Could Larry McMurtry have unwittingly inspired the characters of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar as well as some of the story of Brokeback Mountain? In The Late Child, a novel of his published in 1995, there is a minor incident towards the end of the book in Chapter 14 that causes me to wonder. Here are a few quotes, condensed from several pages:
(At the airport) ".... noticed a young cowboy, sitting a few seats away. The cowboy was short and skinny. When she glanced at him she saw that he was bent over, with his face in his hands, crying. His skinny shoulders were shaking, and his black cowboy hat had fallen off his head and was on the floor, by his boots.
.... All he had with him was a small duffel bag, with a pair of spurs dangling from the handle, and a rope. His boots were dusty and his pants legs were a little too long--he had stepped on the cuffs and left them pretty frayed. Since he had his face in his hands it was difficult to tell exactly how old he was, but he looked to be only in his late teens.
.... 'Can I help you, sir?' she asked, sitting down beside him.
The boy, his face wet with tears, looked up at her--his look was blank.
'Jody's dead,' the young man said simply, as if it should be obvious to any passerby why he was sitting in the Tulsa airport at midnight, crying.
'That old pickup of ours didn't have no seat belts on the driver's side,' he went on. 'Jody always drove like a bat out of hell even when there wasn't no hurry. She missed a curve and flipped. Got thrown clean out of the window and broke her neck. Kilt instantly. The kids weren't hurt, though.
... 'Jody was your wife?' (she) asked.
'Yep, only she ain't no more, she's dead, and I got two kids to raise and not a cent to my name. I sure can't make enough calf roping to support two kids, so I guess that's the end of rodeoing
.... she said. 'I hope you don't mind if I sit with you for a while.' 'No, ma'am, I don't,' the boy said. I'm Wesley Straw. I come all the way up here from Lubbock and didn't win a cent. I don't know how we'll even scrape up the money to bury Jody... my folks don't think I should have married Jody in the first place....
'Oh God, ma'am, I just can't believe she's dead,' Wesley said. 'All she was doing was driving home. They estimate she was going better than ninety...
'Maybe you can get back to rodeoing a little later, Wesley," (she) said...
But Wesley Straw shook his head. 'I should have give it up already,' he said. 'It was just a dream I had, when I was growing up. I wanted to be a world's champion cowboy so bad-- or at least to get to the national finals. But I can't afford my own trailer, so when I enter a rodeo I have to borrow a horse to rope off of. But that's no good. I ain't familiar with the horse, and the horse ain't familiar with me Sometimes I'll be riding a different roping horse every time I rope. You don't get nowhere that way. All the good ropers got their own trailers and their own horses.'
'It don't matter now,' he went on. 'Jody was getting tired of me going off and never bringing home no money. I would have had to give up and go to work in the oil fields anyway, pretty soon. God, I hate the thought of spending the rest of my life working in the stinking oilfields.'
'Wesley, I lost my daughter recently,' (she) said.
'Aw, ma'am, that's worse.' Wesley said, turning his anguished eyes to hers. 'Losing Jody is hell, but if I was to lose one of my girls I'd take a shotgun and blow my head off.' On impulse he dug in his pocket and pulled out a sweat-stained walled and showed (her) small snapshots of his daughters, aged three and four.
Then he pulled out a picture of his wife.
'And this is Jody,' he said, offering (her) a picture of a thin-faced, pretty brunette.
... Just then Wesley Straw's flight was called. He popped up and put his black hat back on his head--it looked much too large for his small head and thin neck. He picked up his duffel bag, which made his spurs jingle a little.
... He gave (her) a little nod, and a grateful glance before getting in line to board the plane. Then he dried his eyes on his shirtsleeve and straightened his black hat on his head. There was something about his look that broke (her) heart. He was only nineteen, he had said, and now he was flying off to try his best to be a brave cowboy and raise his little girls, letting go forever his dream of being a world's champion calf roper and getting to compete in the national finals rodeo; all because his wife was driving too fast and failed to make a curve. Probably it had been hard for Wesley to keep up his hopes anyway, since he didn't even have enough money to own a trailer and didn't get to rope off his own horse. But he had still been trying.... Now it was over.
