Now I am wondering why AP had Jack eat two bowls of stew, two bottles of beer, four of Ennis's stone biscuits, and a can of peaches one evening early in their Brokeback Mountain adventure...
Obviously Proulx is indicating Jack's ravenous nature and appreciation of what Ennis provides. But if we "read in" as Brokies tend to do...
The menu to me seems to hint at sexual tension. Even numbers (pairs) of most everything. Then the peaches — with their smell, ripeness, fuzz and round cleavage on the outside — connote youth, freshness and sexuality. Here, they're "canned" = preserved from a while ago, put on hold. Our boys, at least so far, have put overt sexuality on hold while up away from town. So the "stew" is especially appropriate. I pictured the "stone biscuits" as being round (or hard) like stones (didn't know about the...hmmm...
grinding method!) It can be thought of as another testicular reference (do you have the stones to do it, or not?)
And of course (to really reach), peaches are a fruit (queer).
To me it also reminds me of the stony face Ennis adopted sometimes when talking of his dad, his early life, etc.
And, now that I think about it, the stony face of Jack as he watched Ennis drive away...
If we're branching off with alternate uses of the word... Jack + Ennis get stoned on their last evening together.
And of course Jack may have suffered a tribal-style execution at the hands of a group of men... a contemporary, roadside version of "stoning".