(no subject)
THE OUTLAND
CHAPTER 16
Outland, n. foreign land or
unknown territory, [A. Sax.
ut-out, and land-land] --
outlander, n. foreigner,
outsider -- outlandish, adj.
bizarre or unfamiliar.
(Kelly's Modern Lexicon, 2nd Edition, 1944)
For Sybil the first time was the hardest. After the twin suns of her world drove away, taking all warmth and light with them, it was another three days before she could bring herself to remove the silver key from its hiding place and walk the path to the trailer. Scattered items inside and out were testament to the unplanned departure. She sat at the small table and allowed a few tears to trickle into the hollows beneath her eyes. Tears didn't come easily to Sybil; what little store of softness she had brought into her marriage had been well and truly parched into a tough membrane long ago. Crying was for the weak, and when you lived out in the sticks on a hardscrabble ranch with the likes of John Twist, weakness could have no place if you were to survive.
With stoic efficiency she tidied, cleaned and sorted, until the public spaces were to her satisfaction, then moved on to the areas which had never known her presence. A tiny smile curled her mouth as she entered the little bedroom with its carefully disarranged bed. She straightened the bedding, knowing it had no need of laundering; dust motes rose and danced. She tsk-tsked at the bathroom, tossed an assortment of dirty towels, face-washers and other not-quite-nameable cloths into the laundry basket and scrubbed the room from ceiling to floor, even the clean parts. Then, steeling herself, she opened the door to the main bedroom, her son's room, the room he shared with Ennis, two men, one bed.
Next day, arrayed on the clothes line, flapping and snapping in the gusting wind alongside the discarded underwear and shirts and jeans, was all the double bedding - sheet, duvet, overblanket, underblanket, the lot - and not a sign of that token single sheet which had made its weekly appearance for the past two years. On his way in for lunch John cast a malevolent eye over the items, opened his mouth to speak as he entered the kitchen and shut it again. In his forty-odd years of married life, no-one had dared look at him that way; suddenly there had been three of them, wife, son, and even Ennis, united against him. And whether he admitted it or not, it was Ennis who had hurt him most.
His lunch was late that day, and his supper also, late and even more plain and boring than usual. The next day was the same, and on and on until he had almost forgotten it had ever been any other way. Every so often when he reached for a clean workshirt or pair of drawers, there weren't as many as he expected. Or a loose button remained loose, a sock lost its pair, a rip got bigger instead of being neatly mended. Sybil shed no more tears but as days became weeks and months, a hardness settled around her eyes and mouth. Her small world had shifted its epicenter and John Twist knew for sure that he was now and for ever consigned to an outer circle. He might bitch and snarl as much as before but his words rebounded now, no longer finding a target in yielding flesh.
Nothing was ever said about the departed ones but when a pretty card came from Junior and Kurt, thanking the Twists for their lovely gift of table linen, Sybil set it up on the mantlepiece and found a simple frame for the enclosed photo of the happy couple with a shyly smiling Ennis. Even in his own house, the man would not be allowed to forget the truth.
Every month thereafter, Sybil took herself back to the trailer, gave it a quick once-over then settled down to write a brief account of life in Lightning Flat, to be despatched care of General Delivery at one post office or another. Her first letter went to Signal, the town's name familiar to her from a couple of summers long ago. She described the branding, how John had got the herd down bit by bit, with just his dogs to help, exactly as he had done for many years; how Gerry Gerdsen and his son and the two friends they'd brought up to help were puzzled to find the old man working alone; how they'd gone away at work's end none the wiser as to why Jack and Ennis had moved away. In that first letter she also mentioned the phone call from Rob, asking where his dad was, but she didn't describe the quaver in the boy's voice, the stumbling uncertainty, the words that neither of them could bring themselves to utter.
As autumn gilded the land, Sybil could tell them about the Harkness kid from Weston, desperate for money to buy himself a decent truck and hightail it out of Wyoming at the first opportunity, so desperate he'd even work for old man Twist. He was sleeping in Jack's little room during the week, and John had known better than to suggest the trailer could be used as a bunkhouse. The kid did okay, kept the hay alive, handled the stock with a clumsy enthusiasm, did as he was told. But when each Saturday afternoon rolled around he was off and running, to be dropped back by his mates late Sunday, smelling of beer and worse, and no threats or cajoling could make him work a seven-day week like a real hand. He lasted a week into the winter feeding, reconsidered his options one bleak dawn, called up a friend, packed his gear and disappeared out of the gate without a backwards glance.
The calving began, and John cursed the extra heifers who required his attention. Not for the first time in his long years, he ate and slept out in the shed, returning to the house in quiet moments, to bathe and to rail against the useless no-goods who'd left him in the lurch with so much added work to do. Sybil bit her tongue but her eyes said much: You brought all this upon yourself, now live with it.
When a whole year had passed and branding time came around again, he had to pay, and pay over the odds to get anyone to come and help. Word had got around: Old Man Twist was back to his mean old ways. If there was gossip about the son and his friend, nice enough guys both of them, it never reached Sybil's ears.
She wasn't privy to the ranch finances, never had been, just made do with whatever housekeeping money came her way, and her husband made it plain through his smug expression that the books were in the black come year's end. But Sybil wasn't blind: she saw the fence wires left curled and broken, the shingles and sidings torn away by the relentless wind, the truck tires worn beyond dangerous, all the little things which he had neither the time, energy nor money to fix, the things which her boys had scrupulously attended to in the past. As for the sheep, they lived or died on whatever she could do for them; with a countrywoman's resourcefulness she eked out the small amount of money Jack had sent her, found enough to pay for the spring shearing, and then counted the return on her little wool clip with a degree of satisfaction.
All this she wrote in her clipped and distant fashion, filtering out the pain and anger and just leaving in the plain facts. And in return would come the eagerly awaited phone calls or postcards, or messages relayed through her brother Harold, letting her know those boys were doing okay, holding on, safe and well, somewhere out there in the world.
But she didn't describe how the old man often sat on the porch of an evening and glared at the gate and the road going south, as if summoning back those who had gone, his thoughts so clear it was as if his skull were transparent: Come back, have you? Crawlin on your bellies, askin for work? Okay, I'm big enough to take you back, seein as how you're so needin of it. But don't you go thinkin you got the better a me. This is a man's world, man's work, and you lilywhite she-men had better shape up good or you'll be back on your asses again.
Seasons turned and once again the hayfields rippled like gold silk under a hot sun. A smaller acreage this year, just enough for one determined man to handle by himself. In plenty of time he hauled out the mower and the rake and the baler from the machine shed, gave the ancient Ferguson an overdue service, and prepared to bring in the hay.
~~~
The cut-rate privacy of Stoutamire's bunkhouse ended the day Claude and Augie Noble had a knockdown fight with their mother's latest boyfriend who didn't fancy sharing her attentions with two overgrown teenagers. He was bigger than both of them put together so grudgingly they packed their bags and moved out to the ranch. The Nobles favored top bunks, whence their snoring and snuffling and eruptions of gas could drift down and across the gangway to where the other two lay head to head in stoic silence. Once the snoring commenced in stereo, a hand would reach out to touch a head, then, one at a time, two shadows would lift themselves out of the dark of the bunkhouse to reunite in the greater darkness outside.
It was only a matter of days before others came out for the branding and the ages-old tradition of rounding up the herd and bringing them down began again. The weasel-faced foreman favored a motorcycle, prefered weaving in and out as he shouted orders, rather than the gentle somnolence of horseback. Ennis's horses tolerated the noise and stink of the cycle but flattened their ears and snorted every time as if passing their own judgment. The cattle were not so forgiving, and on the second day, as Ennis was down and vulnerable, checking a bull calf with a noticeable limp, Weaselface's cycle back-fired and Ennis found himself sprawled on the ground, spitting out blood and tooth fragments. Cowboy up! yelled the foreman, roaring off in a cloud of dust.
They tackled the main part of the herd first, long but exhilirating days filled with the stink of mansweat and blood and scorching hair and skin, the tang of ordure and fear, the lowing and bellowing of the cattle as the dogs nipped at their heels, lewd wisecracks, barked orders, a rough male world. In the midst of this, with barely enough time to make eye contact, the lovers found themselves halfway across a yard one lunchbreak, Ennis facing north, Jack south, and snatched the opportunity to rub their knuckles together, a tiny touch of reassurance, hard and masculine as befitted their surroundings. But it wasn't the lack of time alone with Jack which was causing Ennis's temper to sour and quicken.
Unlike John Twist, marooned in a sea of desolation, Stoutamire was hemmed in on all sides by neighbors who stubbornly refused to go under, so he had resorted to grazing the overflow of his herd on leased land a few miles to the east. This extra acreage scrambled across foothills, wrapped around hoodoos and dipped into coulees, spanned a myriad small runoffs which even this far into the summer still pooled into swampy hollows, and provided countless retreats for wayward or stupid cows and calves. Most of this herd of several dozen older cows and their offspring meekly did as they were told, but winkling out the last of them was where the fun lay.
Ennis went at the task with a grim determination, growing more sullen and snappy in turn as the roundup continued. What's eatin you? Jack asked after he'd been yelled at once too often, but Ennis ignored him, bent on chasing a calf that had eluded them through no fault of Jack's. When finally they had a little bunch of animals rough-penned in a narrow draw, and the signs of the other hands had faded to just distant whistles and shouts, Jack baled him up against the rock-face.
"You friggin gimme any more a this shit and you'll be eatin my fist! What the fuck's gotten into you?"
Ennis went to shove free but his face screwed up as pain needled through his skull. Jack's anger drained away in a second.
"Goddammit, is that tooth still botherin you?"
"Ain't nothin," he muttered, like a big sulky child.
"You don't hafta be the big hero. Get it seen to 'fore I strap you down and get the pliers myself. We got the money for a dentist."
"Thought we agreed we wasn't goin a touch your money."
"No, dumbass, we agreed we wasn't goin a touch our money 'cept in a emergency and this is a goddamn emergency 'cause if you don't lighten up I'm goin a hafta kill you."
"Don't like dentists."
"And I don't like cuttin my tongue on all your busted teeth, and I ain't too keen on your lousy breath neither."
"Well, stop damn well kissin me!" Ennis shouted into a sudden lull in the wind. The echo of his own voice bounced back fair in his face and when Jack started laughing at his horrified expression he couldn't help but sheepishly join in.
"Dammit, Ennis, I love you. I don't wanta see you hurtin. And I don't wanta be shovin my tongue in some puckered-up mouthful a gums when we're ninety. Now promise me, when this work is finished..."
"Okay, so long as I don't end up with big white tombstones like you got. Use ta take me half a mornin just to scrub em clean when you was out to it."
Jack grinned broadly, displaying his dental work to perfection. "Don't you worry, our finances don't run to anythin this fancy." His tongue flicked across his teeth and found the gap where a couple had gone missing back on that dreadful, wonderful day when he'd been pumping up a flat out on a backroad a lifetime ago. "Hey, did I ever thank you for savin my life?"
Ennis snorted. "Didn't save your life, just kept your nose and your ass wiped while you was busy sleepin."
"Ain't quite what I meant." Jack moved in closer but the whistles and shouts were drawing near again so they resumed a decent distance. Ennis winked.
"If you wanta thank me again, how about we volunteer to babysit the herd tonight? I'm feelin in the mood to spend a night under---" and he paused just long enough "---under the stars."
Just when it looked as if Jack's employment was reaching an end, Claude Noble rolled in shickered one night, made it slowly up to his top bunk and rapidly down the other way, snapped his collarbone and got shipped home to mother. By that time Ennis was sporting a mouthful of amalgam and a couple of gaps in his smile but at least the smile was back in place. It dropped noticeably the day they went into town and found a letter from Rob awaiting them at the post office. They fortified themselves with coffee and donuts before Jack clenched his jaw and tore open the envelope.
"Dear Dad & Ennis" he read quietly. His eyes lifted; a flicker of hope passed between the two men. "I hope you are both keeping well. Mom has agreed...." ...agreed that, providing he could get the grades at his local college, he could transfer to West Texas in two years' time, if that was still his dream. The balance of the short letter was just polite chat but every word was gold to the father who read it. "Write soon. With love to...." Jack's voice cracked and he rubbed the heel of his hand hard across his eyes. "With love to you both, Rob."
The waitress was looking the other way; Ennis ran a booted foot up and down the back of Jack's calf and hid his own stinging eyes underneath the brim of his hat. "Finish up, bud. Gotta get back 'fore the boss has our balls."
Once the hay was in, Jack was let go. Without fuss or explanation, Ennis handed in his notice. Weaselface looked puzzled, Stoutamire had a good idea, would have liked to keep Ennis on but the little guy was one extra paycheck he couldn't afford. They followed the harvest north, as far as the Canadian border, then drifted back to Wyoming ahead of the cold weather, picked up what jobs they could, sometimes together, more often apart; work for one man could be hard to find, work for two even more so, despite Ennis's contacts. One promise they stuck to despite their difficulties: Jack's pot of gold wasn't to be touched except as a last resort. Somehow they'd see this through until they could figure out a better way. Many times, as winter encroached and he found himself knee-deep in mud or with ice spicules hitting his face, or as he stumbled back alone to a bunkhouse, or received his meager paycheck after a seventy-hour week, Jack remembered with some shame Ennis's words of a few years back: "Jack, I got a work. You forget how it is bein broke all the time..."
December found them working together for a big operation on the Wind River, upstream from Riverton and in the lee of the Rockies. They rented a cheap single-wide in a rundown trailer park nearby, so open to the miserable weather that no-one bothered staying outside long enough to gossip about their neighbors. The ranch owner knew Ennis from way back. He was a genial and fair boss, just enough to counterbalance the discomfort of living so close to Alma. Nevertheless, Ennis mostly stayed out of town, left the shopping to Jack who one time passed Alma in the street although neither acknowledged the fact.
They worked through Christmas in exchange for a whole day off together on the 28th which they spent with Junior and Kurt and Francie, comforting hours in front of a roaring log fire, good whiskey at hand and no questions asked. When the phone rang a little after five, all of them knew who it was. Junior got up to answer, and by the sweet tone in his daughter's voice Ennis suspected there'd been quite a few words exchanged between their offspring in the past year. Mellow and content, Jack and he bumbled their way through the chat with Rob, and by the time they cautiously hit the icy road back home, both agreed it had been a pretty good day.
Two months later Ennis got a decent break: the night calver, alive and kicking as the first heifer went into labor, was dead of a brain aneurysm before her calf hit the straw, and Ennis stepped into the breach. He worked a twelve-hour shift seven nights a week, on better pay, while Jack continued on with the general ranch work. If they were lucky their paths crossed twice daily coming and going, sometimes not even that much. They might be just distant figures to each other, one stumbling bleary-eyed from the calving shed, the other throwing hay into the teeth of a sleety wind, but when each lay down to sleep the bed held the reassuring smell of the other and a promise of better times down the trail.
A low grumble vibrated Ennis's body as a draft of chill air wormed its way down his spine, to be quickly replaced by Jack's warmth. When he pushed back into that heated crescent, denim and metal met his bare skin.
"Time to wake up, cowboy, them mamas are bellowin for your safe hands."
Sleep slowly drained from Ennis's brain as the honey-sweet voice cooed into his ear and a playful hand ruffled the fur on his chest.
"Wassa time? Why're you back early?"
"Somethin we gotta talk about. C'mon, get up. I got supper on the go." Jack flung the blankets back and ended all hope of extra sleep. He followed Ennis's shuffling progress into the bathroom and wrapped his arms around Ennis's waist as he peed.
"Met a man I use ta know, few days ago." Ennis twisted a little in his arms, managed to raise an eyebrow. "Not that sorta knowin, not the Biblical sense. I didn't screw everthin in pants, asshole." He nibbled a while on Ennis's shoulder as the forceful stream ebbed into a series of final spurts, then reached around and shook the drips off. "C'mon, get dressed afore I'm obliged to drop my jeans and take you here and now."
As Ennis pulled on his shirt and jeans, Jack continued. "This guy, Matt, same line a business. Farm equipment. Use ta see him---"
"Coffee."
"Here you go. Sit down and drink. Yeah, Matt, we'd fall over each other at stock shows. He was an old Wyomin boy, I liked to hear him talk, reminded me a someone I missed a whole lot back in them days."
Ennis grunted into his cup, steam and caffeine slowly unpeeling his eyelids.
"So I ran into him - he's back here, family affairs, funeral, somethin - and he tells me there's a job goin. Salesman. With a guy he knows, runs a used car lot. Trucks and shit. Here in Wyomin. In Rawlins."
"Rawlins." It was somewhere between a question and a comment. Jack ignored them both and plowed on.
"So I gave him a call. Short story, job's mine. If I want it."
By now Ennis was wide awake. "So you rang this guy? When d'you do all this? Was you plannin on tellin me any a this?"
"Shit, Ennis, ain't seen you to talk to in four days. Had ta move fast."
"I can read, y'know."
Jack sank a little lower in his chair. Yeah, guess I coulda left you a note, but---" he held out his hands "---wanted to know I could do it, get a real job. It's been so long."
"Ranchin ain't real? That what you sayin? Feels damn real to me."
"That's 'cause it's what you're good at. But I ain't no hand. On our own spread, I'd work my ass off for you, ever hour god sent me, but workin for someone else..." He shrugged, kept his eyes cast down at the floor. "We're just markin time."
"Rawlins is halfway to Texas."
"Bullshit, it ain't even to the border, you know that!"
"So when d'you start, Mr Hotshot Salesman?"
"When would I start, you mean. You think I'd decide without you agreed too?" A pot on the stove began boiling over, spitting and hissing. Jack stood up, turned it down, flipped the steaks over in their bowl of marinade, took the opportunity to drape himself around Ennis's shoulders and nuzzle his cheek. "If we wanta get us a real place it's goin a take more'n us both mendin fences, even if you still got that money stashed away in your coffee tin. I'm doin this for us. They got ranches down near Rawlins too. You'll pick up work easy. I know you don't feel comfortable in town but it's just a little place. We can live a way out and I can commute."
Ennis stood up and walked to the window, stared out as if hoping to find an answer on the rain-blurred horizon, but he knew the answer lay with the man standing silently behind him. He nodded.
"Okay, bud, Rawlins it is. But I gotta finish up here first---"
"Course you do."
"---and that's another four weeks at least."
"Lemme introduce you to Mr Palm and his five strappin sons. Look, I can drive up, days off, and we can fuck our brains out enough to last the week."
"I'm goin a miss you."
Jack looked down, not quite quickly enough, and there was a catch in his voice as he murmured, "You get use ta it."
Ennis pulled him close, kissed his curls, his ear, his neck. "I'm sorry. Never meant to hurt you."
"Can't forget them years," Jack sighed, "but they don't hurt no more."
Ennis glanced over his head at the stove. "Them spuds got long to go?"
"Long enough," said Jack, already reaching for his buckle.
In due course Ennis found work in the yard of the Rawlins hay and grain store, and his heart always did a tiny skip when, on a long delivery run, he passed some deserted house with a For Sale sign outside. Angel and Thunder were agisted out near Hadsell and when they could co-ordinate their days off, the men rode in the Sierra Madres and the Ferrises, sweet echoes of a wistful past. Hoffmeyers' Family Hotel became their new home, a rundown two-storey establishment that resembled a set out of a 1930s western, whose spinster owner ran it as a cheap boarding house since it saved her coming to a decision about its future any time between now and death. At first they took a pair of single rooms in the upper back corner, away from the handful of other near-ghostly residents, and wore a track each night between their doors until Miss Hoffmeyer suggested in her rusted barbed-wire voice that they share a double, why doncha, twenty-five percent off, save her the extra laundry and cleaning hassles. Ennis helped her with maintenance when he could; she called him and Jack "my boys". They used an old bathroom that even the other residents shunned. The mirror they shaved in front of, standing side by side each morning, was spotted black, cracked and distorted, but they could have done each other's face with their eyes closed, so intimately did they know each hard-earned line and scar. Some nights they'd fire up the chip heater, lock the door and fill the clawfoot bath all the way up to its overflow grate, slide themselves in and make slippery love as the water sploshed onto the black and white checkered tiles and steam clouds clung to the distant dingy ceiling. One night they'd even awakened, blue and shivering, and scampered naked across the dark hallway to their room, to warm up the last hours until dawn.
So the summer drifted on in a kind of sweet limbo. For Ennis, who had never known the luxury of ease, it was like an extended childhood fantasy. The boring days of work flew by, the long nights with Jack were a peaceful heaven. They laughed and played like two big kids, lost in their own little world. Sometimes they talked about the future, about maybe getting that spread of their own. The pennies slowly stacked up in the bank, and they allowed themselves to dream. Lightning Flat wasn't the only place to have abandoned ranches waiting quietly for new owners; there were many out there on the endless plains, where they could make a fresh start amongst the deep fissures, choppy hills and table-top buttes, far enough away from any neighbors.
Except, said Ennis, always practical, we ain't got money for stock or feed or fencin or equipment. And Jack reluctantly agreed. It would take a whole lot more work before dream could become realty.
A hot sun straddled the meridian, the only thing in a sky stretching blue to the edges of the horizon. The cabin clock showed 12.18. No reason to hurry back to the store, too hot to eat in the truck. Ennis eased into the tiny patch of shade offered by a fir tree on the fringe of Rawlins' small park, took his lunch pail and found a bench out of the sun. It would have been good to share the time with Jack but they'd decided the fewer townsfolk who connected them the better, so if Ennis was out on the delivery run and Jack was in the sales yard when he passed, a dip of two heads was the most any prying eyes would see. Funny how six months apart could pass in the bad old days and now six hours without Jack felt like Purgatory.
Two baloney and pickle sandwiches and a warmish beer later he tipped his hat forward and closed his eyes. He may have dozed off, hard to tell, but the slight shifting of the slats beneath him brought him back to consciousness. With the caution born of years of practice he sneaked a sideways glance at the person who now shared his seat. His hat brim afforded a view of heavy workman's boots that did nothing to weigh down the restless feet, sturdy overall-clad legs, and hands that nervously toyed with a fresh cigarette. You gotta light? said a low voice which none-the-less shivered like a hard-plucked and overtight guitar string.
Ennis patted his pocket, pulled out a fluorescent orange plastic lighter, extended his hand. As the man took it their fingertips grazed. An old panic reared up, new reasoning tried to beat it down; it was an accident, just happened, no need to run, no need to fight. The man lit up, exhaled, handed back the lighter, fingers well forward. Ennis removed it with the delicacy of a surgeon. Thanks, said the man, a note of defeat chopping off the word.
Go now, you can go now, Ennis told himself, just stand up, nod, say you gotta get back. Hell, you don't even owe him that much. Just go, now, 'fore somethin bad happens. But he didn't. Hotter'n hell, said the other. Yup, said Ennis, you from around here? What the fuck are you doin, makin small talk with this guy? No, came the reply, just passin through. Roughneck, hey? Yeah, out in the Red Desert Basin, shithole of a place. Tell him your son-in-law's a roughneck, that'll do it. But do what? Prove you was a fool for most a your life? Shit, maybe I got this guy all wrong anyway.
It's the look in their eyes, Jack had said once, the eyes always give em away. Ennis raised his head at last, took in the sun-reddened cheeks, the gingery cropped hair, and the eyes, a cheap blue tinged with forlorn hope, an aching desire for touch, a yearning to be with The Man, any man who could assuage that desperate need. Thoughts of Jack welled up, all those lonely years in Texas, so far away from the man he loved, so unsure. Was this poor guy just the same, another lost and lonely man trying to get by until the next bit of happiness came his way? Nothing Ennis could do about it if he was. He sighed, pushed himself up to his feet.
"I gotta go."
"You can't spare five minutes?"
"I'm sorry," said Ennis, quiet and open, "but I got someone---" he paused a beat "---waitin on me. Gotta get back."
"Guess I'll see you around, huh?"
"Maybe not. You take care."
As he reached the truck and opened the doors to let the hot air spill out, he caught a backward glimpse of the man walking slowly towards the toilet block. That night he didn't tell Jack about his encounter but made an extra-special effort to let him know how much he was loved.
"Is this so bad?" asked Jack one evening as they propped on their sagging four-poster. The room contained little else in the way of seating, a single stool doing triple duty as coffee table and stepladder. An ancient television flickered on the dresser facing the end of the bed, a baseball game being silently enacted, but the colors had all slid into green long ago and one team looked pretty much like the other. The ashtray balanced on Ennis's belly rose and fell with his breaths, his hands occupied themselves with an unlit cigarette and Jack's old lighter, heavy and flashy symbol of a sleek and easy life now gone. He rubbed the back of his head against Jack's shoulder, made a little puzzled noise in response. "I'm sorry, darlin," Jack went on, "endin up this way, it ain't what I wanted for you, wanted a make you a home, not be here in a dump like this."
The ashtray got shifted to Jack's belly as Ennis rolled into him, breathing up the essence of the man he loved, the man who made him feel safe and whole. "Wouldn't know what to do with a home if I had one. No, it ain't so bad. Got you, all that matters."
The final letter, when it came, was a wry mixture of efficiency and satisfaction: Jack's father had upended the tractor, over-reaching himself, leg broken in three places, bad breaks, lot of pain, long recovery needed, couldn't get help, no-one would work for him, things had been going backwards, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. The tractor was okay. Sybil added almost as an afterthought: He has said nothing to anyone.
"So what do we do?" asked Jack after he'd stopped cursing the tractor-rolling god who didn't quite finish the job.
"Up to you, bud. You're the one who's gotta put up with your old man's shit, though I guess now he reckons I'm lower'n a snake's belly too."
"Think we might have him by the balls this time, even if we are just a pair a faggots."
"Reckon he might a known that a long time 'fore he found that dirty picture. Strange how folks can shut their eyes when they don't wanta see somethin."
Jack's own eyes slipped Ennis a sideways glance at that but he bit back the smartass comment which arose. Let bygones be bygones indeed. "So, what'ya say?"
"Be good to get back to ranchin again, real good. But, like I said, it's up to you. I'll put up with him if you will."
"Not no more, I won't. Ain't takin no more a his shit. Funny, use ta bust a gut gettin up there. Now I don't give a rat's ass. Ain't goin back for him. Tell you what, if we go back, it's for us."
"And your Mama."
"And Mama. And I ain't goin a pretend, neither. If he don't like what we do he can go fuck himself. If I wanta give my man a hug, daddy can choke on his own bile for all I care."
So they agreed, handed in their notices, farewelled Miss Hoffmeyer - you boys take good care of each other, she told them, it's a dangerous world out there - and hit the road one last time. But not to Lightning Flat, not straight away. With Angel and Thunder loaded once more on the turquoise truck, their road first took them west, across the Red Desert, past Rock Springs and Green River, past Kemmerer and along the bank of Twin Creek until Ennis, in the lead, veered north up a dusty track that hadn't felt tires in a long time. The ranch gate, when he reached it, hung aslant on its hinges, the clapboard house at the head of a rutted drive admitted light where light was not supposed to shine, broken windows gazed impassively out across abandoned fields. Just starlings and memories lived there now.
Ennis set his shoulder to the locked door but it gave easily under his touch as if it had long awaited his return. Floorboards creaked but held. Sifted sunlight caught up sudden dust swirls, ashes of the past. He walked from room to bare room, Jack his shadow. Adult fingers sought and explored the secret hiding places of youth, empty now of old treasures; children who had owned but little had left nothing behind. In the kitchen he opened the pantry door, laughed under his breath, responded to Jack's touch with hushed words, as if talking in church.
"Mama use ta pickle and preserve everthin she could grow or get for free. After she went, we ate our way through the lot, the peaches and the carrots and the onions and all. It was like she was still lookin after us. In the end there weren't nothin left but little jars a fruit in liquor, fancy stuff she made for presents for folks. One night, me and my brother ate them all up, spewed up real bad. Kinda like the last kick in the guts." He pinched his mouth shut, exhaled, went on discovering.
They climbed to the bedroom, hot and cramped under the roof, where he'd pummelled his big brother into submission with his six-year-old fists, then returned to the livingroom where they'd been playing on the day their father had said, hard and cold, Boys, get in the truck, somethin to show you. He remembered, but could not share with Jack, the first pangs of panic as he heard his father's voice. And he recalled his mother's face, tight and drawn and turned away from his own.
Later they took the horses out along the creek, up tracks, through coulees, singing the songlines of a long-forgotten homeland. Here the tire swing had hung from a now-fallen branch, there the kids had built a cubby, played Cowboys and Indians. Beyond the back forty they jumped over the remains of a boundary fence and entered an old hay meadow, long gone to spurge and sage. Land and ditch, land and ditch, land and ditch, the ground still held traces of the handiwork of men. They dismounted, secured the horses and continued down a shallow pass to where a long gash scarred the land, a gash that had once run with water, and with a far more sinister flow. Here Ennis stopped, removed his hat and stood in silence; Jack too. The images played out before them, one remembered, one imagined. They were so still that a ground squirrel moved unheeding between them, and the only sounds were of the wind soughing through the grass, and the steady thumping of their two hearts. A tiny cloud tumbled and rolled its way across the sky, melting and fading away as they stood. Finally Ennis sighed deeply and replaced his hat.
"You okay?" whispered Jack, slipping an arm around his beloved's waist.
"Yeah, darlin, fine. Everthin's fine." He put his arm around Jack's shoulder and squeezed him tightly, and thus they made their way back to the horses. The ride back to the house was solemn and silent but now and again Ennis moved in close, touched Jack's shoulder, brushed his thigh, held his hand.
At nightfall, they built up a fire in the old fireplace, heated up tins of beans and stew, drank whiskey and watched the pictures forming in the flames. Then they spread out their bedrolls and made love, bodies and souls united eternally. The glowing coals cast faint shadows around the room, the great arc of stars wheeled across the night sky, bringing them ever closer to morning. On that morning Jack and Ennis would resume their journey, drive to the opposite corner of the state, back to the place they now thought of as home. Yet both had come to know that, wherever they went, they were no longer wanderers in a foreign land, outlanders in a world of strangers, for each had found his true home deep in the heart of the other.
In the thousandth of a second that separates despair from hope, a life may change, shift its course from bad to good, leave the old sadness and the old world behind forever. In that old world, a man might die by a roadside, drowning in his own blood, reaching out in vain for the one he thought could never love him; a sad-eyed man might live alone with his memories, mourning the one he had denied until it was too late; and young men with all of it before them might lie down to sleep and never wake up. But in this world, hope remains alive.
The road to Lightning Flat.
The End.
My thanks to everyone who's had the patience to stick with this over the past not-quite-year, and the kindness to comment, here and elsewhere. Thank you to MiralParis7 and MountainMouse, and especially to Canstandit, my soundingboard, advisor and helper. Thank you to Ang and Larry and Diana and Jake and all the film-makers, for bringing Brokeback Mountain to me in the first place. But mostly, thank you to Annie and Heath. I can never adequately thank you all for changing my life.
CHAPTER 16
Outland, n. foreign land or
unknown territory, [A. Sax.
ut-out, and land-land] --
outlander, n. foreigner,
outsider -- outlandish, adj.
bizarre or unfamiliar.
(Kelly's Modern Lexicon, 2nd Edition, 1944)
For Sybil the first time was the hardest. After the twin suns of her world drove away, taking all warmth and light with them, it was another three days before she could bring herself to remove the silver key from its hiding place and walk the path to the trailer. Scattered items inside and out were testament to the unplanned departure. She sat at the small table and allowed a few tears to trickle into the hollows beneath her eyes. Tears didn't come easily to Sybil; what little store of softness she had brought into her marriage had been well and truly parched into a tough membrane long ago. Crying was for the weak, and when you lived out in the sticks on a hardscrabble ranch with the likes of John Twist, weakness could have no place if you were to survive.
With stoic efficiency she tidied, cleaned and sorted, until the public spaces were to her satisfaction, then moved on to the areas which had never known her presence. A tiny smile curled her mouth as she entered the little bedroom with its carefully disarranged bed. She straightened the bedding, knowing it had no need of laundering; dust motes rose and danced. She tsk-tsked at the bathroom, tossed an assortment of dirty towels, face-washers and other not-quite-nameable cloths into the laundry basket and scrubbed the room from ceiling to floor, even the clean parts. Then, steeling herself, she opened the door to the main bedroom, her son's room, the room he shared with Ennis, two men, one bed.
Next day, arrayed on the clothes line, flapping and snapping in the gusting wind alongside the discarded underwear and shirts and jeans, was all the double bedding - sheet, duvet, overblanket, underblanket, the lot - and not a sign of that token single sheet which had made its weekly appearance for the past two years. On his way in for lunch John cast a malevolent eye over the items, opened his mouth to speak as he entered the kitchen and shut it again. In his forty-odd years of married life, no-one had dared look at him that way; suddenly there had been three of them, wife, son, and even Ennis, united against him. And whether he admitted it or not, it was Ennis who had hurt him most.
His lunch was late that day, and his supper also, late and even more plain and boring than usual. The next day was the same, and on and on until he had almost forgotten it had ever been any other way. Every so often when he reached for a clean workshirt or pair of drawers, there weren't as many as he expected. Or a loose button remained loose, a sock lost its pair, a rip got bigger instead of being neatly mended. Sybil shed no more tears but as days became weeks and months, a hardness settled around her eyes and mouth. Her small world had shifted its epicenter and John Twist knew for sure that he was now and for ever consigned to an outer circle. He might bitch and snarl as much as before but his words rebounded now, no longer finding a target in yielding flesh.
Nothing was ever said about the departed ones but when a pretty card came from Junior and Kurt, thanking the Twists for their lovely gift of table linen, Sybil set it up on the mantlepiece and found a simple frame for the enclosed photo of the happy couple with a shyly smiling Ennis. Even in his own house, the man would not be allowed to forget the truth.
Every month thereafter, Sybil took herself back to the trailer, gave it a quick once-over then settled down to write a brief account of life in Lightning Flat, to be despatched care of General Delivery at one post office or another. Her first letter went to Signal, the town's name familiar to her from a couple of summers long ago. She described the branding, how John had got the herd down bit by bit, with just his dogs to help, exactly as he had done for many years; how Gerry Gerdsen and his son and the two friends they'd brought up to help were puzzled to find the old man working alone; how they'd gone away at work's end none the wiser as to why Jack and Ennis had moved away. In that first letter she also mentioned the phone call from Rob, asking where his dad was, but she didn't describe the quaver in the boy's voice, the stumbling uncertainty, the words that neither of them could bring themselves to utter.
As autumn gilded the land, Sybil could tell them about the Harkness kid from Weston, desperate for money to buy himself a decent truck and hightail it out of Wyoming at the first opportunity, so desperate he'd even work for old man Twist. He was sleeping in Jack's little room during the week, and John had known better than to suggest the trailer could be used as a bunkhouse. The kid did okay, kept the hay alive, handled the stock with a clumsy enthusiasm, did as he was told. But when each Saturday afternoon rolled around he was off and running, to be dropped back by his mates late Sunday, smelling of beer and worse, and no threats or cajoling could make him work a seven-day week like a real hand. He lasted a week into the winter feeding, reconsidered his options one bleak dawn, called up a friend, packed his gear and disappeared out of the gate without a backwards glance.
The calving began, and John cursed the extra heifers who required his attention. Not for the first time in his long years, he ate and slept out in the shed, returning to the house in quiet moments, to bathe and to rail against the useless no-goods who'd left him in the lurch with so much added work to do. Sybil bit her tongue but her eyes said much: You brought all this upon yourself, now live with it.
When a whole year had passed and branding time came around again, he had to pay, and pay over the odds to get anyone to come and help. Word had got around: Old Man Twist was back to his mean old ways. If there was gossip about the son and his friend, nice enough guys both of them, it never reached Sybil's ears.
She wasn't privy to the ranch finances, never had been, just made do with whatever housekeeping money came her way, and her husband made it plain through his smug expression that the books were in the black come year's end. But Sybil wasn't blind: she saw the fence wires left curled and broken, the shingles and sidings torn away by the relentless wind, the truck tires worn beyond dangerous, all the little things which he had neither the time, energy nor money to fix, the things which her boys had scrupulously attended to in the past. As for the sheep, they lived or died on whatever she could do for them; with a countrywoman's resourcefulness she eked out the small amount of money Jack had sent her, found enough to pay for the spring shearing, and then counted the return on her little wool clip with a degree of satisfaction.
All this she wrote in her clipped and distant fashion, filtering out the pain and anger and just leaving in the plain facts. And in return would come the eagerly awaited phone calls or postcards, or messages relayed through her brother Harold, letting her know those boys were doing okay, holding on, safe and well, somewhere out there in the world.
But she didn't describe how the old man often sat on the porch of an evening and glared at the gate and the road going south, as if summoning back those who had gone, his thoughts so clear it was as if his skull were transparent: Come back, have you? Crawlin on your bellies, askin for work? Okay, I'm big enough to take you back, seein as how you're so needin of it. But don't you go thinkin you got the better a me. This is a man's world, man's work, and you lilywhite she-men had better shape up good or you'll be back on your asses again.
Seasons turned and once again the hayfields rippled like gold silk under a hot sun. A smaller acreage this year, just enough for one determined man to handle by himself. In plenty of time he hauled out the mower and the rake and the baler from the machine shed, gave the ancient Ferguson an overdue service, and prepared to bring in the hay.
~~~
The cut-rate privacy of Stoutamire's bunkhouse ended the day Claude and Augie Noble had a knockdown fight with their mother's latest boyfriend who didn't fancy sharing her attentions with two overgrown teenagers. He was bigger than both of them put together so grudgingly they packed their bags and moved out to the ranch. The Nobles favored top bunks, whence their snoring and snuffling and eruptions of gas could drift down and across the gangway to where the other two lay head to head in stoic silence. Once the snoring commenced in stereo, a hand would reach out to touch a head, then, one at a time, two shadows would lift themselves out of the dark of the bunkhouse to reunite in the greater darkness outside.
It was only a matter of days before others came out for the branding and the ages-old tradition of rounding up the herd and bringing them down began again. The weasel-faced foreman favored a motorcycle, prefered weaving in and out as he shouted orders, rather than the gentle somnolence of horseback. Ennis's horses tolerated the noise and stink of the cycle but flattened their ears and snorted every time as if passing their own judgment. The cattle were not so forgiving, and on the second day, as Ennis was down and vulnerable, checking a bull calf with a noticeable limp, Weaselface's cycle back-fired and Ennis found himself sprawled on the ground, spitting out blood and tooth fragments. Cowboy up! yelled the foreman, roaring off in a cloud of dust.
They tackled the main part of the herd first, long but exhilirating days filled with the stink of mansweat and blood and scorching hair and skin, the tang of ordure and fear, the lowing and bellowing of the cattle as the dogs nipped at their heels, lewd wisecracks, barked orders, a rough male world. In the midst of this, with barely enough time to make eye contact, the lovers found themselves halfway across a yard one lunchbreak, Ennis facing north, Jack south, and snatched the opportunity to rub their knuckles together, a tiny touch of reassurance, hard and masculine as befitted their surroundings. But it wasn't the lack of time alone with Jack which was causing Ennis's temper to sour and quicken.
Unlike John Twist, marooned in a sea of desolation, Stoutamire was hemmed in on all sides by neighbors who stubbornly refused to go under, so he had resorted to grazing the overflow of his herd on leased land a few miles to the east. This extra acreage scrambled across foothills, wrapped around hoodoos and dipped into coulees, spanned a myriad small runoffs which even this far into the summer still pooled into swampy hollows, and provided countless retreats for wayward or stupid cows and calves. Most of this herd of several dozen older cows and their offspring meekly did as they were told, but winkling out the last of them was where the fun lay.
Ennis went at the task with a grim determination, growing more sullen and snappy in turn as the roundup continued. What's eatin you? Jack asked after he'd been yelled at once too often, but Ennis ignored him, bent on chasing a calf that had eluded them through no fault of Jack's. When finally they had a little bunch of animals rough-penned in a narrow draw, and the signs of the other hands had faded to just distant whistles and shouts, Jack baled him up against the rock-face.
"You friggin gimme any more a this shit and you'll be eatin my fist! What the fuck's gotten into you?"
Ennis went to shove free but his face screwed up as pain needled through his skull. Jack's anger drained away in a second.
"Goddammit, is that tooth still botherin you?"
"Ain't nothin," he muttered, like a big sulky child.
"You don't hafta be the big hero. Get it seen to 'fore I strap you down and get the pliers myself. We got the money for a dentist."
"Thought we agreed we wasn't goin a touch your money."
"No, dumbass, we agreed we wasn't goin a touch our money 'cept in a emergency and this is a goddamn emergency 'cause if you don't lighten up I'm goin a hafta kill you."
"Don't like dentists."
"And I don't like cuttin my tongue on all your busted teeth, and I ain't too keen on your lousy breath neither."
"Well, stop damn well kissin me!" Ennis shouted into a sudden lull in the wind. The echo of his own voice bounced back fair in his face and when Jack started laughing at his horrified expression he couldn't help but sheepishly join in.
"Dammit, Ennis, I love you. I don't wanta see you hurtin. And I don't wanta be shovin my tongue in some puckered-up mouthful a gums when we're ninety. Now promise me, when this work is finished..."
"Okay, so long as I don't end up with big white tombstones like you got. Use ta take me half a mornin just to scrub em clean when you was out to it."
Jack grinned broadly, displaying his dental work to perfection. "Don't you worry, our finances don't run to anythin this fancy." His tongue flicked across his teeth and found the gap where a couple had gone missing back on that dreadful, wonderful day when he'd been pumping up a flat out on a backroad a lifetime ago. "Hey, did I ever thank you for savin my life?"
Ennis snorted. "Didn't save your life, just kept your nose and your ass wiped while you was busy sleepin."
"Ain't quite what I meant." Jack moved in closer but the whistles and shouts were drawing near again so they resumed a decent distance. Ennis winked.
"If you wanta thank me again, how about we volunteer to babysit the herd tonight? I'm feelin in the mood to spend a night under---" and he paused just long enough "---under the stars."
Just when it looked as if Jack's employment was reaching an end, Claude Noble rolled in shickered one night, made it slowly up to his top bunk and rapidly down the other way, snapped his collarbone and got shipped home to mother. By that time Ennis was sporting a mouthful of amalgam and a couple of gaps in his smile but at least the smile was back in place. It dropped noticeably the day they went into town and found a letter from Rob awaiting them at the post office. They fortified themselves with coffee and donuts before Jack clenched his jaw and tore open the envelope.
"Dear Dad & Ennis" he read quietly. His eyes lifted; a flicker of hope passed between the two men. "I hope you are both keeping well. Mom has agreed...." ...agreed that, providing he could get the grades at his local college, he could transfer to West Texas in two years' time, if that was still his dream. The balance of the short letter was just polite chat but every word was gold to the father who read it. "Write soon. With love to...." Jack's voice cracked and he rubbed the heel of his hand hard across his eyes. "With love to you both, Rob."
The waitress was looking the other way; Ennis ran a booted foot up and down the back of Jack's calf and hid his own stinging eyes underneath the brim of his hat. "Finish up, bud. Gotta get back 'fore the boss has our balls."
Once the hay was in, Jack was let go. Without fuss or explanation, Ennis handed in his notice. Weaselface looked puzzled, Stoutamire had a good idea, would have liked to keep Ennis on but the little guy was one extra paycheck he couldn't afford. They followed the harvest north, as far as the Canadian border, then drifted back to Wyoming ahead of the cold weather, picked up what jobs they could, sometimes together, more often apart; work for one man could be hard to find, work for two even more so, despite Ennis's contacts. One promise they stuck to despite their difficulties: Jack's pot of gold wasn't to be touched except as a last resort. Somehow they'd see this through until they could figure out a better way. Many times, as winter encroached and he found himself knee-deep in mud or with ice spicules hitting his face, or as he stumbled back alone to a bunkhouse, or received his meager paycheck after a seventy-hour week, Jack remembered with some shame Ennis's words of a few years back: "Jack, I got a work. You forget how it is bein broke all the time..."
December found them working together for a big operation on the Wind River, upstream from Riverton and in the lee of the Rockies. They rented a cheap single-wide in a rundown trailer park nearby, so open to the miserable weather that no-one bothered staying outside long enough to gossip about their neighbors. The ranch owner knew Ennis from way back. He was a genial and fair boss, just enough to counterbalance the discomfort of living so close to Alma. Nevertheless, Ennis mostly stayed out of town, left the shopping to Jack who one time passed Alma in the street although neither acknowledged the fact.
They worked through Christmas in exchange for a whole day off together on the 28th which they spent with Junior and Kurt and Francie, comforting hours in front of a roaring log fire, good whiskey at hand and no questions asked. When the phone rang a little after five, all of them knew who it was. Junior got up to answer, and by the sweet tone in his daughter's voice Ennis suspected there'd been quite a few words exchanged between their offspring in the past year. Mellow and content, Jack and he bumbled their way through the chat with Rob, and by the time they cautiously hit the icy road back home, both agreed it had been a pretty good day.
Two months later Ennis got a decent break: the night calver, alive and kicking as the first heifer went into labor, was dead of a brain aneurysm before her calf hit the straw, and Ennis stepped into the breach. He worked a twelve-hour shift seven nights a week, on better pay, while Jack continued on with the general ranch work. If they were lucky their paths crossed twice daily coming and going, sometimes not even that much. They might be just distant figures to each other, one stumbling bleary-eyed from the calving shed, the other throwing hay into the teeth of a sleety wind, but when each lay down to sleep the bed held the reassuring smell of the other and a promise of better times down the trail.
A low grumble vibrated Ennis's body as a draft of chill air wormed its way down his spine, to be quickly replaced by Jack's warmth. When he pushed back into that heated crescent, denim and metal met his bare skin.
"Time to wake up, cowboy, them mamas are bellowin for your safe hands."
Sleep slowly drained from Ennis's brain as the honey-sweet voice cooed into his ear and a playful hand ruffled the fur on his chest.
"Wassa time? Why're you back early?"
"Somethin we gotta talk about. C'mon, get up. I got supper on the go." Jack flung the blankets back and ended all hope of extra sleep. He followed Ennis's shuffling progress into the bathroom and wrapped his arms around Ennis's waist as he peed.
"Met a man I use ta know, few days ago." Ennis twisted a little in his arms, managed to raise an eyebrow. "Not that sorta knowin, not the Biblical sense. I didn't screw everthin in pants, asshole." He nibbled a while on Ennis's shoulder as the forceful stream ebbed into a series of final spurts, then reached around and shook the drips off. "C'mon, get dressed afore I'm obliged to drop my jeans and take you here and now."
As Ennis pulled on his shirt and jeans, Jack continued. "This guy, Matt, same line a business. Farm equipment. Use ta see him---"
"Coffee."
"Here you go. Sit down and drink. Yeah, Matt, we'd fall over each other at stock shows. He was an old Wyomin boy, I liked to hear him talk, reminded me a someone I missed a whole lot back in them days."
Ennis grunted into his cup, steam and caffeine slowly unpeeling his eyelids.
"So I ran into him - he's back here, family affairs, funeral, somethin - and he tells me there's a job goin. Salesman. With a guy he knows, runs a used car lot. Trucks and shit. Here in Wyomin. In Rawlins."
"Rawlins." It was somewhere between a question and a comment. Jack ignored them both and plowed on.
"So I gave him a call. Short story, job's mine. If I want it."
By now Ennis was wide awake. "So you rang this guy? When d'you do all this? Was you plannin on tellin me any a this?"
"Shit, Ennis, ain't seen you to talk to in four days. Had ta move fast."
"I can read, y'know."
Jack sank a little lower in his chair. Yeah, guess I coulda left you a note, but---" he held out his hands "---wanted to know I could do it, get a real job. It's been so long."
"Ranchin ain't real? That what you sayin? Feels damn real to me."
"That's 'cause it's what you're good at. But I ain't no hand. On our own spread, I'd work my ass off for you, ever hour god sent me, but workin for someone else..." He shrugged, kept his eyes cast down at the floor. "We're just markin time."
"Rawlins is halfway to Texas."
"Bullshit, it ain't even to the border, you know that!"
"So when d'you start, Mr Hotshot Salesman?"
"When would I start, you mean. You think I'd decide without you agreed too?" A pot on the stove began boiling over, spitting and hissing. Jack stood up, turned it down, flipped the steaks over in their bowl of marinade, took the opportunity to drape himself around Ennis's shoulders and nuzzle his cheek. "If we wanta get us a real place it's goin a take more'n us both mendin fences, even if you still got that money stashed away in your coffee tin. I'm doin this for us. They got ranches down near Rawlins too. You'll pick up work easy. I know you don't feel comfortable in town but it's just a little place. We can live a way out and I can commute."
Ennis stood up and walked to the window, stared out as if hoping to find an answer on the rain-blurred horizon, but he knew the answer lay with the man standing silently behind him. He nodded.
"Okay, bud, Rawlins it is. But I gotta finish up here first---"
"Course you do."
"---and that's another four weeks at least."
"Lemme introduce you to Mr Palm and his five strappin sons. Look, I can drive up, days off, and we can fuck our brains out enough to last the week."
"I'm goin a miss you."
Jack looked down, not quite quickly enough, and there was a catch in his voice as he murmured, "You get use ta it."
Ennis pulled him close, kissed his curls, his ear, his neck. "I'm sorry. Never meant to hurt you."
"Can't forget them years," Jack sighed, "but they don't hurt no more."
Ennis glanced over his head at the stove. "Them spuds got long to go?"
"Long enough," said Jack, already reaching for his buckle.
In due course Ennis found work in the yard of the Rawlins hay and grain store, and his heart always did a tiny skip when, on a long delivery run, he passed some deserted house with a For Sale sign outside. Angel and Thunder were agisted out near Hadsell and when they could co-ordinate their days off, the men rode in the Sierra Madres and the Ferrises, sweet echoes of a wistful past. Hoffmeyers' Family Hotel became their new home, a rundown two-storey establishment that resembled a set out of a 1930s western, whose spinster owner ran it as a cheap boarding house since it saved her coming to a decision about its future any time between now and death. At first they took a pair of single rooms in the upper back corner, away from the handful of other near-ghostly residents, and wore a track each night between their doors until Miss Hoffmeyer suggested in her rusted barbed-wire voice that they share a double, why doncha, twenty-five percent off, save her the extra laundry and cleaning hassles. Ennis helped her with maintenance when he could; she called him and Jack "my boys". They used an old bathroom that even the other residents shunned. The mirror they shaved in front of, standing side by side each morning, was spotted black, cracked and distorted, but they could have done each other's face with their eyes closed, so intimately did they know each hard-earned line and scar. Some nights they'd fire up the chip heater, lock the door and fill the clawfoot bath all the way up to its overflow grate, slide themselves in and make slippery love as the water sploshed onto the black and white checkered tiles and steam clouds clung to the distant dingy ceiling. One night they'd even awakened, blue and shivering, and scampered naked across the dark hallway to their room, to warm up the last hours until dawn.
So the summer drifted on in a kind of sweet limbo. For Ennis, who had never known the luxury of ease, it was like an extended childhood fantasy. The boring days of work flew by, the long nights with Jack were a peaceful heaven. They laughed and played like two big kids, lost in their own little world. Sometimes they talked about the future, about maybe getting that spread of their own. The pennies slowly stacked up in the bank, and they allowed themselves to dream. Lightning Flat wasn't the only place to have abandoned ranches waiting quietly for new owners; there were many out there on the endless plains, where they could make a fresh start amongst the deep fissures, choppy hills and table-top buttes, far enough away from any neighbors.
Except, said Ennis, always practical, we ain't got money for stock or feed or fencin or equipment. And Jack reluctantly agreed. It would take a whole lot more work before dream could become realty.
A hot sun straddled the meridian, the only thing in a sky stretching blue to the edges of the horizon. The cabin clock showed 12.18. No reason to hurry back to the store, too hot to eat in the truck. Ennis eased into the tiny patch of shade offered by a fir tree on the fringe of Rawlins' small park, took his lunch pail and found a bench out of the sun. It would have been good to share the time with Jack but they'd decided the fewer townsfolk who connected them the better, so if Ennis was out on the delivery run and Jack was in the sales yard when he passed, a dip of two heads was the most any prying eyes would see. Funny how six months apart could pass in the bad old days and now six hours without Jack felt like Purgatory.
Two baloney and pickle sandwiches and a warmish beer later he tipped his hat forward and closed his eyes. He may have dozed off, hard to tell, but the slight shifting of the slats beneath him brought him back to consciousness. With the caution born of years of practice he sneaked a sideways glance at the person who now shared his seat. His hat brim afforded a view of heavy workman's boots that did nothing to weigh down the restless feet, sturdy overall-clad legs, and hands that nervously toyed with a fresh cigarette. You gotta light? said a low voice which none-the-less shivered like a hard-plucked and overtight guitar string.
Ennis patted his pocket, pulled out a fluorescent orange plastic lighter, extended his hand. As the man took it their fingertips grazed. An old panic reared up, new reasoning tried to beat it down; it was an accident, just happened, no need to run, no need to fight. The man lit up, exhaled, handed back the lighter, fingers well forward. Ennis removed it with the delicacy of a surgeon. Thanks, said the man, a note of defeat chopping off the word.
Go now, you can go now, Ennis told himself, just stand up, nod, say you gotta get back. Hell, you don't even owe him that much. Just go, now, 'fore somethin bad happens. But he didn't. Hotter'n hell, said the other. Yup, said Ennis, you from around here? What the fuck are you doin, makin small talk with this guy? No, came the reply, just passin through. Roughneck, hey? Yeah, out in the Red Desert Basin, shithole of a place. Tell him your son-in-law's a roughneck, that'll do it. But do what? Prove you was a fool for most a your life? Shit, maybe I got this guy all wrong anyway.
It's the look in their eyes, Jack had said once, the eyes always give em away. Ennis raised his head at last, took in the sun-reddened cheeks, the gingery cropped hair, and the eyes, a cheap blue tinged with forlorn hope, an aching desire for touch, a yearning to be with The Man, any man who could assuage that desperate need. Thoughts of Jack welled up, all those lonely years in Texas, so far away from the man he loved, so unsure. Was this poor guy just the same, another lost and lonely man trying to get by until the next bit of happiness came his way? Nothing Ennis could do about it if he was. He sighed, pushed himself up to his feet.
"I gotta go."
"You can't spare five minutes?"
"I'm sorry," said Ennis, quiet and open, "but I got someone---" he paused a beat "---waitin on me. Gotta get back."
"Guess I'll see you around, huh?"
"Maybe not. You take care."
As he reached the truck and opened the doors to let the hot air spill out, he caught a backward glimpse of the man walking slowly towards the toilet block. That night he didn't tell Jack about his encounter but made an extra-special effort to let him know how much he was loved.
"Is this so bad?" asked Jack one evening as they propped on their sagging four-poster. The room contained little else in the way of seating, a single stool doing triple duty as coffee table and stepladder. An ancient television flickered on the dresser facing the end of the bed, a baseball game being silently enacted, but the colors had all slid into green long ago and one team looked pretty much like the other. The ashtray balanced on Ennis's belly rose and fell with his breaths, his hands occupied themselves with an unlit cigarette and Jack's old lighter, heavy and flashy symbol of a sleek and easy life now gone. He rubbed the back of his head against Jack's shoulder, made a little puzzled noise in response. "I'm sorry, darlin," Jack went on, "endin up this way, it ain't what I wanted for you, wanted a make you a home, not be here in a dump like this."
The ashtray got shifted to Jack's belly as Ennis rolled into him, breathing up the essence of the man he loved, the man who made him feel safe and whole. "Wouldn't know what to do with a home if I had one. No, it ain't so bad. Got you, all that matters."
The final letter, when it came, was a wry mixture of efficiency and satisfaction: Jack's father had upended the tractor, over-reaching himself, leg broken in three places, bad breaks, lot of pain, long recovery needed, couldn't get help, no-one would work for him, things had been going backwards, he was willing to let bygones be bygones. The tractor was okay. Sybil added almost as an afterthought: He has said nothing to anyone.
"So what do we do?" asked Jack after he'd stopped cursing the tractor-rolling god who didn't quite finish the job.
"Up to you, bud. You're the one who's gotta put up with your old man's shit, though I guess now he reckons I'm lower'n a snake's belly too."
"Think we might have him by the balls this time, even if we are just a pair a faggots."
"Reckon he might a known that a long time 'fore he found that dirty picture. Strange how folks can shut their eyes when they don't wanta see somethin."
Jack's own eyes slipped Ennis a sideways glance at that but he bit back the smartass comment which arose. Let bygones be bygones indeed. "So, what'ya say?"
"Be good to get back to ranchin again, real good. But, like I said, it's up to you. I'll put up with him if you will."
"Not no more, I won't. Ain't takin no more a his shit. Funny, use ta bust a gut gettin up there. Now I don't give a rat's ass. Ain't goin back for him. Tell you what, if we go back, it's for us."
"And your Mama."
"And Mama. And I ain't goin a pretend, neither. If he don't like what we do he can go fuck himself. If I wanta give my man a hug, daddy can choke on his own bile for all I care."
So they agreed, handed in their notices, farewelled Miss Hoffmeyer - you boys take good care of each other, she told them, it's a dangerous world out there - and hit the road one last time. But not to Lightning Flat, not straight away. With Angel and Thunder loaded once more on the turquoise truck, their road first took them west, across the Red Desert, past Rock Springs and Green River, past Kemmerer and along the bank of Twin Creek until Ennis, in the lead, veered north up a dusty track that hadn't felt tires in a long time. The ranch gate, when he reached it, hung aslant on its hinges, the clapboard house at the head of a rutted drive admitted light where light was not supposed to shine, broken windows gazed impassively out across abandoned fields. Just starlings and memories lived there now.
Ennis set his shoulder to the locked door but it gave easily under his touch as if it had long awaited his return. Floorboards creaked but held. Sifted sunlight caught up sudden dust swirls, ashes of the past. He walked from room to bare room, Jack his shadow. Adult fingers sought and explored the secret hiding places of youth, empty now of old treasures; children who had owned but little had left nothing behind. In the kitchen he opened the pantry door, laughed under his breath, responded to Jack's touch with hushed words, as if talking in church.
"Mama use ta pickle and preserve everthin she could grow or get for free. After she went, we ate our way through the lot, the peaches and the carrots and the onions and all. It was like she was still lookin after us. In the end there weren't nothin left but little jars a fruit in liquor, fancy stuff she made for presents for folks. One night, me and my brother ate them all up, spewed up real bad. Kinda like the last kick in the guts." He pinched his mouth shut, exhaled, went on discovering.
They climbed to the bedroom, hot and cramped under the roof, where he'd pummelled his big brother into submission with his six-year-old fists, then returned to the livingroom where they'd been playing on the day their father had said, hard and cold, Boys, get in the truck, somethin to show you. He remembered, but could not share with Jack, the first pangs of panic as he heard his father's voice. And he recalled his mother's face, tight and drawn and turned away from his own.
Later they took the horses out along the creek, up tracks, through coulees, singing the songlines of a long-forgotten homeland. Here the tire swing had hung from a now-fallen branch, there the kids had built a cubby, played Cowboys and Indians. Beyond the back forty they jumped over the remains of a boundary fence and entered an old hay meadow, long gone to spurge and sage. Land and ditch, land and ditch, land and ditch, the ground still held traces of the handiwork of men. They dismounted, secured the horses and continued down a shallow pass to where a long gash scarred the land, a gash that had once run with water, and with a far more sinister flow. Here Ennis stopped, removed his hat and stood in silence; Jack too. The images played out before them, one remembered, one imagined. They were so still that a ground squirrel moved unheeding between them, and the only sounds were of the wind soughing through the grass, and the steady thumping of their two hearts. A tiny cloud tumbled and rolled its way across the sky, melting and fading away as they stood. Finally Ennis sighed deeply and replaced his hat.
"You okay?" whispered Jack, slipping an arm around his beloved's waist.
"Yeah, darlin, fine. Everthin's fine." He put his arm around Jack's shoulder and squeezed him tightly, and thus they made their way back to the horses. The ride back to the house was solemn and silent but now and again Ennis moved in close, touched Jack's shoulder, brushed his thigh, held his hand.
At nightfall, they built up a fire in the old fireplace, heated up tins of beans and stew, drank whiskey and watched the pictures forming in the flames. Then they spread out their bedrolls and made love, bodies and souls united eternally. The glowing coals cast faint shadows around the room, the great arc of stars wheeled across the night sky, bringing them ever closer to morning. On that morning Jack and Ennis would resume their journey, drive to the opposite corner of the state, back to the place they now thought of as home. Yet both had come to know that, wherever they went, they were no longer wanderers in a foreign land, outlanders in a world of strangers, for each had found his true home deep in the heart of the other.
In the thousandth of a second that separates despair from hope, a life may change, shift its course from bad to good, leave the old sadness and the old world behind forever. In that old world, a man might die by a roadside, drowning in his own blood, reaching out in vain for the one he thought could never love him; a sad-eyed man might live alone with his memories, mourning the one he had denied until it was too late; and young men with all of it before them might lie down to sleep and never wake up. But in this world, hope remains alive.
The road to Lightning Flat.
The End.
My thanks to everyone who's had the patience to stick with this over the past not-quite-year, and the kindness to comment, here and elsewhere. Thank you to MiralParis7 and MountainMouse, and especially to Canstandit, my soundingboard, advisor and helper. Thank you to Ang and Larry and Diana and Jake and all the film-makers, for bringing Brokeback Mountain to me in the first place. But mostly, thank you to Annie and Heath. I can never adequately thank you all for changing my life.