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Brokeback Mountain 原文小说
Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around t
he aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder sligh
tly in the draft. He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of belly and pubic hai
r, shuffles to the gas burner, pours leftover coffee in a chipped enamel pan;
the flame swathes it in blue. He turns on the tap and urinates in the sink, pu
lls on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the flo
or to get them full on. The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer a
nd under its roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and san
d. It could be bad on the highway with the horse trailer. He has to be packed
and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch is on the market and the
y've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, th
e owner saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping t
he keys in Ennis's hand. He might have to stay with his married daughter until he
picks up another job, yet he is suffused with a sense of pl
easure because Jack Twist was in his dream.
The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side,
pours it into a stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of th
e dream slide forward. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stok
e the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the worl
d and nothing seemed wrong. The wind strikes the trailer like a load of dirt c
oming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves a temporary silence.
They were raised on small, poor ranches in opposite corners of the state, Jack
Twist in Lightning Flat up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar from around S
age, near the Utah line, both high school dropout country boys with no prospec
ts, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken,
inured to the stoic life. Ennis, reared by his older brother and sister after
their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road leaving them twenty-
four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a h
ardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the hig
h school. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper and bad tires; w
hen the transmission went there was no money to fix it. He had wanted to be a
sophomore, felt the word carried a kind of distinction, but the truck broke do
wn short of it, pitching him directly into ranch work.
In 1963 when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and
Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis's case that mea
nt a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for an
y job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment -- they came together
on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operation north of Sign
al. The summer range lay above the tree line on Forest Service land on Brokeba
ck Mountain. It would be Jack Twist's second summer on the mountain, Ennis's f
irst. Neither of them was twenty.
They shook hands in the choky little trailer office in front of a table litter
ed with scribbled papers, a Bakelite ashtray brimming with stubs. The venetian
blinds hung askew and admitted a triangle of white light, the shadow of the f
oreman's hand moving into it. Joe Aguirre, wavy hair the color of cigarette as
h and parted down the middle, gave them his point of view.
"Forest Service got designated campsites on the allotments. Them camps can be
a couple a miles from where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator loss, nobody ne
ar lookin after em at night. What I want, camp tender in the main camp where t
he Forest Service says, but the HERDER" -- pointing at Jack with a chop of his
hand -- "pitch a pup tent on the q.t. with the sheep, out a sight, and he's g
oin a SLEEP there. Eat supper, breakfast in camp, but SLEEP WITH THE SHEEP, hu
nderd percent, NO FIRE, don't leave NO SIGN. Roll up that tent every mornin ca
se Forest Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last
summer had goddamn near twenty-five percent loss. I don't want that again. YO
U," he said to Ennis, taking in the ragged hair, the big nicked hands, the jea
ns torn, button-gaping shirt, "Fridays twelve noon be down at the bridge with
your next week list and mules. Somebody with supplies'll be there in a pickup.
" He didn't ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braided c
ord from a box on a high shelf, wound and set it, tossed it
to him as if he weren't worth the reach. "TOMORROW MORNIN we'll truck you up t
he jump-off." Pair of deuces going nowhere.
They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack telling Ennis abou
t a lightning storm on the mountain the year before that killed forty-two shee
p, the peculiar stink of them and the way they bloated, the need for plenty of
whiskey up there. He had shot an eagle, he said, turned his head to show the
tail feather in his hatband. At first glance Jack seemed fair enough with his
curly hair and quick laugh, but for a small man he carried some weight in the
haunch and his smile disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat
popcorn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable. He was infatuated with the
rodeo life and fastened his belt with a minor bull-riding buckle, but his boot
s were worn to the quick, holed beyond repair and he was crazy to be somewhere
, anywhere else than Lightning Flat.
Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a little cave-chested
, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed a muscular and suppl
e body made for the horse and for fighting. His reflexes were uncommonly quick
and he was farsighted enough to dislike reading anything except Hamley's sadd
le catalog.
The sheep trucks and horse trailers unloaded at the trailhead and a bandy-legg
ed Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mules, two packs and a riding load on e
ach animal ring-lashed with double diamonds and secured with half hitches, tel
ling him, "Don't never order soup. Them boxes a soup are real bad to pack." Th
ree puppies belonging to one of the blue heelers went in a pack basket, the ru
nt inside Jack's coat, for he loved a little dog. Ennis picked out a big chest
nut called Cigar Butt to ride, Jack a bay mare who turned out to have a low st
artle point. The string of spare horses included a mouse-colored grullo whose
looks Ennis liked. Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousand ewes
and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber and o
ut above the tree line into the great flowery Meadows and the coursing, endles
s wind.
They got the big tent up on the Forest Service's platform, the kitchen and gru
b boxes secured. Both slept in camp that first night, Jack already bitching ab
out Joe Aguirre's sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-fire order, though he saddled th
e bay mare in the dark morning without saying much. Dawn came glassy orange, s
tained from below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mo
untain paled slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis's brea
kfast fire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sud
den pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in s
labs of somber malachite.
During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a smal
l dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves across a tablecloth; Jack
, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mas
s of mountain.
Jack came lagging in late one afternoon, drank his two bottles of beer cooled
in a wet sack on the shady side of the tent, ate two bowls of stew, four of En
nis's stone biscuits, a can of peaches, rolled a smoke, watched the sun drop.
"I'm commutin four hours a day," he said morosely. "Come in for breakfast, go
back to the sheep, evenin get em bedded down, come in for supper, go back to t
he sheep, spend half the night jumpin up and checkin for coyotes. By rights I
should be spendin the night here. Aguirre got no right a make me do this."
"You want a switch?" said Ennis. "I wouldn't mind herdin. I wouldn't mind slee
pin out there."
"That ain't the point. Point is, we both should be in this camp. And that godd
amn pup tent smells like cat piss or worse."
"Wouldn't mind bein out there."
"Tell you what, you got a get up a dozen times in the night out there over the
m coyotes. Happy to switch but give you warnin I can't cook worth a sh*t. Pret
ty good with a can opener."
"Can't be no worse than me, then. Sure, I wouldn't mind a do it."
They fended off the night for an hour with the yellow kerosene lamp and around
ten Ennis rode Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through the glimmering frost b
ack to the sheep, carrying leftover biscuits, a jar of jam and a jar of coffee
with him for the next day saying he'd save a trip, stay out until supper.
"Shot a coyote just first light," he told Jack the next evening, sloshing his
face with hot water, lathering up soap and hoping his razor had some cut left
in it, while Jack peeled potatoes. "Big son of a ***. Balls on him size a ap
ples. I bet he'd took a few lambs. Looked like he could a eat a camel. You wan
t some a this hot water? There's plenty."
"It's all yours."
"Well, I'm goin a warsh everthing I can reach," he said, pulling off his boots
and jeans (no drawers, no socks, Jack noticed), slopping the green washcloth
around until the fire spat.
They had a high-time supper by the fire, a can of beans each, fried potatoes a
nd a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs against a log, boot sole
s and copper jeans rivets hot, swapping the bottle while the lavender sky empt
ied of color and the chill air drained down, drinking, smoking cigarettes, get
ting up every now and then to piss, firelight throwing a sparkle in the arched
stream, tossing sticks on the fire to keep the talk going, talking horses and
rodeo, roughstock events, wrecks and injuries sustained, the submarine Thresh
er lost two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the las
t doomed minutes, dogs each had owned and known, the draft, Jack's home ranch
where his father and mother held on, Ennis's family place folded years ago aft
er his folks died, the older brother in Signal and a married sister in Casper.
Jack said his father had been a pretty well known bullrider years back but ke
pt his secrets to himself, never gave Jack a word of advice, never came once to s
ee Jack ride, though he had put him on the woolies when he w
as a little kid. Ennis said the kind of riding that interested him lasted long
er than eight seconds and had some point to it. Money's a good point, said Jac
k, and Ennis had to agree. They were respectful of each other's opinions, each
glad to have a companion where none had been expected. Ennis, riding against
the wind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'd nev
er had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of the moon.
The summer went on and they moved the herd to new pasture, shifted the camp; t
he distance between the sheep and the new camp was greater and the night ride
longer. Ennis rode easy, sleeping with his eyes open, but the hours he was awa
y from the sheep stretched out and out. Jack pulled a squalling burr out of th
e harmonica, flattened a little from a fall off the skittish bay mare, and Enn
is had a good raspy voice; a few nights they mangled their way through some so
ngs. Ennis knew the salty words to "Strawberry Roan." Jack tried a Carl Perkin
s song, bawling "what I say-ay-ay," but he favored a sad hymn, "Water-Walking
Jesus," learned from his mother who believed in the Pentecost, that he sang at
dirge slowness, setting off distant coyote yips.
"Too late to go out to them damn sheep," said Ennis, dizzy drunk on all fours
one cold hour when the moon had notched past two. The meadow stones glowed whi
te-green and a flinty wind worked over the meadow, scraped the fire low, then
ruffled it into yellow silk sashes. "Got you a extra blanket I'll roll up out
here and grab forty winks, ride out at first light."
"Freeze your ass off when that fire dies down. Better off sleepin in the tent.
"
"Doubt I'll feel nothin." But he staggered under canvas, pulled his boots off,
snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack with the clacking of his ja
w.
"Jesus Christ, quit hammerin and get over here. Bedroll's big enough," said Ja
ck in an irritable sleep-clogged voice. It was big enough, warm enough, and in
a little while they deepened their intimacy considerably. Ennis ran full-thro
ttle on all roads whether fence mending or money spending, and he wanted none
of it when Jack seized his left hand and brought it to his erect ***. Ennis j
erked his hand away as though he'd touched fire, got to his knees, unbuckled h
is belt, shoved his pants down, hauled Jack onto all fours and, with the help
of the clear slick and a little spit, entered him, nothing he'd done before bu
t no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silence except for a few sh
arp intakes of breath and Jack's choked "gun's goin off," then out, down, and
asleep.
Ennis woke in red dawn with his pants around his knees, a top-grade headache,
and Jack butted against him; without saying anything about it both knew how it
would go for the rest of the summer, sheep be damned.
As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in
the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down,
and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack
of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no q
ueer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's busines
s but ours." There were only the two of them on the mountain flying in the eup
horic, bitter air, looking down on the hawk's back and the crawling lights of
vehicles on the plain below, suspended above ordinary affairs and distant from
tame ranch dogs barking in the dark hours. They believed themselves invisible
, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 binoculars for te
n minutes one day, waiting until they'd buttoned up their jeans, waiting until
Ennis rode back to the sheep, before bringing up the message that Jack's peop
le had sent word that his uncle Harold was in the hospital with pneumonia and exp
ected not to make it. Though he did, and Aguirre came up aga
in to say so, fixing Jack with his bold stare, not bothering to dismount.
In August Ennis spent the whole night with Jack in the main camp and in a blow
y hailstorm the sheep took off west and got among a herd in another allotment.
There was a damn miserable time for five days, Ennis and a Chilean herder wit
h no English trying to sort them out, the task almost impossible as the paint
brands were worn and faint at this late season. Even when the numbers were rig
ht Ennis knew the sheep were mixed. In a disquieting way everything seemed mix
ed.
The first snow came early, on August thirteenth, piling up a foot, but was fol
lowed by a quick melt. The next week Joe Aguirre sent word to bring them down
-- another, bigger storm was moving in from the Pacific -- and they packed in
the game and moved off the mountain with the sheep, stones rolling at their he
els, purple cloud crowding in from the west and the metal smell of coming snow
pressing them on. The mountain boiled with demonic energy, glazed with flicke
ring broken-cloud light, the wind combed the grass and drew from the damaged k
rummholz and slit rock a bestial drone. As they descended the slope Ennis felt
he was in a slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.
Joe Aguirre paid them, said little. He had looked at the milling sheep with a
sour expression, said, "Some a these never went up there with you." The count
was not what he'd hoped for either. Ranch stiffs never did much of a job.
"You goin a do this next summer?" said Jack to Ennis in the street, one leg al
ready up in his green pickup. The wind was gusting hard and cold.
"Maybe not." A dust plume rose and hazed the air with fine grit and he squinte
d against it. "Like I said, Alma and me's gettin married in December. Try to g
et somethin on a ranch. You?" He looked away from Jack's jaw, bruised blue fro
m the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.
"If nothin better comes along. Thought some about going back up to my daddy's
place, give him a hand over the winter, then maybe head out for Texas in the s
pring. If the draft don't get me."
"Well, see you around, I guess." The wind tumbled an empty feed bag down the s
treet until it fetched up under his truck.
"Right," said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then
there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive awa
y in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling hi
s guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road
and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt abo
ut as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.
In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid-January. He p
icked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled in as a wrangler on the ol
d Elwood Hi-Top place north of Lost Cabin in Washakie County. He was still wor
king there in September when Alma Jr., as he called his daughter, was born and
their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and milk and baby sh*t, and
the sounds were of squalling and sucking and Alma's sleepy groans, all reassur
ing of fecundity and life's continuance to one who worked with livestock.
When the Hi-Top folded they moved to a small apartment in Riverton up over a l
aundry. Ennis got on the highway crew, tolerating it but working weekends at t
he 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 hi
s lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him. "Let's get a place here in
town?"
"I guess," said Ennis, slipping his hand up her blouse sleeve and stirring the
silky armpit hair, then easing her down, fingers moving up her ribs to the je
lly ***, over the round belly and knee and up into the wet gap all the way
to the north pole or the equator depending which way you thought you were sail
ing, working at it until she shuddered and bucked against his hand and he roll
ed her over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed in the little apartment w
hich he favored because it could be left at any time.
The fourth summer since Brokeback Mountain came on and in June Ennis had a gen
eral delivery letter from Jack Twist, the first sign of life in all that time.
Friend this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get it. Heard you was in
Riverton. Im coming thru on the 24th, thought Id stop and buy you a beer Drop
me a line if you can, say if your there.
The return address was Childress, Texas. Ennis wrote back, you bet, gave the R
iverton address.
The day was hot and clear in the morning, but by noon the clouds had pushed up
out of the west rolling a little sultry air before them. Ennis, wearing his b
est shirt, white with wide black stripes, didn't know what time Jack would get
there and so had taken the day off, paced back and forth, looking down into a
street pale with dust. Alma was saying something about taking his friend to t
he Knife & Fork for supper instead of cooking it was so hot, if they could get
a baby-sitter, but Ennis said more likely he'd just go out with Jack and get
drunk. Jack was not a restaurant type, he said, thinking of the dirty spoons s
ticking out of the cans of cold beans balanced on the log.
Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in
and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back. A hot jolt
scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pulling the door closed behind hi
m. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulders,
hugged mightily, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying, son of a bitc
h, son of a ***, then, and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers,
their mouths came together, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat
falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door openi
ng and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shoulders and s
hutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest and groin and t
high and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they pulled apart t
o breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said to his horses a
nd daughters, little darlin.
The door opened again a few inches and Alma stood in the narrow light.
What could he say? "Alma, this is Jack Twist, Jack, my wife Alma." His chest w
as heaving. He could smell Jack -- the intensely familiar odor of cigarettes,
musky sweat and a faint sweetness like grass, and with it the rushing cold of
the mountain. "Alma," he said, "Jack and me ain't seen each other in four year
s." As if it were a reason. He was glad the light was dim on the landing but d
id not turn away from her.
"Sure enough," said Alma in a low voice. She had seen what she had seen. Behin
d her in the room lightning lit the window like a white sheet waving and the b
aby cried.
"You got a kid?" said Jack. His shaking hand grazed Ennis's hand, electrical c
urrent snapped between them.
"Two little girls," Ennis said. "Alma Jr. and Francine. Love them to pieces."
Alma's mouth twitched.
"I got a boy," said Jack. "Eight months old. Tell you what, I married a cute l
ittle old Texas girl down in Childress -- Lureen." From the vibration of the f
loorboard on which they both stood Ennis could feel how hard Jack was shaking.
"Alma," he said. "Jack and me is goin out and get a drink. Might not get back
tonight, we get drinkin and talkin."
"Sure enough," Alma said, taking a dollar bill from her pocket. Ennis guessed
she was going to ask him to get her a pack of cigarettes, bring him back soone
r.
"Please to meet you," said Jack, trembling like a run-out horse.
"Ennis -- " said Alma in her misery voice, but that didn't slow him down on th
e stairs and he called back, "Alma, you want smokes there's some in the pocket
a my blue shirt in the bedroom."
They went off in Jack's truck, bought a bottle of whiskey and within twenty mi
nutes were in the Motel Siesta jouncing a bed. A few handfuls of hail rattled
against the window followed by rain and slippery wind banging the unsecured do
or of the next room then and through the night.
The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet and sou
r hay, saddle leather, sh*t and cheap soap. Ennis lay spread-eagled, spent and
wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent, Jack blowing forceful cigarette cl
ouds like whale spouts, and Jack said, "Christ, it got a be all that time a yo
urs ahorseback makes it so goddamn good. We got to talk about this. Swear to g
od I didn't know we was goin a get into this again -- yeah, I did. Why I'm her
e. I f*ckin knew it. Redlined all the way, couldn't get here fast enough."
"I didn't know where in the hell you was," said Ennis. "Four years. I about gi
ve up on you. I figured you was sore about that punch."
"Friend," said Jack, "I was in Texas rodeoin. How I met Lureen. Look over on t
hat chair."
On the back of the soiled orange chair he saw the shine of a buckle. "Bullridi
n?"
"Yeah. I made three f*ckin thousand dollars that year. f*ckin starved. Had to
borrow everthing but a toothbrush from other guys. Drove grooves across Texas.
Half the time under that *** truck fixin it. Anyway, I didn't never think ab
out losin. Lureen? There's some serious money there. Her old man's got it. Got
this farm machinery business. Course he don't let her have none a the money,
and he hates my f*ckin guts, so it's a hard go now but one a these days -- "
"Well, you're goin a go where you look. Army didn't get you?" The thunder soun
ded far to the east, moving from them in its red wreaths of light.
"They can't get no use out a me. Got some crushed vertebrates. And a stress fr
acture, the arm bone here, you know how bullridin you're always leverin it off
your thigh? -- she gives a little ever time you do it. Even if you tape it go
od you break it a little goddamn bit at a time. Tell you what, hurts like a bi
tch afterwards. Had a busted leg. Busted in three places. Come off the bull an
d it was a big bull with a lot a drop, he got rid a me in about three flat and
he come after me and he was sure faster. Lucky enough. Friend a mine got his
oil checked with a horn dipstick and that was all she wrote. Bunch a other thi
ngs, f*ckin busted ribs, sprains and pains, torn ligaments. See, it ain't like
it was in my daddy's time. It's guys with money go to college, trained athale
tes. You got a have some money to rodeo now. Lureen's old man wouldn't give me
a dime if I dropped it, except one way. And I know enough about the game now
so I see that I ain't never goin a be on the bubble. Other reasons. I'm gettin ou
t while I still can walk."
Ennis pulled Jack's hand to his mouth, took a hit from the cigarette, exhaled.
"Sure as hell seem in one piece to me. You know, I was sittin up here all tha
t time tryin to figure out if I was -- ? I know I ain't. I mean here we both g
ot wives and kids, right? I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain't
nothin like this. I never had no thoughts a doin it with another guy except I
sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you. You do it with other guy
s? Jack?"
"sh*t no," said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own
. "You know that. Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain't over. We got a w
ork out what the f*ck we're goin a do now."
"That summer," said Ennis. "When we split up after we got paid out I had gut c
ramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at th
at 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."
"Friend," said Jack. "We got us a f*ckin situation here. Got a figure out what
to do."
"I doubt there's nothin now we can do," said Ennis. "What I'm sayin, Jack, I b
uilt a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain't her fault.
You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can't hardly be de
cent together if what happened back there" -- he jerked his head in the direct
ion of the apartment -- "grabs on us like that. We do that in the wrong place
we'll be dead. There's no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me."
"Got to tell you, friend, maybe somebody seen us that summer. I was back there
the next June, thinkin about goin back -- I didn't, lit out for Texas instead
-- and Joe Aguirre's in the office and he says to me, he says, 'You boys foun
d a way to make the time pass up there, didn't you,' and I give him a look but
when I went out I seen he had a big-ass pair a binoculars hangin off his rear
view." He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back in his squeaky woo
den tilt chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs bab
y-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him. He wen
t on, "Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you to th
row a dirty punch."
"I come up under my brother K.E., three years older'n me, slugged me silly eve
r day. 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 g
onna 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 the me
ssage. Nothin like hurtin somebody to make him hear good. So I did. I got him
in the outhouse, jumped him on the stairs, come over to his pillow in the nigh
t while he was sleepin and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never ha
d trouble with K.E. since. The lesson was, don't say nothin and get it over wi
th 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 h
orses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'm gettin out a rodeo. I ain't n
o broke-*** rider but I don't got the bucks a ride out this slump I'm in and
I don'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 a
bunch 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 with what
I got, caught in my own loop. Can't get out of it. Jack, I don't want a be lik
e them guys you see around sometimes. And I don't want a be dead. There was th
ese 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 o
ld birds. I was what, nine years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation
ditch. They'd took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his
*** until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked lik
e 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
in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tire iron. Two guys livin toge
ther? No. All I can see is we get together once in a while way the hell out in
the back a nowhere -- "
"How much is once in a while?" said Jack. "Once in a while ever four f*ckin ye
ars?"
"No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. "I goddamn hate it t
hat you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back to work. But if y
ou can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "sh*t. I been lookin at people o
n the 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, maybe go
to Denver," said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him, "and I don't give a
flyin f*ck. Son of a ***, Ennis, take a couple days off. Right now. Get us o
ut a here. Throw your stuff in the back a my truck and let's get up in the mou
ntains. 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 i
t, 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'd always have to
work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis made. Alma asked Ennis to use r
ubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he woul
d be happy to leave her alone if she didn't want any more of his kids. Under h
er breath she said, "I'd have em if you'd support em." And under that, thought
, anyway, what you like to do don't make too many babies.
Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, E
nnis's fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twist and never a vacation
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 roll to the w
all and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent perm
anent job with the county or the power company, put her in a long, slow dive a
nd when Alma Jr. was nine and Francine seven she said, what am I doin hangin a
round with him, divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not getting much ahead
but glad enough to be around stock again, free to drop things, quit if he had
to, and go into the mountains at short notice. He had no serious hard feeling
s, just a vague sense of getting shortchanged, and showed it was all right by
taking Thanksgiving dinner with Alma and her grocer and the kids, sitting betw
een his girls and talking horses to them, telling jokes, trying not to be a sa
d daddy. After the pie Alma got him off in the kitchen, scraped the plates and
said she worried about him and he ought to get married again. He saw she was
pregnant, about four, five months, he guessed.
"Once burned," he said, leaning against the counter, feeling too big for the r
oom.
"You still go fishin with that Jack Twist?"
"Some." He thought she'd take the pattern off the plate with the scraping.
"You know," she said, and from her tone he knew something was coming, "I used
to wonder how come you never brought any trouts home. Always said you caught p
lenty. So one time I got your creel case open the night before you went on one
a your little trips -- price tag still on it after five years -- and I tied a
note on the end of the line. It said, hello Ennis, bring some fish home, love
, Alma. And then you come back and said you'd caught a bunch a browns and ate
them up. Remember? I looked in the case when I got a chance and there was my n
ote still tied there and that line hadn't touched water in its life." As thoug
h the word "water" had called out its domestic cousin she twisted the faucet,
sluiced the plates.
"That don't mean nothin."
"Don't lie, don't try to fool me, Ennis. I know what it means. Jack Twist? Jac
k Nasty. You and him -- "
She'd overstepped his line. He seized her wrist; tears sprang and rolled, a di
sh clattered.
"Shut up," he said. "Mind your own business. You don't know nothin about it."
"I'm goin a yell for Bill."
"You f*ckin go right ahead. Go on and f*ckin yell. I'll make him eat the f*cki
n floor and you too." He gave another wrench that left her with a burning brac
elet, shoved his hat on backwards and slammed out. He went to the Black and Bl
ue Eagle bar that night, got drunk, had a short dirty fight and left. He didn'
t try to see his girls for a long time, figuring they would look him up when t
hey got the sense and years to move out from Alma.
They were no longer young men with all of it before them. Jack had filled out
through the shoulders and hams, Ennis stayed as lean as a clothes-pole, steppe
d around in worn boots, jeans and shirts summer and winter, added a canvas coa
t in cold weather. A benign growth appeared on his eyelid and gave it a droopi
ng appearance, a broken nose healed crooked.
Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mountain dra
inages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows, south end of the Gall
atins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeout
s and the Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the
Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, La
ramies, but never returning to Brokeback.
Down in Texas Jack's father-in-law died and Lureen, who inherited the farm equ
ipment business, showed a skill for management and hard deals. Jack found hims
elf with a vague managerial title, traveling to stock and agricultural machine
ry shows. He had some money now and found ways to spend it on his buying trips
. A little Texas accent flavored his sentences, "cow" twisted into "kyow" and
"wife" coming out as "waf." He'd had his front teeth filed down and capped, sa
id he'd felt no pain, and to finish the job grew a heavy mustache.
In May of 1983 they spent a few cold days at a series of little icebound, no-n
ame high lakes, then worked across into the Hail Strew River drainage.
Going up, the day was fine but the trail deep-drifted and slopping wet at the
margins. They left it to wind through a slashy cut, leading the horses through
brittle branchwood, Jack, the same eagle feather in his old hat, lifting his
head in the heated noon to take the air scented with resinous lodgepole, the d
ry needle duff and hot rock, bitter juniper crushed beneath the horses' hooves
. Ennis, weather-eyed, looked west for the heated cumulus that might come up o
n such a day but the boneless blue was so deep, said Jack, that he might drown
looking up.
Around three they swung through a narrow pass to a southeast slope where the s
trong spring sun had had a chance to work, dropped down to the trail again whi
ch lay snowless below them. They could hear the river muttering and making a d
istant train sound a long way off. Twenty minutes on they surprised a black be
ar on the bank above them rolling a log over for grubs and Jack's horse shied
and reared, Jack saying "Wo! Wo!" and Ennis's bay dancing and snorting but hol
ding. Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear ga
lloped into the trees with the lumpish gait that made it seem it was falling a
part.
The tea-colored river ran fast with snowmelt, a scarf of bubbles at every high
rock, pools and setbacks streaming. The ochre-branched willows swayed stiffly
, pollened catkins like yellow thumbprints. The horses drank and Jack dismount
ed, scooped icy water up in his hand, crystalline drops falling from his finge
rs, his mouth and chin glistening with wet.
"Get beaver fever doin that," said Ennis, then, "Good enough place," looking a
t the level bench above the river, two or three fire-rings from old hunting ca
mps. A sloping meadow rose behind the bench, protected by a stand of lodgepole
. There was plenty of dry wood. They set up camp without saying much, picketed
the horses in the meadow. Jack broke the seal on a bottle of whiskey, took a
long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, "That's one a the two things I ne
ed right now," capped and tossed it to Ennis.
On the third morning there were the clouds Ennis had expected, a grey racer ou
t of the west, a bar of darkness driving wind before it and small flakes. It f
aded after an hour into tender spring snow that heaped wet and heavy. By night
fall it turned colder. Jack and Ennis passed a joint back and forth, the fire
burning late, Jack restless and bitching about the cold, poking the flames wit
h a stick, twisting the dial of the transistor radio until the batteries died.
Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the
Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now for Stoutamire's cow and cal
f outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't wan
t. Jack said he'd had a thing going with the wife of a rancher down the road i
n Childress and for the last few months he'd slank around expecting to get sho
t by Lureen or the husband, one. Ennis laughed a little and said he probably d
eserved it. Jack said he was doing all right but he missed Ennis bad enough so
metimes to make him whip babies.
The horses nickered in the darkness beyond the fire's circle of light. Ennis p
ut his arm around Jack, pulled him close, said he saw his girls about once a m
onth, Alma Jr. a shy seventeen-year-old with his beanpole length, Francine a l
ittle live wire. Jack slid his cold hand between Ennis's legs, said he was wor
ried about his boy who was, no doubt about it, dyslexic or something, couldn't
get anything right, fifteen years old and couldn't hardly read, he could see
it though goddamn Lureen wouldn't admit to it and pretended the kid was o.k.,
refused to get any bitchin kind a help about it. He didn't know what the f*ck
the answer was. Lureen had the money and called the shots.
"I used a want a boy for a kid," said Ennis, undoing buttons, "but just got li
ttle girls."
"I didn't want none a either kind," said Jack. "But f*ck-all has worked the wa
y I wanted. Nothin never come to my hand the right way." Without getting up he
threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up with their truths and lies,
a few hot points of fire landing on their hands and faces, not for the first t
ime, and they rolled down into the dirt. One thing never changed: the brillian
t charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flyin
g, never enough time, never enough.
A day or two later in the trailhead parking lot, horses loaded into the traile
r, Ennis was ready to head back to Signal, Jack up to Lightning Flat to see th
e old man. Ennis leaned into Jack's window, said what he'd been putting off th
e whole week, that likely he couldn't get away again until November after they
'd shipped stock and before winter feeding started.
"November. What in hell happened a August? Tell you what, we said August, nine
, ten days. Christ, Ennis! Whyn't you tell me this before? You had a f*ckin we
ek to say some little word about it. And why's it we're always in the friggin
cold weather? We ought a do somethin. We ought a go south. We ought a go to Me
xico one day."
"Mexico? Jack, you know me. All the travelin I ever done is goin around the co
ffeepot lookin for the handle. And I'll be runnin the baler all August, that's
what's the matter with August. Lighten up, Jack. We can hunt in November, kil
l a nice elk. Try if I can get Don Wroe's cabin again. We had a good time that
year."
"You know, friend, this is a goddamn *** of a unsatisfactory situation. You
used a come away easy. It's like seein the pope now."
"Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. You got a wife
with money, a good job. You forget how it is bein broke all the time. You ever
hear a child support? I been payin out for years and got more to go. Let me t
ell you, I can't quit this one. And I can't get the time off. It was tough get
tin this time -- some a them late heifers is still calvin. You don't leave the
n. You don't. Stoutamire is a hell-raiser and he raised hell about me takin th
e week. I don't blame him. He probly ain't got a night's sleep since I left. T
he trade-off was August. You got a better idea?"
"I did once." The tone was bitter and accusatory.
Ennis said nothing, straightened up slowly, rubbed at his forehead; a horse st
amped inside the trailer. He walked to his truck, put his hand on the trailer,
said something that only the horses could hear, turned and walked back at a d
eliberate pace.
"You been a Mexico, Jack?" Mexico was the place. He'd heard. He was cutting fe
nce now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
"Hell yes, I been. Where's the f*ckin problem?" Braced for it all these years
and here it came, late and unexpected.
"I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain't foolin. What I don't know
," said Ennis, "all them things I don't know could get you killed if I should
come to know them."
"Try this one," said Jack, "and I'll say it just one time. Tell you what, we c
ould a had a good life together, a f*ckin real good life. You wouldn't do it,
Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everthing built on that. It's
all we got, boy, f*ckin all, so I hope you know that if you don't never know
the rest. Count the damn few times we been together in twenty years. Measure t
he f*ckin short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell m
e you'll kill me for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no f*ck
in idea how bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple a high-altit
ude f*cks once or twice a year. You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a wh
oreson ***. I wish I knew how to quit you."
Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years of things u
nsaid and now unsayable -- admissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fears --
rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, face grey and deep-lined, grim
acing, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched, legs caving, hit the ground on his k
nees.
"Jesus," said Jack. "Ennis?" But before he was out of the truck, trying to gue
ss if it was heart attack or the overflow of an incendiary rage, Ennis was bac
k on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked c
ar and then bent again to its original shape, they torqued things almost to wh
ere they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing be
gun, nothing resolved.
What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand
was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind hi
m and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless
hunger.
They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning toss
ing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against
the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis's pocket, from t
he sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat lay
ers above the fire. Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a li
ttle in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibra
tions of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep
that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredging
up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood time before his mother
died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go. Come on, you're sleepin
on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack a shake, a push, and went off in th
e darkness. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words "see you tom
orrow," and the horse's shuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artl
ess, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives. Nothing marred i
t, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face becau
se he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held. And maybe, he tho
ught, they'd never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.
Ennis didn't know about the accident for months until his postcard to Jack say
ing that November still looked like the first chance came back stamped DECEASE
D. He called Jack's number in Childress, something he had done only once befor
e when Alma divorced him and Jack had misunderstood the reason for the call, h
ad driven twelve hundred miles north for nothing. This would be all right, Jac
k would answer, had to answer. But he did not. It was Lureen and she said who?
who is this? and when he told her again she said in a level voice yes, Jack w
as pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire blew up. Th
e bead was damaged somehow and the force of the explosion slammed the rim into
his face, broke his nose and jaw and knocked him unconscious on his back. By
the time someone came along he had drowned in his own blood.
No, he thought, they got him with the tire iron.
"Jack used to mention you," she said. "You're the fishing buddy or the hunting
buddy, I know that. Would have let you know," she said, "but I wasn't sure ab
out your name and address. Jack kept most a his friends' addresses in his head
. It was a terrible thing. He was only thirty-nine years old."
The huge sadness of the northern plains rolled down on him. He didn't know whi
ch way it was, the tire iron or a real accident, blood choking down Jack's thr
oat and nobody to turn him over. Under the wind drone he heard steel slamming
off bone, the hollow chatter of a settling tire rim.
"He buried down there?" He wanted to curse her for letting Jack die on the dir
t road.
The little Texas voice came slip-sliding down the wire. "We put a stone up. He
use to say he wanted to be cremated, ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain. I
didn't know where that was. So he was cremated, like he wanted, and like I sa
y, half his ashes was interred here, and the rest I sent up to his folks. I th
ought Brokeback Mountain was around where he grew up. But knowing Jack, it mig
ht be some pretend place where the bluebirds sing and there's a whiskey spring
."
"We herded sheep on Brokeback one summer," said Ennis. He could hardly speak.
"Well, he said it was his place. I thought he meant to get drunk. Drink whiske
y up there. He drank a lot."
"His folks still up in Lightnin Flat?"
"Oh yeah. They'll be there until they die. I never met them. They didn't come
down for the funeral. You get in touch with them. I suppose they'd appreciate
it if his wishes was carried out."
No doubt about it, she was polite but the little voice was cold as snow.
The road to Lightning Flat went through desolate country past a dozen abandone
d ranches distributed over the plain at eight- and ten-mile intervals, houses
sitting blank-eyed in the weeds, corral fences down. The mailbox read John C.
Twist. The ranch was a meagre little place, leafy spurge taking over. The stoc
k was too far distant for him to see their condition, only that they were blac
k baldies. A porch stretched across the front of the tiny brown stucco house,
four rooms, two down, two up.
Ennis sat at the kitchen table with Jack's father. Jack's mother, stout and ca
reful in her movements as though recovering from an operation, said, "Want som
e coffee, don't you? Piece a cherry cake?"
"Thank you, ma'am, I'll take a cup a coffee but I can't eat no cake just now."
The old man sat silent, his hands folded on the plastic tablecloth, staring at
Ennis with an angry, knowing expression. Ennis recognized in him a not uncomm
on type with the hard need to be the stud duck in the pond. He couldn't see mu
ch of Jack in either one of them, took a breath.
"I feel awful bad about Jack. Can't begin to say how bad I feel. I knew him a
long time. I come by to tell you that if you want me to take his ashes up ther
e on Brokeback like his wife says he wanted I'd be proud to."
There was a silence. Ennis cleared his throat but said nothing more.
The old man said, "Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mountain is. He thoug
ht he was too goddamn special to be buried in the family plot."
Jack's mother ignored this, said, "He used a come home every year, even after
he was married and down in Texas, and help his daddy on the ranch for a week f
ix the gates and mow and all. I kept his room like it was when he was a boy an
d I think he appreciated that. You are welcome to go up in his room if you wan
t."
The old man spoke angrily. "I can't get no help out here. Jack used a say, 'En
nis del Mar,' he used a say, 'I'm goin a bring him up here one a these days an
d we'll lick this damn ranch into shape.' He had some half-baked idea the two
a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin and help me run this ranch an
d bring it up. Then, this spring he's got another one's goin a come up here wi
th him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his fro
m down in Texas. He's goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he
says. But like most a Jack's ideas it never come to pass."
So now he knew it had been the tire iron. He stood up, said, you bet he'd like
to see Jack's room, recalled one of Jack's stories about this old man. Jack w
as ***-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered the son who had discovere
d the anatomical disconformity during a hard scene. He had been about three or
four, he said, always late getting to the toilet, struggling with buttons, th
e seat, the height of the thing and often as not left the surroundings sprinkl
ed down. The old man blew up about it and this one time worked into a crazy ra
ge. "Christ, he licked the stuffin out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom f
loor, whipped me with his belt. I thought he was killin me. Then he says, 'You
want a know what it's like with piss all over the place? I'll learn you,' and
he pulls it out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at
me and makes me mop up the floor, take my clothes off and warsh them in the b
athtub, warsh out the towel, I'm bawlin and blubberin. But while he was hosin me
down I seen he had some extra material that I was missin. I
seen they'd cut me different like you'd crop a ear or scorch a brand. No way t
o get it right with him after that."
The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbing rhythm, was
tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the west window, hitting the nar
row boy's bed against the wall, an ink-stained desk and wooden chair, a b.b. g
un in a hand-whittled rack over the bed. The window looked down on the gravel
road stretching south and it occurred to him that for his growing-up years tha
t was the only road Jack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-hai
red movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone magent
a. He could hear Jack's mother downstairs running water, filling the kettle an
d setting it back on the stove, asking the old man a muffled question.
The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded creto
nne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the close
t hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, o
n the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north
end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here,
stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the na
il. Jack's old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was hi
s own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Ja
ck, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis's nose
hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over
both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn't held because En
nis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the
wild columbine, wings folded.
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sle
eves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt,
lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket
ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shi
rt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his
face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping
for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but th
ere was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback
Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
In the end the stud duck refused to let Jack's ashes go. "Tell you what, we go
t a family plot and he's goin in it." Jack's mother stood at the table coring
apples with a sharp, serrated instrument. "You come again," she said.
Bumping down the washboard road Ennis passed the country cemetery fenced with
sagging sheep wire, a tiny fenced square on the welling prairie, a few graves
bright with plastic flowers, and didn't want to know Jack was going in there,
to be buried on the grieving plain.
A few weeks later on the Saturday he threw all Stoutamire's dirty horse blanke
ts into the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to
turn the high-pressure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed
in the truck bed he stepped into Higgins's gift shop and busied himself with
the postcard rack.
"Ennis, what are you lookin for rootin through them postcards?" said Linda Hig
gins, throwing a sopping brown coffee filter into the garbage can.
"Scene a Brokeback Mountain."
"Over in Fremont County?"
"No, north a here."
"I didn't order none a them. Let me get the order list. They got it I can get
you a hunderd. I got a order some more cards anyway."
"One's enough," said Ennis.
When it came -- thirty cents -- he pinned it up in his trailer, brass-headed t
ack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on the nail he hung the wire
hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it. He stepped back and looked at
the ensemble through a few stinging tears.
"Jack, I swear -- " he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything
and was himself not the swearing kind.
Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen
him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off h
is pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon hand
le jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape a
nd lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon ha
ndle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometim
es in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow somet
imes wet, sometimes the sheets.
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, b
ut nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand
it.
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