The timeline for one of the last editions of the adapted screenplay almost fit what I consider the timeline of Annie Proulx's original story.
I find it quite irritating that avowed heterosexual Larry McMurtry, who brags about women understanding emotion better than men do, had to add a "Cassie" and a "LaShawn" (or Lashawn) to the movie when people who might be them only took up the LIMITED amount of text below in the original story.
Ennis said he'd been putting the blocks to a woman who worked part-time at the Wolf Ears bar in Signal where he was working now for Stoutamire's cow and calf outfit, but it wasn't going anywhere and she had some problems he didn't want. Jack said he'd had a thing going with the wife of a rancher down the road in Childress and for the last few months he'd slank around expecting to get shot by Lureen or the husband, one. Ennis laughed a little and said he probably deserved it.
And, IMO, a guy named "Randall" or whatever does not even need to be in the story. I would rather believe that Jack's "rancher neighbor," whom Mr. Twist talks about at Lightning Flat was a single man who had no ties with any woman.
And using the book's timeline and the way that Annie Proulx writes the story, Jack is physically in the very same shape as when Ennis saw him in May 1963. I just prefer to say that Jack is alive and as well as can be expected due to his being all banged up riding those bulls in rodeos. I just say that Jack in his "Let be, Let be" flash back (which, according to the book, took place after Ennis and Jack were together) decided that while he could not quit loving Ennis Del Mar, he would just move on with his life and find a man who was willing to have a life with him.
And, using the fact that Lureen was lying through her teeth about the accident, bookwise, along with the fact that Ennis NEVER saw any container with ashes in them when he did go to Lightning Flat (not even in the movie), Mr. John C. Twist, Sr. was lying about Jack, too. Jack's mother, since she was a Christian, refused to go along with the lie about Jack's passing. In fact, in the book after Jack's father first responds to Ennis's volunteering to take Jack's ashes to Brokeback, Mrs. Twist ignores him and changes the subject about how she kept Jack's room and Ennis was welcome to go up and see it.
Then is when the story continues here with Mr. Twist speaking again:
The old man spoke 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.
Notice how he started his next speech with "
I can't get no help out here." That sentence was left out of the movie's dialog. I think that it is important to Ol' John's self-centered stud duck attitude.
John C. Twist, Sr. is the
STUD DUCK in the original story. Ain't no man named "L. D. Newsome" in the original story.