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Timeline for the last scenes

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MaineWriter:
Here's my take:

Lake: May, 1983

Pie: one week after the lake scene. Ennis is still depressed. He was at the lake for a week, now home for a week--Cassie hasn't seen him for two weeks and has figured out she got dumped by hasn't gotten over it yet.

Postcard: October, 1983. He sent it in September to plan the November trip (waited until August was over since they didn't have an August get together). The way things work in the postal service, it took a few weeks for the card to get returned.

Phone call: same day as the postcard.

Twist visit: November, 1983. Took awhile for Ennis to get in touch with them, make the arrangements and find a day he could take off for work. By November, ranch operations are at a lull.

Junior visit: April 1984, about 6 weeks before the wedding

David:
I agree Leslie.   That's how I see it too.   Besides, we know that Ennis had that time off in November anyways.   

ednbarby:
I agree with you, too, Leslie.

So now we're left to wonder what the timeframe was for Jack after the lake.

Following the reasoning of Ennis' switch of jacket colors from brown to gray as symbolizing his subconscious mourning for Jack's literal death, I have a new theory for what happened to Jack.

It's been posited in the past that Jack gave up on ever being with Ennis openly that last day together.  I agree with that.  But does it follow that he went back to Childress and took up openly with Randall, breaking up both their marriages, instead?  Jack had 14 hours to think on his way back home.  And here's what my mind's eye pictures him deciding.  No way Randall can fill the void Ennis has left in his life.  And it's not fair to do to Randall what he's had done to him for the last 20 years, which is not equally return his love.  He knows he doesn't love Randall, or at least he doesn't enough.  So it's best to cut him loose.  When he gets back, he does just that.  A week or two goes by.  He's depressed.  He can't have Ennis the way he wants, and he's just broken up with a good catch that he realizes he just doesn't love enough.  He has a particularly shitty day at the office, a big blow-out with Lureen, and heads to the local bar.  He starts drinking shots of whiskey.  He sees a man in a white hat looking at him from across the bar.  He looks familiar...  Oh, yeah - it's that mechanic from that shop down by Roy's place.  What's he lookin' at?  I've seen him lookin' at me like that before.  Does he want me to come over?  He *is* kinda smiling...  How ya doin'?  Bill, ain't it?  Whatcha drinkin', Bill?  JD?  Good choice.  Lemme buy ya your next one, an' a chaser too.  You're the one that worked on my pickup about a month ago, ain't ya?  Been runnin' like a top ever since.  I been meanin' to thank ya...

TJ:
I don't remember where it was posted, either here on BetterMost Forums or on some other online forum board; but, the timeline I saw based on the final screenplay for the movie seemed to have Ennis going to the Twist Place in the next year AFTER Ennis talked to Lureen on the Phone.  Because Jack's boyhood bedroom was hot on the Twist ranch at Lightning Flat (one of the reasons Ennis opened the window in the room), it could not have been in the Fall of the same year unless there had been a heat wave in NE Wyoming on the Central Plains.

(An aside here, in the AP story, the "relationship" which Ennis had with woman who worked part-time in the Wolf Ears bar in Signal was before May 1983 when the guys were together last.)

delalluvia:
Interestingly, and messed up as usual, the screenplay says their last meeting took place in 1981, the last postcard and the trip to the Twists in 1982.

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