“Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you to throw a dirty punch.” 

     “I come up under my brother K.E., three years older’n me, slugged me silly everday. Dad got tired a me come bawlin in the house and when I was about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a problem and you got a fix it or it’s gonna be with you until you’re ninety and K.E.’s ninety-three. Well, I says,he’s bigger’n me. Dad says, you got a take him unawares, don’t say nothin to him, make him feel some pain, get out fast and keep doin it until he takes themessage. Nothin like hurtin somebody to make him hear good. So I did. I gothim in the outhouse, jumped him on the stairs, come over to his pillow in the night while he was sleepin and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never had trouble with K.E. since. The lesson was, don’t say nothin and get it over with quick.” 

     A telephone rang in the next room, rang on and on, stopped abruptly in mid-peal.          “You won’t catch me again,” said Jack. 

     “Listen. I’m thinkin, tell you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calf operation, your horses, it’d be some sweet life. Like I said, I’m gettin out a rodeo. I ain’t nobroke-dick rider but I don’t got the bucks a ride out this slump I’m in and Idon’t got the bones a keep gettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do it, you and me. Lureen’s old man, you bet he’d give me abunch if I’d get lost. Already more or less said it -- “ 

     “Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain’t goin a be that way. We can’t. I’m stuck withwhat I got, caught in my own loop. Can’t get out of it. Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don’t want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich -- Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earldead in a irrigation ditch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on gravel.” 

     “You seen that?” 

     “Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed about it.Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head inthat door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in the backa nowhere -- “ 

     “How much is once in a while?” said Jack. 

     “Once in a while ever four fuckin years?” 

     “No,” said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. 

     “I goddamn hate it that you’re goin a drive away in the mornin and I’m goin back to work. But ifyou can’t fix it you got a stand it,” he said. 

     “Shit. I been lookin at people onthe street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?” 

     “It don’t happen in Wyomin and if it does I don’t know what they do, maybego to Denver,” said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him, 

     “and I don’t givea flyin fuck. Son of a bitch, Ennis, take a couple days off. Right now. Get usout a here. Throw your stuff in the back a my truck and let’s get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call Alma up and tell her you’re goin. Come on,Ennis, you just shot my airplane out a the sky -- give me somethin a go on.This ain’t no little thing that’s happenin here.”The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he were answering it, Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialed his own number. 

     A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, just widening water. She was working at a grocery store clerk job, saw she’dalways have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis made. Almaasked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy. He saidno to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn’t want anymore of his kids. Under her breath she said, “I’d have em if you’d supportem.” And under that, thought, anyway, what you like to do don’t make toomany babies. 

     Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never avacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to step out and have any fun, his yearning for low paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensity to rollto the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the power company, put her in a long, slowdive and when Alma Jr. was nine and Francine seven she said, what am Idoin hangin around with him, divorced Ennis and married the Rivertongrocer.