L’Ape musicale
rivista di musica, arti, cultura
Scene 10
[Jack’s small boyhood bedroom, clean as a pin but hot with the sun beating in. Jack’s narrow bed is against the wall. There is a small desk and chair, a few old magazine pictures on the wall. A window looks out on the dirt road. Ennis enters slowly as if in pain.]
ENNIS
[softly, looking through the window]
There’s old Brokeback in the west.
Jack, I know you looked out that window
a thousand times before you broke loose.
[He moves around the room, touching the furniture Jack had touched so many times. He goes to the closet, just a doorframe with a faded curtain on a string hung in front. He slides the curtain and looks inside. Jack’s boots are there, an old checkered wool hunting jacket, a few pair of jeans on wire hangers. He slides the curtain closed again and turns half away, then opens the curtain again and looks far inside. He reaches in and pulls out a shirt. He recognizes it as Jack’s old shirt from Brokeback days, holds it to his breast, buries his face in it. Then, very slowly holds it out and looks at it, sees there is another shirt inside, slowly draws out his own blood-stained shirt from the long-ago last day on the mountain and the breakup fight.]
ENNIS
Oh God. Jack. Your shirt. My shirt. Your blood.
All the years you kept these hid.
[overwhelmed by memory and longing begins to weep. Stops abruptly, afraid they will hear him downstairs. Folds the shirts together.]
We was always on the edge, always. Our life together. Our life apart. Now it’s too late and we’re both alone forever.
[Ennis goes down to the kitchen holding the shirts reverently. Looks at Jack’s mother questioningly. She nods.]
JACK’S MOTHER
[Knowing Ennis badly needs something of Jack’s]
You take them.
I know Jack would want it so.
I think you was his only friend.
Life isn’t easy for us, it wasn’t easy for him.
JACK’S FATHER
Tell you what. We got a family plot and he’s goin in it. He ain’t goin up on Brokeback.
JACK’S MOTHER
[walking to the door with Ennis]
You come again.
To see his room.
To remember Jack, to remember.
[Interlude]