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Chapter Text

Ennis twisted the thick wire into its new place and snipped it short with his cutters. He leaned back in the harness and let his eyes relax across the fields; flat yellow squares stretched for miles until they were interrupted by a smattering of cottonwood trees and roofs. The white water tower of Boise City, Oklahoma was the tallest thing as far as he could see with the sun stretched low on the flattened landscape. 

He did miss the open air of the hills, but up here on the telephone pole he found a familiar solitude and emptiness. The poles repeated in a vast, straight line to Guymon for an hour along the 412 Highway - the longest stretch of straight road in the US, as he had been told many times since arriving in Boise City. The landscape did change along the road though, from busy ranches to abandoned homesteads, wild plains and dusty voids. 

He did his last checks on the new cable he had installed and pulled out his linesman’s handset. A red rotary phone, with black and red leads that he fixed to the new line. Ennis dialled the number of the county office, spinning the plastic clock face of the phone. When the whine of ringing could be heard, he was satisfied with his work and began the ladder descent down the steps stapled into the wooden post. 

Ennis’ co-worker Glen was leaning against the Cimarron County truck parked on the shoulder of the highway. Glen was a fair and sturdy man, slightly shorter than Ennis, and his prominent brow bone gave his face a look of permanent contemplation. They were both 21, but Glen had started his lineworker apprenticeship the year before Ennis and in most ways was an earnest and open person, but enjoyed flexing his minorly earned authority. From passing on the most basic of tasks to Ennis at work to enforcing his arbitrary orders in the house they shared, he seemed to enjoy his own importance. Ennis didn’t mind though, as his own self-recognised stubborn nature didn’t extend much to which way the dishes had to be stacked in the drying tray. Overall though, they got along well and Glen seemed to enjoy Ennis’ company. 

“I think that’s our last one,” Glen called up as Ennis got closer, flicking through his notepad. “This good weather’s making our job real easy. This time last year the wind was awful, we had ten poles damaged just on this road.”

“It’s been a real good summer. I hope it stays like that.”

“Just you wait until November hits, when the icy winds pick up. A Panhandle blizzard ain’t much fun.”

“Can’t be much worse than winter out on a ranch. Cold’s cold.”

They slid into the truck, and after checking off their final paperwork Glen drove them back to the county depot to drop off their harnesses, helmets and tool belts before they rumbled into their street. Their small, squat house had blue window trim and yellow walls to match the dried grass surrounding it, and was owned by the Cimarron County for its apprentices and contract workers. It had three bedrooms, with the third occasionally being used by an out-of-town contract worker when there was an urgent repair they weren’t trained to do. Their boss Jim Miller lived a couple of streets over and sometimes came round for a drink in the yard after work on a Friday night like this one. Overall, it was a comfortable place to live for now, but Ennis expected it to get quite cold in the winter judging by the draught of the windows. 

Ennis heated up some frozen lasagna for the both of them, and they ate in front of the television, Ennis disappearing into the raggedy armchair he had claimed. In the advertising breaks Glen piped up about this and that, how he wanted to trim the trees that weekend while the weather was good, how his girlfriend Martha would be coming round on Sunday afternoon as she wasn’t on shift this weekend at the hospital. Ennis felt tired and restless simultaneously, as he often felt, and gave short noises in reply.

In the morning Ennis toyed with the idea of going for a drive before Glen came back with Martha from the Methodist church, but it was a hot day and the air-conditioning in his truck had broken about a month ago. Ennis preferred to leave Glen and Martha to themselves, increasingly as Glen had confided in him last month that he had bought a ring for Martha. It was approaching a year since Ennis’ own engagement had fallen into a heap, and he didn’t enjoy being reminded of it so closely. 

Unwillingly, his mind often drifted to one particular memory from that clouded time.

How he had pulled into Alma’s family drive, the buzzing that had accompanied him on the trip from Brokeback opening up into a thundering roar. He had cut the engine and sat for a moment in the drive, looking up at the family home. It wasn’t grand by any means, but Alma’s father always kept the lawns trimmed neatly, and he pressure washed the front porch every month. He remembered seeing a figure suddenly appear at the window, breaking him from his meditation. Stepping out of the truck and holding his hat in front of him like a shield, Ennis had watched as Alma opened the door. She was a gentle person, and he’d always thought she could have been a good match for him. 

“Ennis! I thought you were coming back next month,” Alma called out as she stepped off the porch. 

“Were told to bring the sheep down early,” he replied. “Was a blizzard coming.”

“Well, I’m real glad you’re back.” She smiled, and his eyes fell to the ground. “Did you get caught in that storm a few weeks back? It was bad even here.”

“Yep, sure did.”

He remembered how Alma seemed to falter. Ennis knew she was used to his quiet nature but even he felt his own coldness radiating. He felt like he was going to be sick again.

.  .  .

Glen and Martha spent the afternoon lying in the yard, playing a couple of card games between them in the shade of a mesquite tree. Ennis joined them on the golden and dried grass for a little while and lit up a cigarette. He didn’t have much interest in card games, and didn’t know the ones Glen and Martha played. He studied the long seed pods that littered the base of the tree, and thought they looked like green beans. The game ended, and Glen lifted himself up into a cross-legged position to reshuffle the deck.

“Ennis, where’d you grow up again?”

“Wyoming,” he replied, looking up hesitantly from the seed pods.

“Yeah, I know that, bud. What town?”

“Tiny place called Sage.”

“I thought that was it. I just found out Martha’s cousin lives near there - little place called Opal.” 

Ennis nodded while blowing out smoke.

“Miss it much?” Martha asked. Glen plucked strands of grass to shred. Ennis watched this carefully before replying.

“Nah. Sage ain’t got much to it anymore, town’s drying up. My sister’s still there though.”

“Boise’s dead too,” Martha replied bluntly. “Some day I wanna move out to Amarillo, see what it’s like to live somewhere big.” Glen laughed and pulled his yellow cap over his eyes. 

Every time Martha came over Ennis felt himself being studied. He knew it was probably just curiosity as to why he had uprooted his life to do an apprenticeship in a small town where he knew nobody, but it still set him on edge. Most of the time Glen seemed content to leave Ennis be, but this time he joined in.

“If you want to call your family Ennis, just go ahead and use the phone. You know the county pays the bill, you might as well use it.”

Ennis just stubbed his cigarette on the tree trunk and rolled onto his back, lifting an arm to cover his face, despite being in the shade of the house. He laid there for another half hour while Glen and Martha continued their game.

He mulled over calling his sister while he was working the next day, and decided that even though he found phone calls irritating most of the time, it had been quite a while since he’d been in touch. He called after dinner that evening, from the telephone table in their dark hallway. The sound of the cicadas was rolling in from the open screen door as he and Jean spoke about how her ranch was going - the place he had been crashing in between jobs before moving to Oklahoma. He appreciated hearing her talk about the hay baling that was underway, and about their brother K.E’s new farm, because while he appreciated the stability of a lineman’s apprenticeship (and the pay packet he’d get once he was fully qualified), he did miss working on the land.

He mostly listened to his sister talk for the ten minutes they were on the phone. Jean could be just as quiet as him sometimes, but he could tell she appreciated his call and wanted to share the updates with him. 

As they were saying goodbye, Jean interrupted him with a start.

“Oh! I just remembered, a postcard came for you last week.” 

Ennis frowned and racked his brains. He couldn’t remember ever receiving a postcard from anyone. 

“Really? From who?”

“I guess it’s a friend of yours, someone called Jack Twist?” The hallway seemed to go cold and still. Ennis gripped the phone and was silent for a beat, terrified to reply. He felt frozen in place, he had never expected his own sister to be speaking to him about Jack. Ennis knew it had been over a year since they had come down off the mountain, and had privately considered this anniversary over the past weeks in his most solitary moments; up on a telephone pole, or lying awake at night with shadows from the venetian blinds striping his face. 

“What’s it say?” He hoped he kept his voice even enough.

“Let me pull it out,” Jean said, and he heard the phone being put down for a second. “It says… Friend, this letter is long overdue. Coming through on the 24th. Drop me a line, say if you’re there.” Ennis stayed silent. “I guess you’ll have to write him to say you’re not in Sage anymore. How do you know him?” 

Ennis’ shock gathered and crashed back over him in a wave of anger. How could Jack have been so stupid?

“We was up herding sheep together last summer.”

“Up on Brokeback? It's nice that he wants to stay in touch. Will you reply to him, Ennis, or should I write back to say you’ve moved?” 

Ennis’ jaw was set hard. “I’ll do it.” He couldn’t believe Jack had written to his family home. “Thanks Jeanie, but I’ve got to go.” He sat through a minute or so more of her pleasantries before setting the phone back in the receiver a little harder than he’d meant to. 

.  .  .

It had to be a particularly still night, but sometimes the low vibration of the grain elevator could be heard across Boise City. On the southwest edge of town the grain leg scooped and churned through the dark.

Chapter Text

“I’ve got two fuse pullers, the cable tensioner and a spare ratchet spanner. I couldn’t find mine today.” Glen straightened up from his squatted position in the cramped storeroom. It was a county-owned converted farm shed on the edge of town, made from corrugated iron that shone in the orange sunlight. Inside it was dark, with a dim bare bulb and the rusted holes in the iron lighting up the shelves Glen and Ennis were searching through.

“I’ll sign us out then,” Ennis said. He was keen to finish off what had been a long day.

They locked up the storeroom door and headed back to the truck, parked lazily in the middle of the gravel track. Empty silos framed the dusty land against the road. Glen threw their new supplies into the tray of the truck and looked over at Ennis.

“Did you remember to date the sign-out sheet? It’s important, Jim needs it for the records.” He almost had a look of suspicion cross his face, and Ennis almost had a bubble of frustration lift within him.

“I ain’t stupid,” Ennis replied plainly, and Glen relaxed and chuckled.

“Alright, alright. Just checking.” 

They slid into the truck together, Ennis in the driver’s seat today. He supposed that was a small mercy Glen had started to grant him.

“You wanna grab some beers on the way home?” Glen asked. The past few weeks they had been having a couple of drinks in the yard before eating dinner, enjoying the last of summer.

“I’m going to get home a little later. I’ll drop you off first though.” Ennis pulled out onto the road and wound down his window to let the afternoon air in.

“Where the hell you going? You got a date or something?” 

“Nope. I got shit to do at the library.” 

Glen laughed out loud at that, and wound his window down too, leaning his arm on the sill. 

“Come on now,” he said. “I ain’t buying that, but sure.”

It had been two days since his conversation with Jean, and Ennis had been thinking single-mindedly about it since. Mostly when he thought about Jack’s postcard, he tried to feel that first raw anger at Jack for having stepped into his family’s life at all. But in other moments, quiet moments, he had allowed himself to take hold of that other feeling, the one that lay deeper, and turn it over again and again. Last night he got little sleep, knowing that he had to send a reply to Jack so that he wouldn’t show up in Sage searching for him, but he didn’t know what to say. The thought of writing a message to Jack, however small, was thrilling after a year’s passing. But that year had seen the falling apart of his secure future, and he had only just started to feel like he found his feet slightly again. In his darkest moments when he thought on Alma and the way it had all come apart so quickly, he couldn’t stop himself from settling some blame with Jack and the derailment he had caused. 

After dropping Glen off at home Ennis did continue on to the library on the other side of town. He’d never been before, but had driven past it when picking up Martha from the hospital. Souter Memorial Library stood pleasantly and simply with its angular roof that gave it the impression of a very small church. Ennis was glad it stayed open late until six today, but hoped it would be quiet inside at this time. He tried to reassure himself that he wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary by replying to a friend’s postcard.

Walking inside, with his work boots tapping, he all but ignored the smiling attendant and continued past the front desk. The room was warm and bright, wood paneling covering the walls from floor to ceiling, interrupted by shelving units neatly stacked with books. He picked out the corner that looked most likely to have the White and Yellow Pages and scanned the shelves until he found it; the Wyoming 1964 edition, adorned with its walking fingers logo. Ennis didn’t have any address at all for Jack, but had supposed this was how Jack had found his address in Sage; he had talked about his siblings living there after all. Ennis remembered distinctly the closed and distant way Jack had spoken about his parents up in Lightning Flat, and thought that was his best shot, even if he didn’t live there anymore. Surely Jack’s parents would be able to do the same as Jean had done and give him a call to relay the message.

He took out the book and set it down on one of the centre tables, pulling up a leather-backed chair. Flicking through the White Pages, he found J Twist under Lightning Flat, with no other Twists listed. Ennis dug around in his jacket pocket for a moment until he found the postcard he had picked up from the gas station earlier, while he and Glen had been headed to their third job for the day. He had stood at the postcard stand for a long minute, trying to decide between a photo of Boise City in its dustbowl days, an illustrated map of Oklahoma, or a picture of the Townsman Motel that sat on the outskirts of his side of town. He’d never even stayed there, or given it much thought but at that moment he had thought Jack would like the image. It was a funny little photo, the motel with its bright geometric sign like something out of the Jetsons: ‘Townsman Motel, Boise City, Oklahoma. Restaurant, Swimming Pool, Vacancy’. In the library now though, he realised that he’s subconsciously made up his mind on the decision he had been turning over; whether or not to give Jack his new address. Well, he couldn’t do much about that now.

He flipped over the postcard and began to write, wishing not for the first time that he had neater handwriting.

‘Not in Wyoming anymore. Living and working here in OK. Enjoy your trip to Sage. Ennis.’

He read it over and frowned at the fact that he seemed to have just listed three different place names for each sentence. There wasn’t much room to add anything else of substance though, but he did hesitate before writing his return address in the top left-hand corner. Like he thought before, he hadn’t left himself much choice. He scribbled down what he assumed was John Twist’s address on the right hand side under Jack’s name and hoped it would make it to him in time.

. . .

The days sped by after Ennis dropped his postcard in the little blue mailbox, looking it over one last time before it fell into the dark slot. The air was still warm and dry but the wind had picked up enough to send a tree straight into a pole out on Highway 287. Glen announced that the tree must have been dead already, the leaves sure are green but see here how the roots are withered, and it was just waiting for some bluster to finish it off. In such a barren landscape, a kind of fractal scorched earth populated only with corn and sometimes sorghum, it was a wonder that the tree had come down with enough force in precisely the right direction. The county office didn’t want to spend the money hiring a crane, so it took them a whole day to dig a hole deep enough for the old pole, plus a trench at a fourty-five degree angle for it to be raised from. Even with the rope-and-pulley system Jim set up, it was rough work between the three of them just to save the county a couple hundred bucks. Ennis got stuck with the refitting of the lines into the night to ensure the ranches out on the highway wouldn’t be without power or a telephone line for much longer. He fell into bed at four in the morning, something unnatural for a person raised on farmwork. The days after didn’t let up, with their usual maintenance routine not pausing just for one tree. 

Martha was coming around most nights now too after work, and the three of them would sit at the table to eat their tuna casserole, spaghetti, or Ennis’ favourite store-bought lasagna; depending on whose turn it was to cook. They’d debrief their days at work, Glen mostly speaking on Ennis’ behalf, and Martha would regale them with tales of the day’s patients from her nursing training. A hand caught in a combine harvester, a car ran off the road, a stroke victim. At first Ennis had tried to drown out the details with the chewing of his food, but over time he found the matter-of-fact way she talked about each calamity fascinating, and then reassuring. She was unfazed by it all, this drama that was constantly unfolding just on the other side of town.

Over two weeks had passed, and Ennis had been so swept up in their routine that Jack’s postcard felt almost like a distant memory, until Martha flicked another card to him across the dinner table one night. It was a photograph of the Palisades in Yellowstone, a colourised image of sheer cliffs rising above a small, unreal blue river. He glanced up at Glen and Martha, both of them leaning over some letter Glen had received, and carefully turned over the small card.

‘I really was glad to get your message, friend. I’m in Lightning Flat, helping out with calf weaning. Why OK? Thought you would never cross the Wyoming state line... Thinking of you. Jack.’

Seeing Jack’s handwriting possibly for the first time in his life really was something. It was a loopy scrawl, rushed and crammed onto the card designed for a quick note, not a fractured conversation being opened. A vibrating lifted and rose to Ennis’ lips and his mouth felt mealy and dry, like a moth was caught there. He swallowed down the last of his casserole and wordlessly retreated to his room, shutting the door gently behind him. On the patchwork quilt Jean had made for him, he suspected originally for his wedding, Ennis flipped the card back and forth. The photo was perfectly chosen by Jack.

In a sort of possessed daze he went to the small desk that was mostly occupied by work notepads, a newspaper and a spinning top he found on the sidewalk once. Making a clearing, he pulled a sheet from a notepad. 

‘Jack,

I got a linesman apprenticeship here. Living in a worker house. I miss ranch work but at least it is steady. And I get to be outside. But there are plenty more farms and fields here than plains and mountains. 

It’s good you can help your folks. It has been a fine summer here, I hope the same in Wyoming. 

Ain’t nothing on last year though.

You still wanting to rodeo?

Ennis’

Signing it off he knew he couldn’t read the note back through without wanting to tear it into pieces - so quick as he could shoved the folded paper into an envelope he had spare from when he sent Jean a birthday card a few months back. Sealed it with spit, wrote Jack’s address out and laid himself back on the bed gingerly. The next morning while Glen ate his Quisp Ennis walked down to the corner and posted it without a second glance.

Chapter Text

The re-emergence of their conversation, one year paused, awoke something in Ennis. His life was unrecognisable from just the end of last summer, when he had come down off the mountain shaken and counting the days until his wedding with a grim finality. Since he left Riverton he had lived his life in a fog, clinging on to the routine he found in the advertisement for his apprenticeship. Jack’s last few postcards had ripped these illusions of a fresh start aside, and all of the equal warmth and anxiety Ennis kept tucked away in a corner as something to be barely seen from the corner of an eye, had spilled out. 

He found himself rising to check the mailbox every day. His conversations with Glen while they drove the highways and backroads were shorter than ever, as he found speaking to Glen distracting, where previously he had felt it a welcome respite from his own musings. Ennis began retreating to his room earlier each night, leaving Glen to watch television on his own. One night he caught a frown across Glen’s face, his mouth open and ready to question, but Ennis just turned on his heel and wished him goodnight. Sometimes he would look over Jack’s postcard, studying his rushed script, other times he would lie in bed and let his mind wander back to the brightness of their shared summer. 

A little over a week after he sent his letter, Ennis’ piety was rewarded.

‘Ennis,

Seeing your handwriting in the mailbox sure was a good start to the week. Glad you’ve innovated to the letter, so I can stop myself from trying to fit all I got to say in a couple inches.

It has been hard work here, that's for sure. This ranch ain't bringing much in and my daddy is stubborn as hell. He pulled something in his back last year, so he needs me here but he’ll never hear me say that. I’m glad you still remember me wanting to rodeo - sometimes I forget it myself. I went over to Sheridan last month, but just spectated. 

I thought you would always work with animals Ennis, I can hardly imagine you swinging up on a utility pole. 

Tell me what it's like in Boise City.

Jack.’

Ennis’ reply was written and mailed before they left for work that day. He had felt Glen’s eyes on him as he retreated back into his bedroom, holding Jack’s envelope gingerly, and emerged only ten minutes later to walk down to the corner mailbox. The air felt like it was beginning to turn, a cooler, lighter atmosphere than the oven-like heat of the summer mornings.

‘Jack,

Boise City ain't much of a city, but it has been interesting to live south. It’s real dry and flat. Maybe that’s what it’s like where you are too.

I do miss working with animals, especially the horses. I wonder what happened to Cigar Butt, if Aguirre treats him right. How big is your family’s spread?

Ennis.’

And so they continued, trading notes across 600 miles with Colorado in between. They swapped details of their own lives, Jack complaining at length about his father's stubborn nature, Ennis sharing small tidbits of his life; updating Jack when a freight train carrying cornmeal derailed outside of Boise City, or when an eagle landed on the electricity line right next to him while he was replacing a transformer. 

Approximately eight days passed between each letter from Jack. Ennis would now tuck the envelope in his jacket pocket, to open in the safety of his bedroom. He would hold each note with reverence, scrawling a reply after dinner, or sometimes on the side of the truck while Glen took his turn up the pole, always tucked away safely against his chest before his coworker was even halfway down.

Their notes slowly became less formal, less focused; sometimes Jack's letters would be a meandering dream of turning a dilapidated shack on the ranch into his own spread, but other times he still spoke about joining the rodeo circuit. He described his parents’ ranch as a brown and windy void, but Ennis imagined Jack stretched out in long grass, looking out across the herd. A cool Tuesday morning found Ennis carefully opening another letter in his darkened room, curtains still drawn. This one was much shorter, rushed.

‘You don’t know how much I’ve missed you since we came down.

These letters are making it more powerful. 

I want to see you, friend. 

Maybe you could tell Alma we’re organising a fishing trip?

Yours, Jack’

Ennis was struck guilty by omission. Cornered and exposed, he sighed and raised his chin to stare at the ceiling. Moving away from Wyoming, and with it the future that had once stretched so clearly in front of him was meant to be a fresh start. He was ashamed at the collapse of his engagement and didn’t often speak of it with anyone. He occasionally spoke of Alma to Glen, and they had spent a couple of hours one night talking about it after Glen told him his plans to propose to Martha - although Ennis had deftly passed over the honest details. But he hadn’t been embarrassed to speak of Alma in his letters to Jack, that wasn’t the reason for his white lie. He instead felt a deep sense of trepidation, as if he was standing in front of a wayfinder prevaricating. Ennis read over Jack’s letter for a final time, folded it up and carefully put it back into his jacket pocket before stepping out of his room. This was one letter he couldn’t leave in his desk drawer. 

That day everything seemed to stretch out endlessly as they sped down the highway, the telephone poles gradually forming out of a far, distant perspective and rushing towards them. 

“You know, you seem real distracted at the minute,” Glen proclaimed as they sat on the sloping roadside with their ham and cheese sandwiches. He was looking at Ennis from underneath his cap in an expectant, almost confrontational manner. 

Ennis felt heat rising up the side of his neck. “I got a lot on my mind.” 

“I know the feeling. You’re just acting more and more like a recluse, is all,” Glen continued. “Feels like I’m living by myself.” 

He only received a grunt of a reply when Ennis stood up, scrunched the sandwich paper and threw it into the dried grass and weeds like he was pitching a baseball.

Glen kept quiet the rest of the afternoon, pulled into silence by Ennis’ stoicism, and his fingers tapped on the wheel as they pulled into their drive. Ennis’ jaw was set, the tapping winding up a spring inside of his chest. He swung open the truck’s door and strode into the house, leaving Glen trailing behind him with a furrowed brow. Ennis hung his cream-coloured hat on the hook (a ranch-hand’s accessory he still couldn’t quite shake) and retreated to his room, knowing that behind him Glen was still watching.

For Ennis it had been a day of agonising over words, something he was never familiar or comfortable with. Nothing seemed quite right to respond to Jack’s plea, a hand stretched out across two state lines. He glanced over Jack’s letter one more time, trying to ignore Jack’s admission that he was missing Ennis. He just needed to come clean for now, but he told himself it was much too far between them to think of seeing each other. He’d looked on a map once to see where Lightning Flat was, and it only confirmed the impracticability of a visit.

He lifted his pen to a scrappy piece of his work notepad’s paper. Short and sweet, that’s what he was best at. He didn’t know why it felt like such a serious confession.

“Alma and I never did get married. That’s why I moved out here.

Sorry I didn’t say.”

He wrote Jack’s address out on an envelope pulled from the new pack he had bought a few weeks ago, and before he sealed his note inside, a thought came over him. He knew it was a weak reply to Jack’s vulnerability, but he couldn’t find any other words. Ennis rose, clutching the envelope and walked out into the yard. A pink glow streaking across the sky, he plucked a fern-like leaf from the mesquite tree, a thin strand with olive-green leaflets. Thumbed the stem for a moment before carefully sliding it in next to his note, and sealed the envelope with his spit. 

. . .

Eleanor pulled over at the gate to their dirt road, the angular roof of the house jutting up from a slight depression in the land. On her way home from Lightning Flat’s tiny general store, stocked up with flour, sugar, some cuts of meat and a tray of tinned peaches that were on sale, she often picked up the mail on her way home. She flicked through the small pile of letters and found a bill addressed to John for their recent feed delivery, a letter from her brother Harold, and a plain white envelope addressed to Jack. Not one to miss much in regard to her son, she had noticed Jack’s recent influx of letters, each one coming with the same blocky, always capitalised address on the front. When she passed them on to Jack over lunch he would almost snatch it out of her hand. She would notice out of the corner of her eye how his face would lighten, but he never opened the letter straight away. Instead, he would quickly finish his sandwich and tuck the letter under his arm to open it out on the porch. She’d glance through the window and would catch a gentle smile drift across his face. Jack never said who the letters were from, but they came with a clockwork regularity, every eight days. This routine had carried on for two months, mother and son dancing around each other. Jack was never known to be so taciturn. 

That same day she broke their little routine. As she passed over the new letter, she held onto it for just a second after Jack’s fingers closed over it, the paper taut between them. He glanced up at her questioningly. 

“Who are all these letters from, Jack?” She asked lightly. “Is it a friend of yours?” She let go of the letter.

Jack opened his mouth, and then closed it again, an uncharacteristic wordlessness.

“Quit stammerin and answer your mother,” John snapped from the head of the table.

Jack inhaled in through his nose before answering, “They’re from a friend of mine. Ennis.”

Eleanor remembered how Jack had returned home from his summer job last year speaking almost constantly about his workmate. She had heard how skilled Ennis was at working with horses, how they got stuck in the snow for a day, and how he shot a deer for them both. Eventually Jack’s reminiscing had trailed off and she hadn’t thought much of it over the past few months. Now, it was like she had broken the dam.

“You remember me talking about him, from Brokeback last summer? Well, he moved to Oklahoma so we’ve been keeping in touch this way,” Jack started. “He’s doing a linesman apprenticeship - sounds kinda risky to me, but he says the money’s real good.”

“Sounds like he’s making more of himself than you are.” John interrupted, staring into his coffee cup. 

Jack faltered for only a half-second before continuing. “Ennis was a real good friend to me last year, mama. I think you’d like him.”

Eleanor gave him a small, tight smile at that. “Well, I’m glad you ain’t lost track of each other". 

When they had slipped into bed that night, John with a groan and a loud creak of the weathered bedframe, Eleanor listened to a quiet muffle from the kitchen below. It rose through the gaps in the oak floorboards that on a regular night only gave them a cool draught, but with the wind silent outside, she could hear Jack’s voice on the telephone. She couldn’t make out any of the words, but still she listened.

Chapter Text

Martha must have mentioned something to Glen, otherwise Ennis couldn’t see why he was suddenly being invited to some church barbeque. He had told Glen he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in going to Martha’s church, that he knew Glen only tolerated it to save face for her family, but on that cool October day, something in Ennis felt compelled to join. Only a couple of days had slid by since his last note to Jack, and he still had a few more to wait for a reply. He and Glen had been slightly terse since their roadside conversation last week, and Ennis felt slightly bad for his poisoning mood. 

It was a moonless evening, and Ennis found himself by the fire wrapped in a conversation with a local ranch owner for most of the night - a gruff man bitter at one of his ranch hands for upping and leaving during calf weighing season. The man’s attitude aside, Ennis enjoyed asking questions about the operation over a couple of beers, and when Glen appeared with car keys in hand, the man handed Ennis a receipt with his address written sloping on it. Ennis knew he would never give up his apprenticeship that quickly just for ranch work, but silently considered going for a visit, just to get a taste of the familiar. 

Ennis slid into the back seat and closed his eyes on the five minute drive home. Glen and Martha were laughing about something or other, but he tuned it out and thought about what Jack’s ranch might look like and what he might talk about with his mama over dinner. 

Once home, he slowly followed Glen and Martha up the drive and let them go on ahead. The phone rang down the hall and he ignored it as he hung his hat on the hook next to the door. Glen picked it up with a scrape.

“Hello, Glen Williams speaking.” 

Ennis went to squeeze past him in the hall, Martha leaned her head from the kitchen.

“Oh sure, yep he’s here. Ennis-”, Glen turned around and held out the phone with a questioning look on his face. “Someone called Jack Twist asking for you.”

He was sure that the ashen feeling inside of him was reflected on his face as he snatched the phone out of Glen’s hands, pushing past his shoulder. He leaned against the wall, facing away from the other two as he put the phone gingerly to his ear.

“Jack?”

A familiar voice crackled loudly into his eardrum. Their phone’s volume was always slightly too tinny, but he could tell Jack was almost whispering; at least by Jack’s standards. 

“Ennis! Your letter came today, I had to wait until now to call, otherwise my mama would be on my back, but I can hardly believe it, friend. Did you call it off?” 

Ennis stayed silent for a moment, his jaw set tight and eyes boring into the middle distance of the hallway.

“Nope. It just didn’t work out,” he said. “She didn’t think we was right for each other.” 

“Well, I been thinking I can come down to see you next month, my daddy’ll blow up but he’ll survive a week or so without me. I had a look at a map in the post office and I think I could get there in about a day’s driving, might have to stop near Denver for a night, and I still got that old GMC you remember? So it might be slow going- why did you have to move to Oklahoma anyway? It might be nice to see some different scenery though, I been going crazy on this dead fuckin plot here-”

“Jack, we can’t- how the hell’s that gonna work out? I got my work here, I can’t just take a week off at the drop of a hat.”

“I was thinking of coming over a weekend, friend.” A pause. “Surely you get your weekends free?”

“Why did you have to call me, Jack. I ain’t even gave you my number.” Ennis bluntly ignored the fact that he had memorised Jack’s own phone number from the library White Pages. “I gotta go, it’s late.” 

“Hold on a second, you’re the one who’s been writing me letters every week. Don’t play dumb, and now Alma’s outta the picture we could-”

“Shut up! Stop botherin me!” 

Ennis slammed the phone down and felt a white hot dizziness take hold of him as he listened to inane chatter between Glen and Martha start back up in the kitchen after a previously unnoticed quiet. 

. . .

The mornings were increasingly frosty, requiring them to use their neck gaiters to protect themselves from the stripping wind up on the telephone pole. Ennis was in a sour mood the whole week, and he knew Glen was coddling him when he didn’t lambast Ennis for forgetting to finish the job notes one afternoon. He tried to lighten the atmosphere a little, and suggested they go for a couple drinks at the bar on the edge of town. It was a converted shed with a corrugated-iron roof that drummed when it rained, and was cold enough inside to keep their jackets on. Its saving grace was that it was the only bar in Boise City that wasn’t also a restaurant, and Ennis felt strangely comforted by the coterie of regulars who took their place on the edge of society with a sort of pride and openness he could appreciate.

With an air like he was treading on eggshells Glen told him that he was going to propose to Martha that weekend in Black Mesa State Park. Ennis gave him a genuine smile and patted him on the back. When Glen asked him about his late night phone call the other day, Ennis told him about his friend from herding sheep two summers ago.

“Really the closest friend I’ve had. We reconnected a little while back, been sending a few postcards, but he’s a real dreamer. Always coming up with these crazy schemes. I get real sick of it sometimes,” he said half-heartedly. 

“Don’t find yourself standing in the shade too long, bud.”

As the work week ended Ennis felt as though he was moving through treacle. Even while he had been working or watching television in the evenings with Glen, he mentally replayed the conversation with Jack over and over. He had felt a deep sense of guilt even as his snapped words left his mouth, and it had only grown since. When Glen left to pick Martha up on Saturday morning, he waved him off from the porch before retreating to his room. Blinds half-drawn, staring at a piece of blank paper on his desk for a couple of minutes before rising again. The rest of the day he spent frantically mowing the lawn, trimming the edges, and repairing their dripping kitchen tap. When Glen and Martha came back in the evening, glowing faces and a modest ring attached, Ennis had laid out a simple salad, a couple of beers and got to frying steaks on their outdoor barbeque, stubbornly pushing down the empty feeling burrowing within him.

When they rolled out to work again on Monday morning, Ennis’ guilt and emptiness was shifting into something nearer to panic. It had been over a week since he hung up on Jack, and while he still thought he had been a fool to make such a late night call, Jack’s disappointed voice down the line had been echoing in his mind. He just couldn’t figure out what to say. 

Out on a particularly empty stretch of the Boise City to Guymon highway Ennis began his ascent up one of the wooden poles. It was only a scheduled maintenance job on the telephone line, and the wind had thankfully died down so there was no need for the gaiter. Halfway up the pole Glen called up to him.

“Did you pick up the cable tensioner?”

Ennis clipped himself to the next rung on the pole and turned, getting a brief wave of vertigo while looking straight down at Glen, who had his hands on his hips next to the truck. “Nup, I won’t need it here though.”

“We’ll need it for the next job. I think I left it on the bench in the shed. You sure you didn’t grab it?”

“If it’s not in the truck, it’s not there.”

Glen sighed a long, drawn-out breath that was audible even from where Ennis was perched. 

“I’m gonna have to drive over and grab it then. Otherwise it’ll push back the schedule.” He squinted up at Ennis. “I’ll only be fifteen.”

“That’s fine,” he replied. He was surprised Glen was willing to bend the rules like this, but they did have a busy day ahead of them.

Ennis watched him climb back into the truck and rumble down the highway, county logo receding into the cloudy yellow horizon. He continued his ascent up the telephone pole, double clipping all the way in a meditative rhythm until he reached near the top and could strap himself in just below the cross-arm. It was a quick job, a simple replacement of the rusting cable clamps that attached the secondary wires such as the telephone and cable television lines to the pole that further up carried high-voltage live wires into the transformer. Ennis wrenched the old clamps out quickly and pulled new ones out of his tool belt, installing them with increasingly stiff hands as he had left his gloves in the truck in a moment of optimism against the turning weather. 

Ennis straightened up, pushing out at an angle from the pole with his feet dug in until his spine cracked. Looking up and down the highway at the big stretch of nothingness, not even a homestead in sight. A single six-wheeler appeared out of the slight heat shimmer the asphalt road was still generating in the autumn air. With a mindless, almost frenzy-like motion, he pulled his red linesman’s handset out of his belt and attached the red and black wires to the telephone cable he had just reattached. He glanced again up and down the road, and seeing that Glen’s truck was still not in sight, he dialled on the rotary face and lifted it to his ear to hear it ring. 

“Twist household, Eleanor speaking,” came clearly down the line faster than Ennis was expecting. He jumped, and cleared his throat.

“Ma’am, I’m looking to speak to Jack Twist. Is he in?” He replied in a rush.

“Sure, he’s just out in the barn. Can I ask who’s calling?” She had a deep voice and spoke slowly.

“Ennis Del Mar. I’m a friend of Jack’s.”

Eleanor made a sort of hum down the phone before replying. “He’s mentioned you, I’ll just go get him for you now.” He heard the clatter of the phone being put down before silence. It gave Ennis a moment to gather himself - he hoped he hadn’t waited too long to put things to right.

“Ennis?” Jack’s voice was more stony than he’d ever heard him. Ennis fixed his eyes onto the space between fields and the gray sky and felt a kind of wild determination take hold. He took a breath. 

“Ennis- you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Listen- I tried to write you but couldn’t get it out. Couldn’t find the right words. That ain’t new for me I guess. But I’m sorry for hanging up on you last week. It weren’t right,” Ennis said before clearing his throat again. “I guess I was a little shocked.”

“You can say that again.” He could tell Jack’s tone was a little guarded. “Thought that was the last I'd ever hear from you.”

“Like I said, just couldn’t find the words,” Ennis replied. “I was thinking, it weren’t such a bad idea. You coming down here.”

“You sure you ain't gonna leave me out to dry again?” He could hear a slight smile in Jack’s words through the whine.

“Not if you ain’t acting like a damn fool. I got this weekend free though.”

“Alright- sounds fine to me, friend. It's been a long time.”

Ennis scanned the horizon one more time while Jack continued.

“I’ll head down there on Friday and pray my truck will make it. You got a motel or something in mind? There was that one on your card, don’t look too bad.” 

“Just come to my place first,” Ennis said, the harness holding him up feeling a little lighter. “I’m working so can’t stay on too long. But I’ll see you Friday.”

“Working? You calling me from a payphone or something?”

“Nah, we got these tester handsets. I’m calling you from the top of a Cimarron county telephone pole.”

Jack laughed loud and true down the line, “You crazy son of a bitch, you couldn’t fit me in any other time?”

. . .

When Jack’s black truck shuddered into his drive that Friday before spluttering to a stop, Ennis bounded down off the creaking porch with a shout, “Jack fuckin Twist.” They met in a rough embrace, thumping each other hard on the back, Ennis straining against his chest, Jack muttering, “It’s alright, it’s alright,” before Ennis pushed him forcefully round the side of the house, bringing their mouths together with teeth scraping underneath his bedroom window. Glen suggested later when he came back from Martha’s that Jack stay in the third bedroom for the weekend, to save himself some money, and the room would be empty anyhow. They had a beer together in the kitchen before Jack and Ennis went for a drive along the 412 Highway, the longest and straightest in the world, taking Ennis’ truck to give Jack’s time to cool down.