“You goin a do this next summer?” said Jack to Ennis in the street, one leg already up in his green pickup. The wind was gusting hard and cold.

    “Maybe not.” A dust plume rose and hazed the air with fine grit and he squinted against it. “Like I said, Alma and me’s gettin married in December. Try to get somethin on a ranch. You?” He looked away from Jack’s jaw, bruised blue from the hard punch Ennis had thrown him on the last day.

    “If nothin better comes along. Thought some about going back up to my daddy’s place, give him a hand over the winter, then maybe head out for Texas in the spring. If the draft don’t get me.” “Well, see you around, I guess.” The wind tumbled an empty feed bag down the street until it fetched up under his truck.  “Right,” said Jack, and they shook hands, hit each other on the shoulder, then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but drive away in opposite directions. Within a mile Ennis felt like someone was pulling his guts out hand over hand a yard at a time. He stopped at the side of the road and, in the whirling new snow, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt about as bad as he ever had and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.  In December Ennis married Alma Beers and had her pregnant by mid-January. He picked up a few short-lived ranch jobs, then settled in as a wrangler on the old Elwood Hi-Top place north of Lost Cabin in Washakie County. He was still working there in September when Alma Jr., as he called his daughter, was born and their bedroom was full of the smell of old blood and milk and baby sh*t, and the sounds were of squalling and sucking and Alma’s sleepy groans, all reassuring of fecundity and life’s continuance to one who worked with livestock.

    When the Hi-Top folded they moved to a small apartment in Riverton up over a laundry. Ennis got on the highway crew, tolerating it but working weekends at the Rafter B in exchange for keeping his horses out there. The second girl was born and Alma wanted to stay in town near the clinic because the child had an asthmatic wheeze.

    “Ennis, please, no more damn lonesome ranches for us,” she said, sitting on his lap, wrapping her thin, freckled arms around him.  “Let’s get a place here in town?”

    “I guess,” said Ennis, slipping his hand up her blouse sleeve and stirring the silky armpit hair, then easing her down, fingers moving up her ribs to the jelly breast, over the round belly and knee and up into the wet gap all the way to the north pole or the equator depending which way you thought you were sailing, working at it until she shuddered and bucked against his hand and he rolled her over, did quickly what she hated. They stayed in the little apartment which he favored because it could be left at any time.  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. Hope you get it. Heard you was in Riverton. Im coming thru on the 24th, thought Id stop and buy you a beer Drop me a line if you can, say if your there.  The return address was Childress, Texas. Ennis wrote back, you bet, gave the Riverton address.

    The day was hot and clear in the morning, but by noon the clouds had pushed up out of the west rolling a little sultry air before them.  Ennis, wearing his best shirt, white with wide black stripes, didn’t know what time Jack would get there and so had taken the day off, paced back and forth, looking down into a street pale with dust.  Alma was saying something about taking his friend to the Knife & Fork for supper instead of cooking it was so hot, if they could get a baby-sitter, but Ennis said more likely he’d just go out with Jack and get drunk. Jack was not a restaurant type, he said, thinking of the dirty spoons sticking out of the cans of cold beans balanced on the log.

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