Brokeback Mountain
Annie Proulx
Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing in around the
aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder
slightly in the draft. He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of belly and pubic
hair, 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, pulls
on his shirt and jeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the floor to
get them full on. The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and
under its roaring passage he can hear the scratching of fine gravel and sand. 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 they've
shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off the day before, the owner
saying, "Give em to the real estate shark, I'm out a here," dropping the 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 pleasure 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 the dream slide
forward. If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm
that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing
seemed wrong. The wind strikes the trailer like a load of dirt coming 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
Sage, near the Utah line, both high school dropout country boys with no
prospects, 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 hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the
ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper
and bad tires; when 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 down 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
meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry for
any 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 Signal. The summer range lay above the tree line on Forest Service
land on Brokeback Mountain. It would be Jack Twist's second summer on the
mountain, Ennis's first. Neither of them was twenty.
They shook hands in the choky little trailer office in front of a table littered 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 foreman's
hand moving into it. Joe Aguirre, wavy hair the color of cigarette ash 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 near lookin after em at night. What I want, camp tender in the main
camp where the 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 goin a SLEEP there. Eat supper, breakfast in camp, but SLEEP WITH
THE SHEEP, hunderd percent, NO FIRE, don't leave NO SIGN. Roll up that tent
every mornin case 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. YOU," he said to Ennis, taking in the ragged hair, the big nicked
hands, the jeans 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 cord 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 the
jump-off." Pair of deuces going nowhere.
They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack telling Ennis
about a lightning storm on the mountain the year before that killed forty-two
sheep, 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 boots
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 supple
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
saddle catalog.
The sheep trucks and horse trailers unloaded at the trailhead and a
bandy-legged Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mules, two packs and a
riding load on each animal ring-lashed with double diamonds and secured with
half hitches, telling him, "Don't never order soup. Them boxes a soup are real
bad to pack." Three puppies belonging to one of the blue heelers went in a pack
basket, the runt inside Jack's coat, for he loved a little dog. Ennis picked out a
big chestnut called Cigar Butt to ride, Jack a bay mare who turned out to have
a low startle 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 out above the tree line into the great flowery Meadows and the
coursing, endless wind. They got the big tent up on the Forest Service's
platform, the kitchen and grub boxes secured. Both slept in camp that first
night, Jack already bitching about Joe Aguirre's
sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-fire order, though he saddled the bay mare in the
dark morning without saying much. Dawn came glassy orange, stained from
below by a gelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paled
slowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis's breakfast fire. The
cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil cast sudden pencil-long
shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below them massed in slabs of
somber malachite.
During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a
small 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
mass 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 Ennis'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
the 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
sleepin out there."
"That ain't the point. Point is, we both should be in this camp. And that
goddamn 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 them
coyotes. Happy to switch but give you warnin I can't cook worth a shit. Pretty
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
back 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 bitch. Balls on him size a apples. I bet
he'd took a few lambs. Looked like he could a eat a camel. You want 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 and
a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs against a log, boot soles and
copper jeans rivets hot, swapping the bottle while the lavender sky emptied of
color and the chill air drained down, drinking, smoking cigarettes, getting 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 Thresher lost
two months earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the last 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 after 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 kept his secrets
to himself, never gave Jack a word of advice, never came once to see Jack ride,
though he had put him on the woolies when he was a little kid. Ennis said the
kind of riding that interested him lasted longer than eight seconds and had
some point to it. Money's a good point, said Jack, 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 never 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; the 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 away from the sheep stretched out and out.
Jack pulled a squalling burr out of the harmonica, flattened a little from a fall off
the skittish bay mare, and Ennis had a good raspy voice; a few nights they
mangled their way through some songs. Ennis knew the salty words to
"Strawberry Roan." Jack tried a Carl Perkins 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 white-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 jaw.
"Jesus Christ, quit hammerin and get over here. Bedroll's big enough," said
Jack 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-throttle 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 cock.
Ennis jerked his hand away as though he'd touched fire, got to his knees,
unbuckled his 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
but no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silence except for a few
sharp 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 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 shit, 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 cookin
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