(no subject)

[jack_f_twist]

And that's all it is.

Just a road, stretching straight as the eye can see

(which is odd, 'cause weren't it winding like a snake trying to shed its skin just a minute ago?)

and the only thing on it is Jack's old broken-down truck, the same old piece-of-shit he'd driven to Signal, the same one what kept trying to quit on him once he got down from Brokeback

(that's if he'd ever gotten down from Brokeback, and if those mountains sitting humped and purple in the distance are any clue, he never truly did)

and he's just sitting on the hood, sweating and grease-stained and just about ready to give up on the damned thing.

"Shit," he says, softly, to himself, and squints into the sun.

He hates changing flats.

Comments

[e_delmar]

It's fuzzy, almost, a haze fallen over the land like the early morning fog that ain't lifted yet, but it's hot enough and late enough that there shouldn't be no fog. He hears the clank of metal against metal and watches like a dream as Jack

(ain't Jack, can't be Jack, Jack's dead)

leaning over the hood on his car. He says something, something about helping, maybe, but Jack don't turn, Jack don't hear a thing.

[jack_f_twist]

There's something kinda funny about the whole thing, because somehow Jack's lost the mustache and the weight and about twenty years off his frame, but he don't seem to care that he ain't supposed to up and wandering around--let alone fixing a flat tire--when he's supposed to be dead, so he just gets out the old toolbox from the bed of the truck, and gets to work on the tire.

The sun's heading down to bed among the mountains, shining in his eyes, so that Jack doesn't notice that he ain't strictly alone no more.

Something gleams in the fading light, gray and dull.

After all, it's hard to change a tire without a tire iron.

[e_delmar]

Ennis ain't there, 'cause ain't no way in hell Jack can be there, and he's still fucking around with the stupid truck and Ennis opens his mouth to yell, but nothing comes out.

The road is hard under his boots, and the metal of the truck burns his hand as he slams the door.

[jack_f_twist]

He hates changing tires.

Fucking piece of shit truck, always breaking down--Jack glares up at the still white-hot sun and wipes some sweat from off his forehead, leaving a dark smear of grease like a bruise above his eye

and then someone pushes him, wiry grass scratching his cheek and hands when he tries to push himself back up, too surprised to even fight back.

Seems he's been caught out again.

[e_delmar]

There's heat beneath his hands and heat in his brain

(or maybe that's heat falling down his face in long wet tears)

and he can't see Jack and he can't see the light and he can't hear nothin' but the sounds of the bugs around them and he can't feel nothin' but the hot wet flesh below him but there ain't nothing moving, not on a hot still day like this one.

[jack_f_twist]

He fights back, of course.

Jack's always been one to take on a fight (though he ain't hardly won a one of 'em), and he fights back now, kicking and hitting out wildly. They wrestle in a terrible parody of lovers, but the end is the end and that's never changed.

In the end it's still again, nothing moving but grasshoppers and the sun slowly climbing its way down to the plains below (no mountains--must have just been cloudbanks, before), and Jack tastes salt before everything goes dim, bone-tired as he is, and he slips into something like sleep with relief and loose as any rag-doll.

[e_delmar]

He's breathing hard and harsh now, grabbing and moving and punching and he gets some fabric between his hands and as he pulls on it, he hits the ground.