【断背山】11

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“We herded¹ sheep on Brokeback one summer,” said Ennis. He could hardly speak.

“Well, he said it was his place. I thought he meant to get drunk.

Drink whiskey up there. He drank a lot.”

“His folks still up in Lightnin Flat?”

“Oh yeah. They’ll be there until they die. I never met them. They didn’t come down for the funeral. You get in touch with them. I suppose they’d appreciate it if his wishes was carried out.” No doubt about it, she was polite but the little voice was cold as snow.

The road to Lightning Flat went through desolate² country past a dozen abandoned ranches⁴ distributed over the plain at eight- and tenmile intervals⁵, houses sitting blank-eyed in the weeds, corral fences down. The mailbox read John C. Twist. The ranch³ was a meagre little place, leafy spurge taking over. The stock was too far distant for him to see their condition, only that they were black baldies. A porch stretched across the front of the tiny brown stucco house, four rooms, two down, two up.

Ennis sat at the kitchen table with Jack⁶’s father. Jack’s mother, stout⁷ and careful in her movements as though recovering from an operation, said, “Want some coffee, don’t you? Piece a cherry cake?” “Thank you, ma’am, I’ll take a cup a coffee but I can’t eat no cake just now.”

The old man sat silent, his hands folded on the plastic tablecloth⁸, staring at Ennis with an angry, knowing expression. Ennis recognized in him a not uncommon⁹ type with the hard need to be the stud duck in the pond. （一副“我什么都知道”的模样。他相貌寻常，长得像池塘里的大头鹅。）He couldn’t see much of Jack in either one of them, took a breath.

“I feel awful bad about Jack. Can’t begin to say how bad I feel. I knew him a long time. I come by to tell you that if you want me to take his ashes up there on Brokeback like his wife says he wanted I’d be proud to.”

There was a silence. Ennis cleared his throat but said nothing more.  The old man said, “Tell you what, I know where Brokeback Mountain is. He thought he was too goddamn special to be buried in the family plot.”

Jack’s mother ignored this, said, “He used a come home every year, even after he was married and down in Texas, and help his daddy on the ranch for a week fix the gates and mow¹⁰ and all. I kept his room like it was when he was a boy and I think he appreciated that. You are welcome to go up in his room if you want.” The old man spoke¹¹ angrily. “I can’t get no help out here. Jack used a say, ‘Ennis del Mar,’ he used a say, ‘I’m goin a bring him up here one a these days and we’ll lick this damn ranch into shape.’ He had some half-baked idea the two a you was goin a move up here, build a log cabin and help me run this ranch and bring it up. Then, this spring he’s got another one’s goin a come up here with him and build a place and help run the ranch, some ranch neighbor a his from down in Texas. He’s goin a split up with his wife and come back here. So he says. But like most a Jack’s ideas it never come to pass.” So now he knew it had been the tire iron. He stood up, said, you bet he’d like to see Jack’s room, recalled one of Jack’s stories about this old man. Jack was dick-clipped and the old man was not; it bothered the son who had discovered the anatomical disconformity during a hard scene. He had been about three or four, he said, always late getting to the toilet, struggling with buttons, the seat, the height of the thing and often as not left the surroundings sprinkled down. The old man blew up about it and this one time worked into a crazy rage.

“Christ, he licked the stuffin out a me, knocked me down on the bathroom floor, whipped me with his belt. I thought he was killin me. Then he says, ‘You want a know what it’s like with piss all over the place? I’ll learn you,’ and he pulls it out and lets go all over me, soaked me, then he throws a towel at me and makes me mop up the floor, take my clothes off and warsh them in the bathtub, warsh out the towel, I’m bawlin and blubberin. But while he was hosin me down I seen he had some extra material that I was missin. I seen they’d cut me different like you’d crop a ear or scorch¹² a brand. No way to get it right with him after that.”

The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbing rhythm, was tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the west window, hitting the narrow boy’s bed against the wall, an ink-stained desk and wooden chair, a b.b. gun in a hand-whittled rack over the bed. The window looked down on the gravel¹³ road stretching south and it occurred to him that for his growing-up years that was the only road Jack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone magenta¹⁴. He could hear Jack’s mother downstairs running water, filling the kettle and setting it back on the stove, asking the old man a muffled¹⁵ question.

The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced¹⁶ across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly¹⁷ over wire hangers¹⁸, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered.

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