The bedroom, at the top of a steep stair that had its own climbing rhythm, was tiny and hot, afternoon sun pounding through the west window, hitting the narrow boy's bed against the wall, an ink-stained desk and wooden chair, a b.b. gun in a hand-whittled rack over the bed. The window looked down on the gravel road stretching south and it occurred to him that for his growing-up years that was the only road Jack knew. An ancient magazine photograph of some dark-haired movie star was taped to the wall beside the bed, the skin tone gone magenta. He could hear Jack's mother downstairs running water, filling the kettle and setting it back on the stove, asking the old man a muffled question.
　　The closet was a shallow cavity with a wooden rod braced across, a faded cretonne curtain on a string closing it off from the rest of the room. In the closet hung two pairs of jeans crease-ironed and folded neatly over wire hangers, on the floor a pair of worn packer boots he thought he remembered. At the north end of the closet a tiny jog in the wall made a slight hiding place and here, stiff with long suspension from a nail, hung a shirt. He lifted it off the nail. Jack's old shirt from Brokeback days. The dried blood on the sleeve was his own blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the mountain when Jack, in their contortionistic grappling and wrestling, had slammed Ennis's nose hard with his knee. He had staunched the blood which was everywhere, all over both of them, with his shirtsleeve, but the staunching hadn't held because Ennis had suddenly swung from the deck and laid the ministering angel out in the wild columbine, wings folded.
　　The shirt seemed heavy until he saw there was another shirt inside it, the sleeves carefully worked down inside Jack's sleeves. It was his own plaid shirt, lost, he'd thought, long ago in some damn laundry, his dirty shirt, the pocket ripped, buttons missing, stolen by Jack and hidden here inside Jack's own shirt, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest smoke and mountain sage and salty sweet stink of Jack but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of Brokeback Mountain of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.
　　
　　In the end the stud duck refused to let Jack's ashes go. "Tell you what, we got a family plot and he's goin in it." Jack's mother stood at the table coring apples with a sharp, serrated instrument. "You come again," she said.
　　Bumping down the washboard road Ennis passed the country cemetery fenced with sagging sheep wire, a tiny fenced square on the welling prairie, a few graves bright with plastic flowers, and didn't want to know Jack was going in there, to be buried on the grieving plain.
        陡峭蜿蜒的楼梯把埃尼斯带进了杰克的卧室。房间又小又热，下午的阳光从西窗倾泻进来，把一张窄小的男孩床逼进墙角。一张墨迹斑斑的桌子，一把木椅子，一杆双筒枪挂在床头手工制作的枪架上。窗外，一条碎石路向南延伸，他蓦然想起，杰克小时候就只认得这一条路。床边贴着一些从旧杂志上剪下来的照片，照片上那些黑头发的电影明星，都已经褪色发黄。埃尼斯听到杰克的妈妈在楼下烧开水、灌满水壶、又把它放回炉子，同时在和杰克的老爹小声儿嘀咕。

        卧室里的衣橱，其实就是一个浅浅的凹槽，架着根木棍。一条褪色的布帘子把它跟整个房间隔离开来。衣柜里挂着牛仔裤，仔细烫过，并且折出笔直的裤线。地上放着双似曾相识的破靴子。衣橱最里面，挂着一件衬衣。他把衣服从钉子上摘下来，认出那是杰克在断背山时曾穿过的。袖子上已经干涸的血迹却是埃尼斯的——在断背山上的最后一天，他们扭打的时候，杰克用膝盖磕到了埃尼斯的鼻子，血流得他们两个身上都是，大概也流在了杰克的袖子上。但埃尼斯不能肯定，因为他还用它包过折断翅膀的野鸽子。

       那衬衣很重。他这才发现里面还套着另外一件，袖子被仔细地塞在外面这件的袖子里。那是埃尼斯的一件格子衬衣，他一直以为是洗衣店给弄丢了。他的脏衬衣，口袋歪斜，扣子也不全，却被杰克偷了来，珍藏于此。

        两件衬衣，就象两层皮肤，一件套着另一件，合二为一。他把脸深深埋进衣服纤维里，慢慢地呼吸着其中的味道，指望能够寻觅到那淡淡的烟草味，那来自大山的气息，以及杰克身上独特的汗香。然而，气味已经消散，唯有记忆长存。断背山的绵绵山峦之间，有一种无形的力量——它什么都没留给他，却永远在他心底。

       最终大头鹅老爹也不肯把杰克的骨灰给他：“告诉你，他得埋在自家的祖坟里。”杰克的妈妈用削皮器削着苹果，对他说：“你可得再来啊。”

        回去的路上，埃尼斯颠簸着经过村里的墓地。那只不过是一小块林间空地，松松垮垮地围着栅栏。有几座墓前搁着塑料假花。埃尼斯不知道杰克的墓是哪一座，不知道他被埋在这片伤心平原的哪个角落。