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“Y’know, you two don’t look nothin’ alike.”
Ennis clenches his fists inside his coat pockets, keeps his mouth shut. Jack takes care of the talking—-that’s their way.
“No sir,” Jack says, free and easy, “we surely don’t. Momma used to say we was as differ’nt as night an’ day.”
The man showing them the place—-Ennis can’t remember his name for shit—-chuckles, setting his considerable girth shaking. “I can tell that already. He sure don’t talk much, do he?” he asks, gesturing to Ennis.
“Ennis here? Naw, he sure don’t. Gettin’ him to say more than one or two words like pullin’ teeth. Me, I never was like that. Figure God wouldn’ta given me a mouth if I wasn’t meant to use it.”
“That’s so, son, that’s so.” The man turns up the collar on his fancy-looking coat, shivers a little against the cold. “So what you think of the place?”
Jack looks around again, takes in the wide open plain. “How far you say it was from town a’gin?”
“Hour an’ a half either way. There’s a farm or two ‘bout forty-five minutes south of here, but it’s pretty much lonesome. S’why it’s so cheap.”
Jack turns back to Ennis, voice all business but eyes sparking secrets. “Looks like we’d be all on our own, brother-man. You alright with that?”
Ennis digs his toe into the ground. “I reckon so.” He glances up at the man, checking for any sign of suspicion in his wide-open face, but there’s nothing there. “Good barn, Jack, an’ we could do any fixin’ it needs ourselves.”
“An’ the house?” the man prompts.
Ennis shrugs. “Fine like it is.”
Jack snorts. “You speak for yourself there, Ennis. I for one plan on gettin’ us a workin’ toilet. I am not ‘bout to walk outside to take a damn leak in the middle of January.”
The man jumps back in. “That’s one more thing. No heatin’ to speak of, but the fireplace works fine--not closed up or nothin’, an’ the place so small it heats up real easy.”
“How much land a’gin?”
Easy to be patient when you know you’ve got them already. “Six acres, an’ the land ‘round here runs cheap. If’n you ever get a mind to branch out, wouldn’t be diff’cult to do.”
“Well.” Jack looks back at Ennis once more. “I think you got yourself a deal, Mr. Wright.”
Mr. Wright grins wide, showing off a gold tooth set right up front like a trophy. “Shit, boys, now that is some good news. I got the papers in m’car. You sign on the dotted line an’ it’s all yours. Move in today if’n you got a mind to.”
“Might just take you up on that, sir. Got everythin’ of ours in the truck anyhow, don’t we, Ennis?”
Ennis nods, mumbles something that might have been a yes.
Jack signs his name to the papers with big letters, hands over a deposit of three hundred cash, and takes the deed in his hands. Wright drives away in a blue Cadillac, three hundred dollars and one shit farm taken off his hands to the better, already pitying those poor suckers.
They watch until his car is swallowed up by the horizon. Jack breathes deep for the first time in several hours, looks hard at the deed in his shaking hands. “Thought you was gonna back out on me there for a minute, friend.”
“What you think that for?”
“Not sayin’ a word, stayin’ so far b’hind me the whole time when I was talkin’ to Wright, like this wasn’t none of your concern.”
“Just hangin’ back. You the talker, Twist, not me.”
Jack laughs. “No shit. Ennis Del Mar, silent as the fuckin’ grave, an’ just ‘bout as interestin’ to talk to.”
“Couldn’t get a word in nohow with you runnin’ on like you do.”
“Fuck you.”
“You offerin’?” Ennis grins, catching Jack off guard, slipping his fingers into Jack’s belt loops and hauling him close, chest-to-chest. “’Cause I do b’lieve you said somethin’ ‘bout God meanin’ for you to use that mouth of yours.”
Jack reddens, a little shy, ridiculous after all these months. “Meant for talkin’, cowboy.”
“That so?” Ennis murmurs, devil-voiced. “I got a few other ideas.”