all this arguing about "wrang it out" is funny. tiawahcowboy, you're certainly entitled to interpret the phrase how you like, but I don't understand why you're so adamant that other read it the same way you do. In literature, metaphors are very common. An imagery can be used to describe something even though they nothing to do with one another. When Shakespeare wrote "A rose by any other name" he wasn't talking about flowers. He used the phrase to describe Romeo and Juliet's love in the face of family conflict. A phrase can have a surface meaning and many under layers of meanings at the same time.
Listen up, I live in Oklahoma and so did thousands of other people. If you look up the colloquial/regional expression, "wrang it out," you will see that it has to do with some serious thinking about getting the answer to a difficult question and it takes quite a while before one realizes what the real answer was.
In the book/short story, in August 1963, after Ennis and Jack drove (their trucks) away in opposite directions, "within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at at time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off."
Then at the 1967 Reunion in the Riverton Siesta Motel room . . . "That summer," said Ennis. "When we split up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at that place in Dubois. Took me about a year a figure out it was that I shouldn't a let you out a my sights. Too late then by a long, long while."
Ennis did not exactly have a limited vocabulary; he was a man of few words when it came to speaking to strangers and to himself. The expressions, to "figure it out" and to, "wring it out," mean exactly the same thing here in Tiawah.