"From the History of the Shirts IV" - canon-based ficlet
Content - Brokeback ficlet - another glimpse into the history of the two shirts. This one is called “What of Soul was left, I wonder” and looks at what might have happened down the line.
Ca. 1,000 words, movie canon, rated G.
Warning - for wistful canon-based angst.
Disclaimer - They do not belong to me, but to Annie Proulx, Diana Ossana, Larry McMurtry and Focus Features. I intend no disrespect and make no profit except for the inspiration I find in thinking and writing of Jack and Ennis.
A/N - The titles of this and the three previous ficlets are lines from Robert Browning’s poem “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” which has any number of melancholy lines that out of context serve perfectly to inspire Brokeback thoughts.
The previous ficlets in this series are here:
“I can always leave off talking”: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/21358.html
“When the kissing had to stop”: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/21571.html
“Like a ghostly cricket”: http://gilli-ann.livejournal.com/21829.html
What of Soul Was Left, I Wonder
Alma looked at her daughter with kind eyes.
“All done, then, honey?”
“Yes, ma. It barely took us the afternoon. Daddy didn’t have much to call his own.”
Junior lifted her coffee cup, blew briefly on the hot black brew, and took a small sip. She glanced at her mother over the rim, judging how much she wanted to hear. How much she needed to hear. After all, this represented some sort of closure for her too.
“We sorted through all a it. Jenny and I divided up the usable things between us, - didn’t amount to much, to be honest. We burned the rest a it in the field behind the trailer. What little furniture he had was banged-up and dented, broken or rickety. Even the TV. And his clothes… he wasn’t exactly livin’ it up. We burned most a those too.” She paused. “Oh, and Kurt has found a buyer for the trailer.”
Alma nodded, a far-away look in her eyes.
“Poor Ennis. Maybe he didn’t do right by me, but he was a good dad to you girls most a the time and didn’t deserve such a life a loneliness. And to think he’d pass at his age already and so sudden like, just droppin’ from his horse like that!”
“The doctor said he was prob’ly prone to havin’ a heart attack because a all the smokin’ a his. Daddy always smoked.”
“I suppose.”
They sat for a moment without speaking, contemplating the quiet man, father and ex-husband. Their memories a him would have to suffice now to fill every open space left behind.
Alma cleared her throat, a small involuntary sound.
“You didn’t find anything… very personal, did you? Nothing… unexpected?”
“I’m not sure what you mean, ma? “
“Oh, some trinket perhaps - or some old letters or notes? And…. well, I don’t know, he was livin’ alone all that time, a man still in his best years - I thought maybe he’d have some…. magazines - or…
“Oh my! Oh no, ma, there wasn’t nothing like that. Not at all. No.”
Alma secretly breathed a small sigh of relief. Thank the good Lord! She had been worried that the girls maybe would find out about Ennis by coincidence in some such random way.
Junior was looking pensively down into her coffee again, thinking back. “The only thing that seemed unusual at all was these two very old shirts.”
Alma shrugged. “I guess most a Ennis’s clothes were old?”
“Yes, but these were different. I don’t think they’d been worn for many a long year. Two shirts, one carefully tucked inside the other, and the fabric a both stiff and brittle and with that yellowish taint that ageing cloth gets. There were some faded black stains on the sleeves - I figured that could even be old dried blood.”
She shook her head.
“They were hanging by themselves, like he’d kept them specially. Just inside the closet door, so he must a looked at them every time he opened it. But I don’t know what that means. I don’t know why he would a kept those shirts like that.”
She glanced up at her mother.
“Do you?”
Alma hesitated for a moment. She could perhaps guess at a reason. But she was adamant about letting Ennis take that secret with him to his grave. Their daughters didn’t know, had no inkling at all - and as long as it was up to her, it would stay that way.
“No, I don’t know nothing about that,” she said calmly.
“He had this postcard tacked up right next to them, a mountain picture.”
Alma looked up sharply. “A card? What did it say? I suppose you read it?”
“Well, yes and no, ma. There wasn’t anything on it. Said ‘Brokeback Mountain, WY’ in tiny print along the edge a it. That’s all. No message or greetin’. I don’t think it had ever been mailed.”
“Oh.”
Mother and daughter sat silent once more, sipping their coffee, each lost in her own private musings.
Alma remembered her fiancée returning from sheep-herding on the mountain, all those years ago. Remembered the postcards from that Jack Twist, always pictures of landscapes or mountain views. Those fishing trips when no fish got caught. Even after all this time, that still left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Junior let her grief-laced thoughts linger on the two mysterious shirts, wondering once more about their meaning. It seemed clear they must a meant something special to daddy. A memento from his youth perhaps - could it be something to do with grandpa, who’d died when her daddy was barely a teenager?
She had hesitated over the shirts, contemplating their significance, pondering whether she ought to preserve them as a memory of daddy, keep them in order to honor what he’d seemingly treasured. But she and Kurt and the kids didn’t have much space as it was, and the shirts were old and frail and dirty. She had to be practical about it. In the end she’d wrapped them carefully and snugly in daddy’s bed-sheets and his worn, patched-up bedspread quilt, and put the whole bundle on the fire. All the old dry cloth ignited at once and burned with a strong and bright bluish flame, was quickly consumed and left very little ashes.
She’d felt sorrow and a painful sting in her heart as she watched the fire, hoping to herself that daddy would a understood. He’d asked for so little in life. She’d hate to think she’d gone against his wishes in doing this.
Sighing, she returned to the here and now of her mother’s kitchen.
“We burned the shirts, but I kept that postcard, ma. The mountain. I’ll buy a little frame for it and hang it on our living room wall. In memory of daddy, since he clearly must a cared for it. We’ll use his Brokeback Mountain to remember him by.”