Ennis Del mar wakes
before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the aluminum door and
window frames. The shirts hanging on a
nail [important image at the end] shudder slightly in the draft. He gets up,
scratching the grey wedge of belly and pubic hair, shuffles to the gas burner,
pours leftover coffee in a chipped enamel pan, the flame swathes it in
blue. [swathes,brilliant word choice-jr] He turns
on the tap and urinates in the sink, pulls on his shirt and jeans, his worn
boots, stamping the heels against the floor to get them full on. The wind booms
down the curved length of the trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear
the scratching of the fine gravel and sand. It could be bad on the highway with
the horse trailer. He has to be packed
and away from the place that morning.
Again the ranch is on the market and they’ve shipped out the last of the
horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner saying, “Give em to the
real estate shark, I’m out a here,” dropping the keys in Ennis’s hand. He might
have to stay with his married daughter until he picks up another job, yet he is
suffused with a sense of pleasure because Jack Twist was in his dream.
The stale coffee is
boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side, pours it into a
stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream slide
forward. If he does not force his
attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the
mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. The wind strikes
the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a
temporary silence. [wow, great simile for kinesthetic and auditory detail, appeal to all senses-jr]
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