“They can’t get no use out a me. Got some crushed vertebrates. And a stress fracture, the arm bone here, you know how bullridin you’re always leverin it off your thigh? -- she gives a little ever time you do it. Even if you tape it good you break it a little goddamn bit at a time. Tell you what, hurts like a bitch afterwards. Had a busted leg.  Busted in three places. Come off the bull and it was a big bull with a lot a drop, he got rid a me in about three flat and he come after me and he was sure faster. Lucky enough. Friend a mine got his oil checked with a horn dipstick and that was all she wrote. Bunch a other things, f*ckin busted ribs, sprains and pains, torn ligaments.  See, it ain’t like it was in my daddy’s time. It’s guys with money go to college, trained athaletes. You got a have some money to rodeo now.  Lureen’s old man wouldn’t give me a dime if I dropped it, except one way. And I know enough about the game now so I see that I ain’t never goin a be on the bubble. Other reasons. I’m gettin out while I still can walk.”

Ennis pulled Jack’s hand to his mouth, took a hit from the cigarette, exhaled. “Sure as hell seem in one piece to me. You know, I was sittin up here all that time tryin to figure out if I was -- ? I know I ain’t. I mean here we both got wives and kids, right? I like doin it with women, yeah, but Jesus H., ain’t nothin like this. I never had no thoughts a doin it with another guy except I sure wrang it out a hunderd times thinkin about you. You do it with other guys? Jack?” “sh*t no,” said Jack, who had been riding more than bulls, not rolling his own. “You know that. Old Brokeback got us good and it sure ain’t over. We got a work out what the f*ck we’re goin a do now.”

“That summer,” said Ennis. “When we split up after we got paid out I had gut cramps so bad I pulled over and tried to puke, thought I ate somethin bad at that place in Dubois. Took me about a year a figure out it was that I shouldn’t a let you out a my sights. Too late then by a long, long while.”

“Friend,” said Jack. “We got us a f*ckin situation here. Got a figure out what to do.”

“I doubt there’s nothin now we can do,” said Ennis. “What I’m sayin, Jack, I built a life up in them years. Love my little girls. Alma? It ain’t her fault. You got your baby and wife, that place in Texas. You and me can’t hardly be decent together if what happened back there” -- he jerked his head in the direction of the apartment—“grabs on us like that. We do that in the wrong place we’ll be dead. There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out a me.” “Got to tell you, friend, maybe somebody seen us that summer. I was back there the next June, thinkin about goin back—I didn’t, lit out for Texas instead—and Joe Aguirre’s in the office and he says to me, he says, ‘You boys found a way to make the time pass up there, didn’t you,’ and I give him a look but when I went out I seen he had a big-ass pair a binoculars hangin off his rearview.” He neglected to add that the foreman had leaned back in his squeaky wooden tilt chair, said, Twist, you guys wasn’t gettin paid to leave the dogs baby-sit the sheep while you stemmed the rose, and declined to rehire him. He went on, “Yeah, that little punch a yours surprised me. I never figured you to throw a dirty punch.” “I come up under my brother K.E., three years older’n me, slugged me silly ever day. Dad got tired a me come bawlin in the house and when I was about six he set me down and says, Ennis, you got a problem and you got a fix it or it’s gonna be with you until you’re ninety and K.E.’s ninety-three. Well, I says, he’s bigger’n me. Dad says, you got a take him unawares, don’t say nothin to him, make him feel some pain, get out fast and keep doin it until he takes the message. Nothin like hurtin somebody to make him hear good. So I did. I got him in the outhouse, jumped him on the stairs, come over to his pillow in the night while he was sleepin and pasted him damn good. Took about two days. Never had trouble with K.E. since. The lesson was, don’t say nothin and get it over with quick.” A telephone rang in the next room, rang on and on, stopped abruptly in mid-peal.