Title: The Marrying Kind
Author: Melody Clark
Movie: Brokeback Mountain
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: lots
Summary: Junior helps Ennis find a way into his own life.
Author's Notes: Not intended to infringe on anyone or anything. All
hail Annie Proulx, Larry McMurtry, Diana Ossana, and everyone else
associated with it. It's only a little story.

=================================================================

The Marrying Kind

By Melody Clark


There was a warp in the window sill where the rain had got in, he
could see from where he sat. It was just some old Wind River bronc
rider bar where they had all gone out for a stag party wedding day
toot or something. He'd only done it because his baby girl had asked
him. Even at that, he was sitting there, looking down the snout of a
tall cool one, wishing he had made up some reason to balk.

Kurt, his baby girl's soon-to-be husband, was talking the most. There
was Kurt and his brother Cale for awhile there, talking while he
listened, until some other man walked up to the join the table. The
new one plunked down beside Cale and stuck out his hand toward the
silent man still looking down the business end of a beer.

"I'm Michael Thornton," the new man said briskly. "Call me Mike."

The hand right beneath his nose caused Ennis to look up. It took him
another full second to slip out of one place and into his threadbare
social self. He gripped the other man's hand a second, then returned
to the busywork of emptying his bottle of beer.

"This is Alma's daddy," Kurt spoke up to explain. "Ennis isn't much a
one to talk. Are you, Ennis?"

"Like as not," he said, putting the beer down, with a feeling this
talking stuff was going to run on some.

"Mike here is my good friend," Kurt's brother Cale said, reaching to
touch Mike's arm in such a way it caused Ennis to pay better
attention. Ennis watched them long enough to see a smiling,
shiny-eyed look pass from one man to the other in such a way it was
clear who they were together. "He's from Tulsa. Originally. He`s
here now."

"Roughneck?" Ennis said, because it was the only danged thing he could
think of to say.

"Ranch foreman," Michael said back.

"Good work, if you c'n get it," Ennis said.

"I reckon."

Then it struck Ennis how oddly fit it was to have two men such as they
sitting at the same table with him in this place. It caused Ennis to
tighten up a little, wondering for the hundredth time if what he was,
was obvious. Or if somebody had told somebody something.

Coincidence, he told himself. Had to be.

"Ennis, Alma was telling us you had a good story about when you were a
kid. Somethin' about a double murder around your homeplace."

That might have shook him up extra, except Ennis del Mar only knew one
good story he could tell in public and that was it. His baby girl had
heard it, but he'd just as soon she hadn't told Kurt and really wish
Kurt had kept it to himself.

"Coupla old boys got banged up real bad with a tire iron," Ennis said,
slugging back beer again. "Nothing much but that."

"They were together, though, I mean…" Kurt said, making a hand motion
like there was a whole bunch more to the story that was silently
understood.

"Yeah, I guess," Ennis said, shrugging. "None of my business."

"Kurt was telling us," Cale hopped in quickly, "Because we had a
friend get killed up that way. Not a good friend, just a friend
friend. Some old sodbusters beat his face so bloody his own momma
couldn't know who he was. Nobody recognized him."

Ennis was grateful his own face was just as unknowable. It never bore
much witness to the work of his heart. Those words stabbed sharp and
cold for a long, old time -- almost like he'd swallowed a dagger rock
that spent a winter frozen on Teton Bend. He was hoping to fuck his
eyes hadn't wept out either.

del Mar nodded roughly. "That so?"

"Yeah," the one they named Mike said. "Beat him real bad. Broke his
whole face up."

Ennis took it some more, that ice cold rock down his throat thing. He
chased it down hard with the rest of his beer, but it didn't hardly
help. "That's a wicked thing."

Everyone nodded their darkened faces but suddenly, the Mike one
brightened up a notch to say, "I said he might not have died at all.
He mighta just run out on some sweetheart or a bad debt or something."

Cale laughed up some beer. "Yeah, it'd sure be a slick way of makin'
a new start."

"Except they'd ID him by his dental record," Mike said.

"Not up here," Cale said. "Roughnecks, pony ropers, hands, rodeo
bucks - men like us don't see no dentists except our own doctor to
have a sore tooth out. You don't grow up with it, it don't seem
natural, even when you got good pocket money. We do it ourselves or
do without. Or let the bronc bustin` take care of it for us."

"They still got fingerprints," Mike said.

"Yeah, well," Kurt added in. "Those Mafia boys can hack your danged
hands off so they can't find out. Or burn off your finger ends."

"Mafia boys?" Cale said, slinging a hand at him. "Listen to you. You
been watchin' too much TV."

"It happens."

"Not in Wyoming."

"I heard it does in Texas."

"Yeah" Cale said. "And I heard the wind blow before."

"Ennis," Kurt said, clearly seeing what was happening to the silent
member of the table. "You alright?"

"No," Ennis said, like in a gasp. He pushed away his empty beer.
"I'd just as soon not hear all this."

"We can talk about something else then," Kurt said.

"No, you talk. I`ll take a slow walk. Back to the church."

"I could drive you -- "

"No, I'd sooner walk. I got a bug or something," Ennis said, getting
up fast and walking away hard.

He wasn't beyond the door so he could breathe again, when he let
himself grab something strong so he could hold on. Jack's ghost
sprung up on him this way, most times. There Ennis would be, living
as best he could, then all of a sudden, there Jack Twist would be,
touching a phantom hand to his shuttered, rundown heart.

Ennis walked his way back to the Methodist Church at the end of the
street where it bagged a mite around a drifting corner. The doors
were opened up the way they did to take in or let out for weddings and
funerals. He was real glad there wasn't a dead person where he was
going. He carried around one of his own.

He managed to avoid Alma Senior and her husband at the far end of the
church as the two stood up there talking to the rector. Ennis found
the door marked bride's room and thought he probably should stop and
say something. He tried to remember the way to knock and did so.

The door opened a peep. Jenny's eye, peering out. "Hey," she said
smiling.

"Hey," he said back, smiling too. "The bride decent so I could talk
to her?"

"I expect. You alone? Kurt not with ya?"

"Naw, I took ill and left. They're still at the bar slinging brew I
guess."

"Come in then," Jenny said, grabbing his best jacket's arm and towing
him in. "Bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding,
but I guess fathers are fine."

Ennis fast pecked Jenny on the forehead before he reached a hand
toward Junior, standing there in a long bleached calico wedding gown.
"Look at you. All done up like a lady."

She grabbed for his hand, squeezing it for assurances. "Am I alright?"

"More than alright, darlin'," he said, smiling. "You look more than a
lot like your momma."

That caused Junior to smile some more. "Thank you, Daddy. Now you
know you're to give me away, right?"

"That's what they been sayin'."

Junior's bright eyes grew large. Then she looked across to Jenny.
"Can me and Daddy have a talk, just us?"

"Sure," the other young woman said quickly, opening to the door as if
on cue. "I got to help tie the bouquets anyway. See you later, both
of you."

She was gone before Ennis could say another word.

Alma Junior reached for his spare hand. She squeezed them both
together. She stared at him deeply until he looked up to fully engage
her eyes. He gazed into them as directly as he had ever looked into
any set of eyes, beyond just one other.

"Did Kurt's brother and his friend talk to you?" she said.

More things in Ennis' life had not been said so much as unsaid. He
and his baby girl had always walked in step -- astride or unseen.
Somehow they sensed each other better than he and Jenny did. Ennis
likened as how that counted for most things to be known by people in life.

He shrugged. "They talked some."

"Good. I hope you listened. More than usual. I hope you listened
with your heart, not just your ears. They meant to tell you that life
isn't so all go to hades hopeless. They meant to say that life has
its surprises that are sometimes good ones. Life isn't just about
surviving as if that was all there is. There might be something fine
around the corner."

He let a smile come up a little. "Where d'you get so wise?"

She laughed at herself a little and nodded. "It came natural. But
Daddy, when Kurt and I marry, we gonna have our life together. And I
don't want you to be alone."

"Sweetheart, I expect alone is like I am."

"It doesn't have to be that way," she said, with light and fire in her
eyes.

It made him think so much of the last person that had said something
like that to him. "Was once, maybe not," he said. "But that's all
there is for me. It's just what life give me. That's all I got."

She reached forward at first in frustration to rake back his ungainly
hair, then she took the moment to fix the awkward knot in his tie.
She reached to the bridal desk for a pinned carnation. She tucked it
under his jacket pocket, then slipped the pearl pin inside and out.
She straightened out the effect.

"You look all fit and proper now," she said, her voice riding up a
little. Her eyes were still all shining. "Now, Daddy, you know you
got to give me away, right? There's still lots to say and do. I'm
heading in to get Nanny to fit my veil. I'd ask you to go outside and
have a seat on the bench there. Someone is going to come out and talk
to you."

He grinned a bit. "Doin' a lot of talkin' today, ain't I?"

"Yeah," she said, then kissed his cheek quickly and pushed him for the
outside door. "Now get. Go. Now. It's important. There's someone
I'd like you to meet."

He was a little surprised by it, but nodded his head. "I'll see ya
later, I expect?"

"Yes, you will," she said, smiling even bigger still before she shooed
him finally out the door.

I don't want you to be alone, she'd said. There's someone I'd like
you to meet. Ennis Del Mar had never had much arithmetic, but even he
could put one and one together. She was sending forth some danged
newfound wife prospect for him to meet. Probably Jenny's idea. Had
been many times that Alma Junior had observed that her father wasn't
the marrying kind.

Maybe that whole Kurt and Cale and Mike show was to introduce you to a
new … fella?

Oh, lordy, he doubted he could live through something like that.

But at worst it was a nice woman he could be polite to or even a nice
man he could get to know. Not that anyone, he knew now, could stand
in the place of the only one he could ever truly stand beside.

So he sat down on the little bench outside, and only because he
thought his little girls wanted him to. Junior wanted him to have a
little hope, so he'd have a little hope, if only for her.

Then the last thing in the world he'd expected fell down from the sky.
Unexpected as opening an old bean can and finding it packed full of
diamonds. It was some rope that dropped around him from somewhere
above and behind. It took him a moment to see what it was.

"Shadows don't follow a dead man, Ennis," somebody behind him said.

It was a voice he knew as well as anything he knew … knew as well as
the sun would come up at morning and go down at night and how the wind
would feel through his hair in the afternoon … a voice he knew he
would never hear again. He had known that so well and goddamned well.

And here he was, hearing it.

Ennis grabbed hold of the rope like some piece of some miracle and
held it up in his hand, as if he might find it real. It was rope and
it was real and it was all the way around him, cinched up so it would
never let him go.

He busted up badly, like a built up river blown past its weakened dam.

He had never much cried in the light of day in his whole, old life,
and here he was, choking up in direct sun, staring at this bit of rope
pinched inside his hand like a promise he wouldn't let go of.

Then arms came around from behind him, to confirm the hope.

He turned his head to find himself staring into the bluest eyes he'd
ever seen. Bluer than any Gannett Peak skyline. Bluer than any blue
had ever been blue before. And he looked like the most wonderful
sight in the whole damned world -- this one or the next world, if
there was one.

Those blue, blue eyes were filled up, too. "I couldn't live that way
no more," Jack said, "It wasn't hard to fake it with a little help.
We made up a story and found a mule dead of old age. Incinerated it
and made some ashes. Nobody noticed the difference and don`t say
you`re not surprised."

Ennis Del Mar whipped around to grab hold of Jack Twist's face so
firmly he felt he might leave a dint. He stared at it hard. Hard
like he was looking for anything that would surely tell him it was a
piece of a dream.

"You can't be," Ennis barked out, a gruff battle for real words. He
coughed and gasped for a real breath, then shook his head to clear out
a whole chaotic universe made of shock and amazement. "You can't be.
Standing here. Sweetassjesus, you just can't be."

"But here I am," Jack said, staring back at Ennis as if he loved him
more than he ever had, which was almost damned impossible, if Jack
felt like Ennis felt. And Ennis knew now that he did.

"Here you are."

"Well, you just gonna stand there lookin' like a big landed crappie or
you gonna kiss me?"

"Kiss you later from one end to the other," Ennis said, "but I druther
not shut my eyes just yet. I can't look at you enough. You ain't
dead. I almost died myself from it and you're not dead."

Jack's eye gave out a tear that Ennis caught in the depth of his hand.
"I thought, maybe, you hearin' what you thought happened to me might
make a difference. Ennis, I been hopin', since you went all the way
up to see my folks, you might be feelin' differently now about makin'
this a forever thing."

Ennis shut his eyes a minute, to remember the bad ache in him as he`d
found the shirt in Jack`s home closet … as he had looked out Jack`s
boyhood window, to see a moment through his lover's eyes … as he`d
hurt so damned bad without any hope he could ever get beyond it. He
laughed at the very thought of it all, given who was standing in front
of him.

Ennis snorted out a laugh. "What the hell do you think?"

Jack's smile brightened, widened. "I think maybe?"

"No damned lie, I'd follow you to hell about now. Shoot, I'd even
follow you to Texas. If I had to."

"No need to go that far. Anyway I can't go back. My boy`s grown and
gone to college. There ain`t nothing else for me there."

"What about --" Ennis said, motioning to bring on a name he'd never
known.

"No. He was just a space-keeper. You see where I am right now.
There's never been anybody but you, Ennis, and there ain't no reason
to even try."

"Yeah," Ennis said. "I know the feeling."

"It`s a damned good thing. Little Alma said if I did my part of it,
she'd see to it you kept your end."

"My Alma?"

"Yeah. Your Alma. Little Alma. She was in on it."

Ennis wondered if his grin was as big as his face. He shook his head.
"I mighta known."

The backdoor swung open and Jack, by instinct, stepped away though
Ennis held his ground. Junior was standing in the doorway, a bridal
veil now draped across her face. "Daddy, it's almost time for us to
walk. We gotta get our places."

"Where should I be?" Jack asked, as both men moved toward the Church.

Alma answered for her father. "Right with us, where you always should
have been," she said, before she headed into the other room while the
men stepped through the door.

Ennis hid his love just a little, as he looked around at Jack. "If
you brought your harmonica, you could play that Here Come the Bride song."

Jack shrugged. "Harmonica got broken. Never had it fixed."

Ennis motioned for him to walk first into the rest of the church.
"That's a shame."

"Yeah," Twist said, tossing a blue-eyed smile one more time before
they walked down. "You look real tore up about it."