Brokeback Mountain
from Close Range: Wyoming Stories
by 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 cooking it was so
hot, if they could get a baby-sitter, but Ennis said more likely he’d just go out
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