there was my note still tied there and that line hadn't touched water
in its life." As though 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? Jack Nasty. You and him -- "
She'd overstepped his line. He seized her wrist; tears sprang and
rolled, a dish 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*ckin floor and you too." He gave another wrench that left her
with a burning bracelet, shoved his hat on backwards and slammed
out. He went to the Black and Blue 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 they 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, stepped around in worn boots, jeans and shirts summer
and winter, added a canvas coat in cold weather. A benign growth
appeared on his eyelid and gave it a drooping appearance, a broken
nose healed crooked.
Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows
and mountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns,
Medicine Bows, south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites,
Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the
Shirleys, Ferrises and the Rattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the
Wind Rivers over and again, the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the
Washakies, Laramies, but never returning to Brokeback.
Down in Texas Jack's father-in-law died and Lureen, who inherited
the farm equipment business, showed a skill for management and
hard deals. Jack found himself with a vague managerial title,
traveling to stock and agricultural machinery 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, said 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-name 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 dry 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 on
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 strong spring sun had had a chance to work, dropped
down to the trail again which lay snowless below them. They could
hear the river muttering and making a distant train sound a long way
off. Twenty minutes on they surprised a black bear 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 holding. Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the
startled bear galloped into the trees with the lumpish gait that made
it seem it was falling apart.
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 dismounted, scooped icy water up in his
hand, crystalline drops falling from his fingers, his mouth and chin
glistening with wet.
"Get beaver fever doin that," said Ennis, then, "Good enough place,"
looking at the level bench above the river, two or three fire-rings
from old hunting camps. 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 need
right now," capped and tossed it to Ennis.
On the third morning there were the clouds Ennis had expected, a
grey racer out of the west, a bar of darkness driving wind before it
and small flakes. It faded after an hour into tender spring snow that
heaped wet and heavy. By nightfall 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 with 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 calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere
and she had some problems he didn't want. Jack said he'd had a thing
going with the wife of a rancher down the road in Childress and for
the last few months he'd slank around expecting to get shot by
Lureen or the husband, one. Ennis laughed a little and said he
probably deserved it. Jack said he was doing all right but he missed
Ennis bad enough sometimes to make him whip babies.
The horses nickered in the darkness beyond the fire's circle of light.
Ennis put his arm around Jack, pulled him close, said he saw his
girls about once a month, Alma Jr. a shy seventeen-year-old with his
beanpole length, Francine a little live wire. Jack slid his cold hand
between Ennis's legs, said he was worried 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 little girls."
"I didn't want none a either kind," said Jack. "But f*ck-all has
worked the way 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 time, and they rolled down
into the dirt. One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their