BrokenBack Mountain
A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble,
just widening water. She was working at a grocery store clerk job, saw
she'd always have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis made.
Alma asked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy.
He said no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she
didn't want any more of his kids. Under her breath she said, "I'd have
em if you'd support em." And under that, thought, anyway, what you like
to do don't make too many babies.
Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had
glimpsed, Ennis's fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist
and never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step
out and have any fun, his yearning for low paid, long-houred ranch work,
his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed,
his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the
power company, put her in a long, slow dive and when Alma Jr. was nine
and Francine seven she said, what am I doin hangin around with him,
divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not getting
much ahead but glad enough to be around stock again, free to drop things,
quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice. He had
no serious hard feelings, just a vague sense of getting shortchanged,
and showed it was all right by taking Thanksgiving dinner with Alma
and her grocer and the kids, sitting between his girls and talking horses
to them, telling jokes, trying not to be a sad daddy. After the pie
Alma got him off in the kitchen, scraped the plates and said she worried
about him and he ought to get married again. He saw she was pregnant,
about four, five months, he guessed.
"Once burned," he said, leaning against the counter, feeling too
big for the room.
"You still go fishin with that Jack Twist?"
"Some." He thought she'd take the pattern off the plate with the
scraping.
"You know," she said, and from her tone he knew something was coming,
"I used to wonder how come you never brought any trouts home. Always
said you caught plenty. So one time I got your creel case open the night
before you went on one a your little trips -- price tag still on it
after five years -- and I tied a note on the end of the line. It said,
hello Ennis, bring some fish home, love, Alma. And then you come back
and said you'd caught a bunch a browns and ate them up. Remember? I
looked in the case when I got a chance and there was my note still tied
there and that line hadn't touched water in its life." As though the
word "water" had called out its domestic cousin she twisted the faucet,
sluiced the plates.
"That don't mean nothin."
"Don't lie, don't try to fool me, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack
Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him -- "
She'd overstepped his line. He seized her wrist; tears sprang and
rolled, a dish clattered.
"Shut up," he said. "Mind your own business. You don't know nothin
about it."
"I'm goin a yell for Bill."
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18 嶄猟井