Brokeback Mountain Read online

  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 falling to the floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the

  door opening and Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining

  shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest

  and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes until they

  pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, said what he said

  to his horses and 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

  was 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

  years." As if it were a reason. He was glad the light was dim on the landing

  but did not turn away from her.

  "Sure enough," said Alma in a low voice. She had seen what she had seen.

  Behind her in the room lightning lit the window like a white sheet waving and

  the baby cried.

  "You got a kid?" said Jack. His shaking hand grazed Ennis's hand, electrical

  current 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

  little old Texas girl down in Childress -- Lureen." From the vibration of the

  floorboard 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

  sooner.

  "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 the

  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

  minutes 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 door of the next room then and through the night.

  The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old carpet

  and sour hay, saddle leather, sh*t and cheap soap. Ennis lay spread-eagled,

  spent and wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent, Jack blowing forceful

  cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and Jack said, "Christ, it got a be all that

  time a yours ahorseback makes it so goddamn good. We got to talk about

  this. Swear to god I didn't know we was goin a get into this again - yeah, I

  did. Why I'm here. 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

  give 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

  that chair."

  On the back of the soiled orange chair he saw the shine of a buckle.

  "Bullridin?"

  "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 cunt truck fixin it. Anyway, I didn't never think

  about 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

  sounded 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 fracture, 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 good you break it a little goddamn bit at a time. Tell you what, hurts

  like a bitch afterwards. Had a busted leg. Busted in three places. Come off

  the bull and 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 things, 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 athaletes. 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 out 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 that time tryin to figure out if I was -- ? I know I ain't. I mean here we both got 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 guys? 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 work 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 cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at that 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 sayi
n, Jack, I built 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 decent together if what happened back there" - he jerked his head in the direction 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 found 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 rearview." He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back in his squeaky wooden tilt chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him. He went on, "Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me. I

  never figured you to throw a dirty punch."

  "I come up under my brother K.E., three years older'n me, slugged me silly ever 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 gonna 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 message. 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 night while he was sleepin and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never had trouble with K.E. since. The lesson was, don't say nothin and get it over with 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 horses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'm gettin out a rodeo. I ain't no broke-dick 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 like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don't want a be dead. There was these 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 old 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 dick until it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like 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 together? 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 years?"

  "No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. "I goddamn hate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back to work. But if you can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "sh*t. I been lookin at people on

  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 bitch, Ennis, take a couple days off. Right now. Get us

  out a here. Throw your stuff in the back a my truck and let's get up in the

  mountains. 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 it, 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 rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn't want any more of his kids. Under her 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, Ennis'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 wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the county or the power company, put her in a long, slow dive and when Alma Jr. was nine and Francine seven she said, what am I doin hangin around 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 feelings, 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 between his girls and talking horses to them, telling jokes, trying not to be a sad 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 room. "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 plenty. 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 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 yea
rs 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.