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Jack blinked awake, allowing his eyes to adjust. He was hesitant to check the clock on his bedside table, already sure it was far too early (late?) to be awake. Lureen slept quietly where she always did, Jack turned his head to stare at the pale white ceiling, sighing and trying to work up the courage to look at the damn clock.
He figured, maybe, it could be right before sunrise. Of course, he was fooling himself, growing up with his father you got a good sense of time. You just had to. Jack looked to the window on the adjacent wall, seeing the night sky still in its peak pitch-blackness. Jack finally turned his head to the digital clock. Jack groaned.
2:12 AM
Because of course, it was the middle of the night.
On the days when he awoke at the absolute ass crack of dawn, he could at least drag himself out of bed and find something to do, get on with the work day at five in the morning, file some paperwork. On nights when he couldn’t sleep until the deep, late, hours he could watch a little TV, play it off like he wanted a little time for himself. Sure, he could say he had some things on his mind and could get away with downing a drink or two, (or six). But on nights like these, between 11 PM and 4 AM, there was nothing to be done. He couldn’t even pretend it made sense for him to be awake, couldn’t justify getting up and working at three AM, or having a drink at four.
In that span of five hours, Jack Twist had nothing but his mind and the floor.
Jack particularly hated when he took precautions the night before to make sure he wouldn’t wind up here within those five hours. A couple of pills, a couple of drinks, and some manual labor should’ve put him to sleep for at least a few hours.
But a “few” was often the beginning and end of it.
Jack looked at Lureen one more time to make sure she was asleep. Granted. There was no concern as far as that went because Lureen slept harder than a bag of rocks. Jack closed his eyes again, trying to coerce his body to fall back asleep. Closing his eyes made him feel more awake and alert than having them open. Jack opened his eyes again, just to feel the refreshment of exhaustion. Just for a few seconds at least. He glanced at the clock again.
2:15 AM
Time moved slowly between those five hours.
Time moved like quicksand.
Time moved like the hour between being up on Brokeback, and down on solid land fixing his car with Ennis.
Jack groaned.
This train of thought was all too familiar.
He dragged his feet over the side of the bed, his feet cold against the polished hardwood floor. Jack rested his elbows on his knees and his face against his palms, hardly able to breathe for the few moments he stayed like that. When he raised his head and stared at the door, alluring him. Jack tapped his heel against the floor, staring at the door for much longer than he needed to. That led to him looking behind himself to see Lureen sleeping just as hard as before. Then looked over to the clock again.
2:17 AM
Jack sighed.
He pushed himself out of bed and dragged his exhausted body through the doorway of their bedroom, closing the door behind himself, just to ensure any noise he made would be muffled. Jack made his way to the kitchen unconsciously. Unsure of why he found himself there, and why that was the place his instinct to him to, he got a glass of water. A glass of water he was sure he wouldn’t even drink, but something to do with his hands. Something to say he was doing. A cop out if Lureen happened to ask where he was in the middle of the night. “Just gettin’ some water.” That’s what he’d say, he decided.
Jack swirled the water in the glass, leaning against the countertop near the sink.
He wondered if Ennis ever got like this. Where he couldn’t sleep, and just got to thinking. Granted, Ennis spent enough time thinking as it were. He didn’t need the uncomfortable hours of the night to do that. Jack spent his time acting, moving, and staying busy. There was nothing to stay busy doing in those five hours.
Jack glanced behind himself to see the block of knives.
This was his third night in a row waking up in the Bermuda Triangle that was those five hours. He’d do just about anything to get that sleep back.
Jack shook his head to rid himself of the intrusive thought. Deciding it was a better idea to pace the kitchen, keeping moving was almost just as good as keeping busy. Jack walked to the wall by the refrigerator, looking between the photographs affixed by magnets. Photos Bobby had drawn. Photos they’d had taken. Photos Jack had been offered to keep. Photos Jack had turned down because he had nowhere to put them.
Jack turned on his heels, making his way slowly to the other side of the room. He looked to their living room, considering the TV momentarily, before deciding against it. He looked back to their kitchen, considering the table, before deciding against that as well, because he needed to be busy. He couldn’t even clean if he wanted to – he would’ve disguised it as a spontaneous gift to the house. To Lureen, really.
He looked down at the glass in his left hand, considering the way the gold band on his ring finger distorted through the water. Jack wondered if Ennis ever felt the resentment towards his marriage that Jack felt towards Ennis’. He wondered if Ennis felt the same desire for normalcy, if that normalcy was desired with Jack or a woman neither of them knew yet.
Jack sighed.
None of it really mattered. Not in those five hours, not ever.
None of it really meant anything. Not with Lureen, not with anyone.
Jack’s heart ached for normalcy with Ennis. God, if Ennis were there he’d have woken up the moment he felt a disturbance in Jack’s energy. If Ennis were there he’d have found Jack in the house, wrapped him up in his arms, and taken him back to bed. If Ennis were there maybe he wouldn’t have woken up at all. Maybe he would’ve stirred in his sleep but sank back into unconsciousness the moment he felt Ennis’ arms lying heavy across his torso.
Jack slept good on Brokeback.
Jack slept damn good at the Siesta Motel.
But couldn’t quite say he’d ever slept alright before, or after that.
When Jack was younger he’d stay awake to make sure his father could never get the upper hand. Make sure he never had the chance to catch him off guard. When Jack was even younger than that and his father worked those too-late too-early hours he’s stay awake to make sure his mother was alright, to make sure she didn’t need anything.
And when Jack grew up he’d stay awake to make sure Bobby slept through the night, and if Bobby didn’t he made sure Lureen definitely did.
Now, Jack wasn’t sure why he stayed awake. No real reason, no real desire.
It didn’t help that he felt so stuck. Stuck in his “straight life” marriage of some other man's dreams. Stuck with a kid he didn’t have the money or the energy to raise. Stuck with his pale monochrome red house. Stuck with his dead-end job he’d be working until he died. Stuck without Ennis.
Even with Ennis, he was stuck.
And Ennis was the best Goddamn thing he had going for him.
Then came the anxieties. The insecurities that waited until the looming dark hours to rear their ugly heads.
Ennis had always tried to keep contact minimal when they weren’t together, but Jack was sure Ennis had been more distant than usual. Jack was positive about it even. Maybe Ennis had found someone new. Worse, maybe Ennis was just finally sick of him. Sick of sneaking around, sick of long weekends, and short trips.
Ennis had bought a phone a few months back, “Trying to keep up with the times” Ennis had joked to him when they’d last met up. Ennis scribbled down the number on a well-cut piece of paper. Jack could tell he’d – at the latest – written it the night before, and he was giddy to give it to Jack. Of course, because it’s Ennis Del-Mar we’re talking about, here, Ennis had honed in that it was really only for urgent things or emergencies. Jack had smiled wide and nodded quickly.
Jack spent the week after that racking his brain for as many reasons to ring Ennis Del-Mar as physically possible.
Selfishly, Jack hoped that if Ennis got enough spontaneous postcards, pictures, and phone calls from Jack, it could promote Ennis to keep him on the back burner of his mind. It could keep Ennis from getting sick of him and moving on. Jack hoped, even more selfishly, that Ennis did have nights like these of his own, unable to get Jack off his mind, in the whirlpool of thoughts he had.
Jack, in another journey between the two kitchen walls, looked at the microwave. Considering it.
2:46 AM
Maybe he just wouldn’t go back to sleep.
Maybe he’d go for a drive to kill some extra time.
Maybe he wouldn’t stop driving.
Maybe when he did it would be in Wyoming.
Maybe–
Maybe his thoughts were getting out of hand.
Jack tried to drink some of the water, deciding it was all too bland, too dry, too wet, not good enough. Nothing felt good enough.
Jack poured the water out into the sink and placed the cup in it upside down.
Lureen hated when he did that.
He always did it anyway.
Jack looked at the kitchen table, considering its chairs.
He sat on the floor in front of the sink. His legs extended out in front of him.
Sleeping seemed impossible, unreasonable at this point.
But the exhaustion bore so heavily. Jack looked down at his hands. All his life – mostly by his father – he’d been told he had womanly hands. Jack, at this moment at almost three in the morning, began to understand why his father thought so. His hands were awfully dainty for a man who’d been doing manual labor his whole life.
Jack swallowed thickly.
Nothing about him had ever been good enough. Not for anybody.
He’d tried his damnedest to be everything he could for as many people as possible, but he couldn’t seem to get the balance of it all. Jack Twist liked to please no – he’d been taught to please.
Jack was taught to work, take a beating, and smile when company came over.
Jack hadn’t learned much else.
He’d thought maybe school would teach him something more, but it merely reinforced his three core, fundamental understandings. He learned, again, to work, take a beating, and smile when he got rewarded for it all.
Jack realized at that moment that he’d spent his whole life losing.
He’d never truly won much.
When he won it was dirty. Cheap. Never a real victory. Never a victory that lasted very long.
Jack rested his head against the cabinets near the ground, the cabinets they kept the skillets, and large pots in.
He figured it was finally three AM.
Shit, he hoped so, at least.
Jack stood again, antsy, and sick of sitting still. He looked at the time.
2:58 AM
Jack scoffed.
He even lost when there wasn’t anything at stake.
Jack found himself walking his way over to the living room, walking in circles around the mini coffee table Lureen had insisted they purchase but refused to put anything on. He swore he could see her eyes twitch every time a guest placed a mug, or a cup on the table. Jack smiled at the thought.
He walked between every wall of the house, making as much of a game out of it as he could.
Jack leaned against the wall in the living room, leaning into the kitchen to check the time on the microwave again.
3:04 AM
Jack sighed.
Two more hours in the Bermuda Pentagon.
What would he even do once it was 5 AM? He had no real work to finish. Nothing to do the next day but sit at the office and wait for someone to come by, and cross his fingers, praying that it was someone he could land a sale from, just to keep him busy for a few hours.
He knew he’d spend the day wishing he could go home, wanting his bed.
Jack scoffed at the thought.
Wanting his bed to do what in? Sit and stare at the wall?
Christ, he felt pathetic.
He made his way through the entirety of both floors of the house, he’d looked at himself a total of 13 times in the upstairs bathroom mirror. The one they’d chosen to call Bobby’s bathroom because hardly anything was even on the floor but Bobby’s bedroom and the bathroom. Nobody bothered to go up there and go out of their way to use it—no point when there were two on the main floor.
Jack wondered how the hell Lureen convinced him to buy a five-bedroom, three-bathroom house, knowing good and damn well they didn’t need that kind of space, and those proportions made absolutely no sense.
Jack looked at the phone on the table. Considering it. He could call someone to keep him company for a while. See if anyone would be willing.
Who would he call at this hour? It was the Bermuda Pentagon, and he’d surely wake whoever he’d call up. What would they talk about? He hardly had any more things to think about, let alone things to talk about.
Maybe he should get a therapist.
Sure, it wouldn’t fix his issue of waking up at ridiculous hours, and not being able to get back to sleep, but it would certainly give him someone to talk to. He could tell someone about his troubles, and get some kind of qualified advice.
He sounded ridiculous.
Talk about what? Ennis? That was the problem and solution all rolled into one.
At the re-introduction of Ennis as a topic, Jack got to pacing again – having been unknowingly standing in the same place for a while –
He couldn’t tell a shrink about Ennis. Instead of “qualified advice” he’d wake up in a padded room the next morning. God, forget a padded room, he’d wake up strapped to a table with a towel in his mouth.
All his problems boiled back down to Ennis.
His marriage was unhappy. Bland. Dull. Almost loveless.
Because he couldn’t turn himself loose of Ennis.
His life was a monotonous cycle of nothingness.
Because he wanted his life to be with Ennis.
His job was passionless and repetitive.
Because he wanted to work with Ennis.
Obviously, there was no fix to these things.
He was stuck. And the more he thought about it, the more stuck he felt.
Jack crossed his arms across his chest. He’d been losing muscle in his arms gradually, he had nothing to do to keep his strength up, and he was getting older. His body was starting to require maintenance. He didn’t see a point in keeping up. He looked at the clock above the doorway to their “guest bathroom” named such because of its close proximity to their guest bedroom.
The clock was ugly.
He’d never said anything because he didn’t want to decorate the house in the first place. The house wasn’t really his, not in his eyes at least. Jack simply slept, ate, and showered between the four walls. He didn’t own an inch of it. Nothing about it was his. So, when Lureen dragged him to a furniture store, and set her sights on a large, overly designed clock, Jack, in all of his hungover glory, smiled the way he did, and told her it was lovely.
It was ugly
He’d never looked at it closely until now if was ever honest.
God, he hated the clock, he hated the house. He didn’t want anything to do with picking out a house, or an eggshell white paint for the living room, or a clock to sit atop their bathroom doorway that read
3:30
Because he wanted to decorate a house with Ennis.
Jack knew better.
He got to walking again.
Jack passed the back door of the house, considering it. Maybe some fresh air would do him good.
He’d look like a lunatic. Walking the neighborhood in his comfortable plaid pajama pants and grey T-Shirt.
He decided to head for the other side of the house again.
Jack found himself back in the living room. He stood in the middle for a while, staring at the closed cabinet of vinyl records.
Something to do.
Jack sat on the floor, the plush carpeting making for comfortable seating, and opened the cabinet, removing all the records and lying them on the floor. He shuffled to find a record featuring anyone whose name started with “A”. It very quickly became mindless. Before he knew it he’d made it to the “G”s.
He wondered what kind of music Ennis liked.
If Ennis listened to music at all.
Really listened not just played it in the background.
Jack had been told he had plenty of womanly habits his whole life. It’d been beaten into him to remember how awful that was. His want to clean and organize being one of those habits. Every once in a while, like now, when he was trapped in the quicksand of the Bermuda Pentagon, he could get away with it. Blame it on boredom.
Jack had been told he was too pretty for his own good. Often.
Jack had been told he was blessed with being pretty so that he didn’t have to be smart.
His daddy made sure he knew he wasn’t smart.
The first time Ennis said differently Jack thought he would pass out.
He laughed under his breath at the memory.
Ennis had frowned at him, cigarette stopping halfway to his mouth. “Who says you ain’t smart?” Ennis had looked so upset, angry almost, at the idea that Jack had been convinced his intelligence was a shortcoming. “Bullshit.” Ennis had muttered, staring at Jack. “One’a the smartest people I know,”
Jack closed the well-organized cabinet and stood on his complaining knees.
Jack got back to walking, the first clock he passed was the ugly one above the bathroom doorway.
3:45 AM
The clock ticked softly, Jack stood with his arms crossed again and watched. Listened to the time pass.
The sound was almost soothing.
tick. tick. tick. tick.
Jack watched the longest of the hands circle the face about five times before he got to walking again.
Ennis had taught him how to read an analog clock.
These days everything seemed to come back to Ennis.
Jack walked through the kitchen again, noticing the microwave
3:52 AM
Jack furrowed and turned to go back to the previous clock.
3:50 AM
Either the microwave was two minutes fast or the clock was two minutes slow.
Jack decided he hated that stupid fucking clock, and out of spite, he also decided it was a minute slow, and the microwave had been set correctly.
Although it was incredibly likely that Jack had messed up setting the microwave a few years prior, and nobody had taken the time to fix it.
Ennis taught him to set all his clocks five minutes fast.
“Never be late that way,” Ennis had told him.
Jack couldn’t seem to shake the habit.
The clock on his bedside table was fast.
His wristwatch was fast.
The clock in his truck was fast.
His microwave unsurprisingly could’ve just been fast. It was a hard habit to break.
Or maybe he didn’t want to break the habit at all. Maybe he wanted to cling to as many things about Ennis as he could, because maybe that would make him feel closer, despite being many states and cities apart.
Jack decided the clock over the bathroom was slow,
and the clock on the microwave was fast,
Which made the real time:
3:51 AM
Well,
In the time he’d spent thinking about clocks a few minutes passed, but the idea was still there.
Jack sighed.
One more hour in the Bermuda Pentagon and he was a free man again.
Granted “free” was a hard word to use in this context.
Jack would be back to his shitty life. The real world would wake up again, and he’d have to get ready to sell tractors, and other farm equipment to people who couldn’t afford to buy the ones they already owned.
Jack hated this.
He hated waking up like this, and not sleeping after.
He hated dragging himself through the workday.
He hated walking the floor of his house every other night.
He hated being so far from Ennis.
He hated not having Ennis.
He hated ever driving away from Ennis.
He hated that all of his problems lead back to Ennis Del-Mar
It was, of course, unfair to place all the blame on Ennis. Jack made the first move after all.
Jack sat on the couch, finding himself back in the living room. He stared at the wall in front of him, looking at the small simplistic clock staring back at him.
4:06 AM
Time was moving slowly again.
Had they always had this many clocks?
Jesus Christ,
Jack laid his head back against the couch, letting his eyes fall closed. This time he felt relaxed. Sleep inching its way closer.
Jack lifted his head and opened his eyes sharply.
Too early in the day now to go back to sleep. He had to stay awake. Had to commit to staying awake for the rest of the day.
4:30 AM
What the fuck?
Jack tilted his head to the side, standing with newfound energy and checking every clock he’d previously passed. Without fail, each read the same thing, of course with exceptions as about another minute passed.
Jack stood in the hallway, the entry to their house, the first thing you saw when you entered.
He stared at the clock on the wall.
Yeah, he definitely knocked out for a very real thirty minutes.
Jack groaned and made his way back to the living room to walk on the carpet.
Just to feel the ground on his feet. A better texture than the hardwood on his bare feet.
Jack stopped sleeping in socks when he moved in with Lureen. She’d thought it was strange. He thought it was practical, not wanting to get his feet dirty if he got out of bed for any reason. She hadn’t known about his trouble with sleeping.
Ennis didn’t sleep in any clothes if he could help it. He’d told Jack once that it didn’t make any sense to get dressed to go to sleep.
Ennis eventually started wearing his comfortable jeans to sleep on their trips. Ennis called them his sleep jeans, they were only for when it got too cold to sleep bare.
Jack figured it was a habit he’d picked up at home.
Jack wondered what Ennis slept in at home.
Jack wanted a home with Ennis.
Jack let his eyes fall closed, this time not to sleep but to let his imagination work its magic the way it did when he was missing Ennis.
Jack wanted to have a little house with Ennis so badly. Somewhere to call home, nothing far too extravagant. Three bedrooms – max – and only because they both had kids. He and Ennis could split a too-small closet, and complain about the lack of space all the time.
Jack wanted to have a tiny kitchen where he could sit on the counter and make jokes with Ennis while he cooked, Ennis would only ever cook. Jack was never very good at that. A “womanly” quality he never quite retained.
Jack wanted to have a comfortable bedroom where he and Ennis could spend their nights talking about anything and everything.
Most important of all, in every single one of his wants, Ennis is happy. Jack is happy.
They would be happy together.
They could be perfect together.
“Jack?”
Jack practically jumped ten feet, the smile on his face fleeing quickly as he came back to reality, turning his head from where he leaned on the wall to see a tired Lureen rubbing her eyes. He looked back to the clock in the hallway.
5:00 AM
He’d survived another morning/night in the Bermuda Pentagon and it was early enough to get on with the day.