De Amerikaanse schrijfster en journaliste Annie Proulx werd geboren op 22 augustus 1935 in Norwich, Connecticut. Zie ook alle tags voor Annie Proulx op dit blog en ook mijn blog van 22 augustus 2010.
Uit: Brokeback Mountain
“During the day Ennis looked across a great gulf and sometimes saw Jack, a small dot moving across a high meadow as an insect moves across a tablecloth; Jack, in his dark camp, saw Ennis as night fire, a red spark on the huge black mass of mountain.
Jack came lagging in late one afternoon, drank his two bottles of beer cooled in a wet sack on the shady side of the tent, ate two bowls of stew, four of Ennis’s stone biscuits, a can of peaches, rolled a smoke, watched the sun drop.
“I’m commutin four hours a day,” he said morosely. “Come in for breakfast, go back to the sheep, evenin get em bedded down, come in for supper, go back to the sheep, spend half the night jumpin up and checkin for coyotes. By rights I should be spendin the night here. Aguirre got no right a make me do this.”
“You want a switch?” said Ennis. “I wouldn’t mind herdin. I wouldn’t mind sleepin out there.”
Scène uit de film Brokeback Mountain uit 2005
Heath Ledger en Jake Gyllenhaal in de film uit 2005
“That ain’t the point. Point is, we both should be in this camp. And that goddamn pup tent smells like cat piss or worse.”
“Wouldn’t mind bein out there.”
“Tell you what, you got a get up a dozen times in the night out there over them coyotes. Happy to switch but give you warnin I can’t cook worth a shit. Pretty good with a can opener.”
“Can’t be no worse than me, then. Sure, I wouldn’t mind a do it.”
They fended off the night for an hour with the yellow kerosene lamp and around ten Ennis rode Cigar Butt, a good night horse, through the glimmering frost back to the sheep, carrying leftover biscuits, a jar of jam and a jar of coffee with him for the next day saying he’d save a trip, stay out until supper.
“Shot a coyote just first light,” he told Jack the next evening, sloshing his face with hot water, lathering up soap and hoping his razor had some cut left in it, while Jack peeled potatoes. “Big son of a bitch. Balls on him size a apples. I bet he’d took a few lambs. Looked like he could a eat a camel. You want some a this hot water? There’s plenty.”
Annie Proulx (Norwich, 22 augustus 1935)