It was the spring of 1981. Ennis Del Mar truck down the gravel road of the Bighorn Mountain range. He was still in turmoil over the scene he had just left at the trail parking lot beside the lake further up the mountain. His truck wound down the gravel road, swirls of crushed bone dust rose up in front of him coating the windscreen and leaving his vision with a slight haze. The sweet, sharp of pine and sagebrush hung the air and lingered on his skin. He pulled up on the road, got out, exhaled a long ragged breath, and drove his fist hard into the side of his pickup adding one more dent to the battered chassis. The wretched cry of a loggerhead shrike reverberated through the mountain. Before him the trees began to thin out giving way to open space. In the distance, he could just make out a lone ranch house set in the middle of a vast plain. He considered returning to the lake where he had left Jack. He didn't know what to say to make what had happened between them right, and Jack must have left anyway. One of the horses snorted behind the stock rack on the back of the pickup. They sounded like they were getting skittish; their hooves scraping the metal floor.
He said softly to himself, "Time to get 'em home."
It was not as if he had much of a life left in Riverton. Divorced from a wife who had no time for him, two teenage daughters whom he saw less and less of, and a girlfriend that was putting pressure on him to make a commitment that he knew would never work out. What kept him going were the two or three times a year he met with Jack in the mountains. But Jack had always wanted more. Some part of him believed that if had never spent the summer working on Brokeback Mountain he would have married, and not knowing nothing different, his marriage would not have ended in divorce He and Jack had talked about meeting again in August. In the past, he had quit jobs just to meet with Jack the in the mountains, but many ranches were folding up and but this time he knew he would be looking at a long period of unemployment if he gave up the job in August. The next time they met would have to wait till November. They had finished packing up and the horses were already on the back of, the pickup ready to drive off when Ennis told him.
Jack had said, "What in the hell happened to August?" There was a determination in the tone of his voice that the Ennis hadn't heard before.
When Ennis asked him if he had a better idea and Jack had answered that he did once, he knew that something had shifted. Jack had always been the one that kept after him. He had never wanted it, but every time Jack sent him a postcard wanting to meet in the mountains, he couldn't keep away.
The dilapidated floodgates barely held together by an unspoken pact not talk about anything that would endanger a relationship continued under such stringent demands broke under the unstoppable tide of Jacks anger and bitterness. And when Jack's anger, now spent, had come to Ennis trying to comfort him, Ennis had shouted, "Get the fuck off me," and pushed Jack away. They had ended kneeling in the dirt together beside the lake. Ennis is clinging to Jack had said, "I just can't stand it no more Jack."
Jack had drawn away from Ennis a little. One arm still holding him, Jack had stroked Ennis's face and spoke soothingly, "We could a had so much more than this. You know that."
With careful, but insistent pressure he tried to tilt Ennis's face up, "Come on, look at me," Jack said.
Ennis brushed Jack's hand away and stood up.
"God damn you Ennis. You stay and finish this." Jack said.
"What the fuck more do you want from me?" Ennis said, breaking away from Jack's embrace had risen to his feet.
Ennis left Jack still kneeling in the dirt and had driven off. By the time Ennis had returned from the mountains, he always set aside his time there and turned his attention back to his life in Riverton. He now drove into town unsettled, and raw. In the coming months he never lost the sensation that some wild, mountain creature had followed him back home; buried deep inside him and was clawing away at his innards.
Ennis got her note from inside his trailer, lying on his bed. She had called by.
"Miss you Darling, call round when you get back Love Cassie."
