out of him and the first voice was losing to the second, which continued to torment him:

And you never really admitted to what you and him had together.  Sure, you’ll say you had some unexplainable thing, you’ll even admit you like fucking him.  But it’s always been about more than fucking, and that’s what always scared the shit out of you, because it was something that couldn’t be.  He’d admit it though, but for you, he kept his trap shut and accepted the scraps you threw at him because mean old bastard that you are, he loved you anyway.

Ennis sat there, shaking his head, nearly half the bottle gone already, and wanting to break something again.  His coffee mug from the morning was still sitting on the table, so he stood up, grabbed it, then flung it at the wall.  The white ceramic shattered with a satisfying crash, making a mess on the floor, that Ennis hated, so he punched the wall because it had broken the cup, but then hurt his hand in the process, so he just yelled “Fuck!” some more into the empty shack where he was alone, would always be alone, for the rest of his long, miserable fucking life.

*          *            *

Jack spent a good part of his daily life thinking about Ennis.  He thought about Ennis when he was at work, sitting behind his desk, pretending to be busy and avoiding L.D.  He thought about Ennis when he drove anywhere, the vibrations of the motor and the thump of the road were soothing and he found the thoughts rose up easily.  He thought about Ennis as he stared at the television, not watching it.  He thought about Ennis whenever he fucked someone, whether it was his wife or somebody else.

Sometimes he brought up memories of times he and Ennis had had together.  Riding to find a good spot to camp, or fucking late at night, both half asleep, but woken by a need for each other that was subconscious, or talking by the fire, or the time they’d made love outside, in the rain, by a stream.  He had nearly developed pneumonia as a result of this last instance, but had never regretted it for a moment.  At the time, he had not felt the cold, only the burn of their coupling along with the rain pattering all over him, all over them, until they were enveloped in the nature that always surrounded them, a part of it.

But Jack’s favourite “Ennis” thoughts were unlike any of the above, and he only indulged in them every once in a while, for fear they would lose their effect.  These thoughts were of Ennis when Jack was not with him.  Jack imagined him returning after a day of work to that little shack he’d seen when he’d (stupidly!) driven out to see Ennis after his divorce.  Ennis would enter, shoulders hunched, each movement slow and deliberate.  He’d be hungry as hell after the long hours he put in, but would not rush to prepare any dinner.  First he’d open himself a beer or would pour a bit of whiskey into a mug (Jack varied it from time to time), sit at his table sipping and staring, thinking.  Sometimes Ennis was thinking of work, what he’d done that day, what needed to be done in the near future.  Sometimes Ennis was thinking of his girls, how he loved them, what they were up to.  And sometimes, when Jack was feeling especially self-indulgent, Ennis was thinking of him.  Ennis was remembering him or missing him or even fantasizing about him.  When Jack thought this, he wasn’t sure how much he believed it, but he allowed it when he needed the fantasy himself.

Then, he’d find himself some food.  All kinds of canned grub: chilli or soup or even beans.  Sometimes a steak or a couple of sausages fried up.  Sometimes a pie given to him by one of his girls or the ranch foreman’s wife.  Ennis ate in the same way he moved: slowly, deliberately, but also efficiently.  As he ate, the newspaper would be spread out in front of him and he would squint from one article to the next, still refusing to get himself glasses.

By the time he had finished his food and finished with the paper, he would be exhausted.  He’d shut his eyes, give ’em a rub, then take what dirty dishes he had to the sink.  He’d take his time washing them, thinking some more.  And then he would get himself another drink, pull the postcard he’d purchased that day out of his shirt pocket, and sit down with it.  This was when he wrote his postcards to Jack Twist.  For the way Jack imagined it, it was as though Ennis were writing him a twenty-page love letter every night … but this was the part of the fantasy where he really allowed himself to suspend his disbelief.  He knew that in reality, it was a lot more likely that Ennis scrawled his brief and emotionless postcards at the post office, standing up, but in Jack’s mind, they were slowly, lovingly composed, still saying nothing explicitly, but suggesting everything.

And then it was time for bed.  In his mind’s eye, Jack watched as Ennis sat on the edge of his bed, two mattresses piled on the floor, and undid the buttons of his shirt with one hand.  He held his breath as Ennis gently removed the shirt from his own shoulders.  He’d stand and walk over to his little closet, taking his time hanging the shirt and re-buttoning it.  At this point, Jack would be watching from behind, taking in that muscled back, appreciating those broad shoulders, and how his back narrowed into that trim waist.  Jack saw each mole and the slight bump near the bottom of Ennis’s spine, the remnants of an accident ten years ago when Ennis had been thrown from his horse.  He would then turn around and Jack would watch as Ennis’s chest muscles flexed and bulged as he bent slightly forward to undo his jeans.  The jeans would be slid down, and Ennis would step out of them, completely naked.  He hung them up as carefully as he had hung his shirt then turned and moved back to his bed.  Jack watched, seeing the flex of every muscle, the dimple at the hip where leg met ass, and every fucking hair on that lank, sinuous body.  He knew every inch of it, every perfect flaw, every beautiful place on the man he loved.  As Jack watched, he would think about the places he loved to touch on Ennis and when and how.  His back made Jack think of lying under him, staring up at that face, nearly angry in ecstasy and concentration.  Jack thought of the red scratches he often left on the milky surface of those broad muscles.  Ennis’s hands, hanging loose and limp at his sides, made Jack think of them alive and nearly shaking as they moved over his body, saying more than those tense lips ever would.  His thighs, fuzzy and thick, though not as thick as his own, wrapping around his waist, relaxed and spread in a way that he knew only he was privy to.  And of course, his dick.  In these fantasies, Jack always pictured it flaccid.  He liked to see it like that and know how it would rise and swell if Jack were to suddenly appear in front of him.  He also like to picture Ennis like this, relaxed, exhausted, unaware of his dick in a way that Jack knew he never was when they were together.

He watched as Ennis let himself drop to his bed, first in a sitting position, then collapsed down onto his back.  He would tuck a hand under his head and Jack would gaze at the white underside of that sculpted bicep.  Ennis never had the sculpted muscles that Jack had had for most of his life, and he loved Ennis’s long, sinuous body.  But in one place, Ennis did have prominent, bulging muscles, and that was in his arms.  With the work Ennis did, it was impossible for his arms to stay skinny, and so Jack had always known them as thick, sculpted, and strong.  The sight of that bulging bicep transitioning into that body that he saw as perfect was enough to have Jack hard and aching for release and for something else that he could not name.

And then he’d sort of zoom out, watching Ennis from a little further away and from above him.  He watched as Ennis fell into a sleep that came easily after a long and trying day of hard work and then Jack would leave the fantasy just as Ennis was beginning to dream about him.

*          *            *

On Jack’s sixteenth and final day in the hospital, he tried to revisit this fantasy, tried to bring Ennis in Every Day Life back to him, but it would not appear.  Nothing he did would silence the voice in his head that told the truth, that Ennis was doing no such thing at this moment.

His doctor (Donnelly, that was his name) had explained to him that he was currently on some fairly strong painkillers, but that he was being weaned off them.  The pills he was being given to take home were much weaker and were to be taken much less frequently.

“These medications also numb your ability to experience extreme emotions, so I want to warn you that the impact of what has happened to you may begin to kick in more once you get home,” Doctor Donnelly explained.  “Some memories may come back as well at this point.”

So since Lureen had stood beside his bed and told him what had (not!  Oh god, please don’t let it be true!) happened, Jack had been drifting in a surreal world where he could think of Ennis being dead and wallow in his depression … but still not quite believe that it was really true.  Sure, Ennis is dead … and I’m also laid up in this hospital bed ’cause I got attacked, and everything is just a little bit blurry, and nothing really makes quite enough sense anyway, so why should I really believe what she told me?

He had an easy time not thinking about what Doctor Donnelly had told him and how this would affect him once he got home because it was easy to stay away from the reality of home in his drug-induced world of this strange hospital that he saw around him.  It was easy to lie there, shaking with the knowledge of Ennis’s death, because the misery was almost a pleasure to him.  He had spent the last twenty years pushing away the crushing sadness of the reality of his life and the life that he wanted but could never have, so to immerse himself in this exquisitely cutting grief was a relief, because he didn’t try to push it away.  And soon, he would go home, and that horrible truth would no longer be a truth, and he would be back to the unbearable boredom of his day-to-day life.  So he enjoyed this misery while he could.

But on the night before he was to go home, with the drugs much weaker than they had previously been, and with the reality of the house he shared with his wife and son pushing in on him, he decided to indulge on his most favourite fantasy of the man he loved to lighten his darkening mood.  But it didn’t work. As he pushed for that image of Ennis present itself as vividly as it always did, but just couldn’t, his mind suddenly flashed back to a memory that was recent, yet distant, of his truck suddenly spluttering to a halt on the deserted road home, and his inability to get it going again, no matter how many times he turned the key in the ignition, no matter what he prodded, tweaked, or poked at under the hood, it just wouldn’t fucking start!  And then a shadow appearing from behind, asking if he needed a hand, with so much scorn in its voice that Jack turned to ice on the spot, but he barely had time to notice it because—

“Fuck!” tried to yell, but the initial effort to throw his voice pained his broken ribs so much, the word was swallowed inside himself.

And so he kept trying and trying to bring that image of Ennis to him, but it wouldn’t come, and the memories were starting to pop up like flies on a carcass, and then the more he tried to cover them with thoughts of Ennis, the more Lureen’s words yelled into his mind, “He died, Jack … HE DIED!”

*          *            *

Jack looked exhausted when he came home, but it took him until late into the night to fall asleep.  Lureen thought she would never hear the telltale sounds of the slowing of his breath, indicating that he was fast asleep.  When she was sure, she rose and tiptoed to her home office, two doors down the hall from the bedroom she shared with Jack.

“Hello?”

Lureen held the telephone tight to her ear as if she feared that someone would hear if she held it too casually.  “It’s me.”

“’Bout time.”

“Sorry.  Jack took awhile to fall asleep.  Not his usual self, you know.”

“Right.  How’s he doing?”

“Worse’n I thought he’d be, to be honest.  Barely spoke two words all night, took him forever to fall asleep.”

“After what he’d been through, it’s to be expected.”

“Sure, but … I get the feeling that it’s more about what I told him than about what happened to him.”

Tom cleared his throat.  “That’s to be expected too, Lureen.  You knew what you were doing when you decided to tell him that, didn’t you?”

“It’s just that I’m thinking … well, maybe it wasn’t the best time to give him news like that.”

“If you were going to do that, it was the best time, Lureen.”

“But he’s so messed up over the accident—”

“And if he wasn’t, how would you explain that the person who phoned about the death didn’t want to talk to him?”

“Well, sure, but even then, he’s got so much to think about right now—”

“—which is exactly why it’s the ideal time.  He’s going to be fucked up for a bit, for sure, but he’ll get over it, and he’ll think of this time as a big, sad, messed up time in his life.  Which’ll make him appreciate what he’s got with you even more.”

“I suppose.”

“Trust me, Lureen, what you’re doing is for the best.”

“But those … those men.  They didn’t know about E-Ennis.  They did what they did because of … other stuff that Jack did.”

“Lureen, I know about these things.  With Ennis gone, he ain’t gonna be doing no other stuff, all right?  You know your husband, don’t you?  You know it’s this Ennis guy has got him all fucked up.”

“I guess.”

“Look, Lureen, if you were just calling me to tell me you’re having second thoughts, I ain’t gonna be much use to you.”

“No, no, it isn’t that.  Like I said, I don’t go back on my decisions.  I was just … I don’t know, I was just talking.  But no, that’s not why I called you.  I was wondering if you had anymore news on those fellas.”

“Well, at this point, I’m about as stuck as the cops are.  Without Jack’s statement, it’s hard to know where to start.  I got my suspicions based on all kinds of stuff, but without any kind of a recollection from you husband, how’m I supposed to know anything close to the truth?  I’m trying to look into alibis, but I can’t get anything concrete until Jack remembers something.”

“I see.  I been afraid to ask him.”

“I think it’s time, Lureen.  This is necessary, and the cops are going to be asking him soon enough anyhow.”

“Yeah, all right.”

“This is going to work itself out.  You gotta trust me about that.”

There was a lengthy silence before Lureen finally brought herself to say.  “I trust you.”