Wow - I already love this thread. So many good replies from everyone!
Mel, you've been on a roll here with the impressingly in-depth "Shit" analysis and the:
"You have no idea how incoherent I get when I'm post-coital."
That's *so* how it seems to me - Ennis's brain has short-circuited from the "brilliant charge" of that motel night - and the expectation of more to come. But for Alma his little line adds another layer of pain to her sadness, worry and confusion - she suspects (or knows, deep down) what they've been up to. She sees Jack, reclining blissfully against the truck outside, and here is Ennis, rushing around like an overcharged energizer bunny, rattling off that incoherent reply, - I'm sure she's very aware that he never behaved remotely like that either just before or after sex with *her*.
~~~~
About the "Fire and brimstone crowd"; - thank you for bringing that up, Katherine (Hope I got your name right.) I've been wondering about the background for that, whether there was any particular reason for Ennis calling them so at that point in time. Most likely, it's as you say:
2) Pretty obvious: he doesn't want to hang out with churchy types who would judge him harshly if they knew he was gay.
I've been wondering though if there might have been any recent preaching specifically against the sin of homosexuality in their church that has made him less willing to mix with them and more willing to call them names than he originally might have been. The Stonewall riots were in 1969, the less-than-blissful Del Mar domestic Saturday night scene takes place in 1973 - time enough for even small rural community churches to have picked up on the issue and to have started being more active in preaching against it. In Ennis's early youth I imagine there wouldn't be such preaching - it would just be a given to all that it was an abomination and so forth, without anyone going publicly on about it.
That's just speculation on my side, of course, I know next to nothing at all about how (if at all) Stonewall reverberated throughout the country in those years and what went on in American rural church communities back then.
~~~
Now, here's another one I've been thinking about:
"All I'm saying is, what's the point to making it? If the taxes don't get it, the inflation eats it all up. You should see Lureen, punching numbers into her adding machine, hunting for extra zeros, her eyes getting smalller and smaller, it's like watching a rabbit trying to squeeze into a snakehole with a coyote on its tail.
Which could mean:
1) - I've gotten used to being financially well off and I rather like it, so I've gotten into the common habit of all well-off people (ie. griping about taxes and inflation). I admire Lureen for her dedication to our family finances and the business - I look fondly at the way she just never gives up in that respect.
2) - All this work and stress to earn money is stupid - you're left with very little anyway, and money's not the most important part in life. It's ridiculous the way Lureen focuses so much on making money - I can't but laugh a little at her extreme single-mindedness.Personally, I must admit I've always seen number 1) in what Jack says and in his expression while saying it, since I tend to think that Jack's and Lureen's marriage seems to be a well-functioning though platonic and even quite affectionate partnership for many years before it turns more sour towards the end.
