I read Annie Proulx's short story two nights ago. You can find the whole short story in The New Yorker magazine archives, Story here..

I encourage you to read the story. It's amazing and terribly bleak. And so heart breakingly sad.
As I read the story, I kept thinking, "Well, if they just moved somewhere else together, like Chicago or even Des Moines or Kansas City, well then they might have been O.K." But for them it would have been as likely as getting a flight to the moon or Mars. They only knew what they knew.
The thing that is most important about this film is that it shows love between two men who have no real options, no freedom to express their emotional commitment to each other; time and circumstance simply and totally confound them.
Gay men in many parts of the U.S. have a lot more freedom to express their love for each other these days, but this sort of love story still likely happens every day somewhere in this country.
I think that it's important to remember that whatever love we make is hard won no matter how intense and light and wonderful it is when we chance to make it.