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 which way it was, the tire iron or a real accident, blood
choking down Jack's throat 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 dirt 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 say, half his ashes was interred
here, and the rest I sent up to his folks. I thought Brokeback
Mountain was around where he grew up. But knowing Jack, it might
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 whiskey 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 abandoned 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 stock was too far distant
for him to see their condition, only that they were black 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 careful in her movements as though recovering from an
operation, said, "Want some 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 uncommon type with the hard need to be the
stud duck in the pond. He couldn't see much 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 there 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 thought 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 fix the gates and mow and all. I kept his room
like it was when he was a boy and I think he appreciated that. You
are welcome to go up in his room if you want."
The old man spoke angrily. "I can't get no help out here. Jack used a
say, 'Ennis del Mar,' he used a say, 'I'm goin a bring him up here one
a these days and 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 and bring it up. Then, this spring
he's got another one's goin a come up here with him and build a
place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from 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 was dick-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered
the son who had discovered 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, the seat, the height of
the thing and often as not left the surroundings sprinkled down. The
old man blew up about it and this one time worked into a crazy rage.
"Christ, he licked the stuffin out a me, knocked me down on the
bathroom floor, 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 bathtub, 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 to 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 narrow boy's bed against the wall, an ink-stained
desk and wooden chair, a b.b. gun 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 that was the
only road Jack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some
dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin
tone gone magenta. He could hear Jack's mother downstairs running
water, filling the kettle and 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 cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the
room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded
neatly over wire hangers, on 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 nail. Jack's
old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was
his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the
mountain when Jack, 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 Ennis had
suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in
the wild columbine, wings folded.