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xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP imbgVA"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG lmuXQm"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">They were raised on small, poor ranch oppose rners of the state, Jack Twist Lightng Flat, up on the Montana borr, Ennis l Mar om around Sage, near the Utah le, both high-school drop-out untry boys wh no prospects, brought up to hard work and privatn, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, ured to the stoic life. Ennis, reared by his olr brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road, leavg them twenty-four dollars sh and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip om the ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one wdshield wiper, and bad tir; when the transmissn went, there was no money to fix . He had wanted to be a sophomore, felt the word rried a kd of distctn, but the tck broke down short of , pchg him directly to ranch work.</p><p class="paywall">In 1963, when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be savg money for a small spread; Ennis’s se that meant a tobac n wh two five-dollar bills si. That sprg, hungry for any job, each had signed up wh Farm and Ranch Employment—they me together on paper as herr and mp tenr for the same sheep operatn north of Signal. The summer range lay above the tree le on Fort Service land on Brokeback Mounta. It would be Jack Twist’s send summer on the mounta, Ennis’s first. Neher of them was twenty.</p><p class="paywall">They shook hands the choky ltle trailer office ont of a table ltered wh scribbled papers, a Bakele ashtray brimmg wh stubs. The veian blds hung askew and admted a triangle of whe light, the shadow of the foreman’s hand movg to . Joe Aguirre, wavy hair the lor of cigarette ash and parted down the middle, gave them his pot of view.</p><p class="paywall">“Fort Service got signated mps on the allotments. Them mps n be a uple a om where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator loss, nobody near look after em at night. What I want—mp tenr the ma mp where the Fort Service says, but the <em>herr</em>”—potg at Jack wh a chop of his hand—“pch a pup tent on the Q.T. wh the sheep, out a sight, and he’s go a <em>sleep</em> there. Eat supper, breakfast mp, but <em>sleep wh the sheep</em>, hundred percent, <em>no fire</em>, don’t leave <em>no sign</em>. Roll up that tent every morn se Fort Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last summer had goddam near twenty-five-percent loss. I don’t want that aga. <em>You</em>,” he said to Ennis, takg the ragged hair, the big nicked hands, the jeans torn, button-gapg shirt, “Fridays twelve noon be down at the bridge wh your next-week list and mul. Somebody wh suppli’ll be there a pickup.” He didn’t ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braid rd om a box on a high shelf, wound and set , tossed to him as if he weren’t worth the reach. “<em>Tomorrow morn</em> we’ll tck you up the jump-off.” Pair of uc gog nowhere.</p><p class="paywall">They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack tellg Ennis about a lightng storm on the mounta the year before that killed forty-two sheep, the peculiar stk of them and the way they bloated, the need for plenty of whiskey up there. At first glance Jack seemed fair enough, wh his curly hair and quick lgh, but for a small man he rried some weight the hnch and his se disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat poprn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable. He was fatuated wh the roo life and fastened his belt wh a mor bull-ridg buckle, but his boots were worn to the quick, holed beyond repair, and he was crazy to be somewhere, anywhere, else than Lightng Flat.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scffy and a ltle ve-chted, balanced a small torso on long, liper legs, and posssed a mcular and supple body ma for the horse and for fightg. His reflex were unmonly quick, and he was farsighted enough to dislike readg anythg except Hamley’s saddle talogue.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The sheep tcks and horse trailers unload at the trailhead, and a bandy-legged Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mul—two packs and a ridg load on each animal, rg-lashed wh double diamonds and secured wh half hch—tellg him, “Don’t never orr soup. Them box a soup are real bad to pack.” Three puppi belongg to one of the blue heelers went a pack basket, the nt si Jack’s at, for he loved a ltle dog. Ennis picked out a big chtnut lled Cigar Butt to ri, Jack a bay mare that turned out to have a low startle pot. The strg of spare hors clud a moe-lored gllo whose looks Ennis liked. Ennis and Jack, the dogs, the hors and mul, a thoand ew and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber and out above the tree le to the great flowery meadows and the ursg, endls wd.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">They got the big tent up on the Fort Service’s platform, the kchen and gb box secured. Both slept mp that first night, Jack already bchg about Joe Aguirre’s sleep-wh-the-sheep-and-no-fire orr, though he saddled the bay mare the dark morng whout sayg much. Dawn me glassy-orange, staed om below by a gelato band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mounta paled slowly until was the same lor as the smoke om Ennis’s breakfast fire. The ld air sweetened, band pebbl and cmbs of soil st sudn pencil-long shadows, and the rearg lodgepole p below them massed slabs of somber malache.</p><p class="paywall">Durg the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometim saw Jack, a small dot movg across a high meadow, as an sect mov across a tablecloth; Jack, his dark mp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mounta.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Jack me laggg late one afternoon, drank his two bottl of beer oled a wet sack on the shady si of the tent, ate two bowls of stew, four of Ennis’s stone biscus, a n of peach, rolled a smoke, watched the sun drop.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“I’m mut four hours a day,” he said morosely. “Come for breakfast, go back to the sheep, even get em bedd down, e for supper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jump up and check for yot. By rights I should be spend the night here. Aguirre got no right a make me do this.”</p><p class="paywall">“You want a swch?” said Ennis. “I wouldn’t md herd. I wouldn’t md sleep out there.”</p><p class="paywall">“That a’t the pot. Pot is, we both should be this mp. And that goddam pup tent smells like t piss or worse.”</p><p class="paywall">“Wouldn’t md be out there.”</p><p class="paywall">“Tell you what, you got a get up a dozen tim the night out there over them yot. Happy to swch but give you warn I n’t ok worth a sh. Pretty good wh a n opener.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Can’t be no worse than me, then. Sure, I wouldn’t md a do .”</p><p class="paywall">They fend off the night for an hour wh the yellow kerosene lamp, and around ten Ennis ro Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through the glimmerg ost back to the sheep, rryg leftover biscus, a jar of jam, and a jar of ffee wh him for the next day, sayg he’d save a trip, stay out until supper.</p><p class="paywall">“Shot a yote jt first light,” he told Jack the next eveng, sloshg his face wh hot water, latherg up soap, and hopg his razor had some cut left , while Jack peeled potato. “Big son of a bch. Balls on him size a appl. I bet he’d took a few lambs. Looked like he uld a eat a mel. You want some a this hot water? There’s plenty.”</p><p class="paywall">“It’s all yours.”</p><p class="paywall">“Well, I’m go a warsh everthg I n reach,” he said, pullg off his boots and jeans (no drawers, no socks, Jack noticed), sloppg the green washcloth around until the fire spat.</p><p class="paywall">They had a high-time supper by the fire, a n of beans each, ied potato, and a quart of whiskey on shar, sat wh their backs agast a log, boot sol and pper jeans rivets hot, swappg the bottle while the lavenr sky emptied of lor and the chill air draed down, drkg, smokg cigarett, gettg up every now and then to piss, firelight throwg a sparkle the arched stream, tossg sticks on the fire to keep the talk gog, talkg hors and roo, roughstock events, wrecks and juri staed, the submare Thrher lost two months earlier wh all hands and how mt have been the last doomed mut, dogs each had owned and known, the ary service, Jack’s home ranch, where his father and mother held on, Ennis’s fay place, fold years ago after his folks died, the olr brother Signal and a married sister Casper. Jack said his father had been a pretty well-known bull rir years back but kept his secrets to himself, never gave Jack a word of advice, never me once to see Jack ri, though he had put him on the woolli when he was a ltle kid. Ennis said the kd of ridg that terted him lasted longer than eight sends and had some pot to . Money’s a good pot, said Jack, and Ennis had to agree. They were rpectful of each other’s opns, each glad to have a pann where none had been expected. Ennis, ridg agast the wd back to the sheep the treachero, dnken light, thought he’d never had such a good time, felt he uld paw the whe out of the moon.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="iwcikc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The summer went on and they moved the herd to new pasture, shifted the mp; the distance between the sheep and the new mp was greater and the night ri longer. Ennis ro easy, sleepg wh his ey open, but the hours he was away om the sheep stretched out and out. Jack pulled a squallg burr out of the harmoni, flattened a ltle om a fall off the sktish bay mare, and Ennis had a good raspy voice; a few nights they mangled their way through some songs. Ennis knew the salty words to “Strawberry Roan.” Jack tried a Carl Perks song, bawlg “What I say-ay-ay,” but he favored a sad hymn, “Water-Walkg J,” learned om his mother, who believed the Pentest, and that he sang at dirge slowns, settg off distant yote yips.</p><p class="paywall">“Too late to go out to them damn sheep,” said Ennis, dizzy dnk on all fours one ld hour when the moon had notched past two. The meadow ston glowed whe-green and a flty wd worked over the meadow, scraped the fire low, then ffled to yellow silk sash. “Got you a extra blanket I’ll roll up out here and grab forty wks, ri out at first light.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Freeze your ass off when that fire di down. Better off sleep the tent.”</p><p class="paywall">“Doubt I’ll feel noth.” But he staggered unr nvas, pulled his boots off, snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack wh the clackg of his jaw.</p><p class="paywall">“J Christ, qu hammer and get over here. Bedroll’s big enough,” said Jack an irrable sleep-clogged voice. It was big enough, warm enough, and a ltle while they epened their timacy nsirably. Ennis ran full throttle on all roads whether fence mendg or money spendg, and he wanted none of when Jack seized his left hand and brought to his erect ck. Ennis jerked his hand away as though he’d touched fire, got to his kne, unbuckled his belt, shoved his pants down, hled Jack onto all fours, and, wh the help of the clear slick and a ltle sp, entered him, nothg he’d done before but no stctn manual need. They went at silence except for a few sharp tak of breath and Jack’s choked “Gun’s go <em>off</em>,” then out, down, and asleep.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis woke red dawn wh his pants around his kne, a top-gra headache, and Jack butted agast him; whout sayg anythg about , both knew how would go for the rt of the summer, sheep be damned.</p><p class="paywall">As did go. They never talked about the sex, let happen, at first only the tent at night, then the full daylight wh the hot sun strikg down, and at eveng the fire glow, quick, rough, lghg and snortg, no lack of nois, but sayg not a goddam word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped wh “Me neher. A one-shot thg. Nobody’s bs but ours.” There were only the two of them on the mounta, flyg the phoric, bter air, lookg down on the hawk’s back and the crawlg lights of vehicl on the pla below, spend above ordary affairs and distant om tame ranch dogs barkg the dark hours. They believed themselv visible, not knowg Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 boculars for ten mut one day, wag until they’d buttoned up their jeans, wag until Ennis ro back to the sheep, before brgg up the msage that Jack’s people had sent word that his uncle Harold was the hospal wh pnmonia and expected not to make . Though he did, and Aguirre me up aga to say so, fixg Jack wh his bold stare, not botherg to dismount.</p><p class="paywall">In Augt Ennis spent the whole night wh Jack the ma mp, and a blowy hailstorm the sheep took off wt and got among a herd another allotment. There was a damn miserable time for five days, Ennis and a Chilean herr wh no English tryg to sort them out, the task almost impossible as the pat brands were worn and fat at this late season. Even when the numbers were right Ennis knew the sheep were mixed. In a disquietg way everythg seemed mixed.</p><p class="paywall">The first snow me early, on Augt 13th, pilg up a foot, but was followed by a quick melt. The next week Joe Aguirre sent word to brg them down, another, bigger storm was movg om the Pacific, and they packed the game and moved off the mounta wh the sheep, ston rollg at their heels, purple cloud crowdg om the wt and the metal smell of g snow prsg them on. The mounta boiled wh monic energy, glazed wh flickerg broken-cloud light; the wd bed the grass and drew om the damaged kmmholz and sl rock a btial drone. As they scend the slope Ennis felt he was a slow-motn, but headlong, irreversible fall.</p><p class="paywall">Joe Aguirre paid them, said ltle. He had looked at the lg sheep wh a sour exprsn, said, “Some a the never went up there wh you.” The unt was not what he’d hoped for, eher. Ranch stiffs never did much of a job.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">“You go a do this next summer?” said Jack to Ennis the street, one leg already up his green pickup. The wd was gtg hard and ld.</p><p class="paywall">“Maybe not.” A dt plume rose and hazed the air wh fe gr and he squted agast . “Like I said, Alma and me’s gett married December. Try to get someth on a ranch. You?” He looked away om Jack’s jaw, bised blue om the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“If noth better along. Thought some about gog back up to my daddy’s place, give him a hand over the wter, then maybe head out for Texas the sprg. If the draft don’t get me.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="aa2lni"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Well, see you around, I gus.” The wd tumbled an empty feed bag down the street until fetched up unr the tck.</p><p class="paywall">“Right,” said Jack, and they shook hands, h each other on the shoulr; then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothg to do but drive away oppose directns. Wh a e Ennis felt like someone was pullg his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the si of the road and, the whirlg new snow, tried to pe but nothg me up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and took a long time for the feelg to wear off.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid-January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place, north of Lost Cab, Washakie County. He was still workg there September when Alma, Jr., as he lled his dghter, was born and their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and k and baby sh, and the sounds were of squallg and suckg and Alma’s sleepy groans, all reassurg of fecundy and life’s ntuance to one who worked wh livtock.</p><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn lmGzgE llout--has-top-borr" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedWrapper-hNDkqw cDXXLC" data-ttid="external-lk-embed--le"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedText-glBTSy gRKpCf"><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__hed-lk button" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedHed-dSIMOS iUEiRd zdLg gsZLZF">Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter</span></a><p class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedDek-btrWcN iUEiRd flMnoK jwHNCY">Read classic <em>New Yorker</em> stori, curated by our archivists and edors.</p></div><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa ExternalLkEmbedRponsiveImage-iGydLQ dGzCDw rponsive-image"><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w" siz="100vw"/></picture></a></div></div><p class="paywall">When the Hi-Top fold they moved to a small apartment Riverton, up over a lndry. Ennis got on the highway crew, toleratg but workg weekends at the Rafter B exchange for keepg his hors out there. A send girl was born and Alma wanted to stay town near the clic bee the child had an asthmatic wheeze.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis, please, no more damn lonome ranch for ,” she said, stg on his lap, wrappg her th, eckled arms around him. “Let’s get a place here town.”</p><p class="paywall">“I gus,” said Ennis, slippg his hand up her bloe sleeve and stirrg the silky armp hair, fgers movg down her ribs to the jelly breast, the round belly and knee and up to the wet gap all the way to the north pole or the equator pendg which way you thought you were sailg, workg at until she shudred and bucked agast his hand and he rolled her over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed the ltle apartment, which he favored bee uld be left at any time.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The fourth summer sce Brokeback Mounta me on and June Ennis had a general-livery letter om Jack Twist, the first sign of life all that time.</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>Friend this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get . Heard you was Riverton. I’m g th on the 24th, thought I’d stop and buy you a beer. Drop me a le if you n, say if your there.</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">The return addrs was Childrs, Texas. Ennis wrote back, “You bet,” gave the Riverton addrs.</p><p class="paywall">The day was hot and clear the morng, but by noon the clouds had phed up out of the wt rollg a ltle sultry air before them. Ennis, wearg his bt shirt, whe wh wi black strip, didn’t know what time Jack would get there and so had taken the day off, paced back and forth, lookg down to a street pale wh dt. Alma was sayg somethg about takg his iend to the Knife & Fork for supper stead of okg was so hot, if they uld get a babyster, but Ennis said more likely he’d jt go out wh Jack and get dnk. Jack was not a rtrant type, he said, thkg of the dirty spoons stickg out of the ns of ld beans balanced on the log.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Late the afternoon, thunr growlg, that same old green pickup rolled and he saw Jack get out of the tck, beat-up Ristol tilted back. A hot jolt sld Ennis and he was out on the landg pullg the door closed behd him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulrs, hugged mightily, squeezg the breath out of each other, sayg son of a bch, son of a bch; then, and as easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths me together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth brgg blood, his hat fallg to the floor, stubble raspg, wet saliva wellg, and the door openg and Alma lookg out for a few sends at Ennis’s strag shoulrs and shuttg the door aga and still they clched, prsg cht and gro and thigh and leg together, treadg on each other’s to until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on enarments, said what he said to his hors and dghters, “Ltle darl.”</p><p class="paywall">The door opened aga a few ch and Alma stood the narrow light.</p><p class="paywall">What uld he say? “Alma, this is Jack Twist. Jack, my wife, Alma.” His cht was heavg. He uld smell Jack—the tensely faiar odor of cigarett, mky sweat, and a fat sweetns like grass, and wh the shg ld of the mounta. “Alma,” he said, “Jack and me a’t seen each other four years.” As if were a reason. He was glad the light was dim on the landg but did not turn away om her.</p><p class="paywall">“Sure enough,” said Alma a low voice. She had seen what she had seen. Behd her the room, lightng l the wdow like a whe sheet wavg and the baby cried.</p><p class="paywall">“You got a kid?” said Jack. His shakg hand grazed Ennis’s hand, electril current snapped between them.</p><p class="paywall">“Two ltle girls,” Ennis said. “Alma, Jr., and France. Love them to piec.” Alma’s mouth twched.</p><p class="paywall">“I got a boy,” said Jack. “Eight months old. Tell you what, I married a cute ltle old Texas girl down Childrs—Lureen.” From the vibratn of the floorboard on which they both stood Ennis uld feel how hard Jack was shakg.</p><p class="paywall">“Alma,” he said. “Jack and me is go out and get a drk. Might not get back tonight, we get drk and talk.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Sure enough,” Alma said, takg a dollar bill om her pocket. Ennis gused she was gog to ask him to get her a pack of cigarett, brg him back sooner.</p><p class="paywall">“Please to meet you,” said Jack, tremblg like a n-out horse.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis—” said Alma her misery voice, but that didn’t slow him down on the stairs and he lled back, “Alma, you want smok there’s some the pocket a my blue shirt the bedroom.”</p><p class="paywall">They went off Jack’s tck, bought a bottle of whiskey, and wh twenty mut were the Motel Sita jouncg a bed. A few handfuls of hail rattled agast the wdow, followed by ra and a slippery wd bangg the unsecured door of the next room then and through the night.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old rpet and sour hay, saddle leather, sh and cheap soap. Ennis lay spread-eagled, spent and wet, breathg ep, still half tumcent; Jack blew forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and said, “Christ, got to be all that time a yours a-horseback mak so goddam good. We got to talk about this. Swear to God I didn’t know we was go a get to this aga—yeah, I did. Why I’m here. I fuck knew . Red-led all the way, uldn’t get here fast enough.”</p><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn lmGzgE llout--has-top-borr" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedWrapper-hNDkqw cDXXLC" data-ttid="external-lk-embed--le"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedText-glBTSy gRKpCf"><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__hed-lk button" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedHed-dSIMOS iUEiRd zdLg gsZLZF">Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter</span></a><p class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedDek-btrWcN iUEiRd flMnoK jwHNCY">Read classic <em>New Yorker</em> stori, curated by our archivists and edors.</p></div><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa ExternalLkEmbedRponsiveImage-iGydLQ dGzCDw rponsive-image"><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w" siz="100vw"/></picture></a></div></div><p class="paywall">“I didn’t know where the <em>hell</em> you was,” said Ennis. “Four years. I about give up on you. I figured you was sore about that punch.”</p><p class="paywall">“Friend,” said Jack, “I was Texas roo. How I met Lureen. Look over on that chair.”</p><p class="paywall">On the back of a soiled orange chair he saw the she of a buckle. “Bull rid?”</p><p class="paywall">“Yeah. I ma three fuck thoand dollars that year. Fuck starved. Had to borrow everthg but a toothbsh om other guys. Drove groov across Texas. Half the time unr that cunt tck fix . Anyway, I didn’t never thk about los. Lureen? There’s some ser money there. Her old man’s got . Got this farm-machery bs. Course he don’t let her have none a the money, and he hat my fuck guts, so ’s a hard go now but one a the days—”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Well, you’re go a go where you look. Army didn’t get you?” The thunr sound far to the east, movg om them s red wreaths of light.</p><p class="paywall">“They n’t get no e out a me. Got some cshed vertebrat. And a strs acture, the arm bone here, you know how bull rid you’re always lever off your thigh?—she giv a ltle ever time you do . Even if you tape good you break a ltle goddam b at a time. Tell you what, hurts like a bch afterward. Had a bted leg. Bted three plac. Come off the bull and was a big bull wh a lot a drop, he got rid a me about three flat and he e after me and he was sure faster. Lucky enough. Friend a me got his oil checked wh a horn dipstick and that was all she wrote. Bunch a other thgs, fuck bted ribs, spras and pas, torn ligaments. See, a’t like was my daddy’s time. It’s guys wh money go to llege, traed athalet. You got to have some money to roo now. Lureen’s old man wouldn’t give me a dime if I dropped , except one way. And I know enough about the game now so I see that I a’t never go a be on the bubble. Other reasons. I’m gett out while I still n walk.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="3q9p44"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Ennis pulled Jack’s hand to his mouth, took a h om the cigarette, exhaled. “Sure as hell seem one piece to me. You know, I was st up here all that time try to figure out if I was—? I know I a’t. I mean, here we both got wiv and kids, right? I like do wh women, yeah, but J H., a’t noth like this. I never had no thoughts a do wh another guy except I sure wrang out a hunrd tim thk about you. You do wh other guys, Jack?”</p><p class="paywall">“Sh no,” said Jack, who had been ridg more than bulls, not rollg his own. “You know that. Old Brokeback got good and sure a’t over. We got to work out what the fuck we’re go a do now”</p><p class="paywall">“That summer,” said Ennis. “When we spl up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to pe, thought I ate someth bad at that place Dubois. Took me about a year to figure out was that I shouldn’t a let you out a my sights. Too late then by a long, long while.”</p><p class="paywall">“Friend,” said Jack. “We got a fuck suatn here. Got a figure out what to do.”</p><p class="paywall">“I doubt there’s noth now we n do,” said Ennis. “What I’m say, Jack, I built a life up them years. Love my ltle girls. Alma? It a’t her flt. You got your baby and wife, that place Texas. You and me n’t hardly be cent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head the directn of the apartment—“grabs” on like that. We do that the wrong place we’ll be ad. There’s no res on this one. It sr the piss out a me.”</p><p class="paywall">“Got to tell you, iend, maybe somebody seen that summer. I was back there the next June, thk about go back—I didn’t, l out for Texas stead—and Joe Aguirre’s the office and he says to me, he says, ‘You boys found a way to make the time pass up there, didn’t you,’ and I gave him a look but when I went out I seen he had a big-ass pair a boculars hang off his rearview.” He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back his squeaky woon tilt chair and said, “Twist, you guys wasn’t gett paid to leave the dogs baby-s the sheep while you stemmed the rose,” and cled to rehire him. Jack went on, “Yeah, that ltle punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you to throw a dirty punch.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“I e up unr my brother K.E., three years olr’n me, slugged me silly every day. Dad got tired a me e bawl the hoe and when I was about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a problem and you got a fix or ’s go a be wh you until you’re nety and K.E.’s nety-three. Well, I says, he’s bigger’n me. Dad says, You got a take him unawar, don’t say noth to him, make him feel some pa, get out fast and keep do until he tak the msage. Noth like hurt somebody to make him hear good. So I did. I got him the outhoe, jumped him on the stairs, e over to his pillow the night while he was sleep and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never had trouble wh K.E. sce. The lson was, Don’t say noth and get over wh quick.” A telephone rang the next room, rang on and on, stopped abptly mid-peal.</p><p class="paywall">“You won’t tch me aga,” said Jack. “Listen. I’m thk, tell you what, if you and me had a ltle ranch together, ltle w-and-lf operatn, your hors, ’d be some sweet life. Like I said, I’m gett out a roo. I a’t no broke dick rir but I don’t got the bucks a ri out this slump I’m and I don’t got the bon a keep gett wrecked. I got figured, got this plan Ennis, how we n do , you and me. Lureen’s old man, you bet he’d give me a bunch if I’d get lost. Already more or ls said —”</p><p class="paywall">“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It a’t go a be that way. We n’t. I’m stuck wh what I got, ught my own loop. Can’t get out of . Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometim. And I don’t want a be ad. There was the two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich—Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, ne years old, and they found Earl ad a irrigatn dch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, dg him around by his dick until pulled off, jt bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like piec a burned tomato all over him, nose tore down om skidd on gravel.”</p><p class="paywall">“You seen that?”</p><p class="paywall">“Dad ma sure I seen . Took me to see . Me and K.E. Dad lghed about . Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head that door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys liv together? No. All I n see is we get together once a while way the hell out the back a nowhere—”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="ti41hs"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“How much is once a while?” said Jack. “Once a while ever four fuck years?”</p><p class="paywall">“No,” said Ennis, forbearg to ask whose flt that was. “I goddam hate that you’re go a drive away the morn and I’m go back to work. But if you n’t fix you got a stand ,” he said. “Sh. I been look at people on the street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?”</p><p class="paywall">“It don’t happen Wyom and if do I don’t know what they do, maybe go to Denver,” said Jack, stg up, turng away om him, “and I don’t give a fly fuck. Son of a bch, Ennis, take a uple days off. Right now. Get out a here. Throw your stuff the back a my tck and let’s get up the mountas. Couple a days. Call Alma up and tell her you’re go. Come on, Ennis, you jt shot my airplane out a the sky—give me someth a go on. This a’t no ltle thg that’s happen here.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-9 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The hollow rgg began aga the next room, and as if he were answerg Ennis picked up the phone on the bedsi table, dialled his own number.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">A slow rrosn worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, jt wing water. She was workg at a grocery-store clerk job, saw she’d always have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis ma. Alma asked Ennis to e bbers bee she dread another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn’t want any more of his kids. Unr her breath she said, “I’d have em if you’d support em.” And unr that thought, Anyway, what you like to do don’t make too many babi.</p><p class="paywall">Her rentment opened out a ltle every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishg trips once or twice a year wh Jack Twist and never a vatn wh her and the girls, his disclatn to step out and have any fun, his yearng for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensy to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he h the bed, his failure to look for a cent permanent job wh the unty or the power pany put her a long, slow dive, and when Alma, Jr., was ne and France seven she said, What am I do, hang around wh him, divorced Ennis, and married the Riverton grocer.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not gettg much ahead but glad enough to be around stock aga, ee to drop thgs, qu if he had to, and go to the mountas at short notice. He had no ser hard feelgs, jt a vague sense of gettg short-changed, and showed was all right by takg Thanksgivg dner wh Alma and her grocer and the kids, stg between his girls and talkg hors to them, tellg jok, tryg not to be a sad daddy. After the pie Alma got him off the kchen, scraped the plat and said she worried about him and he ought to get married aga. He saw she was pregnant, about four, five months, he gused.</p><p class="paywall">“Once burned,” he said, leang agast the unter, feelg too big for the room.</p><p class="paywall">“You still go fish wh that Jack Twist?”</p><p class="paywall">“Some.” He thought she’d take the pattern off the plate wh the scrapg.</p><p class="paywall">“You know,” she said, and om her tone he knew somethg was g, “I ed to wonr how e you never brought any trouts home. Always said you ught plenty. So one time I got your creel se open the night before you went on one a your ltle trips—price tag still on after five years—and I tied a note on the end of the le. It said, ‘Hello, Ennis, brg some fish home, love, Alma.’ And then you e back and said you’d ught a bunch a browns and ate them up. Remember? I looked the se when I got a chance and there was my note still tied there and that le hadn’t touched water s life.” As though the word “water” had lled out s domtic , she twisted the fcet, sluiced the plat.</p><p class="paywall">“That don’t mean noth.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-10 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Don’t lie, don’t try to fool me, Ennis. I know what means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him—”</p><p class="paywall">She’d overstepped his le. He seized her wrist and twisted; tears sprang and rolled, a dish clattered.</p><p class="paywall">“Shut up,” he said. “Md your own bs. You don’t know noth about .”</p><p class="paywall">“I’m go a yell for Bill.”</p><p class="paywall">“You fuck go right ahead. Go on and fuck yell. I’ll make him eat the fuck floor and you too.” He gave another wrench that left her wh a burng bracelet, shoved his hat on backward and slammed out. He went to the Black and Blue Eagle bar that night, got dnk, had a short dirty fight, and left. He didn’t try to see his girls for a long time, figurg they would look him up when they got the sense and years to move out om Alma.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">They were no longer young men wh all of before them. Jack had filled out through the shoulrs and hams; Ennis stayed as lean as a clothpole, stepped around worn boots, jeans, and shirts summer and wter, add a nvas at ld weather. A benign growth appeared on his eyelid and gave a droopg appearance; a broken nose healed crooked.</p><p class="paywall">Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mounta draag, horse-packg to the Big Horns, the Medice Bows, the south end of the Gallats, the Absarokas, the Gran, the Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, the Ferrris and the Rattlnak, the Salt River range, to the Wd Rivers over and aga, the Sierra Madr, the Gros Ventr, the Washaki, the Larami, but never returng to Brokeback.</p><p class="paywall">Down Texas Jack’s father--law died and Lureen, who hered the farm-equipment bs, showed a skill for management and hard als. Jack found himself wh a vague managerial tle, travellg to stock and agricultural machery shows. He had some money now and found ways to spend on his buyg trips. A ltle Texas accent flavored his sentenc, “w” twisted to “kyow” and “wife” g out as “waf.” He’d had his ont teeth filed down, set wh steel plugs, and pped, said he’d felt no pa, wore Texas sus and a tall whe hat.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In May of 1983 they spent a few ld days at a seri of ltle icebound, no-name high lak, then worked across to the Hail Strew River draage.</p><p class="paywall">Gog up, the day was fe, but the trail ep-drifted and sloppg wet at the margs. They left to wd through a slashy cut, leadg the hors through brtle branch wood, Jack liftg his head the heated noon to take the air scented wh ro lodgepole, the dry needle duff and hot rock, bter juniper cshed beneath the hors’ hoov. Ennis, weather-eyed, looked wt for the heated cumul that might e up on such a day, but the bonels blue was so ep, said Jack, that he might drown lookg up.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-11 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Around three they swung through a narrow pass to a southeast slope where the strong sprg sun had had a chance to work, dropped down to the trail aga, which lay snowls below them. They uld hear the river mutterg and makg a distant tra sound a long way off. Twenty mut on they surprised a black bear on the bank above them rollg a log over for gbs, and Jack’s horse shied and reared, Jack sayg “Wo! Wo!” and Ennis’s bay dancg and snortg but holdg. Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear galloped to the tre wh the lumpish ga that ma seem was fallg apart.</p><p class="paywall">The tea-lored river ran fast wh snowmelt, a srf of bubbl at every high rock, pools and setbacks streamg. The ochre-branched willows swayed stiffly, pollened tks like yellow thumbprts. The hors drank and Jack dismounted, soped icy water up his hand, crystalle drops fallg om his fgers, his mouth and ch glisteng wh wet.</p><p class="paywall">“Get beaver fever do that,” said Ennis, then, “Good enough place,” lookg at the level bench above the river, two or three fire rgs om old huntg mps. A slopg meadow rose behd the bench, protected by a stand of lodgepole. There was plenty of dry wood. They set up mp whout sayg much, picketed the hors the meadow. Jack broke the seal on a bottle of whiskey, took a long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, “That’s one a the two thgs I need right now,” pped and tossed to Ennis.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="xcpvp9"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">On the third morng there were the clouds Ennis had expected, a gray racer out of the Wt, a bar of darkns drivg wd before and small flak. It fad after an hour to tenr sprg snow that heaped wet and heavy. By nightfall had turned lr. Jack and Ennis passed a jot back and forth, the fire burng late, Jack rtls and bchg about the ld, pokg the flam wh a stick, twistg the dial of the transistor rad until the batteri died.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis said he’d been puttg the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar Signal where he was workg now for Car Scrope’s w-and-lf outf, but wasn’t gog anywhere and she had some problems he didn’t want. Jack said he’d had a thg gog wh the wife of a rancher down the road Childrs and for the last few months he’d slank around expectg to get shot by Lureen or the hband, one. Ennis lghed a ltle and said he probably served . Jack said he was dog all right but he missed Ennis bad enough sometim to make him whip babi.</p><p class="paywall">The hors nickered the darkns beyond the fire’s circle of light. Ennis put his arm around Jack, pulled him close, said he saw his girls about once a month, Alma, Jr., a shy seventeen-year-old wh his beanpole length, France a ltle live wire. Jack slid his ld hand between Ennis’s legs, said he was worried about his boy who was, no doubt about , dyslexic or somethg, uldn’t get anythg right, fifteen years old and uldn’t hardly read, <em>he</em> uld see though goddam Lureen wouldn’t adm to and pretend the kid was O.K., refed to get any bch kd a help about . He didn’t know what the fuck the answer was. Lureen had the money and lled the shots.</p><p class="paywall">“I ed a want a boy for a kid,” said Ennis, undog buttons, “but jt got ltle girls.”</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t want none a eher kd,” said Jack. “But fuck-all has worked the way I wanted. Noth never e to my hand the right way.” Whout gettg up he threw adwood on the fire, the sparks flyg up wh their tths and li, a few hot pots of fire landg on their hands and fac, not for the first time, and they rolled down to the dirt. One thg never changed: the brilliant charge of their equent uplgs was darkened by the sense of time flyg, never enough time, never enough.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-12 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">A day or two later the trailhead parkg lot, hors load to the trailer, Ennis was ready to head back to Signal, Jack up to Lightng Flat to see the old man. Ennis leaned to Jack’s wdow, said what he’d been puttg off the whole week, that likely he uldn’t get away aga until November, after they’d shipped stock and before wter feedg started.</p><p class="paywall">“November. What hell happened a Augt? Tell you what, we said Augt, ne, ten days. Christ, Ennis! Whyn’t you tell me this before? You had a fuck week to say some ltle word about . And why’s we’re always the igg ld weather? We ought a do someth. We ought a go South. We ought a go to Mexi one day.”</p><p class="paywall">“Mexi? Jack, you know me. All the travell I ever done is go around the ffeepot look for the handle. And I’ll be nn the baler all Augt, that’s what’s the matter wh Augt. Lighten up, Jack. We n hunt November, kill a nice elk. Try if I n get Don Wroe’s b aga. We had a good time that year.”</p><p class="paywall">“You know, iend, this is a goddam bch of a unsatisfactory suatn. You ed a e away easy. It’s like see the Pope now.”</p><p class="paywall">“Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I ed a qu the jobs. You got a wife wh money, a good job. You fet how is be broke all the time. You ever hear a child support? I been pay out for years and got more to go. Let me tell you, I n’t qu this one. And I n’t get the time off. It was tough gett this time—some a them late heifers is still lv. You don’t leave then. You don’t. Scrope is a hell-raiser and he raised hell about me tak the week. I don’t blame him. He probly a’t got a night’s sleep sce I left. The tra-off was Augt. You got a better ia?”</p><p class="paywall">“I did once.” The tone was bter and accatory.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis said nothg, straightened up slowly, bbed at his forehead; a horse stamped si the trailer. He walked to his tck, put his hand on the trailer, said somethg that only the hors uld hear, turned and walked back at a liberate pace.</p><p class="paywall">“You been a Mexi, Jack?” Mexi was the place. He’d heard. He was cuttg fence now, trpassg the shoot-em zone.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-13 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Hell y, I been. Where’s the fuck problem?” Braced for all the years and here me, late and unexpected.</p><p class="paywall">“I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I a’t fool. What I don’t know,” said Ennis, “all them thgs I don’t know uld get you killed if I should e to know them.”</p><p class="paywall">“Try this one,” said Jack, “and <em>I’ll</em> say jt one time. Tell you what, we uld a had a good life together, a fuck real good life. You wouldn’t do , Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mounta. Everythg built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuck all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rt. Count the damn few tim we been together twenty years. Measure the fuck short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexi and then tell me you’ll kill me for need and not hardly never gett . You got no fuck ia how bad gets. I’m not you. I n’t make on a uple a high-altu fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoron bch. I wish I knew how to qu you.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="yfxh"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Like vast clouds of steam om thermal sprgs wter the years of thgs unsaid and now unsayable—admissns, claratns, sham, guilts, fears—rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, face gray and ep-led, grimacg, ey screwed shut, fists clenched, legs vg, h the ground on his kne.</p><p class="paywall">“J,” said Jack. “Ennis?” But before he was out of the tck, tryg to gus if was a heart attack or the overflow of an cendiary rage, Ennis was back on his feet, and somehow, as a at hanger is straightened to open a locked r and then bent aga to s origal shape, they torqued thgs almost to where they had been, for what they’d said was no news. Nothg end, nothg begun, nothg rolved.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">What Jack remembered and craved a way he uld neher help nor unrstand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had e up behd him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfyg some shared and sexls hunger.</p><p class="paywall">They had stood that way for a long time ont of the fire, s burng tossg ddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodi a sgle lumn agast the rock. The mut ticked by om the round watch Ennis’s pocket, om the sticks the fire settlg to als. Stars b through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath me slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a ltle the sparklight, and Jack leaned agast the steady heartbeat, the vibratns of the hummg like fat electricy and, standg, he fell to sleep that was not sleep but somethg else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredgg up a sty but still able phrase om the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to h the hay, wboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleep on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a ph, and went off the darkns. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “See you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shudrg snort, grd of hoof on stone.</p><p class="paywall">Later, that dozy embrace solidified his memory as the sgle moment of artls, charmed happs their separate and difficult liv. Nothg marred , even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face bee he did not want to see or feel that was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Ennis didn’t know about the accint for months until his postrd to Jack sayg that November still looked like the first chance me back stamped “<em class="small">DECEASED</em>.” He lled Jack’s number Childrs, somethg he had done only once before, when Alma divorced him, and Jack had misunrstood the reason for the ll, had driven twelve hundred north for nothg. This would be all right; Jack would answer, had to answer. But he did not. It was Lureen and she said who? who is this? and when he told her aga she said a level voice y, Jack was pumpg up a flat on the tck out on a back road when the tire blew up. The bead was damaged somehow and the force of the explosn slammed the rim to his face, broke his nose and jaw and knocked him unnsc on his back. By the time someone me along he had drowned his own blood.</p><p class="paywall">No, he thought, they got him wh the tire iron.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-14 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Jack ed to mentn you,” she said. “You’re the fishg buddy or the huntg buddy, I know that. Would have let you know,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure about your name and addrs. Jack kept most a his iends’ addrs his head. It was a terrible thg. He was only thirty-ne years old.”</p><p class="paywall">The huge sadns of the Northern plas rolled down on him. He didn’t know which way was, the tire iron or a real accint, blood chokg down Jack’s throat and nobody to turn him over. Unr the wd drone he heard steel slammg off bone, the hollow chatter of a settlg tire rim.</p><p class="paywall">“He buried down there?” He wanted to curse her for lettg Jack die on the dirt road.</p><p class="paywall">The ltle Texas voice me slip-slidg down the wire, “We put a stone up. He e to say he wanted to be cremated, ash sttered on Brokeback Mounta. I didn’t know where that was. So he was cremated, like he wanted, and, like I say, half his ash was terred here, and the rt I sent up to his folks. I thought Brokeback Mounta was around where he grew up. But knowg Jack, might be some pretend place where the bluebirds sg and there’s a whiskey sprg.”</p><p class="paywall">“We herd sheep on Brokeback one summer,” said Ennis. He uld hardly speak.</p><p class="paywall">“Well, he said was his place. I thought he meant to get dnk. Drk whiskey up there. He drank a lot.”</p><p class="paywall">“His folks still up Lightn Flat?”</p><p class="paywall">“Oh yeah. They’ll be there until they die. I never met them. They didn’t e down for the funeral. You get touch wh them. I suppose they’d appreciate if his wish was rried out.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-15 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">No doubt about , she was pole but the ltle voice was as ld as snow.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The road to Lightng Flat went through solate untry past a dozen abandoned ranch distributed over the pla at eight- and ten-e tervals, ho stg blank-eyed the weeds, rral fenc down. The mailbox read “John C. Twist.” The ranch was a meagre ltle place, leafy spurge takg over. The stock was too far distant for him to see their ndn, only that they were black baldi. A porch stretched across the ont of the ty brown stuc hoe, four rooms, two down, two up.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis sat at the kchen table wh Jack’s father. Jack’s mother, stout and reful her movements as though reverg om an operatn, said, “Want some ffee, don’t you? Piece a cherry ke?”</p><p class="paywall">“Thank you, Ma’am, I’ll take a cup a ffee but I n’t eat no ke jt now.”</p><p class="paywall">The old man sat silent, his hands fold on the plastic tablecloth, starg at Ennis wh an angry, knowg exprsn. Ennis regnized him a not unmon type wh the hard need to be the stud duck the pond. He uldn’t see much of Jack eher one of them, took a breath.</p><p class="paywall">“I feel awful bad about Jack. Can’t beg to say how bad I feel. I knew him a long time. I e by to tell you that if you want me to take his ash up there on Brokeback like his wife says he wanted I’d be proud to.”</p><p class="paywall">There was a silence. Ennis cleared his throat but said nothg more.</p><p class="paywall">The old man said, “Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mounta is. He thought he was too goddam special to be buried the fay plot.”</p><p class="paywall">Jack’s mother ignored this, said, “He ed a e home every year, even after he was married and down Texas, and help his daddy on the ranch for a week, fix the gat and mow and all. I kept his room like was when he was a boy and I thk he appreciated that. You are wele to go up his room if you want.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-16 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The old man spoke angrily. “I n’t get no help out here. Jack ed a say, ‘Ennis l Mar,’ he ed a say, ‘I’m go a brg him up here one a the days and we’ll lick this damn ranch to shape.’ He had some half-baked ia the two a you was go a move up here, build a log b, and help me n this ranch and brg up. Then this sprg he’s got another one’s go a e up here wh him and build a place and help n the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his om down Texas. He’s go a spl up wh his wife and e back here. So he says. But like most a Jack’s ias never e to pass.”</p><p class="paywall">So now he knew had been the tire iron. He stood up, said you bet he’d like to see Jack’s room, relled one of Jack’s stori about this old man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; bothered the son, who had disvered the anatomil disnformy durg a hard scene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late gettg to the toilet, stgglg wh buttons, the seat, the height of the thg, and often as not left the surroundgs sprkled down. The old man blew up about and this one time worked to a crazy rage. “Christ, he licked the stuff out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom floor, whipped me wh his belt. I thought he was kill me. Then he says, ‘You want a know what ’s like wh piss all over the place? I’ll learn you,’ and he pulls out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at me and mak me mop up the floor, take my cloth off and warsh them the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I’m bawl and blubber. But while he was hos me down I seen he had some extra material that I was miss. I seen they’d cut me different like you’d crop a ear or srch a brand. No way to get right wh him after that.”</p><p class="paywall">The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had s own climbg rhythm, was ty and hot, afternoon sun poundg through the wt wdow, htg the narrow boy’s bed agast the wall, an k-staed sk and woon chair, a B.B. gun a hand-whtled rack over the bed. The wdow looked down on the gravel road stretchg south and occurred to him that for Jack’s growg-up years that was the only road he knew. An ancient magaze photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall bi the bed, the sk tone gone magenta. He uld hear Jack’s mother downstairs nng water, fillg the kettle and settg back on the stove, askg the old man a muffled qutn.</p><p class="paywall">The closet was a shallow vy wh a woon rod braced across, a fad cretonne curta on a strg closg off om the rt of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and fold neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a ty jog the wall ma a slight hidg place and here, stiff wh long spensn om a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted off the nail. Jack’s old shirt om Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a ghg nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mounta when Jack, their ntortnistic grapplg and wrtlg, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard wh his knee. He had stanched the blood, which was everywhere, all over both of them, wh his shirtsleeve, but the stanchg hadn’t held, bee Ennis had sudnly swung om the ck and laid the misterg angel out the wild lumbe, wgs fold.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="m6ph81"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt si , the sleev refully worked down si Jack’s sleev. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago some damn lndry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missg, stolen by Jack and hidn here si Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two sks, one si the other, two one. He prsed his face to the fabric and breathed slowly through his mouth and nose, hopg for the fatt smoke and mounta sage and salty sweet stk of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of , the imaged power of Brokeback Mounta of which nothg was left but what he held his hands.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In the end the stud duck refed to let Jack’s ash go. “Tell you what, we got a fay plot and he’s go .” Jack’s mother stood at the table rg appl wh a sharp, serrated stment. “You e aga,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">Bumpg down the washboard road Ennis passed the untry cemetery fenced wh saggg sheep wire, a ty fenced square on the wellg prairie, a few grav bright wh plastic flowers, and didn’t want to know Jack was gog there, to be buried on the grievg pla.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">A few weeks later, on the Saturday, he threw all the Coffeepot’s dirty horse blankets to the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to turn the high-prsure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed the tck bed he stepped to Higgs’ gift shop and bied himself wh the postrd rack.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis, what are you look for, root through them postrds?” said Lda Higgs, throwg a soppg brown ffee filter to the garbage n.</p><p class="paywall">“Scene a Brokeback Mounta.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-17 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Over Fremont County?”</p><p class="paywall">“No, north a here.”</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t orr none a them. Let me get the orr list. They got I n get you a hunrd. I got a orr some more rds anyway.”</p><p class="paywall">“One’s enough,” said Ennis.</p><p class="paywall">When me—thirty cents—he pned up his trailer, brass-head tack each rner. Below he drove a nail and on the nail he hung a wire hanger and the two old shirts spend om . He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stgg tears.</p><p class="paywall">“Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anythg and was himself not the swearg kd.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Around that time Jack began to appear his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-head and sg and buck-toothed, talkg about gettg up off his pockets and to the ntrol zone, but the n of beans wh the spoon handle juttg out and balanced on the log was there as well, a rtoon shape and lurid lors that gave the dreams a flavor of ic obsceny. The spoon handle was the kd that uld be ed as a tire iron. And he would wake sometim grief, sometim wh the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometim wet, sometim the sheets.</p><p class="paywall">There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothg uld be done about , and if you n’t fix you’ve got to stand . ♦</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS jyGBoi"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body article__body--grid-margs"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv jfHKjr"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG bGJnrW ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy fzwwkW article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo jiRiRj" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/1997/10/13" data-reactroot="">October 13, 1997</a>, issue.</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="LkStackWrapper-NFLYw kgtXXB lkstack" data-ttid="LkStack"><div class="SectnTleRoot-dBGvdq jKqVjh LkStackHear-lKjbE eCTbJl lk-stack--headg" data-ttid="SectnTle"><h2 class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SectnTleHed-dKqZet dxqEAa bcJVYP jttyjJ">New Yorker Favor</h2></div><div class="LkStackContent-jyKicS gPhyME"><ul class="LkStackList-gGcjdZ dnMwpz"><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>The killer who <a href="/magaze/1995/06/05/rejectg-ga" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">got to Harvard</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>A thief who <a href="/magaze/2004/05/17/the-silver-thief" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">stole only silver</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>The light of the <a href="/tech/annals-of-technology/the-first-light-of-the-try-atomic-tt" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">world’s first nuclear bomb</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>How Steve Mart <a href="/magaze/2007/10/29/-the-bird-ge" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">learned what’s funny</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>Growg up as the <a href="/magaze/1998/11/16/the-ln-and-me" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">son of the Cowardly Ln</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>Amelia Earhart’s <a href="/magaze/2009/09/14/amelia-earhart-last-flight" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">last flight</a>.</p></div></li><li class="LkStackBullet-kQRqul iQHwiG lk-stack--lk-em" data-ttid="LkStackBullet"><div><p>Fictn by Milan Kunra: “<a href="/magaze/1984/03/19/the-unbearable-lightns-of-beg" class="InternalLkEmbedWrapper-fhjgJW cQLtaa">The Unbearable Lightns of Beg</a>.”</p></div></li></ul><div class="LkStackFooter-KfRyO ebnmps lk-stack--footer"><div><p><a href=">Sign up</a> for our daily newsletter to receive the bt stori om <em>The New Yorker</em>.</p></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu bkAXdT ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBContent-ubQdr jZTSSi"><div class="ContributorBHear-ledood XOIEx"></div><div class="ContributorBB-fBolsO giFhKz"><a href="/ntributors/annie-proulx">Annie Proulx</a> is the thor of “<a href=">Fen, Bog & Swamp: A Short History of Peatland Dtctn and Its Role the Climate Crisis</a>,” which will be published September.</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div 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And Mry was ready, but not willg.”</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Alice Munro</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2011/07/25/matee-robert-over" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Matée" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX eBzgnX bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Fictn</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM lcgkxf summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/magaze/2011/07/25/matee-robert-over" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ bfaBFr summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Matée</div></a><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Robert Coover</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX eBzgnX bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM lcgkxf summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ bfaBFr summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd flMnoK fTdiKs summary-em__k">How the U.S. ernment me to rely on the tech billnaire—and is now stgglg to re him .</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ 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story" class="ActnBarButton-dyFOZU hWdNVN bookmark large-screen"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="ActnBarWrapper-dhxmQh iOZiXn viewport-monor-anchor"><button id="bookmark" aria-label="Save this story" class="ActnBarButton-dyFOZU jSkR bookmark mobile"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" xmlns="><tle>Save this story</tle><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M20 23.9508L12.5 19.7312L5 23.9508V2.95081H14V3.93211H6V22.1845L12.5 18.5536L19 22.1845V8.83866H20V23.9508Z"></path><path class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP imbgVA"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG lmuXQm"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">They were raised on small, poor ranch oppose rners of the state, Jack Twist Lightng Flat, up on the Montana borr, Ennis l Mar om around Sage, near the Utah le, both high-school drop-out untry boys wh no prospects, brought up to hard work and privatn, both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, ured to the stoic life. Ennis, reared by his olr brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road, leavg them twenty-four dollars sh and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip om the ranch to the high school. The pickup was old, no heater, one wdshield wiper, and bad tir; when the transmissn went, there was no money to fix . He had wanted to be a sophomore, felt the word rried a kd of distctn, but the tck broke down short of , pchg him directly to ranch work.</p><p class="paywall">In 1963, when he met Jack Twist, Ennis was engaged to Alma Beers. Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be savg money for a small spread; Ennis’s se that meant a tobac n wh two five-dollar bills si. That sprg, hungry for any job, each had signed up wh Farm and Ranch Employment—they me together on paper as herr and mp tenr for the same sheep operatn north of Signal. The summer range lay above the tree le on Fort Service land on Brokeback Mounta. It would be Jack Twist’s send summer on the mounta, Ennis’s first. Neher of them was twenty.</p><p class="paywall">They shook hands the choky ltle trailer office ont of a table ltered wh scribbled papers, a Bakele ashtray brimmg wh stubs. The veian blds hung askew and admted a triangle of whe light, the shadow of the foreman’s hand movg to . Joe Aguirre, wavy hair the lor of cigarette ash and parted down the middle, gave them his pot of view.</p><p class="paywall">“Fort Service got signated mps on the allotments. Them mps n be a uple a om where we pasture the sheep. Bad predator loss, nobody near look after em at night. What I want—mp tenr the ma mp where the Fort Service says, but the <em>herr</em>”—potg at Jack wh a chop of his hand—“pch a pup tent on the Q.T. wh the sheep, out a sight, and he’s go a <em>sleep</em> there. Eat supper, breakfast mp, but <em>sleep wh the sheep</em>, hundred percent, <em>no fire</em>, don’t leave <em>no sign</em>. Roll up that tent every morn se Fort Service snoops around. Got the dogs, your .30-.30, sleep there. Last summer had goddam near twenty-five-percent loss. I don’t want that aga. <em>You</em>,” he said to Ennis, takg the ragged hair, the big nicked hands, the jeans torn, button-gapg shirt, “Fridays twelve noon be down at the bridge wh your next-week list and mul. Somebody wh suppli’ll be there a pickup.” He didn’t ask if Ennis had a watch but took a cheap round ticker on a braid rd om a box on a high shelf, wound and set , tossed to him as if he weren’t worth the reach. “<em>Tomorrow morn</em> we’ll tck you up the jump-off.” Pair of uc gog nowhere.</p><p class="paywall">They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack tellg Ennis about a lightng storm on the mounta the year before that killed forty-two sheep, the peculiar stk of them and the way they bloated, the need for plenty of whiskey up there. At first glance Jack seemed fair enough, wh his curly hair and quick lgh, but for a small man he rried some weight the hnch and his se disclosed buckteeth, not pronounced enough to let him eat poprn out of the neck of a jug, but noticeable. He was fatuated wh the roo life and fastened his belt wh a mor bull-ridg buckle, but his boots were worn to the quick, holed beyond repair, and he was crazy to be somewhere, anywhere, else than Lightng Flat.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis, high-arched nose and narrow face, was scffy and a ltle ve-chted, balanced a small torso on long, liper legs, and posssed a mcular and supple body ma for the horse and for fightg. His reflex were unmonly quick, and he was farsighted enough to dislike readg anythg except Hamley’s saddle talogue.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The sheep tcks and horse trailers unload at the trailhead, and a bandy-legged Basque showed Ennis how to pack the mul—two packs and a ridg load on each animal, rg-lashed wh double diamonds and secured wh half hch—tellg him, “Don’t never orr soup. Them box a soup are real bad to pack.” Three puppi belongg to one of the blue heelers went a pack basket, the nt si Jack’s at, for he loved a ltle dog. Ennis picked out a big chtnut lled Cigar Butt to ri, Jack a bay mare that turned out to have a low startle pot. The strg of spare hors clud a moe-lored gllo whose looks Ennis liked. Ennis and Jack, the dogs, the hors and mul, a thoand ew and their lambs flowed up the trail like dirty water through the timber and out above the tree le to the great flowery meadows and the ursg, endls wd.</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">They got the big tent up on the Fort Service’s platform, the kchen and gb box secured. Both slept mp that first night, Jack already bchg about Joe Aguirre’s sleep-wh-the-sheep-and-no-fire orr, though he saddled the bay mare the dark morng whout sayg much. Dawn me glassy-orange, staed om below by a gelato band of pale green. The sooty bulk of the mounta paled slowly until was the same lor as the smoke om Ennis’s breakfast fire. The ld air sweetened, band pebbl and cmbs of soil st sudn pencil-long shadows, and the rearg lodgepole p below them massed slabs of somber malache.</p><p class="paywall">Durg the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometim saw Jack, a small dot movg across a high meadow, as an sect mov across a tablecloth; Jack, his dark mp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mounta.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Jack me laggg late one afternoon, drank his two bottl of beer oled a wet sack on the shady si of the tent, ate two bowls of stew, four of Ennis’s stone biscus, a n of peach, rolled a smoke, watched the sun drop.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“I’m mut four hours a day,” he said morosely. “Come for breakfast, go back to the sheep, even get em bedd down, e for supper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jump up and check for yot. By rights I should be spend the night here. Aguirre got no right a make me do this.”</p><p class="paywall">“You want a swch?” said Ennis. “I wouldn’t md herd. I wouldn’t md sleep out there.”</p><p class="paywall">“That a’t the pot. Pot is, we both should be this mp. And that goddam pup tent smells like t piss or worse.”</p><p class="paywall">“Wouldn’t md be out there.”</p><p class="paywall">“Tell you what, you got a get up a dozen tim the night out there over them yot. Happy to swch but give you warn I n’t ok worth a sh. Pretty good wh a n opener.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Can’t be no worse than me, then. Sure, I wouldn’t md a do .”</p><p class="paywall">They fend off the night for an hour wh the yellow kerosene lamp, and around ten Ennis ro Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through the glimmerg ost back to the sheep, rryg leftover biscus, a jar of jam, and a jar of ffee wh him for the next day, sayg he’d save a trip, stay out until supper.</p><p class="paywall">“Shot a yote jt first light,” he told Jack the next eveng, sloshg his face wh hot water, latherg up soap, and hopg his razor had some cut left , while Jack peeled potato. “Big son of a bch. Balls on him size a appl. I bet he’d took a few lambs. Looked like he uld a eat a mel. You want some a this hot water? There’s plenty.”</p><p class="paywall">“It’s all yours.”</p><p class="paywall">“Well, I’m go a warsh everthg I n reach,” he said, pullg off his boots and jeans (no drawers, no socks, Jack noticed), sloppg the green washcloth around until the fire spat.</p><p class="paywall">They had a high-time supper by the fire, a n of beans each, ied potato, and a quart of whiskey on shar, sat wh their backs agast a log, boot sol and pper jeans rivets hot, swappg the bottle while the lavenr sky emptied of lor and the chill air draed down, drkg, smokg cigarett, gettg up every now and then to piss, firelight throwg a sparkle the arched stream, tossg sticks on the fire to keep the talk gog, talkg hors and roo, roughstock events, wrecks and juri staed, the submare Thrher lost two months earlier wh all hands and how mt have been the last doomed mut, dogs each had owned and known, the ary service, Jack’s home ranch, where his father and mother held on, Ennis’s fay place, fold years ago after his folks died, the olr brother Signal and a married sister Casper. Jack said his father had been a pretty well-known bull rir years back but kept his secrets to himself, never gave Jack a word of advice, never me once to see Jack ri, though he had put him on the woolli when he was a ltle kid. Ennis said the kd of ridg that terted him lasted longer than eight sends and had some pot to . Money’s a good pot, said Jack, and Ennis had to agree. They were rpectful of each other’s opns, each glad to have a pann where none had been expected. Ennis, ridg agast the wd back to the sheep the treachero, dnken light, thought he’d never had such a good time, felt he uld paw the whe out of the moon.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="iwcikc"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The summer went on and they moved the herd to new pasture, shifted the mp; the distance between the sheep and the new mp was greater and the night ri longer. Ennis ro easy, sleepg wh his ey open, but the hours he was away om the sheep stretched out and out. Jack pulled a squallg burr out of the harmoni, flattened a ltle om a fall off the sktish bay mare, and Ennis had a good raspy voice; a few nights they mangled their way through some songs. Ennis knew the salty words to “Strawberry Roan.” Jack tried a Carl Perks song, bawlg “What I say-ay-ay,” but he favored a sad hymn, “Water-Walkg J,” learned om his mother, who believed the Pentest, and that he sang at dirge slowns, settg off distant yote yips.</p><p class="paywall">“Too late to go out to them damn sheep,” said Ennis, dizzy dnk on all fours one ld hour when the moon had notched past two. The meadow ston glowed whe-green and a flty wd worked over the meadow, scraped the fire low, then ffled to yellow silk sash. “Got you a extra blanket I’ll roll up out here and grab forty wks, ri out at first light.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Freeze your ass off when that fire di down. Better off sleep the tent.”</p><p class="paywall">“Doubt I’ll feel noth.” But he staggered unr nvas, pulled his boots off, snored on the ground cloth for a while, woke Jack wh the clackg of his jaw.</p><p class="paywall">“J Christ, qu hammer and get over here. Bedroll’s big enough,” said Jack an irrable sleep-clogged voice. It was big enough, warm enough, and a ltle while they epened their timacy nsirably. Ennis ran full throttle on all roads whether fence mendg or money spendg, and he wanted none of when Jack seized his left hand and brought to his erect ck. Ennis jerked his hand away as though he’d touched fire, got to his kne, unbuckled his belt, shoved his pants down, hled Jack onto all fours, and, wh the help of the clear slick and a ltle sp, entered him, nothg he’d done before but no stctn manual need. They went at silence except for a few sharp tak of breath and Jack’s choked “Gun’s go <em>off</em>,” then out, down, and asleep.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis woke red dawn wh his pants around his kne, a top-gra headache, and Jack butted agast him; whout sayg anythg about , both knew how would go for the rt of the summer, sheep be damned.</p><p class="paywall">As did go. They never talked about the sex, let happen, at first only the tent at night, then the full daylight wh the hot sun strikg down, and at eveng the fire glow, quick, rough, lghg and snortg, no lack of nois, but sayg not a goddam word except once Ennis said, “I’m not no queer,” and Jack jumped wh “Me neher. A one-shot thg. Nobody’s bs but ours.” There were only the two of them on the mounta, flyg the phoric, bter air, lookg down on the hawk’s back and the crawlg lights of vehicl on the pla below, spend above ordary affairs and distant om tame ranch dogs barkg the dark hours. They believed themselv visible, not knowg Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 boculars for ten mut one day, wag until they’d buttoned up their jeans, wag until Ennis ro back to the sheep, before brgg up the msage that Jack’s people had sent word that his uncle Harold was the hospal wh pnmonia and expected not to make . Though he did, and Aguirre me up aga to say so, fixg Jack wh his bold stare, not botherg to dismount.</p><p class="paywall">In Augt Ennis spent the whole night wh Jack the ma mp, and a blowy hailstorm the sheep took off wt and got among a herd another allotment. There was a damn miserable time for five days, Ennis and a Chilean herr wh no English tryg to sort them out, the task almost impossible as the pat brands were worn and fat at this late season. Even when the numbers were right Ennis knew the sheep were mixed. In a disquietg way everythg seemed mixed.</p><p class="paywall">The first snow me early, on Augt 13th, pilg up a foot, but was followed by a quick melt. The next week Joe Aguirre sent word to brg them down, another, bigger storm was movg om the Pacific, and they packed the game and moved off the mounta wh the sheep, ston rollg at their heels, purple cloud crowdg om the wt and the metal smell of g snow prsg them on. The mounta boiled wh monic energy, glazed wh flickerg broken-cloud light; the wd bed the grass and drew om the damaged kmmholz and sl rock a btial drone. As they scend the slope Ennis felt he was a slow-motn, but headlong, irreversible fall.</p><p class="paywall">Joe Aguirre paid them, said ltle. He had looked at the lg sheep wh a sour exprsn, said, “Some a the never went up there wh you.” The unt was not what he’d hoped for, eher. Ranch stiffs never did much of a job.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">“You go a do this next summer?” said Jack to Ennis the street, one leg already up his green pickup. The wd was gtg hard and ld.</p><p class="paywall">“Maybe not.” A dt plume rose and hazed the air wh fe gr and he squted agast . “Like I said, Alma and me’s gett married December. Try to get someth on a ranch. You?” He looked away om Jack’s jaw, bised blue om the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“If noth better along. Thought some about gog back up to my daddy’s place, give him a hand over the wter, then maybe head out for Texas the sprg. If the draft don’t get me.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="aa2lni"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“Well, see you around, I gus.” The wd tumbled an empty feed bag down the street until fetched up unr the tck.</p><p class="paywall">“Right,” said Jack, and they shook hands, h each other on the shoulr; then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothg to do but drive away oppose directns. Wh a e Ennis felt like someone was pullg his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the si of the road and, the whirlg new snow, tried to pe but nothg me up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and took a long time for the feelg to wear off.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid-January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place, north of Lost Cab, Washakie County. He was still workg there September when Alma, Jr., as he lled his dghter, was born and their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and k and baby sh, and the sounds were of squallg and suckg and Alma’s sleepy groans, all reassurg of fecundy and life’s ntuance to one who worked wh livtock.</p><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn lmGzgE llout--has-top-borr" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedWrapper-hNDkqw cDXXLC" data-ttid="external-lk-embed--le"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedText-glBTSy gRKpCf"><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__hed-lk button" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedHed-dSIMOS iUEiRd zdLg gsZLZF">Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter</span></a><p class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedDek-btrWcN iUEiRd flMnoK jwHNCY">Read classic <em>New Yorker</em> stori, curated by our archivists and edors.</p></div><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa ExternalLkEmbedRponsiveImage-iGydLQ dGzCDw rponsive-image"><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w" siz="100vw"/></picture></a></div></div><p class="paywall">When the Hi-Top fold they moved to a small apartment Riverton, up over a lndry. Ennis got on the highway crew, toleratg but workg weekends at the Rafter B exchange for keepg his hors out there. A send girl was born and Alma wanted to stay town near the clic bee the child had an asthmatic wheeze.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis, please, no more damn lonome ranch for ,” she said, stg on his lap, wrappg her th, eckled arms around him. “Let’s get a place here town.”</p><p class="paywall">“I gus,” said Ennis, slippg his hand up her bloe sleeve and stirrg the silky armp hair, fgers movg down her ribs to the jelly breast, the round belly and knee and up to the wet gap all the way to the north pole or the equator pendg which way you thought you were sailg, workg at until she shudred and bucked agast his hand and he rolled her over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed the ltle apartment, which he favored bee uld be left at any time.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The fourth summer sce Brokeback Mounta me on and June Ennis had a general-livery letter om Jack Twist, the first sign of life all that time.</p><blockquote class="BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL jPeLne paywall blockquote-embed"><div class="BlockquoteEmbedContent-RbGs gmbtPx blockquote-embed__ntent"><p>Friend this letter is a long time over due. Hope you get . Heard you was Riverton. I’m g th on the 24th, thought I’d stop and buy you a beer. Drop me a le if you n, say if your there.</p></div></blockquote><p class="paywall">The return addrs was Childrs, Texas. Ennis wrote back, “You bet,” gave the Riverton addrs.</p><p class="paywall">The day was hot and clear the morng, but by noon the clouds had phed up out of the wt rollg a ltle sultry air before them. Ennis, wearg his bt shirt, whe wh wi black strip, didn’t know what time Jack would get there and so had taken the day off, paced back and forth, lookg down to a street pale wh dt. Alma was sayg somethg about takg his iend to the Knife & Fork for supper stead of okg was so hot, if they uld get a babyster, but Ennis said more likely he’d jt go out wh Jack and get dnk. Jack was not a rtrant type, he said, thkg of the dirty spoons stickg out of the ns of ld beans balanced on the log.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Late the afternoon, thunr growlg, that same old green pickup rolled and he saw Jack get out of the tck, beat-up Ristol tilted back. A hot jolt sld Ennis and he was out on the landg pullg the door closed behd him. Jack took the stairs two and two. They seized each other by the shoulrs, hugged mightily, squeezg the breath out of each other, sayg son of a bch, son of a bch; then, and as easily as the right key turns the lock tumblers, their mouths me together, and hard, Jack’s big teeth brgg blood, his hat fallg to the floor, stubble raspg, wet saliva wellg, and the door openg and Alma lookg out for a few sends at Ennis’s strag shoulrs and shuttg the door aga and still they clched, prsg cht and gro and thigh and leg together, treadg on each other’s to until they pulled apart to breathe and Ennis, not big on enarments, said what he said to his hors and dghters, “Ltle darl.”</p><p class="paywall">The door opened aga a few ch and Alma stood the narrow light.</p><p class="paywall">What uld he say? “Alma, this is Jack Twist. Jack, my wife, Alma.” His cht was heavg. He uld smell Jack—the tensely faiar odor of cigarett, mky sweat, and a fat sweetns like grass, and wh the shg ld of the mounta. “Alma,” he said, “Jack and me a’t seen each other four years.” As if were a reason. He was glad the light was dim on the landg but did not turn away om her.</p><p class="paywall">“Sure enough,” said Alma a low voice. She had seen what she had seen. Behd her the room, lightng l the wdow like a whe sheet wavg and the baby cried.</p><p class="paywall">“You got a kid?” said Jack. His shakg hand grazed Ennis’s hand, electril current snapped between them.</p><p class="paywall">“Two ltle girls,” Ennis said. “Alma, Jr., and France. Love them to piec.” Alma’s mouth twched.</p><p class="paywall">“I got a boy,” said Jack. “Eight months old. Tell you what, I married a cute ltle old Texas girl down Childrs—Lureen.” From the vibratn of the floorboard on which they both stood Ennis uld feel how hard Jack was shakg.</p><p class="paywall">“Alma,” he said. “Jack and me is go out and get a drk. Might not get back tonight, we get drk and talk.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Sure enough,” Alma said, takg a dollar bill om her pocket. Ennis gused she was gog to ask him to get her a pack of cigarett, brg him back sooner.</p><p class="paywall">“Please to meet you,” said Jack, tremblg like a n-out horse.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis—” said Alma her misery voice, but that didn’t slow him down on the stairs and he lled back, “Alma, you want smok there’s some the pocket a my blue shirt the bedroom.”</p><p class="paywall">They went off Jack’s tck, bought a bottle of whiskey, and wh twenty mut were the Motel Sita jouncg a bed. A few handfuls of hail rattled agast the wdow, followed by ra and a slippery wd bangg the unsecured door of the next room then and through the night.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, of old rpet and sour hay, saddle leather, sh and cheap soap. Ennis lay spread-eagled, spent and wet, breathg ep, still half tumcent; Jack blew forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and said, “Christ, got to be all that time a yours a-horseback mak so goddam good. We got to talk about this. Swear to God I didn’t know we was go a get to this aga—yeah, I did. Why I’m here. I fuck knew . Red-led all the way, uldn’t get here fast enough.”</p><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn lmGzgE llout--has-top-borr" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedWrapper-hNDkqw cDXXLC" data-ttid="external-lk-embed--le"><div class="ExternalLkEmbedText-glBTSy gRKpCf"><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__hed-lk button" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedHed-dSIMOS iUEiRd zdLg gsZLZF">Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter</span></a><p class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ExternalLkEmbedDek-btrWcN iUEiRd flMnoK jwHNCY">Read classic <em>New Yorker</em> stori, curated by our archivists and edors.</p></div><a aria-label="Sign Up for The Sunday Archive Newsletter" class="external-lk external-lk-embed__image-lk" data-event-click="{"element":"ExternalLk","outgogURL":"" href=" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa ExternalLkEmbedRponsiveImage-iGydLQ dGzCDw rponsive-image"><img alt="" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w" siz="100vw"/></picture></a></div></div><p class="paywall">“I didn’t know where the <em>hell</em> you was,” said Ennis. “Four years. I about give up on you. I figured you was sore about that punch.”</p><p class="paywall">“Friend,” said Jack, “I was Texas roo. How I met Lureen. Look over on that chair.”</p><p class="paywall">On the back of a soiled orange chair he saw the she of a buckle. “Bull rid?”</p><p class="paywall">“Yeah. I ma three fuck thoand dollars that year. Fuck starved. Had to borrow everthg but a toothbsh om other guys. Drove groov across Texas. Half the time unr that cunt tck fix . Anyway, I didn’t never thk about los. Lureen? There’s some ser money there. Her old man’s got . Got this farm-machery bs. Course he don’t let her have none a the money, and he hat my fuck guts, so ’s a hard go now but one a the days—”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Well, you’re go a go where you look. Army didn’t get you?” The thunr sound far to the east, movg om them s red wreaths of light.</p><p class="paywall">“They n’t get no e out a me. Got some cshed vertebrat. And a strs acture, the arm bone here, you know how bull rid you’re always lever off your thigh?—she giv a ltle ever time you do . Even if you tape good you break a ltle goddam b at a time. Tell you what, hurts like a bch afterward. Had a bted leg. Bted three plac. Come off the bull and was a big bull wh a lot a drop, he got rid a me about three flat and he e after me and he was sure faster. Lucky enough. Friend a me got his oil checked wh a horn dipstick and that was all she wrote. Bunch a other thgs, fuck bted ribs, spras and pas, torn ligaments. See, a’t like was my daddy’s time. It’s guys wh money go to llege, traed athalet. You got to have some money to roo now. Lureen’s old man wouldn’t give me a dime if I dropped , except one way. And I know enough about the game now so I see that I a’t never go a be on the bubble. Other reasons. I’m gett out while I still n walk.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="3q9p44"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Ennis pulled Jack’s hand to his mouth, took a h om the cigarette, exhaled. “Sure as hell seem one piece to me. You know, I was st up here all that time try to figure out if I was—? I know I a’t. I mean, here we both got wiv and kids, right? I like do wh women, yeah, but J H., a’t noth like this. I never had no thoughts a do wh another guy except I sure wrang out a hunrd tim thk about you. You do wh other guys, Jack?”</p><p class="paywall">“Sh no,” said Jack, who had been ridg more than bulls, not rollg his own. “You know that. Old Brokeback got good and sure a’t over. We got to work out what the fuck we’re go a do now”</p><p class="paywall">“That summer,” said Ennis. “When we spl up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to pe, thought I ate someth bad at that place Dubois. Took me about a year to figure out was that I shouldn’t a let you out a my sights. Too late then by a long, long while.”</p><p class="paywall">“Friend,” said Jack. “We got a fuck suatn here. Got a figure out what to do.”</p><p class="paywall">“I doubt there’s noth now we n do,” said Ennis. “What I’m say, Jack, I built a life up them years. Love my ltle girls. Alma? It a’t her flt. You got your baby and wife, that place Texas. You and me n’t hardly be cent together if what happened back there”—he jerked his head the directn of the apartment—“grabs” on like that. We do that the wrong place we’ll be ad. There’s no res on this one. It sr the piss out a me.”</p><p class="paywall">“Got to tell you, iend, maybe somebody seen that summer. I was back there the next June, thk about go back—I didn’t, l out for Texas stead—and Joe Aguirre’s the office and he says to me, he says, ‘You boys found a way to make the time pass up there, didn’t you,’ and I gave him a look but when I went out I seen he had a big-ass pair a boculars hang off his rearview.” He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back his squeaky woon tilt chair and said, “Twist, you guys wasn’t gett paid to leave the dogs baby-s the sheep while you stemmed the rose,” and cled to rehire him. Jack went on, “Yeah, that ltle punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you to throw a dirty punch.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“I e up unr my brother K.E., three years olr’n me, slugged me silly every day. Dad got tired a me e bawl the hoe and when I was about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a problem and you got a fix or ’s go a be wh you until you’re nety and K.E.’s nety-three. Well, I says, he’s bigger’n me. Dad says, You got a take him unawar, don’t say noth to him, make him feel some pa, get out fast and keep do until he tak the msage. Noth like hurt somebody to make him hear good. So I did. I got him the outhoe, jumped him on the stairs, e over to his pillow the night while he was sleep and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never had trouble wh K.E. sce. The lson was, Don’t say noth and get over wh quick.” A telephone rang the next room, rang on and on, stopped abptly mid-peal.</p><p class="paywall">“You won’t tch me aga,” said Jack. “Listen. I’m thk, tell you what, if you and me had a ltle ranch together, ltle w-and-lf operatn, your hors, ’d be some sweet life. Like I said, I’m gett out a roo. I a’t no broke dick rir but I don’t got the bucks a ri out this slump I’m and I don’t got the bon a keep gett wrecked. I got figured, got this plan Ennis, how we n do , you and me. Lureen’s old man, you bet he’d give me a bunch if I’d get lost. Already more or ls said —”</p><p class="paywall">“Whoa, whoa, whoa. It a’t go a be that way. We n’t. I’m stuck wh what I got, ught my own loop. Can’t get out of . Jack, I don’t want a be like them guys you see around sometim. And I don’t want a be ad. There was the two old guys ranched together down home, Earl and Rich—Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, ne years old, and they found Earl ad a irrigatn dch. They’d took a tire iron to him, spurred him up, dg him around by his dick until pulled off, jt bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like piec a burned tomato all over him, nose tore down om skidd on gravel.”</p><p class="paywall">“You seen that?”</p><p class="paywall">“Dad ma sure I seen . Took me to see . Me and K.E. Dad lghed about . Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and was to put his head that door right now you bet he’d go get his tire iron. Two guys liv together? No. All I n see is we get together once a while way the hell out the back a nowhere—”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="ti41hs"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">“How much is once a while?” said Jack. “Once a while ever four fuck years?”</p><p class="paywall">“No,” said Ennis, forbearg to ask whose flt that was. “I goddam hate that you’re go a drive away the morn and I’m go back to work. But if you n’t fix you got a stand ,” he said. “Sh. I been look at people on the street. This happen a other people? What the hell do they do?”</p><p class="paywall">“It don’t happen Wyom and if do I don’t know what they do, maybe go to Denver,” said Jack, stg up, turng away om him, “and I don’t give a fly fuck. Son of a bch, Ennis, take a uple days off. Right now. Get out a here. Throw your stuff the back a my tck and let’s get up the mountas. Couple a days. Call Alma up and tell her you’re go. Come on, Ennis, you jt shot my airplane out a the sky—give me someth a go on. This a’t no ltle thg that’s happen here.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-9 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The hollow rgg began aga the next room, and as if he were answerg Ennis picked up the phone on the bedsi table, dialled his own number.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">A slow rrosn worked between Ennis and Alma, no real trouble, jt wing water. She was workg at a grocery-store clerk job, saw she’d always have to work to keep ahead of the bills on what Ennis ma. Alma asked Ennis to e bbers bee she dread another pregnancy. He said no to that, said he would be happy to leave her alone if she didn’t want any more of his kids. Unr her breath she said, “I’d have em if you’d support em.” And unr that thought, Anyway, what you like to do don’t make too many babi.</p><p class="paywall">Her rentment opened out a ltle every year: the embrace she had glimpsed, Ennis’s fishg trips once or twice a year wh Jack Twist and never a vatn wh her and the girls, his disclatn to step out and have any fun, his yearng for low-paid, long-houred ranch work, his propensy to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he h the bed, his failure to look for a cent permanent job wh the unty or the power pany put her a long, slow dive, and when Alma, Jr., was ne and France seven she said, What am I do, hang around wh him, divorced Ennis, and married the Riverton grocer.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis went back to ranch work, hired on here and there, not gettg much ahead but glad enough to be around stock aga, ee to drop thgs, qu if he had to, and go to the mountas at short notice. He had no ser hard feelgs, jt a vague sense of gettg short-changed, and showed was all right by takg Thanksgivg dner wh Alma and her grocer and the kids, stg between his girls and talkg hors to them, tellg jok, tryg not to be a sad daddy. After the pie Alma got him off the kchen, scraped the plat and said she worried about him and he ought to get married aga. He saw she was pregnant, about four, five months, he gused.</p><p class="paywall">“Once burned,” he said, leang agast the unter, feelg too big for the room.</p><p class="paywall">“You still go fish wh that Jack Twist?”</p><p class="paywall">“Some.” He thought she’d take the pattern off the plate wh the scrapg.</p><p class="paywall">“You know,” she said, and om her tone he knew somethg was g, “I ed to wonr how e you never brought any trouts home. Always said you ught plenty. So one time I got your creel se open the night before you went on one a your ltle trips—price tag still on after five years—and I tied a note on the end of the le. It said, ‘Hello, Ennis, brg some fish home, love, Alma.’ And then you e back and said you’d ught a bunch a browns and ate them up. Remember? I looked the se when I got a chance and there was my note still tied there and that le hadn’t touched water s life.” As though the word “water” had lled out s domtic , she twisted the fcet, sluiced the plat.</p><p class="paywall">“That don’t mean noth.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-10 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Don’t lie, don’t try to fool me, Ennis. I know what means. Jack Twist? Jack Nasty. You and him—”</p><p class="paywall">She’d overstepped his le. He seized her wrist and twisted; tears sprang and rolled, a dish clattered.</p><p class="paywall">“Shut up,” he said. “Md your own bs. You don’t know noth about .”</p><p class="paywall">“I’m go a yell for Bill.”</p><p class="paywall">“You fuck go right ahead. Go on and fuck yell. I’ll make him eat the fuck floor and you too.” He gave another wrench that left her wh a burng bracelet, shoved his hat on backward and slammed out. He went to the Black and Blue Eagle bar that night, got dnk, had a short dirty fight, and left. He didn’t try to see his girls for a long time, figurg they would look him up when they got the sense and years to move out om Alma.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">They were no longer young men wh all of before them. Jack had filled out through the shoulrs and hams; Ennis stayed as lean as a clothpole, stepped around worn boots, jeans, and shirts summer and wter, add a nvas at ld weather. A benign growth appeared on his eyelid and gave a droopg appearance; a broken nose healed crooked.</p><p class="paywall">Years on years they worked their way through the high meadows and mounta draag, horse-packg to the Big Horns, the Medice Bows, the south end of the Gallats, the Absarokas, the Gran, the Owl Creeks, the Bridger-Teton Range, the Freezeouts and the Shirleys, the Ferrris and the Rattlnak, the Salt River range, to the Wd Rivers over and aga, the Sierra Madr, the Gros Ventr, the Washaki, the Larami, but never returng to Brokeback.</p><p class="paywall">Down Texas Jack’s father--law died and Lureen, who hered the farm-equipment bs, showed a skill for management and hard als. Jack found himself wh a vague managerial tle, travellg to stock and agricultural machery shows. He had some money now and found ways to spend on his buyg trips. A ltle Texas accent flavored his sentenc, “w” twisted to “kyow” and “wife” g out as “waf.” He’d had his ont teeth filed down, set wh steel plugs, and pped, said he’d felt no pa, wore Texas sus and a tall whe hat.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In May of 1983 they spent a few ld days at a seri of ltle icebound, no-name high lak, then worked across to the Hail Strew River draage.</p><p class="paywall">Gog up, the day was fe, but the trail ep-drifted and sloppg wet at the margs. They left to wd through a slashy cut, leadg the hors through brtle branch wood, Jack liftg his head the heated noon to take the air scented wh ro lodgepole, the dry needle duff and hot rock, bter juniper cshed beneath the hors’ hoov. Ennis, weather-eyed, looked wt for the heated cumul that might e up on such a day, but the bonels blue was so ep, said Jack, that he might drown lookg up.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-11 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Around three they swung through a narrow pass to a southeast slope where the strong sprg sun had had a chance to work, dropped down to the trail aga, which lay snowls below them. They uld hear the river mutterg and makg a distant tra sound a long way off. Twenty mut on they surprised a black bear on the bank above them rollg a log over for gbs, and Jack’s horse shied and reared, Jack sayg “Wo! Wo!” and Ennis’s bay dancg and snortg but holdg. Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear galloped to the tre wh the lumpish ga that ma seem was fallg apart.</p><p class="paywall">The tea-lored river ran fast wh snowmelt, a srf of bubbl at every high rock, pools and setbacks streamg. The ochre-branched willows swayed stiffly, pollened tks like yellow thumbprts. The hors drank and Jack dismounted, soped icy water up his hand, crystalle drops fallg om his fgers, his mouth and ch glisteng wh wet.</p><p class="paywall">“Get beaver fever do that,” said Ennis, then, “Good enough place,” lookg at the level bench above the river, two or three fire rgs om old huntg mps. A slopg meadow rose behd the bench, protected by a stand of lodgepole. There was plenty of dry wood. They set up mp whout sayg much, picketed the hors the meadow. Jack broke the seal on a bottle of whiskey, took a long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, “That’s one a the two thgs I need right now,” pped and tossed to Ennis.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="xcpvp9"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">On the third morng there were the clouds Ennis had expected, a gray racer out of the Wt, a bar of darkns drivg wd before and small flak. It fad after an hour to tenr sprg snow that heaped wet and heavy. By nightfall had turned lr. Jack and Ennis passed a jot back and forth, the fire burng late, Jack rtls and bchg about the ld, pokg the flam wh a stick, twistg the dial of the transistor rad until the batteri died.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis said he’d been puttg the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar Signal where he was workg now for Car Scrope’s w-and-lf outf, but wasn’t gog anywhere and she had some problems he didn’t want. Jack said he’d had a thg gog wh the wife of a rancher down the road Childrs and for the last few months he’d slank around expectg to get shot by Lureen or the hband, one. Ennis lghed a ltle and said he probably served . Jack said he was dog all right but he missed Ennis bad enough sometim to make him whip babi.</p><p class="paywall">The hors nickered the darkns beyond the fire’s circle of light. Ennis put his arm around Jack, pulled him close, said he saw his girls about once a month, Alma, Jr., a shy seventeen-year-old wh his beanpole length, France a ltle live wire. Jack slid his ld hand between Ennis’s legs, said he was worried about his boy who was, no doubt about , dyslexic or somethg, uldn’t get anythg right, fifteen years old and uldn’t hardly read, <em>he</em> uld see though goddam Lureen wouldn’t adm to and pretend the kid was O.K., refed to get any bch kd a help about . He didn’t know what the fuck the answer was. Lureen had the money and lled the shots.</p><p class="paywall">“I ed a want a boy for a kid,” said Ennis, undog buttons, “but jt got ltle girls.”</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t want none a eher kd,” said Jack. “But fuck-all has worked the way I wanted. Noth never e to my hand the right way.” Whout gettg up he threw adwood on the fire, the sparks flyg up wh their tths and li, a few hot pots of fire landg on their hands and fac, not for the first time, and they rolled down to the dirt. One thg never changed: the brilliant charge of their equent uplgs was darkened by the sense of time flyg, never enough time, never enough.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-12 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">A day or two later the trailhead parkg lot, hors load to the trailer, Ennis was ready to head back to Signal, Jack up to Lightng Flat to see the old man. Ennis leaned to Jack’s wdow, said what he’d been puttg off the whole week, that likely he uldn’t get away aga until November, after they’d shipped stock and before wter feedg started.</p><p class="paywall">“November. What hell happened a Augt? Tell you what, we said Augt, ne, ten days. Christ, Ennis! Whyn’t you tell me this before? You had a fuck week to say some ltle word about . And why’s we’re always the igg ld weather? We ought a do someth. We ought a go South. We ought a go to Mexi one day.”</p><p class="paywall">“Mexi? Jack, you know me. All the travell I ever done is go around the ffeepot look for the handle. And I’ll be nn the baler all Augt, that’s what’s the matter wh Augt. Lighten up, Jack. We n hunt November, kill a nice elk. Try if I n get Don Wroe’s b aga. We had a good time that year.”</p><p class="paywall">“You know, iend, this is a goddam bch of a unsatisfactory suatn. You ed a e away easy. It’s like see the Pope now.”</p><p class="paywall">“Jack, I got a work. Them earlier days I ed a qu the jobs. You got a wife wh money, a good job. You fet how is be broke all the time. You ever hear a child support? I been pay out for years and got more to go. Let me tell you, I n’t qu this one. And I n’t get the time off. It was tough gett this time—some a them late heifers is still lv. You don’t leave then. You don’t. Scrope is a hell-raiser and he raised hell about me tak the week. I don’t blame him. He probly a’t got a night’s sleep sce I left. The tra-off was Augt. You got a better ia?”</p><p class="paywall">“I did once.” The tone was bter and accatory.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis said nothg, straightened up slowly, bbed at his forehead; a horse stamped si the trailer. He walked to his tck, put his hand on the trailer, said somethg that only the hors uld hear, turned and walked back at a liberate pace.</p><p class="paywall">“You been a Mexi, Jack?” Mexi was the place. He’d heard. He was cuttg fence now, trpassg the shoot-em zone.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-13 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Hell y, I been. Where’s the fuck problem?” Braced for all the years and here me, late and unexpected.</p><p class="paywall">“I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I a’t fool. What I don’t know,” said Ennis, “all them thgs I don’t know uld get you killed if I should e to know them.”</p><p class="paywall">“Try this one,” said Jack, “and <em>I’ll</em> say jt one time. Tell you what, we uld a had a good life together, a fuck real good life. You wouldn’t do , Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mounta. Everythg built on that. It’s all we got, boy, fuck all, so I hope you know that if you don’t never know the rt. Count the damn few tim we been together twenty years. Measure the fuck short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexi and then tell me you’ll kill me for need and not hardly never gett . You got no fuck ia how bad gets. I’m not you. I n’t make on a uple a high-altu fucks once or twice a year. You’re too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoron bch. I wish I knew how to qu you.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="yfxh"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Like vast clouds of steam om thermal sprgs wter the years of thgs unsaid and now unsayable—admissns, claratns, sham, guilts, fears—rose around them. Ennis stood as if heart-shot, face gray and ep-led, grimacg, ey screwed shut, fists clenched, legs vg, h the ground on his kne.</p><p class="paywall">“J,” said Jack. “Ennis?” But before he was out of the tck, tryg to gus if was a heart attack or the overflow of an cendiary rage, Ennis was back on his feet, and somehow, as a at hanger is straightened to open a locked r and then bent aga to s origal shape, they torqued thgs almost to where they had been, for what they’d said was no news. Nothg end, nothg begun, nothg rolved.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">What Jack remembered and craved a way he uld neher help nor unrstand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had e up behd him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfyg some shared and sexls hunger.</p><p class="paywall">They had stood that way for a long time ont of the fire, s burng tossg ddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodi a sgle lumn agast the rock. The mut ticked by om the round watch Ennis’s pocket, om the sticks the fire settlg to als. Stars b through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath me slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a ltle the sparklight, and Jack leaned agast the steady heartbeat, the vibratns of the hummg like fat electricy and, standg, he fell to sleep that was not sleep but somethg else drowsy and tranced until Ennis, dredgg up a sty but still able phrase om the childhood time before his mother died, said, “Time to h the hay, wboy. I got a go. Come on, you’re sleep on your feet like a horse,” and gave Jack a shake, a ph, and went off the darkns. Jack heard his spurs tremble as he mounted, the words “See you tomorrow,” and the horse’s shudrg snort, grd of hoof on stone.</p><p class="paywall">Later, that dozy embrace solidified his memory as the sgle moment of artls, charmed happs their separate and difficult liv. Nothg marred , even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face bee he did not want to see or feel that was Jack he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Ennis didn’t know about the accint for months until his postrd to Jack sayg that November still looked like the first chance me back stamped “<em class="small">DECEASED</em>.” He lled Jack’s number Childrs, somethg he had done only once before, when Alma divorced him, and Jack had misunrstood the reason for the ll, had driven twelve hundred north for nothg. This would be all right; Jack would answer, had to answer. But he did not. It was Lureen and she said who? who is this? and when he told her aga she said a level voice y, Jack was pumpg up a flat on the tck out on a back road when the tire blew up. The bead was damaged somehow and the force of the explosn slammed the rim to his face, broke his nose and jaw and knocked him unnsc on his back. By the time someone me along he had drowned his own blood.</p><p class="paywall">No, he thought, they got him wh the tire iron.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-14 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Jack ed to mentn you,” she said. “You’re the fishg buddy or the huntg buddy, I know that. Would have let you know,” she said, “but I wasn’t sure about your name and addrs. Jack kept most a his iends’ addrs his head. It was a terrible thg. He was only thirty-ne years old.”</p><p class="paywall">The huge sadns of the Northern plas rolled down on him. He didn’t know which way was, the tire iron or a real accint, blood chokg down Jack’s throat and nobody to turn him over. Unr the wd drone he heard steel slammg off bone, the hollow chatter of a settlg tire rim.</p><p class="paywall">“He buried down there?” He wanted to curse her for lettg Jack die on the dirt road.</p><p class="paywall">The ltle Texas voice me slip-slidg down the wire, “We put a stone up. He e to say he wanted to be cremated, ash sttered on Brokeback Mounta. I didn’t know where that was. So he was cremated, like he wanted, and, like I say, half his ash was terred here, and the rt I sent up to his folks. I thought Brokeback Mounta was around where he grew up. But knowg Jack, might be some pretend place where the bluebirds sg and there’s a whiskey sprg.”</p><p class="paywall">“We herd sheep on Brokeback one summer,” said Ennis. He uld hardly speak.</p><p class="paywall">“Well, he said was his place. I thought he meant to get dnk. Drk whiskey up there. He drank a lot.”</p><p class="paywall">“His folks still up Lightn Flat?”</p><p class="paywall">“Oh yeah. They’ll be there until they die. I never met them. They didn’t e down for the funeral. You get touch wh them. I suppose they’d appreciate if his wish was rried out.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-15 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">No doubt about , she was pole but the ltle voice was as ld as snow.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The road to Lightng Flat went through solate untry past a dozen abandoned ranch distributed over the pla at eight- and ten-e tervals, ho stg blank-eyed the weeds, rral fenc down. The mailbox read “John C. Twist.” The ranch was a meagre ltle place, leafy spurge takg over. The stock was too far distant for him to see their ndn, only that they were black baldi. A porch stretched across the ont of the ty brown stuc hoe, four rooms, two down, two up.</p><p class="paywall">Ennis sat at the kchen table wh Jack’s father. Jack’s mother, stout and reful her movements as though reverg om an operatn, said, “Want some ffee, don’t you? Piece a cherry ke?”</p><p class="paywall">“Thank you, Ma’am, I’ll take a cup a ffee but I n’t eat no ke jt now.”</p><p class="paywall">The old man sat silent, his hands fold on the plastic tablecloth, starg at Ennis wh an angry, knowg exprsn. Ennis regnized him a not unmon type wh the hard need to be the stud duck the pond. He uldn’t see much of Jack eher one of them, took a breath.</p><p class="paywall">“I feel awful bad about Jack. Can’t beg to say how bad I feel. I knew him a long time. I e by to tell you that if you want me to take his ash up there on Brokeback like his wife says he wanted I’d be proud to.”</p><p class="paywall">There was a silence. Ennis cleared his throat but said nothg more.</p><p class="paywall">The old man said, “Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mounta is. He thought he was too goddam special to be buried the fay plot.”</p><p class="paywall">Jack’s mother ignored this, said, “He ed a e home every year, even after he was married and down Texas, and help his daddy on the ranch for a week, fix the gat and mow and all. I kept his room like was when he was a boy and I thk he appreciated that. You are wele to go up his room if you want.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-16 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The old man spoke angrily. “I n’t get no help out here. Jack ed a say, ‘Ennis l Mar,’ he ed a say, ‘I’m go a brg him up here one a the days and we’ll lick this damn ranch to shape.’ He had some half-baked ia the two a you was go a move up here, build a log b, and help me n this ranch and brg up. Then this sprg he’s got another one’s go a e up here wh him and build a place and help n the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his om down Texas. He’s go a spl up wh his wife and e back here. So he says. But like most a Jack’s ias never e to pass.”</p><p class="paywall">So now he knew had been the tire iron. He stood up, said you bet he’d like to see Jack’s room, relled one of Jack’s stori about this old man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; bothered the son, who had disvered the anatomil disnformy durg a hard scene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late gettg to the toilet, stgglg wh buttons, the seat, the height of the thg, and often as not left the surroundgs sprkled down. The old man blew up about and this one time worked to a crazy rage. “Christ, he licked the stuff out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom floor, whipped me wh his belt. I thought he was kill me. Then he says, ‘You want a know what ’s like wh piss all over the place? I’ll learn you,’ and he pulls out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at me and mak me mop up the floor, take my cloth off and warsh them the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I’m bawl and blubber. But while he was hos me down I seen he had some extra material that I was miss. I seen they’d cut me different like you’d crop a ear or srch a brand. No way to get right wh him after that.”</p><p class="paywall">The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had s own climbg rhythm, was ty and hot, afternoon sun poundg through the wt wdow, htg the narrow boy’s bed agast the wall, an k-staed sk and woon chair, a B.B. gun a hand-whtled rack over the bed. The wdow looked down on the gravel road stretchg south and occurred to him that for Jack’s growg-up years that was the only road he knew. An ancient magaze photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall bi the bed, the sk tone gone magenta. He uld hear Jack’s mother downstairs nng water, fillg the kettle and settg back on the stove, askg the old man a muffled qutn.</p><p class="paywall">The closet was a shallow vy wh a woon rod braced across, a fad cretonne curta on a strg closg off om the rt of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and fold neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a ty jog the wall ma a slight hidg place and here, stiff wh long spensn om a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted off the nail. Jack’s old shirt om Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a ghg nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mounta when Jack, their ntortnistic grapplg and wrtlg, had slammed Ennis’s nose hard wh his knee. He had stanched the blood, which was everywhere, all over both of them, wh his shirtsleeve, but the stanchg hadn’t held, bee Ennis had sudnly swung om the ck and laid the misterg angel out the wild lumbe, wgs fold.</p></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="m6ph81"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bDFJoo"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa jNFncF body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt si , the sleev refully worked down si Jack’s sleev. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago some damn lndry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missg, stolen by Jack and hidn here si Jack’s own shirt, the pair like two sks, one si the other, two one. He prsed his face to the fabric and breathed slowly through his mouth and nose, hopg for the fatt smoke and mounta sage and salty sweet stk of Jack, but there was no real scent, only the memory of , the imaged power of Brokeback Mounta of which nothg was left but what he held his hands.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In the end the stud duck refed to let Jack’s ash go. “Tell you what, we got a fay plot and he’s go .” Jack’s mother stood at the table rg appl wh a sharp, serrated stment. “You e aga,” she said.</p><p class="paywall">Bumpg down the washboard road Ennis passed the untry cemetery fenced wh saggg sheep wire, a ty fenced square on the wellg prairie, a few grav bright wh plastic flowers, and didn’t want to know Jack was gog there, to be buried on the grievg pla.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">A few weeks later, on the Saturday, he threw all the Coffeepot’s dirty horse blankets to the back of his pickup and took them down to the Quik Stop Car Wash to turn the high-prsure spray on them. When the wet clean blankets were stowed the tck bed he stepped to Higgs’ gift shop and bied himself wh the postrd rack.</p><p class="paywall">“Ennis, what are you look for, root through them postrds?” said Lda Higgs, throwg a soppg brown ffee filter to the garbage n.</p><p class="paywall">“Scene a Brokeback Mounta.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-17 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“Over Fremont County?”</p><p class="paywall">“No, north a here.”</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t orr none a them. Let me get the orr list. They got I n get you a hunrd. I got a orr some more rds anyway.”</p><p class="paywall">“One’s enough,” said Ennis.</p><p class="paywall">When me—thirty cents—he pned up his trailer, brass-head tack each rner. Below he drove a nail and on the nail he hung a wire hanger and the two old shirts spend om . He stepped back and looked at the ensemble through a few stgg tears.</p><p class="paywall">“Jack, I swear—” he said, though Jack had never asked him to swear anythg and was himself not the swearg kd.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Around that time Jack began to appear his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-head and sg and buck-toothed, talkg about gettg up off his pockets and to the ntrol zone, but the n of beans wh the spoon handle juttg out and balanced on the log was there as well, a rtoon shape and lurid lors that gave the dreams a flavor of ic obsceny. The spoon handle was the kd that uld be ed as a tire iron. And he would wake sometim grief, sometim wh the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometim wet, sometim the sheets.</p><p class="paywall">There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothg uld be done about , and if you n’t fix you’ve got to stand . ♦</p></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS jyGBoi"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body article__body--grid-margs"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv jfHKjr"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG bGJnrW ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy fzwwkW article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo jiRiRj" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/1997/10/13" data-reactroot="">October 13, 1997</a>, issue.</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="LkStackWrapper-NFLYw kgtXXB lkstack" 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Affairs</span></a><a href="/tag/wyomg" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM TagCloudLk-kvjZFu iUEiRd ggMZaT gFob hIhJOI"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ TagCloudName-eAUnLd iUEiRd gZIBON bUkXwu">Wyomg</span></a></div></div></div></div><div data-ttid="ContentFooterBottom" class="ContentFooterBottom-jwWZfC kcbyiW"><div class="ContentFooterNewsletterContentWrapper-bmjtna kixtae"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper-fCqqkN jKSBhE newsletter-subscribe-form ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper-fpMElW eglIBL"><h3 class="NewsletterSubscribeFormDangeroHed-kRwWjt feDzQf newsletter-subscribe-form__hed ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf">Books & Fictn</h3><div 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And Mry was ready, but not willg.”</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Alice Munro</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2011/07/25/matee-robert-over" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Matée" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX eBzgnX bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Fictn</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM lcgkxf summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/magaze/2011/07/25/matee-robert-over" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ bfaBFr summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Matée</div></a><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Robert Coover</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX eBzgnX bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM lcgkxf summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ bfaBFr summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Elon Mk’s Shadow Rule" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd flMnoK fTdiKs summary-em__k">How the U.S. ernment me to rely on the tech billnaire—and is now stgglg to re him .</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ronan Farrow</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff hlYhBH summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Why Barbie Mt Be Punished" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl ldWYvC summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX eBzgnX bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">The Weekend Essay</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM lcgkxf summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ bfaBFr summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Why Barbie Mt Be Punished</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Why Barbie Mt Be Punished" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd flMnoK fTdiKs summary-em__k">Mothers, dghters, and an in’s existential crisis.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi hYsZi summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY giiC summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH fObg byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd bGKdiw gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Llie Jamison</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm bGoarw 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