【断背山】01

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  Ennis Del Mar¹ wakes before five, wind rocking the trailer, hissing² in around thealuminum door and window frames. The shirts hanging on a nail shudder³ slightly inthe draft. He gets up, scratching the grey wedge of belly⁴ and pubic hair, shuffles⁵ to thegas burner, pours leftover⁶ coffee in a chipped enamel⁷ pan; the flame swathes it in blue.He turns on the tap and urinates in the sink, pulls on his shirt and jeans, his wornboots, stamping the heels against the floor to get them full on. The wind booms downthe curved length of the trailer and under its roaring passage he can hear thescratching of fine gravel⁹ and sand. It could be bad on the highway with the horsetrailer. He has to be packed and away from the place that morning. Again the ranch¹⁰ ison the market and they’ve shipped out the last of the horses, paid everybody off theday before, the owner saying, “Give em to the real estate shark, I’m out a here,”dropping the keys in Ennis’s hand. He might have to stay with his married daughteruntil he picks up another job, yet he is suffused¹¹ with a sense of pleasure because JackTwist was in his dream.The stale coffee is boiling up but he catches it before it goes over the side, pours it intoa stained cup and blows on the black liquid, lets a panel of the dream slide forward. Ifhe does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold timeon the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong. The windstrikes the trailer like a load of dirt coming off a dump truck, eases, dies, leaves atemporary silence. 

      They were raised on small, poor ranches¹³ in opposite corners of the state, JackTwist in Lightning Flat up on the Montana border, Ennis del Mar fromaround Sage⁸, near the Utah line, both high school dropout¹⁴ country boys withno prospects¹⁵, brought up to hard work and privation, both rough-mannered,rough-spoken, inured¹⁶ to the stoic¹⁷ life. Ennis, reared by his older brother andsister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road leavingthem twenty-four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied¹⁸ at agefourteen for a hardship license¹⁹ that let him make the hour-long trip from theranch to the high school. The pickup²⁰ was old, no heater, one windshieldwiper and bad tires; when the transmission went there was no money to fix it.He had wanted to be a sophomore²¹, felt the word carried a kind of distinction,but the truck broke down short of it, pitching him directly into ranch work. 

      In 1963 when he met Jack¹² Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jackand Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis’s case thatmeant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside. That spring, hungry forany job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment -- they cametogether on paper as herder and camp tender for the same sheep operationnorth of Signal. The summer range lay above the tree line on Forest Serviceland on Brokeback Mountain. It would be Jack Twist’s second summer on themountain, Ennis’s first. Neither of them was twenty.They shook hands in the choky little trailer office in front of a table litteredwith scribbled²² papers, a Bakelite ashtray²³ brimming with stubs. The venetianblinds hung askew²⁴ and admitted a triangle of white light, the shadow of theforeman’s hand moving into it. 

      Joe Aguirre, wavy²⁵ hair the color of cigaretteash and parted down the middle, gave them his point of view.“Forest Service got designated campsites on the allotments. Them camps canbe a couple a miles from where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator²⁶ loss,nobody near lookin after em at night. What I want, camp tender in the maincamp where the Forest Service says, but the HERDER” -- pointing at Jack witha chop of his hand -- “pitch a pup tent on the q.t. with the sheep, out a sight,and he’s goin a SLEEP there. Eat supper, breakfast in camp, but SLEEP WITHTHE SHEEP, hunderd percent, NO FIRE, don’t leave NO SIGN. Roll up thattent every mornin case Forest Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last summer had goddamn near twenty-five percent loss. Idon’t want that again. YOU,” he said to Ennis, taking in the ragged²⁷ hair, thebig nicked hands, the jeans torn, button-gaping shirt, “Fridays twelve noon bedown at the bridge with your next week list and mules²⁸. Somebody withsupplies’ll be there in a pickup.”

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