Chapter 34:
He decided to wait until dawn to spread the ashes, then return down the mountain. He cooked himself some beans, a deliberate choice he made in memory of Jack, an invocation of their magical summer together. At first, it had seemed like a sentence of exile – the harsh rocky crags, the sudden weather shifts, the bone chilling cold at night, and the endless, inescapable stink of sheep creeping into everything, even their food. And all that changed, gradually at first, then all at once with the spark of their intimacy. And what lingered in his memory, was this sweetness... this magic.
He crawled into the tent when dark fell over the mountain, letting the fire die out, the urn lying next to him, and once again found himself in a one-sided conversation with his dead lover. “You always loved it out here, even when it was too cold for ya. Not so bad that summer, though... if it weren’t for the fuckin sheep.” He took a sip of whiskey from the bottle he had brought with him, another tribute, he supposed. Every time he and Jack met, they had whiskey with them, in later years, a handful of joints Jack brought with him and they shared, mostly when winding down after sex. “Haven’t smoked any weed since you been gone, how d’ya like that, hm?” he said, drifting, in a kind of a muzzy half-dream, and it seemed to him he saw Jack sitting up, pillow tucked under his arm, looking down at him.
“You ain’t changed a lick,” he said. “You ain’t never gonna grow old I don’t think,” he said, and Ennis looked up at him, thinking that was an odd thing to say.
“Well you can’t grow old cause yer dead.”
“True, that,” Jack replied, a distant look in his eyes.
“Listen ta me, Jack. What happened in Austin that night? Ellery’s down there rackin his brains to find this Worrell fella. Was he the one? Did ya make some kinda move on em an he hit ya on the head? I need ta know, Jack, it’s drivin me insane. If I’m gonna let ya rest here I got ta know the truth.”
“Ya got ta find out, Ennis. Ya got ta find out,” Jack replied, and Ennis jerked awake, looking around the tent, finding himself awake and alone.
L