Archive of Our Own ^beta

He opens the creaky door of the trailer every morning to take in the cold for a few moments, let his eyes adjust before the bitter black coffee. He likes to pretend that the air down here is similar to the air up at Brokeback. It never is. It’s barely a memory, it’s more of a shadow. The mountain’s air was filled with Jack and the air around here lacks his sweat and mountain grass. If he would ever leave, there wouldn’t be much he would take with him, except for the stashed postcards, filled with brief, simple messages of dates and places. 

The cabin he moved into after the divorce was removed from the most settled part of the town and of shabby construction. He worked himself like a dog, not used to anything else, and came home to an empty place, an empty bedroom with empty sheets. 

He still enjoyed the deep quiet more than the loud family life. It was easier to let his thoughts swim up Jack’s shore. 

He kept a pack of cigarettes in his pocket, one he believed was Jack’s favorite. He had no reason to think so, only when he lighted one—ashamed but craving a reminder of Brokeback being real—the smoke reminded him of Jack.

——— 

“Daddy, you really oughtta get a phone up in here,” Jenny said. She always did.

“Or you could visit,” he retaliated.

She looked away, all weird. “I might not be able to. Not often. Might be movin and all…”

Ennis looked down at his feet, then at Jenny.  Frowning: “Where?”

“College. Out of state.”

“Got the money for that?”

“Yes. Been saving my whole life. I’ll take out a loan. Monroe will support my livin. I really need this, daddy. Riverton ain’t cut out for me.”

“It ain't cut out for you.”

“It ain’t. They accepted me into a college already. In Denver.”

He didn’t know many people who had left the state. The only one he thought of was Jack, as was quite common. It makes him think of how one time they met with Jack and how he’d developed a Texan drawl in the time. How awful it was to see such a change, and how easy it was to love. 

It took him seconds to reply to Jenny.

“They have? That’s real nice, darlin'.”

Jenny smiled shyly, more like Junior always did, and nodded a thank you. Ennis felt prouder and lonelier than a minute ago.

——— 

Jack disappeared as quickly as he drove up the road to his house.

Still, it gave him a real scare—the thing they had was not real all the time because it was curtained by tall, cold mountains, sometimes with bees around, sometimes with snow. He only wanted it to be real in solitude. He regretted sending him the damned postcard.

“Was Mr Twist in a hurry?” Jenny asked next to him. 

Ennis couldn’t bear to try to understand her curiosity. His heart skipped a beat at his name, and he had the sudden urge to rip away the steering wheel. 

“Yeah, somethin like that…”

“Woulda been nice to meet ‘im.”

Ennis nodded faintly.

That night he drank more whiskey than usual and found the pack of smokes he associated with Jack. Thinking about it now, he wasn't sure if Jack ever particularly liked them. He had nothing else that smelled like him and probably never would. 

He helped himself to more glasses of whiskey at the bar that night—and in the company of no one, he took out a cigarette from the half-empty pack. As the lighter’s flame touched the tip, Ennis looked for the scent he smelled earlier that day, with Jack’s arms around his body. 

There wasn’t so little as a hint of it. Never was. Served him right.

——— 

Following Jenny’s wish, he installed a telephone in his scruffy old cabin. It mostly collected dust, like all the rest of things. Knowing he has one less person to love left in Wyoming left the days more hollow. The dark thing looming over him at all times grew bigger at that time, and it was only whiskey that did anything at all to dilute it.

 He drank at home most nights, filling the cabin with smoke and anxiety. That night, he got so drunk he could barely remember his own name, but he sure as hell remembered Jack’s number. As he dialed it up on the phone, it was the only thing he could or wanted to remember. He was sure it was late, must have been, but he didn’t care. Just a few words. 

Ennis sat down in his only armchair, creaky and old, clutching the phone with one hand. 

He waited and realized with a sudden flux of terror Jack wasn’t the only one who could pick up. He has had one too many, and with that, felt warm deeper—lower—at the sole prospect of hearing Jack. His stomach twisted in disgust.

“Jack Twist. Hello?” He took a deep breath, suddenly taken away by the reality he was facing. He picked up.

“Uh, hello. Evenin.”

“Who is— Ennis?” perky as he said his name.

“Yeah.”

A pause. Breaths from both sides of the lines, relieved, scared, as if standing from something way, way bigger than themselves. They’d never gone this far, and Ennis feared what a terrible thing he was doing.

Ennis heard a few muffled expirations in his ear, unfamiliar distance alarming. He stayed quiet, breathing heavily. He wasn’t sure if it was desire taking over him, the drink, or something entirely else. He couldn’t get himself to speak

“Ennis… Ennis, it’s late. Somethin the matter?” Jack asked. Then there was the low chuckle and with a smirk in the voice, “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Without much hesitation, Ennis hurled out: “Got a place of my own now. It ain’t much at all.”

“How so?”

Hearing Jack got him thinking how he would give anything to have him right there, let him touch his body, take it in, and do what he does so well. The whiskey haze made it hard to think and to act. He stayed silent until Jack had to say, “Hello?”

“Well. It gets lonely.”

“Already?” Jack muttered sweetly, and Ennis almost wondered if Jack could tell where his mind was at. It sent a sharp bolt through his body.  

He sharply laughed. The only moments he didn’t feel out of place were by Jack’s side when no one saw them. Hearing his voice now made him less lonely, but so out of place. He was not supposed to hear Jack in here, or anywhere near the town.

Ennis unwittingly shifted his hips. He only wished there’d be Jack sitting up on him… or maybe on his knees, looking up the way only he can.

“...Ennis? You there?”

He hummed, or he thought he did, but Jack repeated the question with a different tone. It left him feeling dumbfounded—normally, he’d get away with the silence, a hum, a stare. This telephone thing was uncompromising. He might get rid of it right after this.

“Yes…” he managed, wondering if Jack would detest him for thinking about the things he did. But Jack was never all that shy, both a virtue and vice. The side of Jack excited and terrified Ennis all the same.

He grunted in annoyance and it must have been loud because Jack had his kind laugh when he said: “Oh, I reckon you are.”

His voice sounded too similar to how he spoke to Ennis in the tents after sundown. Hearing it through the telephone was even more unnatural than that.

Promptly, he hung up and wrung it out to Jack by himself and after he came he cried much in the same way when they exchanged their first goodbyes, after Brokeback.

———

Ennis cracked while waiting for October, during late spring that they could have been spending together.

It wasn’t his habit to rewind their conservations too closely, especially when they poked at the raw emotional wound that was their relationship. He’s never had much appropriate words or eloquence to make sense of the infernal vortex of love he felt for Jack, but he couldn’t escape from the fight. It’s been on his mind ever since they last held each other. Two utterly broken men trying to keep themselves together, knowing they’ll never fit.

Ennis lay awake those nights, imagining in whose bed Jack might be, and then trying to string together a reason for why that's any of his business. Was there ever a time when Jack was completely his? If yes, he let it slip away from him. 

The floor and walls of the trailer cracked at night, the outside world quieter than quiet except for the gusty wind. It gave a lot up to the imagination—and Ennis couldn't be blamed if his mind ventured to the South, someplace warm. The beds in Mexico must have been softer than the tented bed rolls up in the mountains. Even the ones in Texas. Was there ever a man next to him? Or only his frigid wife, or that mistress of his?

Either-or, Ennis had no one. His heart never allowed for more. The sheets crinkled around his lonely body and no one else’s, and the solitude felt more like a void than peace. For the first time in ages, thinking of Jack couldn’t fill the vacancy he left in Ennis.

Jack never had enough. That was what Ennis couldn’t understand. They already got more than they should have, more years and more nights than men like them deserved to have.

On a chilly night, early May, he sat in his trailer chair and stared at the dark as he drank whiskey. And he got to thinking, about how Jack was bound to getting himself killed one of these days. The way Jack spoke, the way he acted—people would find out soon enough. People would find out and Ennis would be all alone; with Jack gone, only his daughters would be left, and those were outgrowing him. 

“...Sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it,” Jack said last time.

The ranch life gives to empty fields and plains, living alongside the rough nature, adapting the same rough way of living. Giving it a go alone, with no woman by his side, gave him a reputation. Cassie rejecting him served as a reminder that the closer people got to him, the closer they were to realizing how he was. And what the reason for how miserably he loves was.

He got a warning in the rain, like a well-timed alarm bell.

Hiding in his trailer from the downpour, Ennis thought about one lonely night up on Brokeback. Back then, he whittled and could barely see through the heavy rain from the barely dry place in the tent. Jack was up with the sheep up there, all alone, and Ennis thought only about him all night. How much warmer they could be together. He was cold now and he doubted it rained in Texas, but he had no doubts Jack was cold, too. 

And cigarettes or whiskey never really warmed anyone. 

——— 

The rancher he worked for hired new ranchhands, having been urged by an older relative of his. It meant that both Ennis’ workload and paycheck decreased. And despite August having its last stretch, the cold had been getting right to the marrow of his bones and all he knew was that Texas had a sun that shone brighter.

Having to employ his acquaintances and not wanting to pay for Ennis’ share that week, the boss offered that he could take a few days free, unpaid. It was a miserable deal, especially considering Ennis already had to be frugal to pay for his children. But something nudged at him, reminding him how sour they left things months ago. Maybe it was a mistake to betray their August.

Ennis still wasn’t enough of a fool to take a trip down there unannounced, like Jack once had. That was why he called the Twist household for the second time. He called from home and was glad he could—at the end of the day, it felt less perverse than going up the phone booth.

Dialing up the number felt like second nature to him.

“Hello?” a detached female voice echoed through the line.

“Hello. Uh, this is… this is Ennis Del Mar.”

“Yes? Hello.”

“I—I was hopin I could speak with Jack Twist? I’m an old friend of his.”

“Wait up…” the woman, undoubtedly Lureen, must have put the phone away and called for Jack somewhere in the house. Then she said, “I know about you two,” a pause that frightened Ennis, “You that fishin buddy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Right. Well, he’s here.”

Lureen didn’t say anything more before Ennis listened to the shuffling sounds of them exchanging the phone. And then, at last, the one voice he always yearns to hear.

“Hello? Jack Twist.”

“It’s Ennis,” he said and hurled out, “I know it won’t be exactly warm anymore… But I’ve been thinkin about October.”

“Have you?” Jack’s smile spilled through the telephone line, so different from his wife. Ennis closed his eyes and pretended he was home, waiting for Jack to say some more so he could bask in his fathom presence. “I hoped it was you. We rarely get calls this late and last time…”

Ennis cut into his sentence, to spare himself the shame of recollection: “What about this week?” 

All he knew about love was from Jack. He could give him this trip if nothing else.

Jack agreed and Ennis felt like he had a target on his back each time he went outside. This has been way too easy. 

——— 

The sight of the shape of Jack’s car winding down the road in the distance breathed into Ennis a new breath of life. This was why Jack wanted to meet in August. Nature became more alive, enclosing the two of them between it. The mountains were shaped distinctly on the horizon, inviting them to get buried and lost and forgotten. 

The first thing Jack did when he stepped out of the car was kiss Ennis with fervor much like they kissed when first reuniting. Ennis called him darling and the lonesome chill left his body as he saw peace washing over Jack’s face.

They went about the trip as if nothing had changed, as if Ennis wasn’t now balancing on a rope over the valley, walking out bravery act he’d been avoiding for decades. They set up camp, searched around the area, made dinner, and drank only little before they fucked.

After, they fell asleep in the tent, Jack in Ennis’ embrace. He let Jack drift away before him, enjoying having him in his arms as if he could protect him from everything in the world. In truth, it was the mountains and rivers protecting them. Ennis never could stand up to any man, but he was already defying his nature. So he stayed silent the entire night, as he did all the nights before, only pulling Jack closer to his chest.

——— 

“I’m thinkin of gettin a divorce.”

“For that neighbor’s girl?”

“What? Oh, god, no,” Jack chuckled and picked up a rock from the ground to play with. Ennis waited for him to explain more. 

They were sitting on one log, a campfire in front of them, passing between them a bottle of whiskey and a joint. Ennis liked the repetition of their trips. It almost felt like if they could go through the same thing enough times, it would resolve itself down the road.

It took Jack long before he spoke again, “I’m so damn tired of it all. Ain’t you?”

Ennis didn’t know what Jack wanted him to say, he never liked when Jack got like this, all deep in thought and urging. He was never capable of giving him the answer he wanted to hear, and even considering it terrified him greatly.

“You…” Jack rubbed his forehead and then looked up at the moon. They never look each other in the eye when discussing life. “You already know how I feel, hm?”

Ennis only mumbled nothing in particular, shook his head vaguely, and took a deep drink. 

A long time passed before Jack spoke again. Ennis couldn’t dare to. His heart ached too sharp. 

“It’s the loneliest life. What we have here.” 

And he looked at Jack then, properly; the joint between his lips, the mustache now thick and familiar, sad distant eyes. The sorrowful look made Ennis say something, for once. He gulped down more whiskey first. He was already here, his actions should speak louder than anything he could put into words. Ennis never understood that. He was already doing more than he ever could for them. How could Jack want even more as if they deserved it?

“Well…” he drew out the word and searched for the next ones. With a stiff smile, he said, “Don’t feel so lonely right about now, Jack.”

But Jack kept staring ahead, at the imposing moonlit landscape. He looked as if the words saddened him. Ennis couldn’t keep his eyes away, so he watched the smoke go up and over Jack’s face and disappear into the starry sky.