Notes:
What follows is a Brokeback Mountain fanfiction based on "fairy tale" themes. It contains mature themes such as male/male sex, graphic violence, and rape. The characters belong to Annie Proulx and the movie makers who brought them to life. No money is being made from of this.
This is, for all its angst, a happy-ending story. Because it is based on fairy tales, some plot elements are far-fetched. The angst factor is amplified, but so is the fluff. Each chapter may be from a different character's point of view, and in a different style.
A very special thanks to my beta, Jenny/jennydcf. She put an unprecedented amount of work into this, and on a daily basis.
Many chapters of this were previously posted at the livejournal community 31_days. The themes come from there as well.
"You got a better idea?"
"I, did once."
When the crazy ordeal, the most terrifying day of Ennis's life, was at its close, he was left alone on a sunken cot, cotton and worn wool pulled chin-high, more exhausted than he'd felt in forever and a day. Still, sleep couldn't find its way into his drafty trailer to comfort him. When he closed his eyes, the
scene played over and over again with a defiant mind of its own, like Jack was still living up there and the fight was still going on. Ennis clamped his lids down hard and tried to concentrate on other things, on price per pound of stock, but whenever he started to ease his guard, slip into sleep, Jack's words hammered through his head.
He bore that burden two nights and one day. Waking moments and unslept nights Ennis spent carrying Jack's words, a lonely Atlas, because Jack was his world- the world he knew now he'd broken down from Earth to earth, Fire to ashes.
It was at the close of the second dreamless nightmare-night that Ennis found his body was moving against his will. He got up before dawn and drove into town. For a moment he thought he saw a person's shadow watching from the alleyway near the post office, and Ennis nearly turned toward home for good. The shadow, he saw then, was a stray dog, lost and without a place in this world. Still screaming in his head not to do this thing, he found a shaky, clammy hand grappling with the black pay phone. The quarters seemed large and clumsy as he sunk them in one at a time. His mouth as filled with cotton-balls. His eyelids felt clammy, too, and he squinted against the rising of the sun.
"Hello?" A woman answered him from way out in Lightning Flat.
"Uh, is Jack there?"
"Hold on."
A short time later, Ennis heard some mumbles and whispers. Words, while not harsh, were hurried at dawn in the Twist household.
"Hello?" Jack's voice.
Ennis couldn't find his, though. It was like Jack had stolen his very breath away. He squinted back into the sun and tried to make a sound, any sound, come from his throat. He managed a little drowning noise. It was all that was needed.
"Ennisss?" The hiss was alarming.
"I... uh, I..."
"Why are you calling me?" Jack didn't exactly sound happy. Ennis'd thought they'd put things in their proper places after the argument, but Jack's voice told him otherwise.
"Listen, Jack... I can't... I mean, I been thinkin' on what you said." And it was the truth. For the past two nights and one day, the scene that had been playing over and over in his brain had been the one at the lakeshore, truths more than he knew how to bear piling high on his conscience. But under it always like a curtain that changed the color of light falling into a room was the night on a lakeshore so many years ago. "What if you and me had a little ranch together somewhere, little cow-and-calf operation, it'd be some sweet life." Ennis had been thinking on what Jack said.
"About August?"
Not exactly. "Any way... any way you could see fit ta find yourself back here so we could talk about this more... uh, in person?" Because what he had to say shouldn't be said over the phone. The sigh on the other end let Ennis know that if he got this wish it must come with a price. "You know I just got here, an' I want to visit with the folks. We don't got anything to say we didn't already say, I reckon."
"Well... Yeah, uh, I do."
"You do?"
"Yup."
"Well, why don't you just tell it to me now? I got a be goin' soon, nice as it is to hear from you." Ennis heard the sarcasm there, and it stung.
"I... I's just..."
"I don't got time for this shit."
"Jack, dammit. I'm tryin' a do something, here."
Jack must have heard something in Ennis's voice, cause his breath turned from hard with anger to hard with something that seemed more like exhaustion. "Listen, friend, I gotta go."
"Jack." Suddenly Ennis was desperate to get his point across, keep Jack on the line, do what was needed. He hadn't wanted to do this over the phone, but Jack wasn't exactly giving him a choice. And something, something deep inside Jack's voice was telling Ennis he might not ever hear that voice again if he let receiver touch base. If he let that little plastic triangle fold back into the phone, Ennis would forever fold into himself as well, and the line would be dead. "Jack, I... Jus' listen, alright?" He paused, hearing breathing to let him know Jack was listening, was still there like Jack was always still
there, whether he wanted to be or not. "I... I don't have nothin' here. I got a shitty trailer. I haven't seen Junior in almos' a year, Francine in... in longer'n that, anyway. Hell, I don't hardly got a job. Just some old cowboy. 'Could replace me with a kid in ten minutes flat, an' there's talk a sellin' the ranch. I got nothin'."
"Yeah, and? You chose that life, Ennis. I told you you chose it and I meant it. So don't you go an' try ta pin this one-"
"I know it, Jack! Jus'... listen. I always wanted a be my own boss, see, run my own spread. You think you can still get that money from LD?"
Ennis couldn't hear Jack's breath or even Jack's silence over the hammering in his own ears as his vision turned red in the golden dawn, blood rushing everywhere.
"No, reckon not." Jack was a long time answering, and his answers were slow and deliberate. "LD died 'bout two years ago."
"Oh. Sorry to hear 'bout that."
"Well I'm not. But it's not like I'd just hand the money over to you, anyway."
"I wan't askin' you to."
Jack exhaled. "I'm older, got more money now, though. I'd get an awful lot a money out of a divorce settlement. Maybe even enough ta get a proper bank loan for a spread."
"Yeah. That'd be good. For the cows."
"For the cows?"
"I mean." Ennis floundered, not chickening out exactly, but stunned to silence by Jack's less than enthusiastic reply.
"Ennis, for once, I got no clue what you mean. Thinkin' I must a hit my head."
"Think maybe I hit mine."
"Or that."
"So... what do you say?"
Jack sighed to prove it was a long road to that destination, and the words took a full minute forming in Ennis's ear, and another minute forming in his mind. "I say... yes. Fuckit, yes. Shit, I must be crazy."
When Ennis could think clear again, he managed to say, "Well, don't sound so happy now."
Jack laughed, true and ringing and young like the sunlight that was now high enough off the horizon to sparkle and splatter off every dull, unwashed window of the Riverton main drag.
Ennis had no choice but to laugh back, to laugh like he couldn't remember.
Jack answered him again with a chuckle, a whole conversation in smiles and sighs for want of air. When they floated back down to Earth, Jack was already making plans. "Alright. Alright. I gotta... I'm gonna light on out a here, go straight back to Texas. I got some affairs to get in order, I reckon. Might
take a while, I rightly don't know. How long your divorce take you?"
"Couple months."
"Alright. I'll get in touch with you, though, let you know what's goin'."
"K."
"Ok. Alright."
"Yup."
"And Ennis?"
"Yup?"
"This a mighty fine thing."
Ennis made a noise in his throat.
"For the cows, I mean." Jack chuckled one last time before his voice was gone and Ennis was alone on the desolate street, only not desolate any more, because people were starting a move about. He saw that and hung up, climbed back into his truck without meeting a single eye.
Even all those eyes couldn't subtract from his mood. He whistled and laughed at private jokes the whole way out to work. He'd be late. He didn't care. He didn't care about anything any more. He saw now that all the things he'd spent his whole life caring about had just been fill-ins for the one thing he
needed. He wasn't sure how he had done it, and when he thought on it his heart got to hammering uncomfortably in his chest, but he'd done it, and there really wasn't another word that fit.
Ennis del Mar had made Jack Twist a proposal.
