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The place is nothing but a spit of dirt surrounded on either side by fifty miles of lonesome. In the summer it gets hot as a wide-open oven, the heat rising in shimmering waves off the brown-baked ground, and not a damn thing grows except some grass and a few stubborn weeds. In winter snow spreads out thick as breath over the flatlands, piles up against the low clapboard house in drifts as tall as two good-sized men, makes it near impossible to budge from indoors, though it has to be done. The barn is a sight better than the house itself, even it is just whitewashed boards and tar-paper and shingles—least it doesn’t shake with the wind and roll with the occasional twister, which is why on more than one occasion they’ve found themselves bedded down in the hayloft.
“M’be we oughta just close up the house, move on in out here,” Ennis mumbled once. “S’warmer.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Not so shaky, neither. Times I get to feelin’ like I’m on some bronc a’gin, the way that place rattles.”
“Reckon that’s so.”
“Bronc-ridin’s more in your line, I guess.”
“There was a time.”
“What you think—that house throw you ‘round like them broncs did?”
“I resent you implyin’ that I couldn’t stay on them broncs any damn day I wanted to. ‘Sides, only thing I ride in that house is you.”
“Asshole.”
“Yeah, I reckon that’s ‘bout where I—”
“Fuck you!” They rough-housed for a couple of minutes, nothing serious, just playing around like they were still a pair of nineteen-year-olds. Ended up one on top of the other, neither minding over-much.
“S’what you say, huh? You want we should move out here?”
Jack reached down, wrapped his hand around hard muscle and squeezed, got a pleasured groan back for his troubles. “Nah,” he said finally. “We’d scare the horses.”