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asexual_amoeba wrote an interesting and very detailed analysis of her fanfic “Portrait of a Life” which motivated me to do something like this for a couple of my own BBM fics.Of all my Brokeback stories, “Red and White” is the most complex and is constructed with the most organization, if I should put it that way, and it seemed obvious to analyze the details in that one that a reader may not have caught the meaning of. But there are some things in “Home” that I also wanted to address, especially because a lot of people got the opposite idea from the way it ends than I think I was meaning to convey, so I did an analysis for that one, too.
Introduction: I was trying to remember what scene from this fic was the first that came into my head or what exactly the first idea was that the rest of it grew from, but I really can’t remember. I believe it might have started with the idea of Jack being able to almost read Ennis’s thoughts and how he is able to pull them out of him as words the way nobody else can. The description of that reunion kiss from Jack’s point of view was definitely one of the first things in this story that formed in my head.
But how Lureen became the main presence in this story besides Jack is what I don’t really remember. I guess I was itching to write something about her that nobody else had touched on already. I loved her character in the movie. She was such a confident and powerful kind of woman most of the time, but in the best moments of Anne Hathaway’s performance, her cool and controlled exterior would melt away just a little and show a tiny bit of an inner vulnerability.
I had been reading people’s ideas about the meaning of different colors in the movie on the IMDb boards, and someone had pointed out that when Jack first goes to Riverton he is driving a red and white truck, just like the colors Lureen wears a lot. I thought of the Thanksgiving scene when Jack basically has to fight for the position of alpha male and claim his home and his child as his, and realized how much this makes sense for the truck he’s using to be Lureen’s colors - he has no control over his life, nothing is his own, and L.D. is the “stud duck in the pond,” not him. The rest of the story came from there.
I also want to mention that I did not read about this idea until after writing this story, but the characters in BBM can be thought of as different elements; Ennis is earth, Jack is wind (or air), Alma is water, and Lureen is fire. How appropriate for her to almost always be wearing red and white, the colors of flames and ash.
So you think you can tell
Heaven from hell
Blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail
A smile from a veil
Do you think you can tell
Did they get you to trade
Your heroes for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for the cool breeze
Cold comfort for change
Did you exchange
How I wish you were here
We’re just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here
-”Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd
I had not known I was going to attach these lyrics to the story until I was almost done writing it, and it’s amazing how perfectly it fits. I already planned on putting this song on my ”Shapes of Sleepy Music” fanmix, so maybe my writing was just unconsciously influenced by it.
What this whole story is, essentially, is contrast. You have the bright, clean colors contrasting with dark, earthy, natural colors. You have an unpassionate relationship full of misunderstandings contrasted with the most real and ardent kind of love possible. These Pink Floyd lyrics are mostly composed of contrasting images: pain and happiness, a real smile of genuine joy and a fake smile, nature and machinery. It’s perfect.
When Jack met Lureen Newsome, she was wearing red and white. He thought it looked cute at the time. Everything about her called attention to itself. She practically demanded to be noticed in the way she moved and talked and shot glances across a crowd toward him.
When Jack met Lureen, he was tired. He was tired of being dissapointed and of nobody giving a damn. And here was this cute little gal who had flashed him a wink and was now staring spears across the room at him. She was wanting to be noticed, all right, and he was glad to oblige as long as she kept taking so much notice of him. So he danced with this pretty girl that any man would be a lucky son of a bitch to even get one pearly white smile from, and tried not to listen to the lonely, longing tune being played or think of the open, uncrowded outdoors where the only music was the wind in the trees.
Lureen was wearing red and white and Jack “thought it looked cute at the time.” I wanted to give the idea that he doesn’t have any idea that these will become the colors of his prison. He will be so sick of red and white.
Even her smile is “pearly white.”
That very night Jack got much luckier than he ever would have expected. While he was driving, Lureen reached her hand over to Jack’s seat and tickled the back of his neck right at the place where his hair began.
“You tryin’ a make me hit somethin?” he laughed.
She giggled, her mouth suddenly right by his face, tickling his ear. He pulled the car over to the side of the road as she started to plant little kisses on his neck, and suddenly they were breathing heavily in the back seat and her hands were eagerly going right for the buttons of his pants. She did him right there in the car and all he could think was Good lord, this woman’s crazy. He didn’t know what the hell had hit him, but his blood felt warm pumping through his body for the first time in too goddamn long, and there was another warm body against him, and it felt like finally, and yes, and thank you.
But his mind kept drifting off to find that silence he knew was still hanging at the top of that mountain he’d left, where maybe a bird was making a crooning, mourning-like call that sounded like the song they had danced to. The truth was he felt so alone, even as he lay against Lureen’s breasts in her arms afterwards when they still had twenty minutes to kill before she had to be home. She talked on and on about something that had nothing to do with what they’d just done, and he didn’t hear a word.
Back then Lureen was such a thrill. Before long he found that what really got her off was doing whatever would make her parents’ eyes pop out of their sockets in horror if they knew about her doing it. When she first took him out to dinner with them, she sat next to him smiling that bright white good-girl smile as she did all the talking for them just to make sure they were impressed, meanwhile moving her hand in between Jack’s thighs under the table so that he gave a sudden choke and dropped his fork, supressing a laugh. Lureen giggled and glanced to the side at him with a secret smirk; her father looked at him like he was the lowest loser on the face of the earth.
”Bright white good-girl smile”; a fake smile; a mask, or “veil” like in the song lyrics.
It was so easy to be with this wild and loud girl who would do everything for the both of them, hardly ever needing any effort put forward on his part. This was the kind of girl he could settle down with. Sure. Real easy.
Not like it had been with the other for those few months of unimaginable pleasure and absolute torture he’d had that summer that he just thought he was getting into an easy job. At first he thought he knew there was no cracking Ennis Del Mar’s shell, no way he would ever, no chance in hell, nothing there. Everything probably would have worked out better if he’d been right. When he finally, unbelievably got him just the way he wanted him, afterwards he felt like he could have scraped his fists against a tree until they bled because it may be the only time and that was just too much, more than he could take without being driven half-insane from the imprint and memory of that one time, one. But Ennis did cave in and give up resisting for just solitary, isolated moments for the rest of the summer, but Jack practically had to beg like a dog for every one and work for it. Ennis had to be carefully eased into everything to open up. Even every word he said had to be painstakingly drawn out of him with Jack’s stubborn persistence. It was fucking exhausting.
This is where I first set up the theme of real love being an extremely hard thing to deal with, but ultimately worth dealing with. It is often very hard to be with the one you are in love with as opposed to someone you just get along with well. It is easier for Jack to accept Lureen. He doesn’t know yet that this is a huge mistake. I think one of the strongest themes in the movie is that love and life are not easy and always happy, though people often make them out to be. Love makes you feel sick, makes you hate the person you love, makes you wish you had never met them, makes you think you would rather be alone, but that doesn't make it not what it is.
When my sister beta-read this she loved the concept of sometimes just referring to Ennis as “the other.” It just felt better than writing his name for me and fit the way he would probably be trying not to think too hard about him at this point in his life. It also emphasizes that we’re contrasting Lureen and Ennis as Jack’s partners; there’s Lureen and then there’s “the other.”
He still felt the bruise on his cheekbone from where Ennis had punched him after all this time. There was an ache somewhere in his chest when he thought about it, and a poisonous anger about the whole thing - Aguirre making them leave the job early, and how it unexpectedly turned Ennis back into an inpenetrable mound of rock all over again. Maybe things hadn’t needed to go the way they did that day. Maybe there was something else Jack could have said or done. But hell, he thought, why did he need to do all of the talking and doing all the time?
I love describing Ennis as "an inpenetrable mound of rock." An unreachable island in the middle of the sea. The earth.
Something inside nagged him and said maybe the way Ennis was wasn’t his fault. Maybe he needed him to say something. Maybe he needed Jack to draw the words out of him that he couldn’t say on his own. I’m sorry, I didn’ mean a hurt you back there, bud.
The scene in “Home” when Ennis talks about Earl is kind of an outtake from this story, because when I write “the way Ennis was wasn’t his fault” I am referring to that incident in his life that basically silenced him. I was going to elaborate on that later in this story, but it just didn’t seem relevant enough. It felt like a different story. Now I know why - it was for a different story.
“Jack?” Lureen would say, sitting beside him with his arm around her, having just asked him some question when he was staring off into thin air. He would take a moment to remember where he was, Ennis’s unspoken words still clouding his mind.
Ennis would be married by now just like he’d said. He had not come back to work for Aguirre again. They lived in completely different states now. Jack knew it was way past the time to realize there was no hope. He should have realized it after they said goodbye. He shouldn’t have watched Ennis in his sideview mirror as he walked out of his life. He should have just drove right off and not looked back at all.
He tried to think of Ennis’s shirt hidden in his bedroom in Lightning Flat and tell himself it was enough. Tried to accept that it was all he had. The shirt. That and one distant, hazy memory he had that now seemed more like something he’d heard in a fairy tale than something that had happened to him, of when Ennis had come up behind him and embraced him with no hesitation. The memory that hurt more than the remaining ache from the punch.
Enough, he told himself, and made himself marry Lureen Newsome while such a good opportunity was presenting itself.
She was still fascinating to him for all of the first six months or so, the way she so quickly adapted to the role of wife and learned how to keep a home. Everything in their house was so spotlessly clean and white, as if the air inside of it was different than outside and didn’t even have any dust floating in it. Sometimes the atmosphere seemed just too sterile and blank, the air so clean it was unbreathable. He often found himself wandering out onto the porch to get a breath of outside air, the wind carrying the dirty scent of pine and dust.
Lureen once planted herself in his lap while he was watching TV and picked a piece of a leaf off of his shirt that he hadn’t noticed was stuck there. “Those red curtains I bought look real nice,” she said, looking over at the dining room. “I think I could jus’ do that whole room in that color. Get a tablecloth to match ‘n’ everthin.’ What do ya think?”
Lureen picking a leaf off of his shirt is quite symbolic. Everything about Brokeback is washed off of him here.
Now that I think about it, I wish I hadn't used the description "planted herself in his lap." Growing plants are exactly the kind of thing that shouldn't be associated with Lureen and her environment. D'oh!
He gave some half-hearted, neutral response and she kept talking, never short of energy and hardly stopping for breath in between sentences. Then during a rare pause of silence, he put a hand on her leg and said, “Y’know, you’re a hell of a woman.”
Any time he paid her a compliment like that she would grin widely and seem to turn into silk in his arms, reminding him of a satisfied, purring cat. It always made him think of that first time in her car, when she asked him if he thought she was going too fast. Of course he wouldn’t have been thinking that about her; all he was thinking about was that somebody finally thought something of him. But now, every once in a while, he wondered about that, why she was in such a hurry as if she was gasping for air after being suffocated for so long. Why she needed the approval from him so much and melted right into him after he said it was just fine with him.
Comparing Lureen to a cat maybe seems weird in this passage. Where it comes from is in that scene of them in her car, after he says “I just like the direction you’re going,” when she leans in to kiss him you hear them rubbing against the leather seats and at first I always think it sounds like Lureen is purring. LOL. And somehow that seems perfect for the expression on her face then.
She still melted into him like that sometimes, and Jack vaguely felt that there was something about her at those times that was very sweet and vulnerable, completely unlike the lively and confident creature she usually was. He almost felt bad when he closed his eyes in the midst of it when he wasn’t much in control of his mind and saw a different place around him than here. He once wondered fleetingly if the other ever thought about being back there when he was fucking his wife, then decided he’d never think about that again.
That particular night, when Lureen was happy about her new curtains, was when he got her pregnant with Bobby. He felt like there was something heavy like iron weighing him down in his stomach when he found out. He wouldn’t be teaching his boy how to ride the bulls like his own daddy never taught him. No, Bobby would be taught about the family business and be a Newsome, not a Twist.
I surprised myself by writing about Bobby’s birth this way, because for a while I believed they might have had a shotgun wedding. It would certainly explain why L.D. hates him so much. I guess I didn’t believe it that much if I wrote it this way.
He felt more and more like he couldn’t breathe anymore. Some indescribable pull was always drawing him out into the backyard, away from his family. He spent a lot of time alone out there on the porch, still hearing those unsaid words that haunted him. One aftermoon he was out there for a whole hour and no one ever came looking for him, and Lureen was the only one he heard even once speak his name in conversation inside. He could hear L.D. playing with Bobby, now eight months old, talking to him stupidly in that loud voice Lureen had inherited but sounded smarter using. He got in his truck. He started to drive to the post office.
I made sure to mention that Lureen is the one who he hears speak his name, probably wondering aloud where he went or something. Lureen does pay attention to Jack when nobody else does. They exchange glances at the dinner table. She sympathizes with him.
I like how the last sentences in that passage seem sudden and random. I hoped to give the impression that he was already in his truck and driving before he really thought about what the hell he was doing.
He should have said something that day they parted. Ennis had needed him to be the one to say something. Maybe. Suddenly it seemed almost possible that he just needed him to be the one to say something now, do something. Maybe Ennis was just waiting for him these whole four years. It only seemed barely possible. But it was worth the try.
He sent a postcard to Ennis Del Mar, drove back home, told his wife he might be driving to Wyoming later that month to go see an old buddy. She had no objection.
”She had no objection” could easily just seem like a way to end the paragraph, but I wanted to kind of allude to the fact that she doesn’t ever complain about him going on fishing trips or really care what he does. The only reason she tells him to be back soon in that scene that he’s looking for his parka is because he needs to be there for business reasons.
Ennis had been miserably sorry about punching him. He had needed a reconnection just as much as Jack did. As soon as Ennis grabbed him and pressed him against a wall with a starving, reclaiming kiss, he knew that he should have known this all along. Ennis hardly knew how to speak his thoughts without Jack pulling the words out of him, but Jack always knew what the words were anyway, like he could read them where they sat nestled and hidden inside him, never spoken. He should have known.
When he had gotten the postcard with Ennis’s short response, “You bet,” his thoughts and his heart had suddenly started leaping around like a fish out of water. He’d had no idea what was going to happen when he got there but he couldn’t help imagining, all the while trying not to get his hopes up for too much. What really happened the moment he and Ennis saw each other again was far beyond anything he had imagined during the whole drive there. Everything around them disappeared - everything that had been built into and added onto their lives - and they were nineteen again with no responsibilities and no worries. When they finally opened their eyes and had to go back to reality, Jack was surprised to find that Ennis had two children, had to think before he remembered why he had come in a red and white truck he didn’t recognize.
Before they went inside Ennis had muttered breathlessly into his ear, almost soundlessly, Little darlin’, so quietly that it barely came out. But Jack would never know for sure if he had actually heard it said out loud or if he had just been hearing it in his head, hearing Ennis’s thoughts.
Sometimes it seemed he really could hear them. Jack always heard, loud and clear, what Ennis wasn’t saying when he said, “I thought you was sore about that punch.” And “I was just sendin’ up a prayer o’ thanks.” And finally, “There ain’t no reins on this one.” He heard, I’m sorry. Christ, I cain’t say how much I missed you. Please. You know it. I need...
Because of the tiny referrence to the way Ennis is because of the Earl incident, plus the referrence to the shirts in the middle, and the dialogue above, I kind of think of this as a companion piece to “Home.” The line “There ain’t no reins on this one” can be interpreted different ways. In this story, it means “This thing we feel is out of control, I’m half-crazy around you.” In “Home,” it means “There’s no telling what this can do to us and it scares me.”
He sure as hell could never read Lureen that way. She was like a completely different species to him. It was daunting how she had turned into such an intimidating businesswoman, always so headstrong and domineering. She had taken after her father so much, in ways he had never seen when he first met her and she was just a relaxed young lady. Now she was always talking on and on about nothing, her lips working into the receiver of a phone, her nails tapping noisily on the table when whatever was being said on the other line was aggravating her. If he could ever stop feeling sorry for himself for a moment, maybe he could have felt sorry for her. Poor Lureen. Poor him. Was this his life?
Jack had never hated his life as much as he did when he had to return to it that time after his first trip to Wyoming to see Ennis. In a way he had forgotten that perfectly clean, soulless house and had had some feeble dream that he wasn’t really going to come back.
Red and white. Everything Jack had was red or white. Nothing he had was his.
The tile floor of the bathroom was white. The shirt Lureen had picked out for him for Christmas was red. The sheets on his bed were white. The cloth napkins on the table were red.
Lureen’s lips and nails were bright, burning red and her face was pale white. These days she wore such a thick layer of make-up that it was like a protective mask. Rings with red rubies and white pearls shined and glimmered on her fingers as she smoked her cigarette and dialed numbers on the telephone.
Jack had a mask of his own. Not that L.D. would ever recognize it, but Jack was practically born to talk to customers, persuade them to take a look at things and buy. Just keep smiling and flashing those teeth, he thought wearily. Sometimes after a whole day’s work he would come home and have to go straight into the bedroom where he could have some privacy before Lureen or Bobby noticed he was back and just let his mask peel off for a few seconds, listen to the silence of no machinery and nobody talking. He’d sit on the bed and close his eyes to relieve them of the brightness of the colors in the room and think of the lush green of trees, the dirty dark brown of firewood, the calm blue of the surface of the water at night. He thought of birds sleeping comfortably in nests and trees growing slowly and patiently. Silence, stillness, slowness. Out there on the mountain, nothing was this blank white he saw every day. It felt like negative space where nothing existed, all this white in his life. Not like out there, where his vision was always so full of sky and earth that he felt he could never take all of it in, sometimes thought his heart was going to implode from all the outside pressure when he tried to.
This is the most important passage in the story and certainly my favorite. I think it pretty much speaks for itself. I thought for a long time about how to describe this feeling of stillness and peace that Jack associates with being with Ennis in the mountains. Something you long for so much that just thinking about it seems to pull at your guts and make you feel like you could cry.
Sometimes when he sat on the bed thinking like this, it was all he could do to take tight fistfulls of the sheets in his hands and hold on, try to keep himself held together tight and not break apart. He’d take in a few deep breaths, put his mask back on, and go out into the kitchen where dinner would be ready.
But the feeling would creep back up on him and take control when his guard was down. Once while he was at the office going through some papers, when nothing at all had prompted it, when nothing had reminded him of it, he had suddenly been hit with a terrible, gut-renching, soul-tearing feeling of helpless needing, a feeling that he couldn’t not be with him. His consciousness of the fact that he wouldn’t be able to see Ennis again for still another three months was an affliction that he found himself suddenly without the strength to accept, a rock he needed to swallow but couldn’t. And he just couldn’t help it. He went to the bathroom and started sobbing into his hands as quietly as he could, his shoulders shaking uncontrollably, feeling like the sorriest fool and not quite understanding what had gotten into him until he pictured, in his head, Ennis laughing and smiling in that genuinely happy way that only Jack could make him smile. From then on, he was terrified about whether or not he would be able to keep holding in the feeling when he needed to or if he might break down unexpectedly again. Ignoring it, avoiding it, and just letting it linger inside him seemed to only make it worse, like neglecting an infected wound. He didn’t know what the hell he was supposed to do about it. Ennis always said they had to stick this out, stand it. How was it so easy for him?
When I started this story, I didn’t identify that much with Jack’s frustration that all boils over in that argument at the end of the movie. Now I understand everything he was feeling. These characters really got into my blood and their thoughts started coming out in my words. I understand: he hates his life because it’s fake. He’s not himself except with Ennis.
Lureen has a mask; a “veil” like in the song. Jack has a mask; “just keep smiling and flashing those teeth.” Jack thinks about Ennis smiling in that genuinely happy way he makes him smile; a real smile, not a veil.
Something had happened to Lureen. It made Jack a little sad to watch her now. Not guilty. He wouldn’t know how to begin taking responsibility for it, whatever “it” was. Just sorry.
He may never have known the true person she was underneath that bold, confident exterior, but he knew for sure that he didn’t know this person she had become now. He felt like he never recognized this woman because she always looked different. Practically every time he blinked she had done something new with her hair or was wearing something that the Lureen from three years ago would never have worn. She was always redecorating some room in the house, buying new outfits that she only wore once when entertaining guests, changing the color of her hair over and over, ingratiating, waiting for approval and acceptance.
I think Lureen's constant changing of her appearance is her way of covering up what she's really feeling all along, but it is also just her thinking she is not good enough and trying to make herself acceptable and get her husband to notice her. Putting so much effort into the way she looks is her way of forcibly insisting to herself that she's fine. She won't let herself look the way she feels.
It was disheartening to compare the way she was now to what she was like that day he met her, when she had looked so pretty with her rich black hair in a ponytail that flailed behind her freely as she rode that horse away like her life depended on it. Perhaps she had been trying to win some battle against her father when she married the worthless fuck-up she’d picked up at the rodeo. But she’d lost. Now she had been reduced to a cold, passionless husk whose eyes never looked at anything farther away than the numbers she spent all day punching into a machine at her desk.
She wasn’t that free-spirited young girl he’d known anymore. Something had chained her down, whether it was him who had done it to her or something else. And for that he was sorry as hell, almost told her so, one day when he was about to leave the office and he stopped and watched her punching those numbers for a moment in strange amazement. Instead he said nothing about it, just came forward, leaned over, and kissed her forehead, surprising her.
“You look real pretty today,” he said. “Some kinda special occasion?”
He waited for that wide, glowing smile to spread across her face like it used to when he paid her a compliment. But after a moment of confusion she just cocked an eyebrow and smirked. “Allright, cowboy, no need ta beat around the bush. What do ya want?”
He gave an almost-felt laugh. “I don’t want nothin’ from you.”
Even though he had said it in a gentle, joking tone, it was clear from the perceptible change in her that the truth of the statement was deeply felt, and he at once wanted to take it back. Her expression didn’t change, but she just became very still and unlike her usual restless, animated self, staring forward at him blankly.
Suddenly he would no sooner stay in that room any longer than he would leave a knife sitting in her chest that he had accidentally drove in there. He just said, “Look, I’ll see ya later,” put his jacket on, and left. By the time he saw her later, he wasn’t going to be sober enough to feel guilty about anything, that was for sure.
Something had happened to Jack. It would have been impossible for even Lureen not to notice.
When she had met him, she thought she’d never met anyone so youthful and enthusiastic. Nothing seemed to ever dampen his spirits or wipe that boyish smile off of his face. Here was someone whose head was always up in the clouds, and maybe she had thought that he could carry her away to those places he dreamed of, take her up into the blue sky where they would stay and never come down. She could relax with him. She felt like he didn’t expect much of her; those dreamy eyes, just like a little kid’s, never examined her in that judgemental, critical way she couldn’t stand.
She thought she might know what had happened to that boy she married. He had invested so much of himself into his distant dreams that when they collapsed, parts of him did, too. She wasn’t too sure what it was he had been reaching for and wanting so badly to attain before he became this way, but she certainly knew that he never wanted to end up selling farm equipment. She knew Jack had loved the rodeo, even though now he only complained about it and how it had left him so busted-up. Just talking about it used to make his eyes get all big and blue, his voice get so excited. His eyes never looked that way anymore.
"His eyes got all big and blue"; more color referrences. Blue is a happy color; Brokeback is where bluebirds sing.
That was all she could guess had happened to the young, coltish, light-hearted Jack she’d known. He had loved something so fiercely, hopefully, and passionately, but that thing had done nothing but fight him and throw him off, leaving him busted-up and broken from trying desperately to hold on. And he still held onto this thing he loved, wishing he could just let go and not want it anymore.
But he had given up. He had done what was easy. Jack had quit the rodeo when he married Lureen and started working for her old man in a business that certainly made more money than the bull-riding. He had given up what was him for what was not. And for what? Comfort and security. Fancy and expensive kitchen appliances. Heavy glass ashtrays that were too nice to use as ashtrays. And for that she was sorry as hell, almost told him so, one night when he came home after being out late drinking by himself and lay down in bed facing away from her. It wasn’t like she never noticed that he wasn’t okay. After he came back from those fishing trips with his friend in Wyoming, she could always perceive some kind of sorrow weighing him down, like coming back home made him feel like he had chains around his ankles he was dragging around. Or maybe something had happened in Wyoming to make him sad, she once considered. But she didn’t dare ask him about it, because everything was fine as long as she didn’t. And she didn’t say anything then.
"He had done what was easy" really refers to him choosing to marry Lureen. Ennis was much more of a pain in the ass. But Ennis was the one he loved.
It's really quite unfair for me to write that, isn't it? Jack would have been with Ennis if he could. But later on in his life he definitely wishes he didn't love Ennis because it's too hard to. He wishes he could just be happy with Lureen instead.
I'm not very happy with the final paragraph. We finally get into Lureen's head in this part, but should she really have the last words? The last sentences elaborate too much; at this point I should be saying more with less and getting right to the point. It gets stretched out and boring and starts beating all the ideas to death.
Of course, I love the whole bull-riding metaphor in the story and the meaning o Jack's name and all. Lureen has no idea that she's figured everything out about why Jack is unhappy, although he gave up a man, not the rodeo. Riding bulls has more risks and potential to hurt him, but he loved it anyway, just like he loved Ennis.
Introduction: I already had some of the ideas I used in "Home" in my head when I wrote "Red and White," but for some reason ended up saving it for last. It was nice to do it that way, because with my last fic I actually ended up going all the way back to the very beginning and describing the first moment Jack and Ennis see each other. Then the last paragraph has a sense of finality to it, yet is not a happy ending, which I never had the intention of writing for this couple. It's very bittersweet. Anything related to his film is always going to be bittersweet for me.
As I explained in the author's note when I posted this, it was very much inspired by a lot of Heath Ledger's comments about playing Ennis in interviews. He said he saw Ennis as someone who's sensitive to light and sound. He doesn't like being out in the open where everybody sees him. The way I see it, it's unbelievable to him that someone could peer deep inside of him and actually like what they see. There's something inside of Ennis that he's not at peace with but he doesn't know what it is. Jack comes into his life and is this thing incarnate. He sees everything that Ennis is, faults and all, and loves him for it, which is unbearable for him because he doesn't even want to face everything that he is.
Ennis feels like he knows nothing but roads, even though he and Alma have a comfortable little place above the laundry in Riverton. It is hardly the kind of living situation meant to last. When his two girls get older, the little apartment won’t be enough room for them all.
His life stretches far ahead of him like a long road with no turns. No going back and no other way to go than forward into the never-changing path ahead. There is no place he returns to after every exhausting journey, where he can rest and take comfort in the feeling of being back where he belongs.
He gets a postcard from someone who might as well be a long-gone childhood friend whose face he doesn’t even remember. Yet the lost time suddenly feels like yesterday. Maybe, he thinks. Just maybe things can go back to the way they were. Maybe he can still return.
This sets up the idea of going back to someplace where everything was right. I think everybody has had that feeling of wishing they could return to that innocent time when they were a kid and had no worries. On Brokeback, Ennis and Jack both had no worries.
When I was writing this story I kept thinking of that part in Garden State when Andrew talks about how after you leave home and go off to college, even if you get married and start a family and a new home the idea of home is never the same, because the place where you grew up will always be your only true home in your mind. I think there's a lot of truth to that, and I haven't even really left home yet. But in this story, Ennis did find a home in Jack, but never really found his way back to it after their first summer. You can never go back home. You can never go back to Eden, to innocence.
Ennis hated bright light. He couldn’t stand having the sun in his eyes. When he went out he always had his hat on, even if sitting inside a diner near a window, and his head was always bowed to keep his eyes shaded from the sunlight. His shoulders were always stiffened and hunched, forming a protective barrier. His tightened, guarded appearance usually gave off the message that he wasn’t the kind of person to walk up to and try to strike up a conversation with. Always looking down, he never had to make eye contact. It worked to protect him from the world. Usually, the world got the message and left him alone.
Jack Twist, however, didn’t get the message. It made Ennis very uncomfortable the way this man he didn’t know immediately started burning holes in him with his eyes as soon as he got out of his truck and noticed him standing there. Knowing he was being watched but not wanting to meet eyes with this stranger, he stood there with his eyes down on the rocks he nervously shuffled around on the ground with his feet, wishing he would just look away and let him be. The man seemed to be waiting for some kind of acknowledgement of him from Ennis, for him to say something. His eyes on him were like a bright light being shined on him as he was examined and inspected. Ennis felt like a helpless little ant under a magnifying glass focusing the unbearable sunlight on him in one blindingly bright spot. He stood with his hands dug deep in his pockets and his whole body clenched up like a turtle drawing into its shell to hide, just wanting to sink into a hole in the ground where it would be safe and dark and nobody could see him.
But then the man looked away. When he did it, it was like he was accepting something and giving up, abandoning an attempt. At what, Ennis didn’t know, but he felt a kind of relief when this man stopped expecting something from him and went on with his own business, looking into his sideview mirror as he shaved his face, sometimes whistling a tune that the wind carried over in Ennis’s direction.
A wind referrence is always good in relation to Jack.
I liked getting into Ennis's head in this scene. I think I have felt this way in real-life situations. Jack complements Ennis in every way, so I wanted to make him stubborn about getting Ennis to look at him or say something. He doesn't "get the message." He's the one person he's met who doesn't want to give up on him and leave him alone. He'll get him to talk one way or another.
Jack Twist. He wasn’t so bad, as it turned out. He didn’t know how to ever shut up and usually Ennis wasn’t comfortable around people like that. They always kept asking him questions and energetically searching for a subject they could both talk about when Ennis really didn’t know what to say in response to anything and didn’t even understand why he should have to talk. At least Jack would usually do all the talking for the both of them. His voice wasn’t the kind that hurt the ears after a while. In fact, sometimes Ennis found himself laughing at the things he said or even speaking back without being asked anything. Jack, who had decided to expect nothing from him, was always clearly surprised when he willingly opened his mouth and let something escape out of it that had been fighting around inside him and struggling to get out and see the light of day. Sometimes, it even felt good to let these things out. That was the thing that was so surpising about being with Jack. It was even intimidating and unsettling.
Ennis felt so unwatched and free up on the mountain. He started to act any way he felt like, making an ass out of himself after too many drinks of whiskey and joking around with Jack in ways he had never been able to with anyone else before, teasing him about being a terrible shot and making those unmusical nothing noises on his harmonica. And Jack let him. He was always expecting nothing from Ennis, but what he could get he took.
Perhaps it was too liberating to be up there. After a month of that kind of freedom, too many of the knots inside of him came loose. His tense muscles relaxed too much, slackening the barrier of his broad shoulders. His hands more often came out of his pockets where they were usually buried and reached away from him to let Jack hand him the whiskey bottle or his lighter, reaching out to take things offered. He forgot what wasn’t normal and okay, only knew what felt right. He had forgotten everything he knew before he was here on this mountain. He did things he never, ever thought he would want to do. Then he realized what he was doing and knew he should be disgusted. But it was only as sickening to him as seeing his own blood flow from a deep wound.
I'm glad I came up with that comparison of "his own blood flowing from a deep wound." I think that is what it would really feel like if I was in his position, doing something I know isn't good but I don't actually feel wrong about.
He kept waiting to feel ashamed, embarassed, and disgusted with himself. But it still seemed like everything he thought he knew was right and wrong had no meaning out here. He always got the sense that there was nobody watching and even God himself didn’t have a judgmental eye on them. He never felt the weight of the world’s criticism on his shoulders. He and Jack did what they did in the dark, protected and unseen. When Ennis kissed him he would close his eyes and just not think about who he was kissing. He would close his eyes and fall into an enveloping darkness where he could hide, not seeing anything he didn’t want to and not being seen. It was a safe, comfortable, nurturing darkness, a feeling like being in a mother’s womb.
There are a few subtle comparisons between the way Jack cares for Ennis and the way his mother did; this comparison to this darkness feeling like being in a mother's womb is one of them.
There isn't any love like a mother's love. Parents usually love their children absolutely unconditionally. All they care about is that they're safe. I think their mothers and each other are the only people Jack and Ennis ever got this kind of love from. Ennis's parents died when he was young and he had to learn to be independent and responsible. He has to work hard to survive and support his wife and two children. But nobody takes care of him. Except Jack, the "ministering angel." When he'll let him.
After the second night he slept in the camp with Jack, he woke up with a strange but familiar feeling that he knew he hadn’t had for a very long time. Jack was still sleeping beside him, the sound of his breath a constant, certain thing. The night he had just spent with him had somehow vanquished all of his worries and anxiety about this thing going on between them and left his mind placidly blank. He was ready to just let this happen to him and stop questioning it. Everything seemed right and orderly like it does to a child who doesn’t question anything or comprehend what there is to be concerned about. He felt like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, like he not only knew this place as well as he knew his own face, but had never known anywhere else.
When he thought about the last time he’d felt that kind of security and safe familiarity, his head suddenly filled with memories of the backyard of the house where he grew up, the things he’d had in his room, and the clothes he’d worn that his mother had made. Tangible memories he could feel and smell of bread baking in the kitchen, the thin cotton dresses with flowery patterns that his mother wore in June, the soft sound heard from another room of her humming tunes as she watered her plants, the collection of animal figures on his dresser that he had carved during long hours spent alone, and he and his sister collecting fireflies in jugs. Home.
It had been a hot, yellow day full of rank smells and the sound of flies when his father said to him and his brother, “Boys, let’s go for a walk.” When they got back Ennis was shaking and starting to feel sick, and his mother was waiting outside for them. Two women had come by hollering hysterically that old Earl was dead and they’d seen him, it was awful. The neighbors were all outside talking to them about it. Some kind of morbid local entertainment. Ennis’s mother, however, was standing away from everyone else with her arms crossed, waiting in silence. She knew, somehow. When her husband passed her going inside, they exchanged a look that gave away nothing definite but seemed to give her all the answers. Her inhale of breath that followed shuddered through her whole body; for a moment she grabbed a tight handful of her skirt at her side. Then as Ennis walked by, she composed herself again, reaching an arm to the side to stop him.
This is, of course, describing the day that Ennis saw Earl's dead body. I like the idea that what Ennis remembers most vividly about that day is the sound of flies and smells and that it was hot. In the previous paragraph everything about his childhood sounds so pleasant and innocent, and then suddenly we go into this ugly kind of "yellow" day that changed everything.
“Ennis?” she just said in a concerned voice, running a hand over his hair. It was like she needed to touch him to make sure he was still her boy, still the same person.
“I’m fine, momma,” he said without her asking.
She looked down at him with a warm smile that lasted a lifetime, putting her hand on his face, the corners of her eyes sparkling with what might have been tears. Normally he would have been irritated by her fussing over him, but he didn’t draw back at all or flinch away from her touch. It just felt right then.
“Okay, honey,” she said, lowering her hand from his face to pat his shoulder and gently push his back, easing him on. When he kept on walking to the house, his legs felt strong carrying him again, but they would be carrying more weight from then on than they ever had before.
He and Jack see each other once again, but it is for a brief time. Ennis knows all they will be able to get from each other is tiny samples and tastes of rest and solace. Never will they go back to the mountain where they had it all in their hands. There is no return to Eden. After that innocence and purity is lost, there is no getting it back.
To Ennis, his childhood is something that existed during the brief blink of an eye. Something cruelly cut short. Not when his folks died on that road. No, it happened before then. When innocence was taken away and a great burden was added, and that weightless ignorance of youth was no longer his. His mother looked into his eyes, knowing her boy was not her little boy anymore, quietly holding back tears for the loss. He would forever be under the overbearing weight his father had given him.
When he and Jack are sitting by a fire again just like old days, Ennis tells him the story about Earl. It is the strangest feeling to talk about it aloud; he has never told anybody else about this before, never before even given it any importance. Though the memory has jumped out at him from inside his head too many times to count, the image of that man’s grazed and torn body haunting him even when he thinks he has all but forgotten it. It means so much more at this moment in time than it ever did before, and as he talks about it his heart starts to race like that of a frail little doe being chased by a coyote. He and Jack both are just helpless prey, he realizes.
After he explains what he saw when he was nine, Jack looks at him like he suddenly understands everything. What that missing puzzle piece in this person that he otherwise knows so well is. Ennis tries to say, “I’m scared, Jack,” but it doesn’t come out right, he says, “There ain’t no reins on this one.” But Jack understands and puts his hand to his face, the sad and hollow look in his eyes telling him how he wishes he could promise to never leave Ennis by himself with that terrible memory ever again. Ennis does not flinch at all at his touch. It just feels right.
This kind of touch echoes the way his mother put her hand to his face the day the thing happened that he just told Jack about. He doesn't get annoyed with her for fussing over him even though it doesn't make him feel very tough. Letting Jack comfort him is not exactly a manly thing to do either, but he doesn't flinch away from him because at the moment he just isn't worrying about how a man is expected to act.
Jack knows what he needs, moves his hand to the back of his neck to pull him towards him. For a moment they just sit with their foreheads leaning together, eyes closed, hands wandering blindly down to the buttons of each other’s jeans. Then Jack kisses him, slowly and givingly, and Ennis drowns in darkness. It is this that can kill them, yet nothing in the world feels safer than being in this consuming darkness. Ennis forgets the burden he carries and returns to ignorance. It is the first time in a while that he has closed his eyes and not seen the image of a dead body behind his eyelids.
Far away in Lightning Flat, where the wind quietly blows dust across roads that lead only away from there, their shirts hang in a hidden place in a dark closet. They share the same hanger, Ennis’s shirt inside of Jack’s, unremovable and untouchable. No matter where he is, Ennis is always there inside of Jack. He is protected like a cherished secret, taken care of, kept safe. He is home.
I tried to noticeably emphasize that this place in Jack's closet is in the dark and therefore a safe hiding place. It expresses more of the concept that Ennis is safe when he's with Jack out of sight of anybody else. He doesn't like to be where anyone can see him or see his and Jack's love; he is only comfortable in the dark.
This decription of the shirts came to me late in the process of writing the story, which is strange now because it really makes the whole story. I kind of knew in the back of my head all along that I wanted the last line to be "He is home," but I didn't just want this to be a scene of Jack and Ennis lying together or something. That seemed too obvious and too easy. Sometime it came to me to bring in the idea of the shirts. What it represented seemed perfect. Home is more of an idea than a physical place; even when they're miles away from each other Ennis has a place in Jack's heart.
Some people responded to this story saying that it gave them a sense of peace and made them feel better about the movie. I actually didn't mean for the last part of it to be so optimistic. "The Divine Accident of Life" was optimistic, but this fic is about losing something you can't get back. Ennis was at home on Brokeback, and all that is left of Brokeback is the shirts. They have only the memory of it. Ennis is home only there, in a hiding place in a dark closet nobody else can see. Once he truly finds that place, finds out about those shirts, after Jack dies, it's too late.
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 05:37 am (UTC)Your story does a good job of contrasting the two types of love; the more platonic love that Jack shared with Lureen, and the soul-searing love that he had with Ennis.
I love describing Ennis as "an inpenetrable mound of rock." An unreachable island in the middle of the sea. The earth.
That's a great description :)
Lureen picking a leaf off of his shirt is quite symbolic. Everything about Brokeback is washed off of him here.
I would have missed this gem if you hadn't pointed it out. And then, of course, she starts talking about putting more red stuff in the house. Ouch.
Comparing Lureen to a cat maybe seems weird in this passage.
I remember thinking that was strange when I first read that. I can see where the comparison draws from, but I still can't picture her as cat-like. But the whole "melting" thing makes more sense now.
Thanks for sharing your analysis :) It was fun to read, gave the story a lot more depth for me. The song lyrics are lovely. I'm sad I couldn't download your fanmix :*(
no subject
Date: 2006-04-09 06:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-10 01:26 am (UTC)He doesn't like being out in the open where everybody sees him. The way I see it, it's unbelievable to him that someone could peer deep inside of him and actually like what they see.
Interesting point about Ennis. I always got the sense that Ennis just wanted to hide to blend in, and that's a very insightful reason as to why he would do that.
You can never go back to Eden, to innocence.
Sob. So sad, so true. I guess you have to carry it inside you, create a new Eden wherever you go, if that's even possible.
I'm glad I came up with that comparison of "his own blood flowing from a deep wound."
I like that line a lot. It's such an apt way of putting it; it flows naturally from Ennis, perhaps not something that should see the light of day, but a part of him nonetheless, as strange as being ashamed for breathing.
I would have missed the themes of mother's/parental love and safety in darkness if you hadn't pointed them out. Those add a lot of richness to the tapestry of your writing.