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 queer," and Jack jumped in
with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours."
There were only the two of them on the mountain flying in the
euphoric, 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 ten 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
people had sent word that his uncle Harold was in the hospital with
pneumonia and expected not to make it. Though he did, and Aguirre
came up again 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 blowy 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 with 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 right Ennis
knew the sheep were mixed. In a disquieting way everything seemed
mixed.
The first snow came early, on August thirteenth, piling up a foot, but
was followed 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 heels, 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 flickering
broken-cloud light, the wind combed the grass and drew from the
damaged krummholz 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 already 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 squinted against it. "Like I said, Alma and me's gettin married in
December. Try to get somethin on a ranch. You?" He looked away
from Jack's jaw, bruised blue from 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 spring. If the draft don't get me."
"Well, see you around, I guess." The wind tumbled an empty feed
bag down the street 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 away in opposite directions. Within a mile
Ennis felt like someone was pulling his 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 about 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 picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled
in as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place north of Lost Cabin
in Washakie County. He was still working 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
reassuring 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 laundry. 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?"
"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 jelly breast, 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 sailing, working at it
until she shuddered and bucked against his hand and he rolled her
over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed in the little apartment
which he favored because it could be left at any time.
The fourth summer since Brokeback Mountain came on and in June
Ennis had a general 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 Riverton 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 best 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 the 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 sticking 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 him. 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 bitch, son of a bitch, 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