“We herded sheep on Brokeback one summer,” said Ennis. He could hardly speak.

“Well, he said it was his place. I thought he meant to get drunk.

Drink whiskey up there. He drank a lot.”

“His folks still up in Lightnin Flat?”

“Oh yeah. They’ll be there until they die. I never met them. They didn’t come down for the funeral. You get in touch with them. I suppose they’d appreciate it if his wishes was carried out.” No doubt about it, she was polite but the little voice was cold as snow.

The road to Lightning Flat went through desolate country past a dozen abandoned ranches distributed over the plain at eight- and tenmile intervals, houses sitting blank-eyed in the weeds, corral fences down. The mailbox read John C. Twist. The ranch was a meagre little place, leafy spurge taking over. The stock was too far distant for him to see their condition, only that they were black baldies. A porch stretched across the front of the tiny brown stucco house, four rooms, two down, two up.

Ennis sat at the kitchen table with Jack’s father. Jack’s mother, stout and careful in her movements as though recovering from an operation, said, “Want some coffee, don’t you? Piece a cherry cake?” “Thank you, ma’am, I’ll take a cup a coffee but I can’t eat no cake just now.”

The old man sat silent, his hands folded on the plastic tablecloth, staring at Ennis with an angry, knowing expression. Ennis recognized in him a not uncommon type with the hard need to be the stud duck in the pond. He couldn’t see much of Jack in either one of them, took a breath.

“I feel awful bad about Jack. Can’t begin to say how bad I feel. I knew him a long time. I come by to tell you that if you want me to take his ashes up there o............