Close Range by E. Annie Proulx

First published: 1999

Type of work: Short fiction

Type of plot: Psychological realism

Time of plot: Late nineteenth century to late twentieth century

Locale: Wyoming

The Stories:

Mero Corn, the main character of the opening story, “The Half-Skinned Steer,” leaves his family’s Wyoming ranch in 1936 and does not return for sixty years; he had received a phone call from his brother’s wife, letting him know his brother Rollo died. Mero, who is now more than eighty years old, sets out on a four-day drive from Massachusetts.

The long drive shows Mero’s age. He gets in a traffic accident after he enters the highway the wrong way. While talking to the police, he cannot, at first, remember where he is going. Interspersed with the story of his long trip is his recalling of a story about the curse of a half-skinned steer. In the story, a rancher has partially skinned a steer before stopping for dinner. When the rancher returns, the steer is gone. He had not killed the animal, only stunned it. He soon finds the steer struggling to walk away. The steer’s evil glare leaves the rancher cursed forever.

Back on the road, Mero relies on his sixty-year-old memory of how to get to the family ranch. With ever-deepening snow, he veers off the road into a rocky field, and his car becomes permanently stuck. His only option appears to be a long, unprepared walk. As he starts down the road, he realizes something is trailing him—the half-skinned steer, with its cursing eye.

“The Mud Below” tells the story of how Diamond Felts becomes a rodeo bull-rider. For some spending money, Felts agrees to help out on a local ranch. After work, the rancher offers to let some local teenagers, including Felts, try to ride his bull. After a surprisingly successful ride, Felts is immediately excited by the challenge. Despite his mother’s anger, he takes off to join the rodeo circuit. He begins to have success, until he injures his knee. While home recuperating, he continues to fight with his mother, a single parent, who takes him to see a former rodeo rider who had been permanently injured when kicked in the head. Felts runs off again, even more angry, and takes his temper out on everyone he meets. The story ends by revealing a source for all his violent and self-destructive behavior: He demands that his mother identify his father. He tells her that the man she names has denied parentage. In turn, she tells Felts that the man has lied, knowing full well what effect that lie would have on Felts.

The final story in the book is “Brokeback Mountain,” which tells of the lifelong love between two Wyoming ranch hands, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar. The two, neither more than twenty years old, meet in the summer of 1963 near Brokeback Mountain, where they had been hired to tend a herd of sheep together. Though neither young man wants to think or talk about it, they begin a passionate sexual relationship.

In the years that follow their work on the mountain, Ennis and Jack each follow the path of marriage, though they do so unhappily. The two men manage to get together every few years, under the guise of fishing or hunting trips. They talk about running off together, perhaps to Mexico or a hidden ranch somewhere, and dream of living as a couple. Their dream remains a dream, for they fear being killed if their relationship were in the open. Ennis remembers that at the age of nine, he had been shown by his father the dead body of a man tortured and murdered with a tire iron for living with another man.

After twenty years of spending some weekends together, Ennis discovers that Jack has died. His death is attributed to an accident with an exploding tire, but Ennis believes he had been murdered. Ennis tries to fulfill Jack’s wish of having his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain, but Jack’s parents refuse. Ennis is allowed, however, to see Jack’s old bedroom. In the closet, Ennis discovers Jack’s keepsakes—two shirts, one worn by Ennis and the other by Jack while working together on Brokeback Mountain. Ennis asks if he can keep the shirts, and Jack’s parents say yes.

Bibliography

Hunt, Alex, ed. The Geographical Imagination of Annie Proulx: Rethinking Regionalism. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009. A discussion of how landscape, geography, and the “geographical imagination” figure across Proulx’s works. Includes many articles examining Wyoming as a significant place in her stories.

Proulx, E. Annie. “Big Skies, Empty Places.” The New Yorker, December 25, 2000. Proulx discusses how place, geography, and landscape influence her writings.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Interview with Annie Proulx. Paris Review, no. 188 (Spring, 2009): 22-49. An interview with Proulx in a well-respected literary journal, discussing, among other things, the odd names of her characters.

Rebein, Robert. Hicks, Tribes, and Dirty Realists: American Fiction After Postmodernism. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001. Examines the works of Proulx, Dorothy Allison, Cormac McCarthy, Larry McMurtry, Louise Erdrich, and others and asserts that these authors’ gritty realism has gained ascendency over metafiction in American writing.

Rood, Karen Lane. Understanding Annie Proulx. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. Presents discussion of Proulx’s novels and short fiction, including Close Range. Also includes an informative biographical chapter.

Showalter, Elaine. A Jury of Her Peers: American Women Writers from Anne Bradstreet to Annie Proulx. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. An overview and assessment of women writers, placing Proulx in a broad context.

Stacy, Jim, ed. Reading “Brokeback Mountain”: Essays on the Story and the Film. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2007. A collection of fifteen essays that focuses on the short story “Brokeback Mountain” and on the award-winning film based on the story. Also includes essays on Proulx’s style and her use of locale.