The "ABCs of BBM": Round 965! (Rules in first post)

[memento]

Even though LD and Fayette are frantically happy about the birth of Bobby,  L.D. still treats Jack with disprespect by throwing him the car keys and telling him to get the formula.

[Toast]

Even though LD and Fayette are frantically happy about the birth  of Bobby,  L.D. still directs an unpleasantry in Jack's direction.

def - A disagreeable remark, situation, or act.

[Meryl]

On Thanksgiving Day at the Twist's, L. D. is less than happy at the appellation hurled at him by his host and reseats himself with a venom-filled look.

[southendmd]

LD and Fayette were frantically happy about the birth of Bobby, and on the day they visited, they were wowed by Bobby's alleged resemblance to old LD.

[Fran]

Ennis had xtra-fond memories of the happy days (and nights) he spent up on Brokeback with Jack.

=thank you=
I had a great b-day!

[Fran]

Round 635!

What'll It Be:  This or That?

Posts will include "this" or "that".

He has to be packed and away from the place that morning.

If he does not force his attention on it, it might stoke the day, rewarm that old, cold time on the mountain when they owned the world and nothing seemed wrong.

Ennis, reared by his older brother and sister after their parents drove off the only curve on Dead Horse Road leaving them twenty-four dollars in cash and a two-mortgage ranch, applied at age fourteen for a hardship license that let him make the hour-long trip from the ranch to the high school.

Both Jack and Ennis claimed to be saving money for a small spread; in Ennis's case that meant a tobacco can with two five-dollar bills inside.

That spring, hungry for any job, each had signed up with Farm and Ranch Employment....

"Roll up that tent every mornin case Forest Service snoops around."

"Last summer had goddamn near twenty-five percent loss. I don't want that again.

They found a bar and drank beer through the afternoon, Jack telling Ennis about a lightning storm on the mountain the year before that killed forty-two sheep....

Both slept in camp that first night, Jack already bitching about Joe Aguirre's sleep-with-the-sheep-and-no-fire order....

"By rights I should be spendin the night here.  Aguirre got no right a make me do this."

"That ain't the point.  Point is, we both should be in this camp.  And that goddamn pup tent smells like cat piss or worse."

"You want some a this hot water?"

Ennis said the kind of riding that interested him lasted longer than eight seconds and had some point to it.

Jack tried a Carl Perkins song, bawling "what I say-ay-ay," but he favored a sad hymn, "Water-Walking Jesus," learned from his mother who believed in the Pentecost, that he sang at dirge slowness, setting off distant coyote yips.

"Freeze your ass off when that fire dies down."

They believed themselves invisible, not knowing Joe Aguirre had watched them through his 10x42 binoculars for ten minutes one day, waiting until they'd buttoned up their jeans, waiting until Ennis rode back to the sheep, before bringing up the message that Jack's people had sent word that his uncle Harold was in the hospital with pneumonia and expected not to make it.

There was a damn miserable time for five days, Ennis and a Chilean herder with no English trying to sort them out, the task almost impossible as the paint brands were worn and faint at this late season.

"You goin a do this next summer?" said Jack to Ennis in the street, one leg already up in his green pickup.

The fourth summer since Brokeback Mountain came on and in June Ennis had a general delivery letter from Jack Twist, the first sign of life in all that time.

Friend this letter is a long time over due.

Late in the afternoon, thunder growling, that same old green pickup rolled in and he saw Jack get out of the truck, beat-up Resistol tilted back.

"Alma, this is Jack Twist, Jack, my wife Alma."

"Ennis -- " said Alma in her misery voice, but that didn't slow him down on the stairs....

Ennis lay spread-eagled, spent and wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent, Jack blowing forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and Jack said, "Christ, it got a be all that time a yours ahorseback makes it so goddamn good.  We got to talk about this.  Swear to god I didn't know we was goin a get into this again...."

"I figured you was sore about that punch."

"Friend," said Jack, "I was in Texas rodeoin.  How I met Lureen.  Look over on that chair."

"Yeah. I made three fuckin thousand dollars that year.  Fuckin starved.  Had to borrow everthing but a toothbrush from other guys.  Drove grooves across Texas.  Half the time under that cunt truck fixin it.  Anyway, I didn't never think about losin.  Lureen?  There's some serious money there.  Her old man's got it.  Got this farm machinery business."

"Friend a mine got his oil checked with a horn dipstick and that was all she wrote."

"And I know enough about the game now so I see that I ain't never goin a be on the bubble."

'You know, I was sittin up here all that time tryin to figure out if I was -- ?"

"I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain't nothin like this."

"Shit no," said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own. "You know that."

"That summer," said Ennis. "When we split up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at that place in Dubois.  Took me about a year a figure out it was that I shouldn't a let you out a my sights."

"You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas.  You and me can't hardly be decent together if what happened back there" -- he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment -- "grabs on us like that.  We do that in the wrong place we'll be dead.  There's no reins on this one."

"Got to tell you, friend, maybe somebody seen us that summer."

He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back in his squeaky wooden tilt chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn't gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him.  He went on, "Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me."

"I ain't no broke-dick rider but I don't got the bucks a ride out this slump I'm in and I don't got the bones a keep gettin wrecked.  I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do it, you and me."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain't goin a be that way."

"You seen that?"

"If he was alive and was to put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tire iron."

"No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was.  "I goddamn hate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back to work."

"This happen a other people?  What the hell do they do?"

"This ain't no little thing that's happenin here."

Alma asked Ennis to use rubbers because she dreaded 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.  Under her breath she said, "I'd have em if you'd support em."  And under that, thought, anyway, what you like to do don't make too many babies.

"You still go fishin with that Jack Twist?"

"I looked in the case when I got a chance and there was my note still tied there and that line hadn't touched water in its life."

"That don't mean nothin."

He gave another wrench that left her with a burning bracelet, shoved his hat on backwards and slammed out.  He went to the Black and Blue Eagle bar that night, got drunk, had a short dirty fight and left.

Ennis, weather-eyed, looked west for the heated cumulus that might come up on such a day but the boneless blue was so deep, said Jack, that he might drown looking up.

Jack reached for the .30-.06 but there was no need; the startled bear galloped into the trees with the lumpish gait that made it seem it was falling apart.

"Get beaver fever doin that," said Ennis....

Jack broke the seal on a bottle of whiskey, took a long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, "That's one a the two things I need right now," capped and tossed it to Ennis.

It faded after an hour into tender spring snow that heaped wet and heavy.

Ennis leaned into Jack's window, said what he'd been putting off the whole week, that likely he couldn't get away again until November after they'd shipped stock and before winter feeding started.

"Christ, Ennis!  Whyn't you tell me this before?"

"And I'll be runnin the baler all August, that's what's the matter with August.  Lighten up, Jack.  We can hunt in November, kill a nice elk.  Try if I can get Don Wroe's cabin again.  We had a good time that year."

"You know, friend, this is a goddamn bitch of a unsatisfactory situation."

"Let me tell you, I can't quit this one.  And I can't get the time off.  It was tough gettin this time -- some a them late heifers is still calvin."

He walked to his truck, put his hand on the trailer, said something that only the horses could hear, turned and walked back at a deliberate pace.

"I got a say this to you one time, Jack, and I ain't foolin.  What I don't know," said Ennis, "all them things I don't know could get you killed if I should come to know them."

"Try this one," said Jack, "and I'll say it just one time.  Tell you what, we could a had a good life together, a fuckin real good life.  You wouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain.  Everthing built on that.  It's all we got, boy, fuckin all, so I hope you know that if you don't never know the rest."

What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock.

Ennis's breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced....

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult lives.  Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Ennis would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see nor feel that it was Jack he held.  And maybe, he thought, they'd never got much farther than that.

Ennis didn't know about the accident for months until his postcard to Jack saying

November still looked like the first chance came back stamped DECEASED. 

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 again she said in a level voice yes, Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on a back road when the tire blew up.

"You're the fishing buddy or the hunting buddy, I know that."

"He use to say he wanted to be cremated, ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain.  I didn't know where that was."

The stock was too far distant for him to see their condition, only that they were black baldies.

"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."

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 mow and all.  I kept his room like it was when he was a boy and I think he appreciated that."

"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 stood up, said, you bet he'd like to see Jack's room, recalled one of Jack's stories about this old man.

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.

"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 scorch 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....

The window looked down on the gravel road stretching south and it occurred to him that for his growing-up years that was the only road Jack knew.

Around that time Jack began to appear in his dreams, Jack as he had first seen him, curly-headed and smiling and bucktoothed, talking about getting up off his pockets and into the control zone, but the can of beans with the spoon handle jutting out and balanced on the log was there as well, in a cartoon shape and lurid colors that gave the dreams a flavor of comic obscenity.  The spoon handle was the kind that could be used as a tire iron.

[Meryl]

Jack and Ennis were not in agreement about living together, but they did agree on the importance of this:  abolishing the loneliness that haunted each of them, despite having wives and children.

[southendmd]

Ennis was afraid that death would befall them if "this thing" grabbed a hold of them in the wrong place or time.

[Fran]

Ennis was convinced that he and Jack could never live together without risking their lives.

[memento]

Ennis became downfallen when he found out that they had to come down from the mountain early.