7

INT: WYOMING MOUNTAINS: TRAILHEAD: MORNING: 1981:

JACK

(bitter disappointment)

Never enough time, never enough.

(looks at Ennis)

You know, friend, this is a goddamn bitch of a unsatisfactory situation.  You used to come away easy. Now it's like seein the Pope.

ENNIS

Jack, I got to work. Them earlier days I used to quit the jobs. You forget how it is, bein’ broke all the time. You ever hear of child support? Let me tell you, I can’t quit this one. And I can’t get the time off.

(pause)

Was tough enough gettin’ this time. The trade-off was August.

(pause)

You got a better idea?

JACK shakes his head no.

ENNIS (CONT'D)

You ever get the feelin', I don't know, when you're in town, and someone looks at you, suspicious...like he knows. And then you get out on the pavement, and everyone, lookin' at you, and maybe they all know too?

JACK

Maybe it's time you moved outta there. You know, set yourself up somewhere different. Maybe Texas.

ENNIS

Texas?  Sure, and maybe you'll convince Alma to let you and Lureen adopt my girls, and then we could all live together, herding sheep, and it'll just rain money from L. D. Newsome, and whiskey'11 flow in the streams....

JACK

(bitter, accusatory)

I did, once.

ENNIS says nothing. Straightens up slowly, rubs at his forehead. Walks to the horse trailer, says something that only the horses can hear. Turns and walks back to JACK at a deliberate pace.

Mexico was THE place--ENNIS has heard.

ENNIS

You been to Mexico, Jack? I heard about what they got in Mexico for boys like you.

JACK, braced for it all these years, and here it comes, late and unexpected.

JACK

Hell yes, I been to Mexico. Is that a fuckin’ problem?

ENNIS

I got a say this to you one time, Jack fuckin’ Twist. And I ain’t foolin’. What I don’t know, all them things I don’t know…could get you killed if I should come to know them.

JACK

Try this one...

(pause)

...and I'11 say it just one time.

ENNIS

Go ahead!

JACK

Tell you what, we could of had a good life together, a fuckin' real good life, had us a place of our own. You wouldn't do it, Ennis, so what we got now is Brokeback Mountain. Everything built on that. It's all we got, boy, fuckin’ all, so I hope you know that if you don't never know the rest.  Count the damn few times we been together in nearly twenty years.  Measure the fuckin' short leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mexico and then tell me you'll kill me for needin' somethin' I don't hardly never get.  You got no idea how bad it gets.

JACK (CONT'D)

I'm not you.  I can't make it on a couple of high-altitude fucks once or twice a year.

(pause)

You're too much for me, Ennis, you son of a whoreson bitch.

(pause)

I wish I knew how to quit you.

WE PULL BACK NOW.

Like vast clouds of steam from thermal springs in winter, years of things unsaid and now unsayable admissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fears--rise around them.

ENNIS stands as if heartshot, face gray and deep-lined. Fights a silent battle, grimaces.

ENNIS

Then why don't you?! Why don't you let me be? It's because of you. Jack, that I'm this.  I'm nothin'.  I'm nowhere.

JACK starts towards him, but ENNIS jerks away.

ENNIS(CONT'D) 

Get the fuck off me!

JACK moves towards him again, and this time, ENNIS doesn’t resist.

JACK

Come here…it’s all right. It’s all right…damn you, Ennis.

And then…they hug one another, a fierce, desperate embrace—managing to torgue things almost to where they had been for what they’ve just said is no news: as always, nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.

8

CUT TO FLASHBACK: EXT: BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, WYOMING: CAMPFIRE: NIGHT: CONTINUOUS: 1963:

JACK and ENNIS, much younger.

JACK and ENNIS have finished the last meal of the day.  JACK stands by the campfire, warming himself.  He stands that way for a few moments, alone.

Then WE SEE two arms encircle him from behind:  it is ENNIS.

They stand that way for a moment, JACK leaning back into ENNIS

ENNIS'S breath comes slow and quiet, then he starts to gently rock back and forth a little, lit by the warm fire tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against a rock.  ENNIS hums quietly.

Nothing mars this moment for JACK, even though he knows that ENNIS does not embrace him face to face because he does not want to see or feel that it is JACK he holds--because for now, they are wrapped in a closeness that satisfies some shared and sexless hunger, that is not really sleep but something else drowsy and tranced--until ENNIS, dredging up a rusty phrase from the childhood time before his mother died, says:

ENNIS

Come on now, you're sleepin’ on your feet like a horse.

                               (pause)

My mama used to say that to me when I was little…

They stand like that for another moment.

ENNIS (CONT'D)

…and sing to me....

ENNIS sings low, a childhood song, from some long-ago memory.

ENNIS (CONT'D)

I got to go.

Gives JACK a little shake, a gentle push, and JACK stumbles ever so slightly in the direction of his tent. Stops.

Hears ENNIS'S spurs jingle as he mounts his horse.

ENNIS (CONT'D)

...See you in the mornin'....

A shuddering snort from ENNIS'S horse, the grind of hoof on stone, and ENNIS rides away, a very young JACK watching him go.

9

EXT: RIVERTON, WYOMING: PAY TELEPHONE: DAY: CONTINUOUS: 1982:

The huge sadness of the northern plains rolls down upon ENNIS.  He doesn't know which way it was, the tire iron--or a real accident, blood choking down JACK'S throat and nobody to turn him over.

The wind drones.

LUREEN

(not sure he's still there)

...Hello?

ENNIS

He buried down there?

LUREEN

We put a stone up.  He was cremated, like he wanted, and half his ashes was interred here. The rest I sent up with his folks.  He use to say he wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but I wasn't sure where that was.  I thought Brokeback Mountain might be around where he grew up.  But knowing Jack, it might be some pretend place where the bluebirds sing and there's a whiskey spring.

ENNIS can hardly speak.

ENNIS

...No, ma'am, we herded sheep up on

Brokeback one summer....

LUREEN

Well, he said it was his favorite place. I thought he meant to get drunk. He drank a lot.

ENNIS

His folks still up in Lightnin’ Flat?

LUREEN

They’ll be there till the day they die.

ENNIS

Thanks for your time, then…I sure am sorry…we was good friends….

LUREEN

Get in touch with his folks.  I suppose they'd appreciate it if his wishes was carried out.  About the ashes, I mean.

Although she is polite, her little voice is as cold as ice.

ENNIS hangs up.

Looks like death.

10

INT: OUTSIDE LIGHTNING FLAT, WYOMING: TWIST HOMESTEAD: HOUSE: TOP OF STAIRS: JACK'S ROOM:  DAY: CONTINUOUS: 1982:

WE SEE ENNIS climb a narrow set of stairs.  Enters JACK'S room, tiny and hot, afternoon sun pouring through the west window, hitting the narrow boy's bed against the wall.

A well-used desk and a wooden chair stand against the wall. A small .22 hangs in a wooden rack over the bed.

A window looks down on the dirt road stretching south…the only road out of this godforsaken place.  ENNIS window.  Opens it.

Sits for a moment, looking out at the bleak plain.

Turns, looks around the room.

ENNIS sees the closet.  Gets up, walks over to it.

A shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across it, a faded cretonne curtain on a string half-open, closing the closet off from the rest of the room.  In the closet hangs two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers. On the floor a pair of worn packer boots.

ENNIS looks inside to the left, and WE SEE that the closet makes a tiny jog into the wall--a little hiding place--and there, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hangs a shirt.

ENNIS lifts its sleeve: it’s JACK’S old shirt from Brokeback days, dried blood on the sleeve, ENNIS’S own blood, from their last day together on Brokeback, when they were wrestling and ENNIS slipped and JACK accidentally kneed him in the nose.

The shirt seems heavy. Then ENNIS sees that there is another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside JACK’S shirt sleeves: it is ENNIS’S own shirt, lost, he’d thought, long ago up on Brokeback Mountain, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by JACK and hidden here inside JACK’S own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one.

ENNIS presses his face into the fabric and breathes in slowly through his mouth, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of JACK.

But there is no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain, of which nothing is left but what he now holds in his trembling hands.

11

INT: RIVERTON, WYOMING: DEL MAR TRAILER HOUSE: AFTERNOON: CONTINUOUS: 1984:

ENNIS (CONT'D))

(smiles at his daughter)

You know what?  I reckon they can find themselves another cowboy.

Takes two jelly glasses from the dry rack next to the sink, unscrews the bottle top, fills both.

ENNIS(CONT'D)

My little girl…is getting’ married.

Hands her a glass of wine, Sits.

ENNIS (CONT’D)

(raising his glass)

To Alma and Kurt.

ALMA JR. smiles, and clinks her glass with her daddy’s.  

ENNIS smiles back at his luminous daughter.  But his smiles can't hide his regret and longing, for the one thing that he can't have.  That he will never have.

EXT: RIVERTON, WYOMING: DEL MAR TRAILER HOUSE: AFTERNOON: FEW MINUTES LATER: 1984:

ENNIS stands outside.

ALMA JR., in Kurt's Camaro, back out and drives off, waving to her father as she goes.

ENNIS waves back, until she's well down the road.

Turns.

Goes back inside his crumpled little trailer house.

INT: RIVERTON, WYOMING: DEL MAR TRAILER HOUSE: DAY: CONTINUOUS: 1984:

ENNIS, back inside now, notices that ALMA JR. has left her sweater hanging over her chair.

He picks it up, hurries back to the door, opens it.

Sees she's long gone.

Folds the sweater.  Goes to a little closet, opens the door. He places ALMA JR.'s sweater on the top shelf of the closet.

And there, on the back of the closet door, WE SEE THE SHIRTS, on a wire hangar suspended from a nail, and next to them, a postcard of Brokeback Mountain, tacked onto the door.

He has taken his shirt from inside of JACK'S, and has carefully tucked JACK'S shirt down inside his own.

He snaps the top button of one of the shirts.

Looks at the ensemble through a few stinging tears.

ENNIS

Jack, I swear....

Stands there for a moment.

Then closes the closet door.

He looks out the window, at the great bleakness of the vast northern plains....

THE END