正好看到有人贴，顺手转过来。不知道是不是全文。很长啊，在电脑上看眼珠会暴的。:shock:
Brokeback Mountain
Copyright © 1999 by Dead Line, Ltd.
Ennis Del Mar wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing inaround the aluminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on anail shudder slightly in the draft. He gets up, scratching the greywedge of belly and pubic hair, shuffles to the gas burner, poursleftover 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 andjeans, his worn boots, stamping the heels against the floor to get themfull on. The wind booms down the curved length of the trailer and underits 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 bepacked and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch is on themarket and they've shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybodyoff the day before, the owner saying, "Give em to the real estateshark, I'm out a here," dropping the keys in Ennis's hand. He mighthave 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 inhis dream.
The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes overthe 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 hisattention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time onthe mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. Thewind 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 thestate, Jack Twist in Lightning Flat up on the Montana border, Ennis delMar from around Sage, near the Utah line, both high school dropoutcountry 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 offthe only curve on Dead Horse Road leaving them twenty-four dollars incash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardshiplicense that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the highschool. The pickup was old, no heater, one windshield wiper and badtires; when the transmission went there was no money to fix it. He hadwanted to be a sophomore, felt the word carried a kind of distinction,but the truck broke down short of it, pitching him directly into ranchwork.
In 1963 when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. BothJack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; inEnnis's case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar billsinside. That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farmand Ranch Employment -- they came together on paper as herder and camptender for the same sheep operation north of Signal. The summer rangelay 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 tablelittered 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 hairthe color of cigarette ash and parted down the middle, gave them hispoint of view.
"Forest Service got designated campsites on the allotments. Them campscan be a couple a miles from where we pasture the sheep. Bad predatorloss, nobody near lookin after em at night. What I want, camp tender inthe main camp where the Forest Service says, but the HERDER" --pointing at Jack with a chop of his hand -- "pitch a pup tent on theq.t. with the sheep, out a sight, and he's goin a SLEEP there. Eatsupper, breakfast in camp, but SLEEP WITH THE SHEEP, hunderd percent,NO FIRE, don't leave NO SIGN. Roll up that tent every mornin caseForest Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there.Last summer had goddamn near twenty-five percent loss. I don't wantthat again. YOU," he said to Ennis, taking in the ragged hair, the bignicked hands, the jeans torn, button-gaping shirt, "Fridays twelve noonbe down at the bridge with your next week list and mules. Somebody withsupplies'll be there in a pickup." He didn't ask if Ennis had a watchbut took a cheap round ticker on a braided cord from a box on a highshelf, wound and set it, tossed it to him as if he weren't worth thereach. "TOMORROW MORNIN we'll truck you up the jump-off." Pair ofdeuces going nowhere.
They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack tellingEnnis about a lightning storm on the mountain the year before thatkilled forty-two sheep, the peculiar stink of them and the way theybloated, 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. Atfirst glance Jack seemed fair enough with his curly hair and quicklaugh, but for a small man he carried some weight in the haunch and hissmile disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat popcornout of the neck of a jug, but noticeable. He was infatuated with therodeo life and fastened his belt with a minor bull-riding buckle, buthis boots were worn to the quick, holed beyond repair and he was crazyto be somewhere, anywhere else than Lightning Flat.
Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scruffy and a littlecave-chested, balanced a small torso on long, caliper legs, possessed amuscular and supple body made for the horse and for fighting. Hisreflexes were uncommonly quick and he was farsighted enough to dislikereading anything except Hamley's saddle catalog.
The sheep trucks and horse trailers unloaded at the trailhead and abandy-legged Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mules, two packs and ariding load on each animal ring-lashed with double diamonds and securedwith half hitches, telling him, "Don't never order soup. Them boxes asoup are real bad to pack." Three puppies belonging to one of the blueheelers went in a pack basket, the runt inside Jack's coat, for heloved a little dog. Ennis picked out a big chestnut called Cigar Buttto 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 looksEnnis liked. Ennis and Jack, the dogs, horses and mules, a thousandewes and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through thetimber and out above the tree line into the great flowery Meadows andthe coursing, endless wind.
They got the big tent up on the Forest Service's platform, the kitchenand grub boxes secured. Both slept in camp that first night, Jackalready *****ing about Joe Aguirre's sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-fireorder, though he saddled the bay mare in the dark morning withoutsaying much. Dawn came glassy orange, stained from below by agelatinous band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mountain paledslowly until it was the same color as the smoke from Ennis's breakfastfire. The cold air sweetened, banded pebbles and crumbs of soil castsudden pencil-long shadows and the rearing lodgepole pines below themmassed 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 atablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a redspark on the huge black mass of mountain.
Jack came lagging in late one afternoon, drank his two bottles of beercooled in a wet sack on the shady side of the tent, ate two bowls ofstew, 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 forbreakfast, go back to the sheep, evenin get em bedded down, come in forsupper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jumpin up andcheckin 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 thereover them coyotes. Happy to switch but give you warnin I can't cookworth a sh*t. 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 andaround ten Ennis rode Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through theglimmering frost back to the sheep, carrying leftover biscuits, a jarof jam and a jar of coffee with him for the next day saying he'd save atrip, 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 hisrazor had some cut left in it, while Jack peeled potatoes. "Big son ofa *****. 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 offhis boots and jeans (no drawers, no socks, Jack noticed), slopping thegreen washcloth around until the fire spat.
They had a high-time supper by the fire, a can of beans each, friedpotatoes and a quart of whiskey on shares, sat with their backs againsta log, boot soles and copper jeans rivets hot, swapping the bottlewhile 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 onthe fire to keep the talk going, talking horses and rodeo, roughstockevents, wrecks and injuries sustained, the submarine Thresher lost twomonths earlier with all hands and how it must have been in the lastdoomed minutes, dogs each had owned and known, the draft, Jack's homeranch where his father and mother held on, Ennis's family place foldedyears ago after his folks died, the older brother in Signal and amarried sister in Casper. Jack said his father had been a pretty wellknown bullrider years back but kept his secrets to himself, never gaveJack a word of advice, never came once to see Jack ride, though he hadput him on the woolies when he was a little kid. Ennis said the kind ofriding that interested him lasted longer than eight seconds and hadsome point to it. Money's a good point, said Jack, and Ennis had toagree. They were respectful of each other's opinions, each glad to havea companion where none had been expected. Ennis, riding against thewind back to the sheep in the treacherous, drunken light, thought he'dnever had such a good time, felt he could paw the white out of themoon.
The summer went on and they moved the herd to new pasture, shifted thecamp; the distance between the sheep and the new camp was greater andthe night ride longer. Ennis rode easy, sleeping with his eyes open,but the hours he was away from the sheep stretched out and out. Jackpulled a squalling burr out of the harmonica, flattened a little from afall off the skittish bay mare, and Ennis had a good raspy voice; a fewnights they mangled their way through some songs. Ennis knew the saltywords 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 atdirge slowness, setting off distant coyote yips.
"Too late to go out to them damn sheep," said Ennis, dizzy drunk on allfours one cold hour when the moon had notched past two. The meadowstones glowed white-green and a flinty wind worked over the meadow,scraped the fire low, then ruffled it into yellow silk sashes. "Got youa extra blanket I'll roll up out here and grab forty winks, ride out atfirst 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 hisboots off, snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack with theclacking 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, warmenough, and in a little while they deepened their intimacyconsiderably. Ennis ran full-throttle on all roads whether fencemending or money spending, and he wanted none of it when Jack seizedhis left hand and brought it to his erect cock. Ennis jerked his handaway 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 ofthe clear slick and a little spit, entered him, nothing he'd donebefore but no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silenceexcept for a few sharp intakes of breath and Jack's choked "gun's goinoff," then out, down, and asleep.
Ennis woke in red dawn with his pants around his knees, a top-gradeheadache, and Jack butted against him; without saying anything about itboth 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 firstonly in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sunstriking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughingand snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word exceptonce Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Meneither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours." There were onlythe 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 onthe plain below, suspended above ordinary affairs and distant from tameranch dogs barking in the dark hours. They believed themselvesinvisible, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42binoculars for ten minutes one day, waiting until they'd buttoned uptheir jeans, waiting until Ennis rode back to the sheep, beforebringing up the message that Jack's people had sent word that his uncleHarold 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 withhis bold stare, not bothering to dismount.
In August Ennis spent the whole night with Jack in the main camp and ina blowy hailstorm the sheep took off west and got among a herd inanother allotment. There was a damn miserable time for five days, Ennisand a Chilean herder with no English trying to sort them out, the taskalmost impossible as the paint brands were worn and faint at this lateseason. Even when the numbers were right Ennis knew the sheep weremixed. In a disquieting way everything seemed mixed.
The first snow came early, on August thirteenth, piling up a foot, butwas followed by a quick melt. The next week Joe Aguirre sent word tobring them down -- another, bigger storm was moving in from the Pacific-- and they packed in the game and moved off the mountain with thesheep, stones rolling at their heels, purple cloud crowding in from thewest and the metal smell of coming snow pressing them on. The mountainboiled with demonic energy, glazed with flickering broken-cloud light,the wind combed the grass and drew from the damaged krummholz and slitrock a bestial drone. As they descended the slope Ennis felt he was ina slow-motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.
Joe Aguirre paid them, said little. He had looked at the milling sheepwith a sour expression, said, "Some a these never went up there withyou." The count was not what he'd hoped for either. Ranch stiffs neverdid much of a job.
"You goin a do this next summer?" said Jack to Ennis in the street, oneleg 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 hesquinted against it. "Like I said, Alma and me's gettin married inDecember. Try to get somethin on a ranch. You?" He looked away fromJack's jaw, bruised blue from the hard punch Ennis had thrown him onthe last day.
"If nothin better comes along. Thought some about going back up to mydaddy's place, give him a hand over the winter, then maybe head out forTexas 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 theshoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them andnothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mileEnnis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yardat a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling newsnow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as heever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.
In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant bymid-January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled inas a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place north of Lost Cabin inWashakie County. He was still working there in September when Alma Jr.,as he called his daughter, was born and their bedroom was full of thesmell of old blood and milk and baby sh*t, and the sounds were ofsqualling and sucking and Alma's sleepy groans, all reassuring offecundity and life's continuance to one who worked with livestock.
When the Hi-Top folded they moved to a small apartment in Riverton upover a laundry. Ennis got on the highway crew, tolerating it butworking weekends at the Rafter B in exchange for keeping his horses outthere. The second girl was born and Alma wanted to stay in town nearthe 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'sget a place here in town?"
"I guess," said Ennis, slipping his hand up her blouse sleeve andstirring the silky armpit hair, then easing her down, fingers moving upher ribs to the jelly breast, over the round belly and knee and up intothe wet gap all the way to the north pole or the equator dependingwhich way you thought you were sailing, working at it until sheshuddered and bucked against his hand and he rolled her over, didquickly what she hated. They stayed in the little apartment which hefavored because it could be left at any time.
The fourth summer since Brokeback Mountain came on and in June Ennishad a general delivery letter from Jack Twist, the first sign of lifein all that time.
Friend this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get it. Heard youwas in Riverton. Im coming thru on the 24th, thought Id stop and buyyou 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 hadpushed up out of the west rolling a little sultry air before them.Ennis, wearing his best shirt, white with wide black stripes, didn'tknow what time Jack would get there and so had taken the day off, pacedback and forth, looking down into a street pale with dust. Alma wassaying something about taking his friend to the Knife & Fork forsupper instead of cooking it was so hot, if they could get ababy-sitter, but Ennis said more likely he'd just go out with Jack andget drunk. Jack was not a restaurant type, he said, thinking of thedirty spoons sticking out of the cans of cold beans balanced on thelog.
Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickuprolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat-up Resistol tiltedback. A hot jolt scalded Ennis and he was out on the landing pullingthe door closed behind him. Jack took the stairs two and two. Theyseized each other by the shoulders, hugged mightily, squeezing thebreath out of each other, saying, son of a *****, son of a *****, then,and easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths cametogether, and hard, Jack's big teeth bringing blood, his hat falling tothe floor, stubble rasping, wet saliva welling, and the door openingand Alma looking out for a few seconds at Ennis's straining shouldersand shutting the door again and still they clinched, pressing chest andgroin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other's toes untilthey pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on endearments, saidwhat 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." Hischest was heaving. He could smell Jack -- the intensely familiar odorof cigarettes, musky sweat and a faint sweetness like grass, and withit the rushing cold of the mountain. "Alma," he said, "Jack and meain't seen each other in four years." As if it were a reason. He wasglad 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 hadseen. Behind her in the room lightning lit the window like a whitesheet 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 acute little old Texas girl down in Childress -- Lureen." From thevibration of the floorboard on which they both stood Ennis could feelhow 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. Ennisguessed she was going to ask him to get her a pack of cigarettes, bringhim 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 himdown on the stairs and he called back, "Alma, you want smokes there'ssome in the pocket a my blue shirt in the bedroom."
They went off in Jack's truck, bought a bottle of whiskey and withintwenty minutes were in the Motel Siesta jouncing a bed. A few handfulsof hail rattled against the window followed by rain and slippery windbanging 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 carpetand sour hay, saddle leather, sh*t and cheap soap. Ennis layspread-eagled, spent and wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent,Jack blowing forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and Jacksaid, "Christ, it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback makes it sogoddamn good. We got to talk about this. Swear to god I didn't know wewas goin a get into this again -- yeah, I did. Why I'm here. I f*ckinknew 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. Iabout 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 groovesacross Texas. Half the time under that cunt truck fixin it. Anyway, Ididn't never think about losin. Lureen? There's some serious moneythere. Her old man's got it. Got this farm machinery business. Coursehe don't let her have none a the money, and he hates my f*ckin guts, soit's a hard go now but one a these days -- "
"Well, you're goin a go where you look. Army didn't get you?" Thethunder sounded far to the east, moving from them in its red wreaths oflight.
"They can't get no use out a me. Got some crushed vertebrates. And astress fracture, the arm bone here, you know how bullridin you'realways leverin it off your thigh? -- she gives a little ever time youdo it. Even if you tape it good you break it a little goddamn bit at atime. Tell you what, hurts like a ***** afterwards. Had a busted leg.Busted in three places. Come off the bull and it was a big bull with alot a drop, he got rid a me in about three flat and he come after meand he was sure faster. Lucky enough. Friend a mine got his oil checkedwith 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'tlike 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 oldman wouldn't give me a dime if I dropped it, except one way. And I knowenough about the game now so I see that I ain't never goin a be on thebubble. 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 sittinup 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 withwomen, yeah, but Jesus H., ain't nothin like this. I never had nothoughts a doin it with another guy except I sure wrang it out ahunderd times thinkin about you. You do it with other guys? Jack?"
"sh*t no," said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rollinghis own. "You know that. Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain'tover. 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 Ihad gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I atesomethin bad at that place in Dubois. Took me about a year a figure outit was that I shouldn't a let you out a my sights. Too late then by along, 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 sayin,Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? Itain't her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. Youand me can't hardly be decent together if what happened back there" --he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment -- "grabs on uslike that. We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead. There's noreins on this one. It scares the piss out a me."
"Got to tell you, friend, maybe somebody seen us that summer. I wasback there the next June, thinkin about goin back -- I didn't, lit outfor 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'tyou,' and I give him a look but when I went out I seen he had a big-asspair a binoculars hangin off his rearview." He neglected to add thatthe 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 sheepwhile you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him. He went on,"Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you tothrow a dirty punch."
"I come up under my brother K.E., three years older'n me, slugged mesilly ever day. Dad got tired a me come bawlin in the house and when Iwas about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a problem and yougot a fix it or it's gonna be with you until you're ninety and K.E.'sninety-three. Well, I says, he's bigger'n me. Dad says, you got a takehim unawares, don't say nothin to him, make him feel some pain, get outfast and keep doin it until he takes the message. Nothin like hurtinsomebody 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 hewas sleepin and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never hadtrouble with K.E. since. The lesson was, don't say nothin and get itover 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 youwhat, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and calfoperation, your horses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'mgettin out a rodeo. I ain't no broke-dick rider but I don't got thebucks a ride out this slump I'm in and I don't got the bones a keepgettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can doit, you and me. Lureen's old man, you bet he'd give me a bunch if I'dget lost. Already more or less said it -- "
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain't goin a be that way. We can't. I'm stuckwith what I got, caught in my own loop. Can't get out of it. Jack, Idon't want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don'twant a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together downhome, Earl and Rich -- Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. Theywas 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'dtook a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dickuntil it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done lookedlike pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddinon gravel."
"You seen that?"
"Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughedabout it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and wasto put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tireiron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get togetheronce 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 goddamnhate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin backto work. But if you can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "sh*t. Ibeen lookin at people on the street. This happen a other people? Whatthe 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, "andI don't give a flyin f*ck. Son of a *****, Ennis, take a couple daysoff. Right now. Get us out a here. Throw your stuff in the back a mytruck and let's get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call Alma upand tell her you're goin. Come on, Ennis, you just shot my airplane outa the sky -- give me somethin a go on. This ain't no little thingthat's happenin here."
The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he wereanswering it, Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialedhis own number.
A slow corrosion worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, justwidening water. She was working at a grocery store clerk job, saw she'dalways have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis made. Almaasked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded another pregnancy. Hesaid no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if shedidn't want any more of his kids. Under her breath she said, "I'd haveem if you'd support em." And under that, thought, anyway, what you liketo do don't make too many babies.
Her resentment opened out a little every year: the embrace she hadglimpsed, Ennis's fishing trips once or twice a year with Jack Twistand never a vacation with her and the girls, his disinclination to stepout and have any fun, his yearning for low paid, long-houred ranchwork, his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hitthe bed, his failure to look for a decent permanent job with the countyor 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 withhim, divorced Ennis and married the Riverton grocer.
Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not gettingmuch ahead but glad enough to be around stock again, free to dropthings, quit if he had to, and go into the mountains at short notice.He had no serious hard feelings, just a vague sense of gettingshortchanged, and showed it was all right by taking Thanksgiving dinnerwith Alma and her grocer and the kids, sitting between his girls andtalking 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 andsaid she worried about him and he ought to get married again. He sawshe 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. Alwayssaid you caught plenty. So one time I got your creel case open thenight before you went on one a your little trips -- price tag still onit after five years -- and I tied a note on the end of the line. Itsaid, hello Ennis, bring some fish home, love, Alma. And then you comeback 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 stilltied there and that line hadn't touched water in its life." As thoughthe word "water" had called out its domestic cousin she twisted thefaucet, 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 eatthe f*ckin floor and you too." He gave another wrench that left herwith 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 ashort dirty fight and left. He didn't try to see his girls for a longtime, figuring they would look him up when they got the sense and yearsto move out from Alma.
They were no longer young men with all of it before them. Jack hadfilled out through the shoulders and hams, Ennis stayed as lean as aclothes-pole, stepped around in worn boots, jeans and shirts summer andwinter, added a canvas coat in cold weather. A benign growth appearedon his eyelid and gave it a drooping appearance, a broken nose healedcrooked.
Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows andmountain drainages, horse-packing into the Big Horns, Medicine Bows,south end of the Gallatins, Absarokas, Granites, Owl Creeks, theBridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, Ferrises and theRattlesnakes, Salt River Range, into the Wind Rivers over and again,the Sierra Madres, Gros Ventres, the Washakies, Laramies, but neverreturning to Brokeback.
Down in Texas Jack's father-in-law died and Lureen, who inherited thefarm equipment business, showed a skill for management and hard deals.Jack found himself with a vague managerial title, traveling to stockand agricultural machinery shows. He had some money now and found waysto spend it on his buying trips. A little Texas accent flavored hissentences, "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 littleicebound, no-name high lakes, then worked across into the Hail StrewRiver drainage.
Going up, the day was fine but the trail deep-drifted and slopping wetat the margins. They left it to wind through a slashy cut, leading thehorses through brittle branchwood, Jack, the same eagle feather in hisold hat, lifting his head in the heated noon to take the air scentedwith resinous lodgepole, the dry needle duff and hot rock, bitterjuniper crushed beneath the horses' hooves. Ennis, weather-eyed, lookedwest for the heated cumulus that might come up on such a day but theboneless blue was so deep, said Jack, that he might drown looking up.
Around three they swung through a narrow pass to a southeast slopewhere the strong spring sun had had a chance to work, dropped down tothe trail again which lay snowless below them. They could hear theriver muttering and making a distant train sound a long way off. Twentyminutes on they surprised a black bear on the bank above them rolling alog 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 forthe .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear galloped into thetrees with the lumpish gait that made it seem it was falling apart.
The tea-colored river ran fast with snowmelt, a scarf of bubbles atevery high rock, pools and setbacks streaming. The ochre-branchedwillows swayed stiffly, pollened catkins like yellow thumbprints. Thehorses drank and Jack dismounted, scooped icy water up in his hand,crystalline drops falling from his fingers, his mouth and chinglistening 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-ringsfrom old hunting camps. A sloping meadow rose behind the bench,protected by a stand of lodgepole. There was plenty of dry wood. Theyset 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 rightnow," capped and tossed it to Ennis.
On the third morning there were the clouds Ennis had expected, a greyracer out of the west, a bar of darkness driving wind before it andsmall flakes. It faded after an hour into tender spring snow thatheaped wet and heavy. By nightfall it turned colder. Jack and Ennispassed a joint back and forth, the fire burning late, Jack restless and*****ing about the cold, poking the flames with a stick, twisting thedial of the transistor radio until the batteries died.
Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-timeat the Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now forStoutamire's cow and calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and shehad some problems he didn't want. Jack said he'd had a thing going withthe wife of a rancher down the road in Childress and for the last fewmonths he'd slank around expecting to get shot by Lureen or thehusband, one. Ennis laughed a little and said he probably deserved it.Jack said he was doing all right but he missed Ennis bad enoughsometimes 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 girlsabout once a month, Alma Jr. a shy seventeen-year-old with his beanpolelength, Francine a little live wire. Jack slid his cold hand betweenEnnis's legs, said he was worried about his boy who was, no doubt aboutit, dyslexic or something, couldn't get anything right, fifteen yearsold and couldn't hardly read, he could see it though goddamn Lureenwouldn't admit to it and pretended the kid was o.k., refused to get any*****in kind a help about it. He didn't know what the f*ck the answerwas. 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 workedthe way I wanted. Nothin never come to my hand the right way." Withoutgetting up he threw deadwood on the fire, the sparks flying up withtheir truths and lies, a few hot points of fire landing on their handsand faces, not for the first time, and they rolled down into the dirt.One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their infrequentcouplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time,never enough.
A day or two later in the trailhead parking lot, horses loaded into thetrailer, Ennis was ready to head back to Signal, Jack up to LightningFlat to see the old man. Ennis leaned into Jack's window, said whathe'd been putting off the whole week, that likely he couldn't get awayagain until November after they'd shipped stock and before winterfeeding started.
"November. What in hell happened a August? Tell you what, we saidAugust, nine, ten days. Christ, Ennis! Whyn't you tell me this before?You had a f*ckin week to say some little word about it. And why's itwe're always in the friggin cold weather? We ought a do somethin. Weought a go south. We ought a go to Mexico one day."
"Mexico? Jack, you know me. All the travelin I ever done is goin aroundthe coffeepot lookin for the handle. And I'll be runnin the baler allAugust, that's what's the matter with August. Lighten up, Jack. We canhunt in November, kill a nice elk. Try if I can get Don Wroe's cabinagain. We had a good time that year."
"You know, friend, this is a goddamn ***** of a unsatisfactorysituation. You used a come away easy. It's like seein the pope now."
"Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I used a quit the jobs. You gota wife with money, a good job. You forget how it is bein broke all thetime. You ever hear a child support? I been payin out for years and gotmore to go. Let me tell you, I can't quit this one. And I can't get thetime off. It was tough gettin this time -- some a them late heifers isstill calvin. You don't leave then. You don't. Stoutamire is ahell-raiser and he raised hell about me takin the week. I don't blamehim. He probly ain't got a night's sleep since I left. The trade-offwas August. You got a better idea?"
"I did once." The tone was bitter and accusatory.
Ennis said nothing, straightened up slowly, rubbed at his forehead; ahorse stamped inside the trailer. He walked to his truck, put his handon the trailer, said something that only the horses could hear, turnedand walked back at a deliberate pace.
"You been a Mexico, Jack?" Mexico was the place. He'd heard. He was cutting fence now, trespassing in the shoot-em zone.
"Hell yes, I been. Where's the f*ckin problem?" Braced for it all these years and here it came, late and unexpected.
"I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain't foolin. What Idon't know," said Ennis, "all them things I don't know could get youkilled if I should come to know them."
"Try this one," said Jack, "and I'll say it just one time. Tell youwhat, we could a had a good life together, a f*ckin real good life. Youwouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain.Everthing built on that. It's all we got, boy, f*ckin all, so I hopeyou know that if you don't never know the rest. Count the damn fewtimes we been together in twenty years. Measure the f*ckin short leashyou keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you'll killme for needin it and not hardly never gettin it. You got no f*ckin ideahow bad it gets. I'm not you. I can't make it on a couple ahigh-altitude f*cks once or twice a year. You're too much for me,Ennis, you son of a whoreson *****. I wish I knew how to quit you."
Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter the years ofthings unsaid and now unsayable -- admissions, declarations, shames,guilts, fears -- rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, facegrey and deep-lined, grimacing, eyes screwed shut, fists clenched, legscaving, hit the ground on his knees.
"Jesus," said Jack. "Ennis?" But before he was out of the truck, tryingto guess if it was heart attack or the overflow of an incendiary rage,Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger isstraightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its originalshape, they torqued things almost to where they had been, for whatthey'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.
What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help norunderstand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis hadcome up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfyingsome shared and sexless hunger.
They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, itsburning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies asingle column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the roundwatch in Ennis's pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling intocoals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis'sbreath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in thesparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrationsof the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleepthat was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Ennis,dredging up a rusty but still useable phrase from the childhood timebefore his mother died, said, "Time to hit the hay, cowboy. I got a go.Come on, you're sleepin on your feet like a horse," and gave Jack ashake, a push, and went off in the darkness. Jack heard his spurstremble as he mounted, the words "see you tomorrow," and the horse'sshuddering snort, grind of hoof on stone.
Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single momentof artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives.Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embracehim face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it wasJack he held. And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther thanthat. Let be, let be.
Ennis didn't know about the accident for months until his postcard toJack saying that November still looked like the first chance came backstamped DECEASED. He called Jack's number in Childress, something hehad done only once before when Alma divorced him and Jack hadmisunderstood the reason for the call, had driven twelve hundred milesnorth for nothing. This would be all right, Jack would answer, had toanswer. But he did not. It was Lureen and she said who? who is this?and when he told her again she said in a level voice yes, Jack waspumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire blewup. The bead was damaged somehow and the force of the explosion slammedthe rim into his face, broke his nose and jaw and knocked himunconscious on his back. By the time someone came along he had drownedin his own blood.
No, he thought, they got him with the tire iron.
"Jack used to mention you," she said. "You're the fishing buddy or thehunting buddy, I know that. Would have let you know," she said, "but Iwasn't sure about your name and address. Jack kept most a his friends'addresses in his head. It was a terrible thing. He was only thirty-nineyears old."
The huge sadness of the northern plains rolled down on him. He didn'tknow which way it was, the tire iron or a real accident, blood chokingdown Jack's throat and nobody to turn him over. Under the wind drone heheard steel slamming off bone, the hollow chatter of a settling tirerim.
"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 stoneup. He use to say he wanted to be cremated, ashes scattered onBrokeback 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, andthe rest I sent up to his folks. I thought Brokeback Mountain wasaround where he grew up. But knowing Jack, it might be some pretendplace 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. Theydidn't come down for the funeral. You get in touch with them. I supposethey'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 dozenabandoned ranches distributed over the plain at eight- and ten-mileintervals, 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 seetheir condition, only that they were black baldies. A porch stretchedacross 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, stoutand 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 inhim a not uncommon type with the hard need to be the stud duck in thepond. He couldn't see much of Jack in either one of them, took abreath.
"I feel awful bad about Jack. Can't begin to say how bad I feel. I knewhim a long time. I come by to tell you that if you want me to take hisashes up there on Brokeback like his wife says he wanted I'd be proudto."
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, evenafter he was married and down in Texas, and help his daddy on the ranchfor a week fix the gates and mow and all. I kept his room like it waswhen he was a boy and I think he appreciated that. You are welcome togo up in his room if you want."
The old man spoke angrily. "I can't get no help out here. Jack used asay, 'Ennis del Mar,' he used a say, 'I'm goin a bring him up here onea these days and we'll lick this damn ranch into shape.' He had somehalf-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a logcabin and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then, this springhe's got another one's goin a come up here with him and build a placeand 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. Butlike 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 bethe'd like to see Jack's room, recalled one of Jack's stories about thisold man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered theson who had discovered the anatomical disconformity during a hardscene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late getting tothe toilet, struggling with buttons, the seat, the height of the thingand often as not left the surroundings sprinkled down. The old man blewup about it and this one time worked into a crazy rage. "Christ, helicked 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'lllearn 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 myclothes off and warsh them in the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I'mbawlin and blubberin. But while he was hosin me down I seen he had someextra material that I was missin. I seen they'd cut me different likeyou'd crop a ear or scorch a brand. No way to get it right with himafter that."
The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbingrhythm, was tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the westwindow, hitting the narrow boy's bed against the wall, an ink-staineddesk 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 itoccurred to him that for his growing-up years that was the only roadJack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-haired moviestar was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone magenta.He could hear Jack's mother downstairs running water, filling thekettle and setting it back on the stove, asking the old man a muffledquestion.
The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, afaded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of theroom. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and foldedneatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots hethought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in thewall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspensionfrom a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack's old shirtfrom Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, agushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, intheir contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis's nosehard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere,all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn'theld because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid theministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.
The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it,the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his ownplaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, hisdirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack andhidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, oneinside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric andbreathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintestsmoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was noreal scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of BrokebackMountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
In the end the stud duck refused to let Jack's ashes go. "Tell youwhat, we got a family plot and he's goin in it." Jack's mother stood atthe table coring apples with a sharp, serrated instrument. "You comeagain," she said.
Bumping down the washboard road Ennis passed the country cemeteryfenced with sagging sheep wire, a tiny fenced square on the wellingprairie, a few graves bright with plastic flowers, and didn't want toknow Jack was going in there, to be buried on the grieving plain.
A few weeks later on the Saturday he threw all Stoutamire's dirty horseblankets into the back of his pickup and took them down to the QuikStop Car Wash to turn the high-pressure spray on them. When the wetclean blankets were stowed in the truck bed he stepped into Higgins'sgift shop and busied himself with the postcard rack.
"Ennis, what are you lookin for rootin through them postcards?" saidLinda Higgins, throwing a sopping brown coffee filter into the garbagecan.
"Scene a Brokeback Mountain."
"Over in Fremont County?"
"No, north a here."
"I didn't order none a them. Let me get the order list. They got it Ican get you a hunderd. I got a order some more cards anyway."
"One's enough," said Ennis.
When it came -- thirty cents -- he pinned it up in his trailer,brass-headed tack in each corner. Below it he drove a nail and on thenail he hung the wire hanger and the two old shirts suspended from it.He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stingingtears.
"Jack, I swear -- " he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind.
Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he hadfirst seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking aboutgetting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can ofbeans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log wasthere as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreamsa flavor of comic obscenity. The spoon handle was the kind that couldbe used as a tire iron. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimeswith the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet,sometimes the sheets.
There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried tobelieve, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix ityou've got to stand it.
)
如果你真想知道，可以到书店或图书馆去找来Close Range这本书看看。这部电影倒似乎是很唯美感伤主义的的，从广告片段来看。 
