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Everyone in the county knows Ennis del Mar is the man to call when cows get sick or horses won't foal; everyone in the county has reservations about it on account of what they like to call 'that way of his', but they do it anyway because no one gets down to business like del Mar. This is why Ennis is on his knees at three in the morning in John Wilson's barn, his arm stuck so far up a calving heifer that he's missing his elbow something fierce. This is also why he's still there at ten in the morning, tending to an ailing horse, and at two in the afternoon, talking with a stable boy about what in the hell he's been feeding these skittish colts.
"You got to wrap your head around this, son," he says, going over with patience for the tenth time what he went over days before, and is certain to go over days from now yet again. He thinks maybe if he'd had a son, he'd talk to him this way, except he's sure his own son wouldn't be quite so dim-witted, nor so eager to muck out stalls to get away from these little talks.
The whole Wilson place carries the feel of Ennis's childhood: the musty smell of old buildings; the sweet scent of cut grass; squat buildings rising out of the land and decaying near as soon as they were built. He feels comfort in wandering the familiar landscape.
John Wilson pays him the agreed-upon fee, twice over. "For staying all day," he says, shaking Ennis's hand. "And for a new shirt."
Ennis smiles just a little. He's used to buying new shirts. Comes with the territory. "Much obliged," he says.
"Cup of coffee for the road?" John asks, and means it.
Ennis nods, mumbles a yes, and finds himself ensconced in the kitchen, gulping down a cup and a half. Better than toothpicks for keeping his eyes open. It's a long drive ahead.
"You put that stallion of yours out to stud this year?" John asks, offering Ennis a biscuit. Ennis refuses, since he knows it's got to be as hard as a wood plank; John never covers up those biscuits, and leaves them out to 'season' in the air.
"Not this year. Next, maybe."
"How bout your herd?"
"Sold a few head. Gettin by."
"Good, good." John breaks the biscuit in two by slamming it on the table. Ennis wonders about the man's teeth, which must be made of iron. "Guess you'll be needin more land soon, that herd keeps growin."
"Got plenty to do as it stands." Ennis pushes back his chair, seats his hat on his head, rubs sleep from his eyes. "I'll be hittin the road now."
"Thanks again," John says. He sees Ennis to the door, closes it quietly behind him. Ennis remembers the first time they met, how John barely spoke, wouldn't look him in the eye. Later he told him it was just one of those things. "Wasn't nothin," John said more than a year later, unasked, but apologetic as hell. "Hell, Ennis. I sure am sorry for...you know."
Times do change, but not much. Ennis travels light, and he always keeps one eye on the road, and one on the passers-by.
Ennis once confided his idea of a place of their own to Alma, laid it all out for her in startling detail, from the dropped roof of the ranch house to the backdrop of mountains he saw in his mind's eye, sheltering their home in its shadow. Alma listened with patience, given as how Ennis rarely talked of such things and hardly ever let loose with a blue streak of daydreams, but Ennis had the feeling she was picturing her own place, somewhere closer to town, less expensive. She cautioned him they'd be up to their ears in bills once the babies started coming. Ennis knew it was true, but he didn't let that distract him from the only happy dream he had.
He also didn't tell her that he was putting money aside a little bit at a time, dimes here, dollars there, until he'd accumulated a layer of bills and the coins didn't clink when he dropped them into the coffee can.
From the day they were married, he worked extra jobs - a ranch hand, a cowpoke, even a stable boy - just to have some set-aside. Alma complained he was never home, that they didn't behave like proper married folks should, spending time together respectable-like in town at the picture show or the one lonely restaurant, but Ennis had no time for that. He'd never been very good at reaching out for his future, but the image of it refused to fade, so he'd resolved to do his best.
Things didn't play out the way Alma planned. She waited every month, times of hope and expectation, until her flow came again. Ennis learned to avoid her when she locked herself in the bathroom and wouldn't speak, understanding as he did that it was a womanly thing he could neither help nor comfort, a woman's desire a man had only a small part in, though he did sometimes wonder what kind of father he would be. He had a thought to ask Alma, but such questions only made her eyes take on a distant shine, as if he caused her grief. It was the last thing he wanted, so he let her be, and contented himself with riding the open prairie under the winter sky.
Time came that Alma's sadness was so wide and deep, there was barely room for Ennis in the same little house with it. He would have comforted her, if he'd known how or she had let him, but she had no patience for it, or for him. Eventually she took the few things she'd brought with her to the marriage, and some of what they'd acquired together, and went back to her momma.
Ennis quit his job and gave up the ranch shack as soon as the divorce was final. Riverton was a nowhere town and there were better jobs to be had in the backwater. He took the money out of the coffee can but didn't count it; it settled into his pocket easy, and he hit the road with a firm idea of where he wanted to be in the short term. Long term would take care of itself, like it always had.
The wind kicks up just before sundown, like a horse bucks to make its temper known. A gust catches the side of the truck and tries to swing it, but Ennis is used to it, and besides they make trucks sturdy and low for just this reason. He gives her a little more gas and leaves a good trail of dust between him and where he's headed.
He stops at the general store in White Spring for groceries - flour, coffee, some bacon, a few oranges, a loaf of bread. Hank Daniels tosses it all in a paper bag willy-nilly, not caring much if the bread gets mashed, and drops a couple apples in for free. "Keeps the doctor away," he says, grinning at Ennis. He doesn't ask where he's been, because he's already heard. Miles don't matter in the country; the grapevine has reach. "Listen, Ennis, been meanin to ask you - you got a few hours to spare to take a look at that horse I bought? That beast ain't right, I'm tellin you. Needs a firmer hand than I can give him."
"Be happy to," Ennis says, hefting the sack. He's not really all that happy to, but goodwill is hard to come by, and he's collecting points. "Say the word."
"Come Saturday next?"
"All right."
He deposits the sack in the passenger seat and sits behind the wheel for a few minutes, watching the town quiet down and the blue of the sky deepen, then darken to black. Overhead, clouds twist and twine, then part for the stars. He leans forward, eyes cast to the heavens, then pops out of the truck again, heedless of the chill in the air. The bite of the wind has backed off with the last of the sun, but that doesn't matter; it's the stars, the open sky, that bring a smile to Ennis's face.
Too late to drop mail at the post office, so he sets off for home. Not long now, not long.
The rodeo circuit was a wide road filled with clowns and dudes and every stripe of fan, young and old. They formed a barrier between the riders and the world, a protective curtain of excitement Ennis never had much use for - the smell of bulls made him think of branding, his least favorite job in the world. He parked his truck at the edge of the field and followed the smells of hot dogs and lemonade closer to the ring, listened to the clatter of gates and the warped echo of the crowd as another rider fell to the dirt. This was a world he wasn't much at home in, though it made sense to him Jack would like to be in front of the crowd, with his broad smile.
Ennis tucked his hands in his front pockets and looked around. People everywhere, so many that he might search hours without running across what he came for.
He stopped a rodeo clown, waited while he lifted his hat and rubbed the cuff of his sleeve over his white-painted face, smearing dirt and sweat across his forehead. "You know a fella by the name a Jack Twist?" he asked, and before he had the name out, the man was nodding.
"Rode earlier," the clown said. His beat-up hat looked like it'd been trampled by a hundred bulls; it had seen better days.
"Where can I find him?"
The clown pointed a grubby hand toward the stands, where a considerable sea of humanity crowded against the fence, hanging on its creaky timbers. "There."
Ennis nodded his thanks and moved away. From a distance, all of them could be Jack: the set of their shoulders, eager and captivated, watching the rest of the field compete. When he got closer, he was able to pick out Jack without trouble. Crazy, the way his hands started to shake, like he was struck with palsy. His mouth was dry. A moment of terrible apprehension came over him, a certainty that Jack would not want him there after so much time passed by.
But then Jack turned, and the sun lit his face just so, and his stunned smile blinded Ennis, made him glad they were standing there in the midst of a crowd so he wouldn't do something foolish. Damned if he could understand why Jack brought the devil out in him; sudden wariness made the muscles in his neck tighten, even though he could feel that smile curling through him like lightning.
"Ennis Del Mar, goddamn," Jack said, and Ennis was glad as hell to hear his voice, so familiar that he heard it sometimes in his sleep. Jack jumped down from the fence, took Ennis's hand in his own and shook it, grinning all the while. "What in hell brings you out here?"
"Passin through," Ennis said, though he knew Jack would immediately take it for an excuse, and damn right, too. "Thought I'd stop, see if you..." He lost his voice for a moment when Jack squeezed his hand. Words fled him.
"Got a room, temporary," Jack was saying, his eyes flashing something Ennis recognized very well. "Better'n livin in the truck bed, I guess. We can get us some whiskey, talk over old times."
"You bet," Ennis said, lifting his chin so Jack could see his face.
First thing after the groceries are dropped in the kitchen, he feeds the chickens. Not that he ever wanted chickens, but there's no doubt the eggs come in handy, both for eating and for selling. There were times when he was building the house that he thought he might starve, and he did kill one of those chickens. Never would have thought he'd feel so damned guilty about it, but he did. Later he figured out it was because they were his own, not something he was beholden for someone else for. The thought of it made him dizzy for two days.
After the chickens comes the herd. Then the horses, last, never least. He's dead on his feet, barely functioning.
In the distance, out at the far pasture, he sees Jack on horseback, riding the edge of the fence line. He watches for a moment, then goes back to evening chores.
It's near seven o'clock, well past dark, when he gets the fire going in the main room and crashes down on the floor, smelly shirt stripped off and in a heap on the floor, boots on top, stocking feet stuck out toward the fire. He's asleep in moments.
When the front door opens some time later, then closes, he groans and sits up, groggy from the half-nap. He can't tell how much, but he knows time has passed. "Where'n the hell you been," he mumbles.
"Might ask you the same thing," Jack says, and Ennis doesn't have to turn around to know Jack's smiling. He hears the laughter in his voice. He wants to grumble about Jack making fun of him, but he's too damned tired, so it's a relief when Jack says nothing more, just drops down beside him and pulls him back to the ground. There's a brief tussle, a push and pull for position, and then they are curled together. Jack smells of night air and fresh hay.
Ennis sighs. "I'm fuckin hungry, boy, I'm tellin you. What you goin to do about it?"
"Goddamn, Ennis, you and your stomach." Jack sighs, too, and heaves Ennis off him. "Fine. You bring the groceries?"
"Hell yes." Ennis flops back down, folds his hands over his stomach. Waits. He can afford to wait, now.
Not more than thirty minutes after they'd been reunited, Jack closed the door behind him and tossed the key on the table, just before Ennis got his hands on Jack's body and pushed him into the door, held him there, kissing him hard enough to pull a groan from Jack. Everything from there on was just like it ought to be, or so Ennis thought: a few tugs on their clothes and they were naked as jaybirds, tumbling and roughhousing across the room, hitting the bed sideways in a fit of laughter. Jack needed no urging at all to climb up on the bed and go to all fours, and with some cheap salve Jack shoved at him for aid, Ennis sunk home like it had just been yesterday instead of two years.
His hands fit different against the hollows of Jack's hips; the bones were sharper there, and he could see Jack's ribs prominent at his sides. When he closed his eyes, he caught his breath at the idea that Jack was hungry, that his body wanted more than he could give it, but then Jack grunted beneath him and Ennis pushed deeper, and all thoughts fled his mind for a time.
The questions came later, when he had Jack in his arms, and even then he wasn't ready for them. "Friend, I'll ask again. What in the hell you doin here?"
"Trackin you down," Ennis said, gruff, though he had no condemnation in him for Jack's silence. He knew the reasons why. "Coulda wrote. Coulda sent word."
"You was off to get married," Jack said, his tone quiet.
Ennis splayed his fingers over Jack's skinny chest, ran his hand down to Jack's belly, let it rest there. "Did it, too. But Alma couldn't have no kids, so we split. She went back to her momma down at Pass Junction."
"Bad news," Jack said, sounding sorrier than Ennis would've predicted, and Ennis's heart gave a jump.
"Yeah," he said, and words left him again. Fortunately, Jack had some to spare.
"This bull ridin ain't for me no more, Ennis. I ain't cut out for it. Got me a broken arm couple months ago, a broken rib or two still healin. Gonna need to find me more stable work, somethin to put a few bucks in my pocket so I can have a decent meal ever now and then."
Fear welled up deep inside Ennis, turning his stomach and making the taste sour in his mouth. For a moment he wasn't sure what to say, and the urge to turn away, bolt for the door, was so strong he felt his arms twitch where they rested on Jack's chest. Just then Jack shifted in his arms, turned so Ennis couldn't see his face, as if he knew. "I met a pretty cowgirl on the circuit. Lureen...she ain't livin off her daddy's money, but it's there if she wants it." He sighed. "Maybe...might be time for me to give a wife and kids a try."
Ennis felt the hard lump of words in the back of his throat, so sharp he could almost taste blood in his mouth. There was no way to ask any of the things he was thinking, no way to suggest them. No way from here to the other side of his own wants.
Jack's hand came up, caught Ennis's wrist; he twined his fingers in with Ennis's own, and was still for a minute. Then he said, "I got no options, Ennis."
Just like that, something turned inside Ennis, something crazy and churned up, wild like lightning, and Ennis tried to push it away, since he was never about lightning. That was Jack, Jack with his crazy ideas. But he swallowed hard and set his jaw, and the picture of his ideal place came to mind, just as it always had, and strange how he had never once seen Alma in that picture. "Got some ideas bout that," Ennis said, thinking of the bills in his shirt pocket, now on the ratty carpet beside the door.
Jack went very still, though beneath his arm, Ennis could feel Jack's heart racing. "That so?"
"Yeah," Ennis whispered, burying his face in Jack's thick hair, and the tight ache in his throat eased some. "That's so."
Guilt gets Ennis off the ground and gets him working. Not that he isn't tired, but there are more important things to consider, like his stomach, and the sight of Jack cooking, which is a never-ending source of amusement.
Jack moves some bacon around in a pan with a fork while Ennis opens a can of pears. "Worse chow than up in the pasture," he remarks, meeting Jack's eyes, warming to the quicksilver flash of his smile.
"Not hardly. Pears, bacon, a little bit of bread. What we've got ourselves here is a meal, friend."
"You only say that on account of how you still can't cook," Ennis says, pouring the fruit onto a plate, syrup and all. The smell of bacon, crisp and smoky, fills the room.
"Speak for yourself." Jack forks the bacon, still hissing and jumping, off on a plate and sets it on the tiny makeshift table made from stacked crates. Ennis sets down two tin cups, two plates, and two forks. They stand looking at their simple place settings for a moment before Jack glances up, catching Ennis's eye. No need to say much. Ennis catches his breath; it's like being dragged beneath a waterfall, and he ducks his head down.
"Dig in," Jack says, lifting a plate. Ennis joins him, a plate in one hand and a loaf of bread in the other.
Later, they sit by the fire and pass a bottle of whiskey back and forth, and neither of them thinks to miss the stars overhead, or the clouds shading the moon. It's still there with them, invisible, riding the wave of memory.
"Picked up a few dollars today from John Wilson," Ennis says, staring into the fire.
"You'd have more work'n you could handle, you let yourself take most the jobs these folks offer." Jack takes a long swallow of the whiskey, eyes closed.
"Got more work on this place'n the two of us can handle as it is," Ennis reminds him.
"Hell, I know. Shooed away a couple of Tim Taylor's sheep today, nosin around the south fences. They was too stupid to figure out which way to run. Made me think of them godawful sheep on Brokeback."
Ennis smiles. He thinks of all of it as just another job, be they dumb sheep or obstinate cows, but Jack's right. Those sheep on Brokeback had been some of the dumbest he'd ever run across. He takes the bottle from Jack's outstretched hand, letting his fingers linger over Jack's when they touch, and finds the lip of the bottle wet from Jack's mouth. A pleasant warmth flows through him, and not from the licking fire.
"You pick up the mail?" Jack said, almost managing to sound like he doesn't care much, like there isn't a specific reason for asking, though Ennis knows better.
"Too late. By the time I got away from Wilson's-"
"I know, I know." Jack sighs and stretches his legs out, crossing his feet. "It don't matter."
Ennis vows to himself to get there before the place closes on Monday. He knows Jack is sure that somewhere in the recesses of the unread mail, a letter from his momma waits. He's been asking her to come for a number of years, but there's been only silence on her part. She writes her way around the question, when she addresses it directly, which she doesn't often. Mostly she talks about the farm, and how hard times are getting harder, and how Jack's son of a bitch father won't take no charity from his goddamned son and so he can just quit sending the money now, thank you kindly - Ennis still feels like strangling the bastard when he thinks about it - but she never says yes to coming where Jack is. If that means the old bastard stays put, that's just fine with Ennis, but he knows it isn't fine with Jack. For that much, he is sorry.
They never talk about it, though, like so many other things. It's just understood in the way Jack's face falls to sadness at the short letters, or the small stories he tells about his father, the casual mentions of how his daddy beat him raw every day til Jack was old enough to stand his ground, and even once or twice after that. Every time Ennis thinks about it, rage bubbles up inside him, once hot and immediate, now cold and deadly.
The room grows warm, and Jack slips the bottle from Ennis's hand, freeing him up to fold them over his stomach. He dozes on and off until Jack kicks his foot and says, "Headin to bed. Come with or sleep here, does me no never-mind."
Come summer, they met in a broken-down hotel in Laramie and pooled their money on the bed, counting change as meticulously as Ennis had once rationed his meager food in hard times. Enough for a couple of acres, maybe two or three head of cattle, nothing to get too worked up about. Even so, it was the most money Ennis had ever been able to save, scraped together with sweat and blisters and long cold nights without sleep, and he had the calluses on his hands to show for it. Combined with Jack's - a concept he had never considered previously - they had the start of what might be a good little ranch someday.
Ennis looked down at what was to come, written on the bedspread with dollar bills, and not for the first time he wondered how it would ever come to pass, even with the funds to make it so. Cold sweat broke out on his lip and he wiped it away with the back of his sleeve.
Jack glanced at him, eyes narrowed, then bowed his head. He picked up the money, counted it again, though they'd already counted it ten times or more; then he stowed it in a battered envelope and folded it in half, carefully, as if he was afraid of damaging it. He deposited it in the drawer of the bedside table, alongside a softback Gideon bible with half its cover gone, and closed the drawer quietly. Facing away from Ennis, he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled off his boots, one at a time, dropping each on the floor.
Ennis got up and paced to the window, lit a smoke for him and one for Jack and brought them back to the bed, which was still made with a rumpled burnt-yellow spread. Jack took the cigarette, pressed it between his lips as he unbuttoned his shirt. Still he said nothing.
The silence weighed on Ennis. Not like the comfortable silences he was used to with Jack. This was something heavy, a thickness in the air. He thinned his lips, then slid the butt of the cigarette between and drew a long drag, watching Jack's hunched shoulders as his shirt slid off them. He reached out, put his hand on Jack's shoulder, drew his thumb over Jack's collarbone, tracing its lines. Jack flinched, but didn't move away. Then he said, in the smallest voice Ennis had ever heard, "I know what you're thinking. I know it ain't gonna be easy. Shit, Ennis, fuck if I know how we'll do it."
Ennis pulled his hand away. Not like he didn't think about it, worry over it, every spare second of the day his eyes were open. Not like he hadn't thought a hundred times about hitting the road and never coming back, and leaving a hundred miles between him and their good intentions. Not like he could make himself go, even when he was sitting in his sixth-hand pickup, a map on the seat beside him. But he didn't have reassurance in him for the things he doubted, so he sat back and said nothing until his shoulders took on the same hunch Jack's shoulders held.
The room was nearly pitch black before Jack reached out, switched on the lamp and said, "We maybe oughta put up separate places on the land, one for each of us."
Ennis glanced up then. Jack's shoulders were so tight, Ennis could have bounced a quarter off his skin and watched it hit the far wall.
"Might be best," Ennis said slowly. He knew what people would think. Separate places wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. That cold, hard feeling was back in the pit of his stomach.
"Ennis," Jack said, his head still bowed. He set his cigarette on the edge of the nightstand, ashy end hanging off. Smoke curled up from the lit end, a slow trail of s and l up to the ceiling. "Them things you seen when you was younger...maybe-we shouldn't..." His voice broke off there, stumbling over words Ennis should be saying but wasn't. Couldn't. "We could move up to my daddy's place, for a while. There's work needs doin there. It ain't the best thing, but maybe it's the only way."
After one more long draw on his cigarette, Ennis stubbed it out in a marble-green ashtray with deep burn marks in the bottom, black and full of trapped ash, and said the only thing he knew to say. It rushed out of him on one breath, but there was steel underneath. "Jack, we got to see this thing through if we're ever goin to. Won't get another chance." Ennis set the ashtray on the floor and reached for Jack, pulled him roughly back on the bed and straddled his hips. Whatever had been in Jack's eyes moments before was clearing like storm clouds drifting apart, but some darkness from that troubled gaze remained. Ennis took it for a mirror of what was in his own heart, but they were on the trail, now. No going back.
He showed Jack the best way he knew how, one hand going to the buttons of his fly and the other to cup Jack's neck, pull him closer. Knowing that he was the cause of that look, he tried to erase it, let Jack know his mind was made up, but even when his mouth was on Jack's, he could feel the storm in him, passing on into Jack, all the worry, all the fear.
Ennis crawls into bed behind Jack, shivering against the scratchy sheets, and curls his hand around Jack's hip. Jack stirs, presses back; Ennis pushes his hips forward, lets his cock rest at the small of Jack's back just to hear Jack's sharp intake of breath, then the shivery exhalation Ennis loves, has loved since the first time he heard it, up on the mountain. He slides a hand down Jack's chest, over the fur there, across hard nipples, then lets his splayed fingers rest against Jack's belly while he presses forward again.
"Ennis," Jack murmurs, his cock hardening even before Ennis can get his hand there to wrap around it. He runs his teeth over the nape of Jack's neck and squeezes gently, and Jack moans out loud, never one to keep quiet.
In return, Ennis grunts, then pulls Jack onto his back and into Ennis's arms. This way he can see Jack's face. Time was, he didn't want to see, couldn't stand to know what Jack was feeling, because it was too close to what he felt himself. Now he can't stand to miss it. Jack's eyes are open, half-hazy in the dim light, so dark they are barely blue; his mouth is open, and Ennis closes his own over it, taking deep kisses from Jack, like they're his due. Jack loops one arm around his neck, pulling him closer, so close they are skin to skin all the way down, and Ennis feels Jack hard against him.
He breaks off, and Jack lets loose of him, waiting. Ennis rolls away and gropes down beside the bed, looking for the Vaseline, which is never where it ought to be when he wants it. His fingers close on the metal lid and he yanks it up, open, fingers pushing into the thick stuff, and then he gets down to business. Jack watches, his hand gliding up and down on his cock, until Ennis puts one hand on his hip, and Jack turns on his stomach, long arms stretching up over his head, face turned to the side. Ennis grabs himself quick to stop himself from shooting. Even after all this time, that same silver feeling, pure joy and a rush of wanting, is as strong as it ever was.
Jack raises up, and Ennis slides into him, no prelude, no need. Jack sighs out a soft moan, arches his back impatiently when Ennis stays still inside him. Ennis stops him with one hand, drops his head down until his face touches the bare skin of Jack's back. He kisses Jack's spine, bolder now than he was all those years ago when it was new, and waits for the shiver that tells him Jack is ready for him. He can feel Jack vibrating under his touch, his need mirrored in Ennis's shaking fingertips.
Ennis thrusts in slow and deep, then wraps his arms around Jack's shaking body and pulls him up. Jack's head drops low, and Ennis tightens his arms, his palm resting across Jack's thudding heart, Jack seated on his thighs. He gentles Jack, whispering, shhh, shhhh, and holds him there, waiting, until Jack's shaking eases, until his heart feels less likely to burst straight out of his chest. Then Ennis rolls his hips again, slow, deep, joined tightly to Jack.
"Christ, Ennis," Jack gasps, and Ennis pushes him forward, thrusts in hard as he dares in time to Jack's grunting cries. He strokes Jack's cock a few times, then lets Jack take that over. Ennis's teeth catch the edge of skin just at the joint of Jack's neck and shoulder, biting a little, not enough to mark but enough to sting. He slides his hands down Jack's chest to feel his muscles draw tight. It isn't long after that, a few more thrusts, deep, and Jack tightens around him, pulls Ennis down into his climax, into a blinding rush of pleasure so sharp Ennis can't breathe at all.
It's long minutes before Ennis's heart slows, and even when it does, he doesn't let loose of Jack. They fall asleep that way, pressed together.
They settled on some land thirty miles outside of Parcifal, Montana, in view of the mountains that reminded them of Brokeback, though Jack never said so and Ennis wasn't prone to sentimental observances.
"What'ya think?" Jack asked, standing in the middle of an open field, tall grass to his waist. He pushed his hat brim back from his face and squinted up into the noonday sun.
Ennis shrugged, looked up into the sun, then down at Jack's face, and saw it all written there, as if someone had drawn him a picture. "Nice enough," he said, and Jack's grin flashed, just as though Ennis had called it heaven.
They had barely enough for ten acres, with a promise from the fella who sold it to them that they could buy up more if they came to him within the year with the cash. It seemed to Ennis when they walked the property line that he had never been so free; Jack glanced up at him from beneath the brim of his hat, and nothing could properly contain the grin he directed Ennis's way. Ennis knew how it was to feel that way, had been feeling it all along.
Just as they had always done, they set about making camp, but this time it was permanent. They pitched a tent with unease, Jack ragging Ennis about it because he'd said he was done with tents, and settled in with one eye on the horizon. Jack bought up enough lumber for two houses, a fact Ennis was set to pick on him for until he realized that it would be just that, two places. The idea sent him into a melancholy that lasted for a couple days, and he rode the perimeter of the land, marking fenceposts, until it passed.
Days, they sawed lumber and hauled up frames, settling in. Nights, they retired to the tent, where Jack showed Ennis his considerable skill at things Ennis had never even imagined, and Ennis found himself eager to turn in, to pull Jack into his arms and embrace this thing he still had no name for, as though it was fleeting and might fly away. By day sometimes a furious sense of unease consumed him, but he felt as though he'd given himself over to his fear now, and it was too late to take it back.
The night before they finished the house, they sat side by side on the ground in front of the tent, each wrapped in twilight shadows, lost in their own thoughts. Ennis knew he should start the fire, get the evening's business done, but for some reason he wasn't inclined to hurry. Twilight deepened into night, and Jack threw an arm over his shoulders, pulled him closer.
"Friend, I don't know about you, but I ain't interested in building two houses," he said softly, not looking at Ennis, as if afraid of what his answer would be.
"It ain't a dealbreaker," Ennis said, not looking at Jack, either. In his heart, he knew it should be; it was all stupid and crazy and goddamned if one of them wouldn't end up dead, and that was what made his heart twist up inside him and ache, but here they were and too late to be thinking about it now.
"All right then," Jack said, shaking him a little, pleased. Ennis had the sense that they had just stepped over a line neither of them had even known was there. His belly tightened with fear, then eased.
Jack was quiet a moment, then said, "Gonna need a barn. Got that extra lumber now. What'd'ya think?"
"Sounds about right," Ennis said.
In the morning, with the fire gone out and the stove simmering low, the floorboards are like ice underfoot. Ennis jumps as far as he can from the bedside to the main room, bouncing like a top. "That's right, you just keep sleeping," he mutters toward the lump in the bed, not really all that resentful. Jack'll be up in short order anyhow; it's near dawn, and Jack don't sleep much past when the first faint light hits the windows. Conditioned by all that farm work, maybe. He yanks on a shirt, a pair of jeans that has seen better days, gathers up some socks, all in haphazard order.
Dressed now, he stokes up the fire without trouble, then draws their two chairs over to it. Coffee next, brewed in a speckled tin pot. Ennis tosses the dregs of last night's coffee into the fire, then sets the cups side by side on the hearth. They aren't the same cups he washed every day on Brokeback, but it doesn't matter much; they look the same, mean the same, and they serve the same purpose, in the end.
The rooster crows, and damned if that isn't one more thing Ennis never cared for, but has grown used to over time. Right on cue Jack appears in the doorway, shirt hanging off one shoulder, his eyes heavy with sleep.
"Mornin," he says, giving up a lopsided grin, and Ennis thinks Jack was right after all: this isn't heaven, but it's near enough that a man might get confused from time to time.
End
February - April 2006
To him who in the love of Nature holds Communion with her visible forms, she speaks a various language.
-- William Cullen Bryant