Chapter Text
Jack’s there when he gets off the train at San Francisco 4th & Kings street station, a blot of smiling blue and white and red as recognisable as ever even without his old cowboy hat and gear.
There’s tears in Ennis’ eyes before he knows it, and when Jack manages to paw over to him through the disembarking crowd, he’s turned around hiding his face behind his sleeve. It’s too much. A dizzying gut punch of pure joy, a whip of disbelief, a jaw-kick of revived feeling. He feels like he’s been well and truly punched up when Jack puts a tentative hand on his shoulder, turns him round with gentle coaxing, testing the waters.
Silent as ever they were, they embrace saying nothing. Ennis blinks tears away into Jack’s grey-peppered curls, Jack grips the back of Ennis’ head, says something into his ear that Ennis doesn’t quite hear. Converses tread on top of cowboy boots, the brim of Ennis’ hat hangs over both their faces, Jack’s puffer coat squeaks and sighs under big squeezing arms. Son of a bitch, how different he is, how little Ennis’ feeling towards him has changed. Intense a desire as it ever was, Ennis’ head pulls back on instinct, finds blue eyes, a warm forehead against a cold one, a crooked nose strokes an upturned nose, then easily as ever, lips cling onto lips.
“Jack. Sonovabitch.” Ennis pulls away to breathe, to say Jacks name, to see him standing there. Standing there.
“I know, bud.” Jack’s lips brush his own as he speaks.
“You got a hellova lotta explaining to do.”
“I know that too.”
Ennis jolts, a passerby bustling past, and his hands instantly fall away to his own side. Even so, their eyes stay locked, Jack so close that their knees are still intertwined. When Jack does let go, slow and resistant, there’s claw marks in the canvas of Ennis’ jacket.
“Sure’s busy here,” Ennis says quietly.
“Come on, come on then.”
Jack, giving the charitable patience that is given to an injured animal, puts that same old distance between them and pulls Ennis away by the elbow of his coat sleeve, holding tight.
***
The gold radiance of San Francisco’s setting sun pools at the bottom of the closed bedroom blind. There’s noise, signs of life moving even with the window locked shut. It’s nothing near the tranquil quiet of rural Wyoming, and certainly nothing close to the dig-out of forest Ennis has grown accustomed to over the last year.
Jack sits by the window, blowing smoke, tapping a beat with his lighter and humming a punchy song that Ennis has never heard before. His silhouette, half lost in the dark shadows, comforts Ennis with the little of it he can make out. He gets Jacks attention from the edge of the bed, tells jack to toss him his coat. After some back and forth about how this Jack’s apartment and not no goddamn hotel, Jack does. From the big bottom pocket, Ennis retrieves his camera, aims it, snaps a picture with a lightning rod of white light.
“Goddamn! Now what in the hell is that?”
“Camera. You aint seen one afore?”
“‘Course I seen a fucking camera,” Jack laughs, “and what in the hell are you doing with one? Pick up a new hobby in your old age?”
“Well, I realise, afterwards you know, I aint have no photograph. Not a single one. Well there’s postcards but less you had a modelling career I never found out about, not a one with your face on it.” Ennis says, plucking the sheet of picture paper out, giving it a little wobble alive. “I pick one’a Brokeback in the end.”
Jacks mouth twitches upwards.
“That so?”
“Mm, well…”
“Friend,” Jack says, tone of his voice indicating he’s thinking hard. “I’ve been wond’ring what you’d make of all this.”
“All whut?” Ennis asks.
The photograph’s so dark it’s practically black and white. Ennis, always waiting for the grey skies, checks it close to make sure it’s really Jacks eyes caught lost in thought by that flash. Sure enough. He breathes out slow and long, not having realised he was holding it.
“Where to even start.” Jack hums.
“Why’d everyone think you’re dead?”
“That’s a good place.” Jack laughs. Ennis feels his chest contort, clench closed dead centre and squeeze his heart.
“I don’t get it Jack. I don’t get it. Now, they cremated someone— if it weren’t you, then—“
“Almost was.” Jack says, matter of factly. His head hangs against his fist. “A friend o’ mine… cremated was it?”
“Why they think he was you?”
“He woulda had some of my things in his pockets.”
“Would he? Who? Who’s he? Why?” There’s a spark of frustration in Ennis’ voice. He quells it,
Extinguishes it. Remembers what Jenny said about him being all river and even more dam.
“Well…” Jack takes a shuddering breath, stubs out his cigarette into the ashtray balanced on the arm of his chair. His face turns, half stone caught at the edge of the light, contouring his cheek and nose and brow like the peaks of a mountain enshrined in early dawn. He swallows, his mouth tight and downturned.
“Ennis let me start from the start, here. It’s a bitch of story, I needa start from the start or I’ll get mixed up, alright?”
***
“Friend, Christ!” Jack breaths heavy, plunging breathes. His naked chest heaving, shaking like an earth quake when he laughs. His back aches against the cold ridges of the bed’s headboard, pressed harder when Randall’s thick upper body leans back and settles against his. They slide against each other, sweat slicked, and Jack throws an arm around Randall’s shoulders, pressing close and seat-belting him tight.
“Tell you what, you’re the biggest I ever had cowboy.” Jack lies. Randall smiles shy, triumphant.
“You got a smoke?” Randall asks.
“Back pocket’a my jeans, there. Don’t know which one.”
The slippery cold jets between them as they unsuture from one another, Randall’s broad top half leaning down and sorting through bundled up pieces of clothing.
“Light me one.”
“Say, who you take me for?”
“ Please.” Jack drawls.
They laugh.
“That better. My momma raise me right, that all.” Randall says, finding something with a celebratory rattle, an engraved silver cigarette case that Lureen got Jack last Christmas. It came in a pair with a whisky tumblr. He smokes and drinks, that’s about all she knows about him anymore. Randall flicks open the lid, lands painfully fast back against Jack’s chest. Jack doesn’t complain. Everything he wants comes with a little pain.
“ That’s all . Like if mine didn’t, huh?”
“She aint learn you your P’s and T’s, that for sure.” Randall holds the cigarette in his mouth, it jounces upwards like if alive, it’s face finding the flame of his lighter.
“Oh, she teach me awrite. But I never been one much for learning what I was taught.”
Jack steals the smoke off him, breathes it in deep. The arm around Randall’s chest glides across hot skin, squeezing the muscle, brushing the nipple, pulling at the chest hair. He smiles against Randalls ear, eyes closed, cigarette burning the edge of his fingers.
“Ain’t no way you learned any’a that from your mama anyways.” Jack sniggers. Randall bats him away haphazardly.
“Don’t be sick.” There’s something of a genuine grimace in his voice, Jack ignores it.
“Lashawn think you’re pokering again?”
“She think what she wanna think. I don’t bother saying. Not like she listens anyhow.”
“Well where she think you at? You said pokering the other time.”
“I don’t know, said.”
“You should keep up with pokering. Makes a pattern, see? Keep it up.”
“No impertinence, Jack, but it matter?”
“Well, friend, when you divorce you gotta keep some pretend going. At least before it’s all—“
“Divorce… now why can’t you keep one conversation steady without bringing up divorce.”
Jack swallows. His stomach feels empty, hands and feet cold.
“You said you was.” Jack reminds him, plain.
“I said, I said…” Randall sighs, asks for the cigarette back with a twitch of two fingers. Jack leans his head down to give it, lips pressing against the back of Randall’s hand. He kisses it while it hangs around.
“Jack, you’re a cute thing. No impertinence, like, but y’are… you’re too quick with this. I know what I said, and I’m not taking it back now, but we can’t rush into these things.”
“Rush…. Rush, well I’m thirty-nine and you’re thirty-seven. Tell you what, way I see it, we don’t rush, we’ll be dead long a’fore we touch any damm ranch.”
Jack looks away, stares at the black window, almost seeing the stars, almost seeing firelight. He feels a wind gush past, but there’s no breeze in the poky little motel room, there’s hardly even enough air to breath.
“I had enough a waiting around.” Jack says, simple.
“And you won’t be. But we gotta do it properly. Alright? I don’t want’a get no one hurt in this. You or Lashawn. We gotta figure it out. We got time… that about all we got.”
Jack rolls his head back, smells the musky, sweaty stench of sex in the air. Hears the squeal of bed springs and the jumble of laughter in recent memory, notices Randall’s face, reflected ghostlike in the window, contorted and dropped, frown lines and wet eyes. He forces himself to cheer up, hand moving to Randall’s thin hair, stroking it back.
“Time… friend, you’re already balding. You call that time?” He puts a note of friendliness in his voice, about as much as he can muster, and laughs only after Randall does.
A hand finds his thigh under the covers, holds it, scratches it gently.
“I will do it, Jack.” Randall says. “Said I would. And Mama always learned me to keep to my word.”
The morning’s only half awake when they close the motel door behind them and linger on the run-around porch. Their trucks are parked opposite one another, Jack's big black gas-guzzler and Randall’s beaten up nameless old thing. They look lonely against the grey dawn, facing away from eachother, all ready to head off on their separate ways.
A morning bird caws, like metal scraping bone.
Randall turns to Jack, offering his hand with a tight smile, polite-like. Jack takes it, shakes it, hesitates, and then grips hard and pulls Randall close. Kisses him, kisses him with might, pulls away and then pecks him once more, a goodbye kiss if there ever was. Ennis had kissed him much the same way once, up on Brokeback, before they even knew what a goodbye really was. Ah, Goddammit. He said he wasn’t gonna think of Ennis anymore. It had become a New Year’s resolution at this point, one with a success rate close to ‘ lose weight’ or ‘ learn a new language’.
Randall smiles sadly at him, strokes the label in the back of Jack’s shirt collar, and then drops away from him with a scan of their surroundings. Hesitates.
“Say, buddy, you aint hungry are ya?” Randall starts, “‘cos I seen this diner down there, says open twenny-four seven when I sees it.”
Jack agrees fast. Says they should take separate pick-ups, but after Randall’s coughs and growls and fails to get going, a sweet-old reminder of their first meeting on that roadside months back, Jack says it’d be alright if they just go in his. Says they’re overthinking it, anyways.
The diner is a tin-can of a place, alone on the long stretch of road except for it’s direct neighbour, a large mechanics full of steel debris. It has it’s name glued onto the front in big, old -western style red lettering. LAST STOP DINER. The whole things a pallid blue and where it’s not, it’s bloody rust. The large rectangle windows reflect the clear white sky behind and ahead of them. He marvels at just how clear the day is, feels a comforting sort of finality in it, seeing some sort of mirage ending through that endless, empty opaque. Randall leans his forehead against the passenger side window, looking somewhere Jack can’t see, hand squeezing Jack’s inner thigh. They park round the back of the place, In Jack’s head it makes sense, some privacy when getting in and out. In hindsight, maybe it made all the difference.
Wrenching up the hand break, Jack finds Randall’s hand, tries to thread their fingers together, but it’s holding onto him tightly, too tightly. Then, quick and sudden, Randall flinches away.
“Friend?” Jack looks up.
With a feeling of being made to swallow a lead weight, he sees in the passenger-side wing mirror what Randall must have been watching closely the whole time.
Three men, ripped shirts and dirty boots, drop from a soiled white pick-up freshly parked a few metres away and begin a slow march towards them.
“Shit.”
Jack lurches for the hand break with his left hand. His right fights with the car keys.
The car growls, clogs, spits. Dies.
“Shit shit shit shit!”
He tries again. Dead. another try. It lurches, then starts. Thank god. Thank god. Thank—
A window smashes. Jacks side. Glass covers him, cuts open his shirt and jeans as two pairs of thick hands drag him out. He hears Randall yell his name before a fist knocks the hearing out of him. A hard-heeled boot swings between his legs, sends his vision white and folds him up like a pen-knife. He gargles. Ducks his head between his arms just in time, something thin and blunt comes full force down on his elbow.
Crack .
He screams. Another stumbling kick to the chin kills it. His attacker pauses, distracted. Through the high pitched whine that fills his head, the crunch of a broken tooth swimming around his bloody mouth, he hears the scuffle from the other side of the car, hears shouting and swearing, a choke, a crack, a snap. The boot of a car slams, shoes slap gravel hard and fast. Something metal hits something blunt. He feels a splash of hot and wet spray his crossed forearms.
He can hear Randall fighting back, can hear footsteps leave him be, run towards the chaos. He dares to open an eye, peaking out from behind his arms, body curled away. He don’t like what he sees. It makes his stomach, still in searing agony after the kick to the groin, twist and seize.
He’s sick. Blood and bile. He stumbles upright, finds the wall, finds his feet, finds his arm below the elbow swinging limp beside him. His finger is snapped. The one with the wedding band, except that’s long gone, lost to the gravel somewhere.
He glances again. Randall’s a piece of roadkill on the ground. Stomped, kicked, spat on, punched. The long blunt object that Jack is sure took out his elbow glints in the early morning light. A tyre iron. It slams down onto Randalls head. His body uncurls like a spring, wrists twist the wrong way around, feet pointing straight out. Body rigid, he shakes and rolls as they pummel him. His stiff body reminds Jack, just before he turns back around, of the way he had stretched that morning, how peaceful he had been then.
He runs, limping. What can he do? What can he do. He never was a fighter. He hears yelling, sees them coming after him in his mind's eye. Runs as fast as he can. Falls. Launches himself back up. There’s nothing but running on his mind. He can’t hear past his own panting breath, can hardly see except for the empty horizon ahead. Keep going. Keep going.
Finally, he arrives back at the motel. By grace he has Randall’s pick up keys in his pocket, having promised to check it out for him once they had finished with breakfast. Oh god. Oh thank god. He gets in the van, starts it. Fails. Tries again. No luck. He’s not sure if they’re still coming, knows they can’t be far off if they are.
With a lurch of pure faith and hope, he twists the key one last time. The car ticks, moans, and then roars to life. He cries in relief, heaves the wheel and stamps the gas pedal to the floor.
He’s away. Arm broken, hardly in control of the car, but he’s off. He made it. He made it out. He made it.
He retches, thinking of Randall left back there, and pulls over once he’s far enough cleared and the roads back to empty, almost like nothing happened at all.
He falls from the footwell of the driver's side, collapses into long dry grass and pukes the last of his guts out. It’s nothing but blood and bile like before. It keeps coming, floods the soil in front of him, a puddle of molten lava.
He cries.
Thinks of Ennis. Thinks of the fear in his eyes as he told Jack what he saw at the age of ten. Thinks he hates him for forcing him into this, some twisted, ironic way it was his fault, wasn’t it? God damn it. Wasn’t it? Yet it’s Ennis his mind finds through the fog, through the confusion, through the shock.
He needs him. That’s all he wants. His arms round him, body close, safe.
And just like it’s always gone, he cries alone.
***
Ennis is frozen, taking in the story, feeling around in his gut for what to do. His gut says go to Jack and hold him, hold him tight with both arms and tell him it’s okay, tell him it’s okay now.
“It’s the brain.” Jacks says, voice uneven, slipping
in the tears.
“They start to stretch out like that, wrists outwards and all that, it’s the brainstem. Friend here who’s doctorin’ told me that. Hands in, curled up on the chest like, like they’re a begging dog, that’s damage to the front.” Jack lifts his head from his hands to circle his own forehead in explanation.
“But hands out like that, outwards facing like he had, body like that…” Jack continues, “that’s the brain stem. That’s the all of you. Your bridge to your body. You don’t make it back from that. Fuck that up and you’re gone.”
“Jack…”
“Means when I saw him last, he was practically already dead.” Jacks hand flies quick to his mouth, he swallows deep, clears his throat. Like a drain unblocking, tears flow freely.
“And they was still kicking him, Ennis, that’s the thing.”
“Jack, I…”
Ennis can hardly stand to hear it. He’s seen it before of course, and then a hundred times in dreams, from age ten till now, life almost half behind him, it’s haunted everyday of his.
Like instinct learnt by routine, he stands, puts his arms around Jack's shaking shoulders, whispers something in his ear, stands him up, walks him steady to the bed and lays him down gentle. Jack cries. Cries so hard and Ennis remembers the last time he saw his tears. Tries to forget it, slides in beside him, holds him. It’s like that, laying together in all their clothes and all their hurt, Ennis’ forehead against Jacks cheek, tears not his own running down his face , that he hums a tune he hasn’t felt in his own throat for years.
A nursery rhyme his mama used to sing to him when he was little.
“Ennis?” Jack says, voice small. Talk the copper off the pipes, Ennis has never heard him so quiet.
“Yeah?”
“You staying?”
It’s the question. Ennis doesn’t answer, not straight away. Not quick enough for Jack. Never quick enough for Jack.
“I saw my obituary in the paper, week later.” Jack says.
“I was lying low, tell you what, I was scared to shit. Thought it might finally all come out… hell, maybe I wanted it to at that point. They must’ve come on the body next to my truck, my name on a cigarette case in his pocket, my wedding ring trodden in mud somewhere around him. He’d left his in his vehicle, left a lot of his things in that truck. It’s run off in a lake in Texas, now. And, shit, doubt his face was anything but a pulp after them bastards’a finished with him. That’s what I think… he ain’t deserve it. he was so gentle, Ennis. He never deserved… well, anyway, I collected what life insurance I could while still laying low, hitch-hiked my way down here, heard it was the place. I thought about coming round your way, but we’d left it how we did. I could never be sure with you, Ennis. Never sure. Tell you what, it’d be nice here Ennis. I got a bit of a life going. It’d be real good. You an’ me. Got friends, got a job. There’s fun round here, it’s not all just living, there’s a bitta life too… you know, just you an’ me.”
Ennis kisses him, saying something without really saying it. Shivers like the shudder of a horse's back course through him everywhere Jack touches. He whispers in Jack’s ear something about staying a week or two on account of Jenny and that hippie kicking back at his place, kisses him up and down, threading leg in leg and arm through arm, never saying what he really means. He knows, as Jack’s fingers tangle with his hair, that Jack would appreciate the words. Damned if he can find them, though.
Anyway, he’s answered the only question Jack’s asked. He’ll stay a while. He’ll stay.