Book of Days
Sep. 29th, 2012 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
morrobay1990Title: Book of Days
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
morrobay1990
Warning:
Genre: canon
Word count: 800-ish
Disclaimer: They are AP's
♥ Jack
He tossed the calendar on the kitchen table as he passed by on his way to the refrigerator and beer. Gwennie, the girl behind the counter at the feed store, had pressed him to take it…that little book of days that turned into months, that time counter for which he had no use.
His life had turned, without him even being aware, into a routine which, though to most would seem dull and monotonous, allowed him to travel through with minimum thought and only slight effort, and in that way was more than a little comforting if he thought about it at all, which he didn’t. He worked, he ate, he slept. He had no need to know the exact date of anything…not any more.
Fridays he got paid, put part in an envelope for Alma, part in another envelope for rent on the trailer. When he had enough to pay both, he knew another month had passed, but for the most part that fact didn’t register as a singular thought.
When he no longer needed to pay child support, the envelope with Jenny’s and Junior’s names on it sat empty in the drawer, but was never discarded, and time was tracked by rent paying alone.
Alma reminded him when the girls’ birthdays were near…Jenny September 1, Junior August 29…or 30…late August. Foreman told him when holidays were coming, and could he work to cover for the guys with families? What did he need a calendar for.
He rummaged in the drawer for the bottle opener, removed the top from the beer and tossed it toward the trash can where it banked off the top and fell short by a few inches, picked up the calendar and took it and the beer to his chair.
Cows. The theme of the calendar was cows and as he flipped through he frowned as he noticed that the bovines were being made to look cute, like maybe they were pets.
He stopped in March, which had a close-up photo of a black and white cow’s face, as if the photographer thought this shot should be captured on film for all time so no one would forget what a cow looks like. March fifteenth was a Thursday this year; from year to year he never knew the day of the week on which it fell.
March fifteenth Jack would have been forty six, same as him…only his birthday was in November…that fact changing in importance during their years together…as they aged Ennis had a running joke of sorts, to point out the fact that Jack was older, closer to social security, an old folks home, death…
Wasn’t funny anymore…downright fucking sad…the one thing that he’d ever had gone. He rested his head back and thought about his life, who he had loved, who had loved him…his parents of course, but they were simply shadowy silhouettes in his memory…his brother and sister – yeah, guess you gotta love family…Alma; thought he did, probably had at the time but she couldn’t possibly ever even come close after he came down off that mountain, even though he’d tried for a while…till ’67…pretty much downhill from there.
His daughters, that was something he knew down to his bones, that deep love for his children…he shook his head and quickly blocked them out as realization surfaced of the pain he must have caused them. Funny, he didn’t think about it at the time, saw his time with Jack as so necessary to his very survival that leaving his family for two weeks at a time seemed inconsequential…
But of course it was Jack…Jack, thoughts of whom, always but especially these days, could bring emotions to the surface, emotions no one had ever seen, emotions he’d hidden from his family, from himself…from Jack.
He never knew he’d had such a keen memory until he started thinking back on their trips and realized he was able to remember the smallest thing…these days the smallest things were pretty big.
He figured part of it was the stack of feed store calendars on the floor in the closet, calendars that he'd stopped collecting in '83....with days, weeks, circled in pencil…different days and weeks each year, each circle commemorating a time in his year that he deemed worthy of remembrance. He circled the days and made a note of the location, that’s it, just where they’d gone.
And that’s all it took to spark his memory…his memory that he thanked God, or whoever, for…his memory that was so sharp, his memory that he relied on to get him through some dark times. Where they had gone, what they had talked about - mostly Jack talking - how they had loved…Jack even talked then.
He remembered it all, and he remembered it all the time.
He got up for another beer and didn’t miss as he pitched the calendar into the trash.
Author:
morrobay1990Warning:
Genre: canon
Word count: 800-ish
Disclaimer: They are AP's
♥ Jack
He tossed the calendar on the kitchen table as he passed by on his way to the refrigerator and beer. Gwennie, the girl behind the counter at the feed store, had pressed him to take it…that little book of days that turned into months, that time counter for which he had no use.
His life had turned, without him even being aware, into a routine which, though to most would seem dull and monotonous, allowed him to travel through with minimum thought and only slight effort, and in that way was more than a little comforting if he thought about it at all, which he didn’t. He worked, he ate, he slept. He had no need to know the exact date of anything…not any more.
Fridays he got paid, put part in an envelope for Alma, part in another envelope for rent on the trailer. When he had enough to pay both, he knew another month had passed, but for the most part that fact didn’t register as a singular thought.
When he no longer needed to pay child support, the envelope with Jenny’s and Junior’s names on it sat empty in the drawer, but was never discarded, and time was tracked by rent paying alone.
Alma reminded him when the girls’ birthdays were near…Jenny September 1, Junior August 29…or 30…late August. Foreman told him when holidays were coming, and could he work to cover for the guys with families? What did he need a calendar for.
He rummaged in the drawer for the bottle opener, removed the top from the beer and tossed it toward the trash can where it banked off the top and fell short by a few inches, picked up the calendar and took it and the beer to his chair.
Cows. The theme of the calendar was cows and as he flipped through he frowned as he noticed that the bovines were being made to look cute, like maybe they were pets.
He stopped in March, which had a close-up photo of a black and white cow’s face, as if the photographer thought this shot should be captured on film for all time so no one would forget what a cow looks like. March fifteenth was a Thursday this year; from year to year he never knew the day of the week on which it fell.
March fifteenth Jack would have been forty six, same as him…only his birthday was in November…that fact changing in importance during their years together…as they aged Ennis had a running joke of sorts, to point out the fact that Jack was older, closer to social security, an old folks home, death…
Wasn’t funny anymore…downright fucking sad…the one thing that he’d ever had gone. He rested his head back and thought about his life, who he had loved, who had loved him…his parents of course, but they were simply shadowy silhouettes in his memory…his brother and sister – yeah, guess you gotta love family…Alma; thought he did, probably had at the time but she couldn’t possibly ever even come close after he came down off that mountain, even though he’d tried for a while…till ’67…pretty much downhill from there.
His daughters, that was something he knew down to his bones, that deep love for his children…he shook his head and quickly blocked them out as realization surfaced of the pain he must have caused them. Funny, he didn’t think about it at the time, saw his time with Jack as so necessary to his very survival that leaving his family for two weeks at a time seemed inconsequential…
But of course it was Jack…Jack, thoughts of whom, always but especially these days, could bring emotions to the surface, emotions no one had ever seen, emotions he’d hidden from his family, from himself…from Jack.
He never knew he’d had such a keen memory until he started thinking back on their trips and realized he was able to remember the smallest thing…these days the smallest things were pretty big.
He figured part of it was the stack of feed store calendars on the floor in the closet, calendars that he'd stopped collecting in '83....with days, weeks, circled in pencil…different days and weeks each year, each circle commemorating a time in his year that he deemed worthy of remembrance. He circled the days and made a note of the location, that’s it, just where they’d gone.
And that’s all it took to spark his memory…his memory that he thanked God, or whoever, for…his memory that was so sharp, his memory that he relied on to get him through some dark times. Where they had gone, what they had talked about - mostly Jack talking - how they had loved…Jack even talked then.
He remembered it all, and he remembered it all the time.
He got up for another beer and didn’t miss as he pitched the calendar into the trash.
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time
Date: 2012-09-30 04:07 am (UTC)