BrokenBack Mountain
"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.
"You won't catch me again," said Jack. "Listen. I'm thinkin, tell
you what, if you and me had a little ranch together, little cow and
calf operation, your horses, it'd be some sweet life. Like I said, I'm
gettin out a rodeo. I ain't no broke-dick rider but I don't got the
bucks a ride out this slump I'm in and I don't got the bones a keep
gettin wrecked. I got it figured, got this plan, Ennis, how we can do
it, you and me. Lureen's old man, you bet he'd give me a bunch if I'd
get lost. Already more or less said it -- "
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. It ain't goin a be that way. We can't. I'm stuck
with what I got, caught in my own loop. Can't get out of it. Jack, I
don't want a be like them guys you see around sometimes. And I don't
want a be dead. There was these two old guys ranched together down home,
Earl and Rich -- Dad would pass a remark when he seen them. They was
a joke even though they was pretty tough old birds. I was what, nine
years old and they found Earl dead in a irrigation ditch. They'd took
a tire iron to him, spurred him up, drug him around by his dick until
it pulled off, just bloody pulp. What the tire iron done looked like
pieces a burned tomatoes all over him, nose tore down from skiddin on
gravel."
"You seen that?"
"Dad made sure I seen it. Took me to see it. Me and K.E. Dad laughed
about it. Hell, for all I know he done the job. If he was alive and
was to put his head in that door right now you bet he'd go get his tire
iron. Two guys livin together? No. All I can see is we get together
once in a while way the hell out in the back a nowhere -- "
"How much is once in a while?" said Jack. "Once in a while ever four
****in years?"
"No," said Ennis, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. "I goddamn
hate it that you're goin a drive away in the mornin and I'm goin back
to work. But if you can't fix it you got a stand it," he said. "Shit.
I been lookin at people on the street. This happen a other people? What
the hell do they do?"
"It don't happen in Wyomin and if it does I don't know what they
do, maybe go to Denver," said Jack, sitting up, turning away from him,
"and I don't give a flyin ****. Son of a *****, Ennis, take a couple
days off. Right now. Get us out a here. Throw your stuff in the back
a my truck and let's get up in the mountains. Couple a days. Call Alma
up and tell her you're goin. Come on, Ennis, you just shot my airplane
out a the sky -- give me somethin a go on. This ain't no little thing
that's happenin here."
The hollow ringing began again in the next room, and as if he were
answering it, Ennis picked up the phone on the bedside table, dialed
his own number.
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18 嶄猟井