While on a 1963 shepherding job on Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming, I met and fell in love with rodeo cowboy Jack Twist.
When Jack and I first began work on Brokeback Mountain, I was stationed at the base camp while Jack watched after the sheep higher on the mountain. We initially met only for meals at the base camp, where we gradually became friends. After a time we switched roles, with Jack taking over duties at base camp and I tending the flock. One night, after the two of us shared a bottle of whiskey, I decided to remain at the base camp overnight instead of returning up the mountain. I was at first reluctant to even sleep in the same tent as Jack, but later that night we shared a brief, intense sexual encounter. Over the remainder of the summer our sexual and emotional relationship deepened further.
After the job was finished, the two of us parted ways. I married my long-term fiancée Alma Beers, and started a family, having two daughters. Jack moved to Texas, where he married a former rodeo performer named Lureen and fathered a son.
Four years later, I received a postcard from Jack asking if he wanted to meet when Jack passed through the area. We reunited, and our passion immediately rekindled. Jack broached the subject of creating a life together on a small ranch. I, unwilling to leave my family and haunted by a childhood memory of the torture and murder of a suspected homosexual couple in my hometown, feared that such an arrangement could only end in tragedy. Unable to be open about our relationship, Jack and I settled for infrequent meetings on camping trips in the mountains.
As the years pass, my marriage deteriorated. Unknown to me, my relationship with Jack was discovered by Alma, who earlier saw Jack and I kissing passionately. Alma eventually divorced me, took custody of our two daughters, and married her former employer. Jack hoped that my divorce would allow us to live together, but I still refused to move away from my children and remained uncomfortable with the idea of men living together. Meanwhile, my oldest daughter, Alma Junior, now in her teens, visited me on a periodic basis, and I met and dated waitress Cassie Cartwright. On another trip with Jack in the mountains, in 1983, I insisted that to keep my job, I couldn't meet with Jack again before November. Our frustrations finally erupted into a bitter argument and a struggle became a desperate embrace. However, we parted upset.
Months later, a postcard I sent to Jack, about meeting in November, had returned to the post office, stamped deceased. In a strained telephone conversation, Jack's wife Lureen told me that Jack died in an accident while changing a tire. During the strained conversation, it was implied that Jack had become an alcoholic. Lureen told me that Jack wished to have his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain. She suggested that I contact Jack's parents about this.
I visited Jack's parents and offered to take Jack's ashes to Brokeback Mountain. Jack's father refused, insisting that Jack's remains be buried in the family plot. Jack's mother was more welcoming, and allowed me to see Jack's boyhood bedroom. While in the room, I discovered two old shirts hidden in the back of the closet. The shirts, hung one inside the other on the same hanger, were the ones Jack and I were wearing on our last day on Brokeback Mountain in 1963. I took the now rolled-up shirts with me; Jack's mother silently offered me a paper sack to put them in.
Some time after I met Jack's parents, Alma Jr. visited me at my home, a ramshackle trailer by the highway. Now 19 years old, she was getting ready to marry, and she asked for my consent in giving her away at the wedding. I seemed initially reluctant, citing that I might have to work, but decided, over a whiskey with my daughter, that I would do it. I asked if her fiance, Kurt, loved her, and she affirmed that he did.
