delalluvia, I like your responses here.
In the book, when Ennis and Alma moved with their children to Riverton and stayed in the apartment over the laundry, Ennis worked 7 days a week. See the quote below from the book:
"Ennis got on the highway crew, tolerating it but working weekends at the Rafter B in exchange for keeping his horses out there. The second girl was born and Alma wanted to stay in town near the clinic because the child had an asthmatic wheeze.
"Ennis, please, no more damn lonesome ranches for us," she said, sitting on his lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him. "Let's get a place here in town?"
But, by the time that Jack showed up in 1967, they were still in the very same small apartment. They still had not moved to a place of their own, which IMO would have been a house with a yard.
I don't consider Ennis to be a lazy person and in the book, he was working when Alma got the job as a grocery store clerk because of all the bills they had which were probably connected with the childrens' health problems and they could not survive just on what Ennis was making.
But, I do know that some people who cannot hold a job very long have self-esteem problems. But, if you read about how ranch work was available on a limited basis for people with little or no job skills in Wyoming in the 1960s, you (meaning anybody) would understand their finacial situation.