The Sisters Brothers

It occurred to me I had not cleaned my teeth since San Francisco, and I crouched at the waterline upriver, scrubbing my tongue and gums and teeth and spitting out the foam like buckshot across the surface of the water. I heard Warm’s voice and looked back at the tent. ‘Hermann?’ I called, but he said nothing more. I moved to the beavers and hefted them one by one, holding them at their tails and flinging them into the water south of the dam. They were heavier than I expected them to be, and the texture of their tails did not feel like the appendage of a living being, but something crafted by man. Charlie had sat up to watch as I tossed out the final few. In spite of the peculiarity of my work, he said nothing about it, and in fact he looked somewhat bored. Forgetting his injury, he reached up to swat a fly from his face and winced at the pain of his fingers knocking together. I tossed out the last beaver and returned to sit beside him. He attempted to unwrap his dressing but it had stuck and dried to his gummy flesh, and when he peeled the cloth back, along with it came a layer of skin from his knuckles and fingers. It did not look to hurt him, any more than he was already hurting that is, but it frightened and disgusted him, and me, also. I said I thought we should soak the entire thing in what was left of the alcohol before removing the dressing and he answered that he would rather wait until after he ate. I made us a small breakfast of coffee and beans. I took Warm a plate but he was sleeping, and I did not wake him. His entire body was red and purple and the blisters on his legs were doubled in number and all of them had burst, coating his skin in the brown-yellow liquid. His toes were black and a death-smell emanated from him; I thought he would likely pass over before the sun set. When I came away from the tent, Charlie was pouring the alcohol into one of Warm’s pots, and there was another pot of boiling water on the fire with a cotton shirt dancing in its roiling bubbles. He had taken the shirt from Morris’s saddlebag, he said, and looked to me for a reproach, but of course I had none to give him. He submerged his hand in the alcohol and a fat, Y-shaped vein rose up and pulsed on his forehead. He needed to scream but did not; when the pain subsided he held his hand before me and I removed the dressing. The flesh came away as before, and his hand as I saw it was ruined. Charlie looked at it but said nothing. I pulled Morris’s shirt from the water with a stick; once it was cooled I wrapped the hand, covering the fingers this time, that we would not have to see them and think about what they meant.

I decided to bury Morris, away from the river where the sand and soil met. This took me several hours and was accomplished with a short-handled spade of Warm’s. I did not and still do not understand the reason for this tool’s existence in comparison with its long-handled counterpart. I will say that digging a grave with it was absolutely a self-torture. I did the work alone, except that Charlie helped me drag the body up the beach and drop it into the hole, but mostly my brother sat away by himself, and twice he walked upriver far enough that I lost sight of him. I did not press him, and he remained attendant for the actual filling in of the grave.

We had Morris’s diary on hand (why did we not return this to him when he was living? It had not occurred to us, is why), and I struggled with the question of whether or not I should bury it with him. I asked Charlie his opinion on the matter but he said he did not have one. In the end I decided to hold on to the book, my thought being that his story was a unique one, and so best to keep his words aboveground where they might be shared and admired. It was a graceless and miserable thing to see Morris’s crooked body at the bottom of that pit. He was filthy and purple and obscene to look at. It was no longer Morris but I spoke to the thing as though it was, saying, ‘I am sorry, Morris. I know you would have preferred a more stylish affair. Well, you impressed us with your show of character. For whatever it’s worth, you have my brother’s and my respect.’ Charlie was unmoved by my speech. I was not sure he had been paying attention enough to hear it. I was fearful I had been overly dramatic. Public speaking, it goes without saying, was not something I typically engaged in. Recalling my bomboniere from the Mayfield bookkeeper, I removed this from my coat pocket and dropped it into the pit, with Morris—a measure of grandness, was my idea. It unfurled across his chest, shining and blue and fine. I asked Charlie if we should mark the spot with a cross and he said I might ask Warm. When I entered the tent I found Warm awake and somewhat alert. ‘Hermann,’ I said. He blinked his milky eyes and ‘looked’ in my general area. ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

‘It’s Eli. How are you feeling? I am happy to hear your voice.’

‘Where is Morris?’

‘Morris has died. We have buried him up from the river. Do you think we should mark his grave or leave him be?’

‘Morris . . . died?’ He began to shake his head back and forth, then to silently weep, and I went away from the tent.

‘Well?’ said Charlie.

‘I will ask again later.’

I thought, I have had enough of grown men crying.

Chapter 56

We combined the entire pull of gold, which between our four-man effort from the night before and Morris and Warm’s initial two-man affair made for near an entire bucket’s worth. This represented a fortune and I could scarcely lift the thing of my own strength. I asked Charlie to lift it but he said he did not want to. I told him it was very heavy and he said he believed me.

In a fit of practicality, and with my thoughts moving inevitably to the future, I began to look over Morris’s horse. He was a sturdy animal, and despite a pang of guilt I put my saddle on him and rode him up and down through the river shallows. He was a smooth rider and something of a gentleman. I had no particular feeling for him but I thought it was likely to follow if we spent any amount of time together. I decided I would win him over with kindness and sugar and trust. ‘I am going to adopt Morris’s horse,’ I said to Charlie.

‘Oh,’ he answered.

Warm was too unwell to transport, and anyway I did not think he could be saved even if we moved him. He was scarcely aware of my nearness but I did not want to leave him to die alone. Charlie brought up the fact that we did not know the recipe for the formula and I said I knew that and what did he think we should do, torture the dying man for every last instruction and ingredient? His tone was somber, and he said, ‘Don’t talk to me like that, Eli. I’ve lost my work hand in this. I am only telling you what is on my mind. After all, Warm may very well want us to know it.’ He was looking away as he said it; and I had never heard him speak this way, even when we were boys. I thought he sounded something like me, actually. He had never been afraid before, that I could remember, but now he was, and he did not know what it meant or what to make of it. I told him I was sorry I had jumped on him about the formula and he accepted my apology. Warm called out my name, and Charlie and I entered his tent. ‘Yes, Hermann?’ I said.

He was flat on his back, his eyes directed upward at the crest of the tent. His chest was rising and falling unnaturally quickly, and he was wheezing and breathing heavily. He told me, ‘I am ready to dictate Morris’s tombstone.’ I fetched a pencil and paper and knelt by his side; when I told him to go ahead he nodded, cleared his throat, and spit straight into the air, a thick globule that doubled back in a graceful arc and landed on the center of his forehead. I do not think he noticed this, or perhaps he did not care. Either way, he did not clean himself or ask to be cleaned. He said: ‘Here lies Morris, a good man and friend. He enjoyed the finer points of civilized life but never shied from a hearty adventure or hard work. He died a free man, which is more than most people can say, if we are going to be honest about it. Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven’t the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood—weak blood, diluted—and their memories aren’t worth a goddamned thing, you will see what I mean. Most people are imbeciles, really, but Morris was not like this. He should have lived longer. He had more to give. And if there is a God he is a son of a bitch.’ Warm paused. He spit again, this time to the side, onto the ground. ‘There is no God,’ he said, and closed his eyes. I did not know if he wanted the last sentence included on the tombstone and I did not ask, for I had no plans to transfer the speech, as it was clear to me he was not completely in his own mind any longer. But I promised Warm I would write it out just as he had said it, and I believe this consoled him. He thanked Charlie and I and we left the tent to sit before the fire. Charlie, gripping the wrist of his wounded hand, said, ‘Don’t you think it might be time to go now?’

I shook my head. ‘We can’t leave Warm to die alone.’

‘It could take him days to die.’

‘Then we will stay here for days.’

This was all that was said on the matter; and this was the beginning of our new brotherhood, with Charlie never again to be the one so far ahead, and me following clumsily behind, which is not to say the roles were reversed, but destroyed. Afterward, and even today, we are careful in our relationship, as though fearful of upsetting each other. In terms of our previous manner of correspondence I cannot say why it vanished suddenly then, snuffed as it was like a candle. Of course the moment it passed I became fond of it in a sorrowful kind of way, at least in theory or maudlin memory. But the question has entered my mind so many times: Whatever became of my bold brother? I can never say, only that he was gone and has yet to return.

As it happened, anyway, we would not have to wait days for Warm to pass, but hours. Night had fallen and Charlie and I were lying beside the fire, feeling very lazy and heavy, when Warm spoke in a wispy voice, ‘Hello?’ Charlie said he did not want to go, and I entered the tent alone.

Warm was breathing his last. He knew this and was frightened. I thought, Will he turn religious at the end, and plead for a speedy entry into heaven? But no, the man was too firm in his nonbeliefs for any last-minute cowardice. He did not wish to speak with me but asked after Morris, having forgotten the man was dead.

‘Why is he not here?’ Warm gasped.

‘He died this morning, Hermann, don’t you remember?’

‘Morris? Died?’ His forehead accordioned and his mouth parted, fixed open in anguish, and I stared at his gums, shiny with blood. He turned away, inhaling choppily, haltingly, as though the passage were partially blocked. I shifted my feet and he turned to follow the sound, asking, ‘Who’s there? Is that Morris?’

I told him, ‘It is Morris.’

‘Oh, Morris! Where have you been all this time?’ His tone was so deeply relieved and moved, I felt a tightening of emotion in my throat.

‘I was gathering firewood.’

Warm, invigorated: ‘What’s that? Firewood? Foraging fuel? That’s the idea. We will have a bonfire tonight, light up the entire operation. All the better to sort through our buckets of fortune, eh?’

‘All the better,’ I agreed.

‘What about the others?’ he wondered. ‘Where have they run off to? That Charlie doesn’t much like the hard work, I have noticed.’

‘No, he would rather stand by.’

‘Not much for cleaning up, is he?’

‘No, he’s not.’

‘But he has turned out a good man, you can’t say otherwise.’

‘He’s a good man, Hermann, you were right about it.’

‘And the other, Eli, where has he gone?’

‘He is out there somewhere.’

‘Making his rounds? Securing the camp?’

‘He is in the darkness, out.’

In a lower tone he said, ‘Well, I don’t know how you feel about it, but I have come to like that one quite a lot, actually.’

‘Yes. And I know he likes you, too, Hermann.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I said I know he likes you, too.’

‘Do I hear a trace of jealousy in your voice?’

‘No!’

‘I’m very flattered by it! All these men crowding around, and all of them so decent and honorable. I felt such the outcast, and for such a long time.’ At these words, his lips curled in bittersweet sadness, and he closed his eyes; tears bloomed from the closed corners of his lids and I wiped these away with my thumbs. Warm kept his eyes shut after this. They would not open again. He said, ‘Morris, if I shouldn’t make it through the night, I want you to carry on with the formula.’

‘Better not to think of it. You should only rest, now.’

‘I had an idea that if you were to coat your flesh with pork fat prior to submersion, that would likely reduce the damage.’

‘It is a fine idea, Hermann.’

He gasped. He said, ‘Well, I feel we have known each other a long while!’

‘I feel just the same.’

‘And I’m sorry about your dying before.’

‘I am all right, now.’

‘I wanted to help you. I thought we could be friends.’

‘We are friends.’

‘I’m,’ he said. ‘I’m.’ He opened his mouth widely and there came a foreign noise from deep within his insides, as though a solid piece of him had cracked or popped. What was this? I did not think it hurt him, or at least he made no sound of pain. I held my hand to his chest and felt his heart flutter and drop. A column of air pushed from his mouth and his body lurched and grew still, and this was where the clock stopped for Hermann Kermit Warm. His right arm fell from the cot and I lifted it back up. When it fell again I left it to hang and exited the tent. I found Charlie sitting fireside, and all was the same as when I had left him save for one conspicuous detail.

Chapter 57

Which was that there were now a half-dozen Indians milling about the camp, rummaging our bags, inspecting the horses and donkeys, and generally searching through our possessions for anything of value they might keep for themselves. The moment I breached the tent an Indian holding a rifle gestured with the barrel that I should sit beside Charlie, and I did this. Neither my brother nor I were armed, our gun belts sitting coiled beneath our saddles on the ground, as was our habit when we were bivouacked. But even if Charlie had been armed I do not know that he would have pulled his pistol. He sat to the side, staring into the flames, casting the rare glance at our visitors but not wanting any part of them.

The bucket of gold sat between us, and I believe this might have gone undetected if Charlie had not attempted to hide it under his hat, which the Indian with the rifle saw and was made suspicious by. He crossed over and tossed the hat aside; his expression was unsmiling and remained so even when he discovered the bucket’s contents. But he found it interesting enough that he called for the others to abandon their investigations, and now they were all squatting around the fire and peering into the metal container. One of them began to laugh but the others did not like this and told him, if I am not mistaken, to be quiet. Another looked at me and addressed me brusquely; I thought he was asking where we had got all the gold. I pointed to the river and he stared at me contemptibly. They emptied the bucket, pouring out equal shares into calfskin bags until it was empty. After this they stood and discussed some serious matter or another, pointing at Charlie and me as they spoke. The Indian with the rifle entered into Warm’s tent and gasped. To think of it now, this seems most un-Indian-like, him gasping like that. But he really did do it. He gasped just like an old woman and all but fell out of the tent, his hand clamped over his mouth, his eyes wide with fright and scandal. Shooing his people backward, away from our camp and toward the river, he described what he had seen in the shelter, and they all turned and hurried off into the darkness. I found it odd they did not take our pistols or horses or lives, but it was likely they thought we had some manner of plague or leprosy. Or perhaps they decided the gold was treasure enough.

‘Warm’s dead,’ I told Charlie.

‘I am going to sleep,’ he said.

And do you know, this is just what he did do, too.

Chapter 58

I put Warm into the ground in the morning, with no help from Charlie, though he was once again petulantly present for the burial itself. Warm’s lone bag was filled with his diaries and papers and I searched through these for the formula’s recipe but could not understand hardly any of what he had written down, this owing less to my ignorance of science and chemistry than to his penmanship, which was atrocious. Finally I gave up and rested the books atop his chest before filling him over with sand and earth. I made no speech this time, and decided I would not mark either one of the side-by-side graves, which I have since wished I had done, illustrating some connection between them as loyal friends, and also mentioning their accomplishments on the river. But I was feeling melancholic and obscurely hexed or obstructed and wanted badly to move on; and so the moment the grave was filled, Charlie and I mounted our horses and left, with the tent standing and fire still smoking. Looking back at the camp I thought, I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself. So that they would not starve to death I had untied Warm’s horse and the donkeys. The horse did not move but the donkeys followed after us. I fired a shot over their heads to scatter them and they ran downriver. They were naked, without any sign of ownership on them, and their stumpy legs swiveled back and forth so quickly and efficiently it did not look real to me.

We took a northwesterly route and arrived in Mayfield three days later. During all this time of riding, Charlie and I had little to say to each other, though when we spoke we were civil and not unfriendly about it. I believe he was wondering whom he might be for the rest of his life; and in a way I was wondering the same thing about myself. Reflecting on the last few days I had passed I told myself, If this was indeed my last bit of work, it is just as well to bow out in so dramatic a fashion. I decided I would pay my mother a visit just as soon as I was able, if she was in fact still alive; and I had many invented, conciliatory conversations with her, each of these ending with when she reached her crooked arm over my neck, kissing me above the line of my beard beneath the eye. The thought of this made me tranquil, and the ride to Mayfield, despite our recent hardships, was as pleasant as could be expected. At what was roughly the halfway point I said to Charlie, ‘Your left hand is still faster than most men’s right.’

‘Most isn’t all,’ he answered, and we returned to silence.

My thoughts about the Indians stealing the gold were complicated. It seemed appropriate in some way that we should not have it—had I not felt a sense of remorse when I hefted that bucket? But I doubt I would have been able to pontificate with such detachment if there was not the pile of gold waiting for us under the stove in Mayfield, a sum that represented for me the realization of all I wanted to be changed in my life. So when I smelt smoke on the wind a mile or two outside of town, I was inhabited by the most powerful type of dread and apprehension. In the time it took Charlie and I to get to the hotel, my feelings pushed past worry and on to anger, which gave way to miserable acceptance. The hotel was burned to the ground, as were the surrounding buildings; in the rubble I spied the potbellied stove, and it was toppled. I stepped through the ash and blackened timber, knowing our treasure was gone, and when I found it to be unrectifiably so I turned back to Charlie, sitting with hunched shoulders on Nimble in the middle of the sun-blanched road. ‘Nothing,’ I called.

‘Drink,’ he called back, which was just as sane and thoughtful a reply as I had ever heard him speak. But with the hotel gone there was nowhere to get a drink, or nowhere to sit and become drunk, and we were forced to buy a bottle of brandy from the chemist’s and to empty this in the road like common rascals.

We sat on the walkway across from the remains of the hotel and stared at it. The fire had gone out days before but smoke still rose up here and there in wriggling ghost-snakes. When the bottle was half gone, Charlie said, ‘Do you think Mayfield did it?’

‘Who else?’

‘He must not have left at all, but hidden himself away, waiting for us to go. I suppose he got the last laugh then.’ I admitted he had and Charlie said, ‘I wonder where your girl is.’

‘I had not thought of it.’ For an instant I was surprised by this, then not.

A person appeared down the road and I recognized him as the weeping man. He was leading his horse, tears streaming down his face, as usual. He did not see us or take notice of us; he was speaking lowly to himself, in a state of catatonic devastation, and I found myself intensely annoyed by him. I picked up a rock and threw it. This glanced off his shoulder, and he looked at me. ‘Get away from here!’ I said. I do not know why I disliked him so. It was as though I were chasing a crow from a corpse. Well, I was drunk. The weeping man continued on with his miserable voyage. ‘I don’t know what to do next,’ I admitted to Charlie.

‘Best not to think of it just now,’ he counseled. And then, bemusedly: ‘Would you look at this? It is my own true love.’ It was his whore approaching. ‘Hello, what’s-your-name,’ he said happily. She stood before us looking damp and raw and red-eyed, the edges of her dress dirtied, her hands trembling. She drew back her arm and threw something at my face. It was the hundred dollars I had left her to give to the bookkeeper. Looking down at the money on the ground, I began to laugh, though I knew it meant the bookkeeper had died. I thought, It must not have been that I loved the bookkeeper, but that I loved the idea of her loving me, and the idea of not being alone. At any rate there was nothing in my heart like sorrow, and I peered up at the whore and said to her pitiful face, ‘And so what about that?’ She spit and walked away and I picked the coins up from the ground. I gave Charlie fifty dollars and he dropped it into his boot, his pinkie arched elegantly skyward. I dropped mine into my boot as well, and we both laughed as though this were the pinnacle of modern comedy.

We were sitting fully in the dirt now, and the bottle was nearly empty. I think we would have passed out and slept in the road but Charlie’s whore had gone and gathered all the other whores, who presently stood over us in a pack, looking down with scandal and outrage. With Mayfield and then the hotel gone, they were all of them fallen on hard times, with perfume no longer trailing over their heads, their dresses no longer crisp and folded stiff with starch. They started in on Charlie and me, saying unkind things about our characters.

‘What a pair.’

‘Look at them on the ground like that.’

‘Look at the gut on the one.’

‘Other one’s hurt his hand, looks like.’

‘No more killing stable boys for him.’

Over the din, Charlie asked me confusedly, ‘What are they so upset about?’

‘We chased away the boss man, remember?’ To the whores I explained, ‘But we didn’t burn the hotel down, Mayfield did. At least I think it was him. But I am sure it wasn’t us.’ This only served to make them angrier, however.

‘Don’t you talk about Mayfield!’

‘Mayfield wasn’t so bad!’

‘He paid us, didn’t he?’

‘He gave us rooms, didn’t he?’

‘He was a bastard, but he wasn’t half the bastard as you two.’

‘You two are the real bastards.’

‘The genuine article, that’s the truth all right.’

‘What should we do with these bastards?’

‘These bastards.’

‘Let’s get them!’

Now they came upon us, overpowering and pinning us to the ground. Through the wall of bodies I could hear Charlie laughing, and I also found this humorous at the start, but my amusement gave way to upset when I found myself unable to move, and as I watched the darting hands of the whores empty my pockets of all my money. I began then, and so did Charlie start to struggle and berate the whores, but it seemed the more we fought the stronger they became. When I heard Charlie scream out in pain I felt truly panicked—his whore was grinding her heel into his injured hand—and I bit the whore closest to me through her dress, sinking my teeth into her rank and ample belly. She became enraged by this, removing my pistol from its holster and pointing it at my skull above the brow. Now I lay completely still and silent, and the look of hatred was so vigorous in her eyes I was expecting at any moment to witness that bright white light from the deep black pit of the gun barrel. But this never came, and the whores, having had enough, wordlessly climbed off and left us, taking with them our pistols and cash, save for the hundred dollars we had dropped in our boots, where they luckily had not thought to look.

INTERMISSION II

I passed out in the dirt and sun in the half-dead town of Mayfield. When I awoke it was dusk and the peculiar girl from my prior visit was standing before me. She had a new dress on, and her hair was just-cleaned and wrapped in a fat red bow. Her hands were clasped daintily to her chest and there was an expectant air of tension about her. She was not looking at me but to my side, at Charlie. ‘It’s you,’ I said. She made a quieting gesture, then pointed to my brother, who was holding a water-filled mason jar. At the bottom of this was a swirling dust devil of black granules and I saw that the girl’s knuckles were flecked in the poison, as before; when Charlie brought the jar to his lips I knocked it away from his hand. The jar did not break but landed in a pit of mud. The water drained away and the girl made a sullen expression at me. ‘Why did you do that?’

I said, ‘I have wanted to talk with you, about what you told me before.’

Staring distractedly at the jar, she said, ‘About what did I tell you before?’

‘You said I was a protected man, do you recall it?’

‘I recall it.’

‘Can you tell me, please, am I protected still?’

She watched me, and I knew she knew the answer but she did not speak.

‘To what degree am I protected?’ I persisted. ‘Will it always be so?

She opened her mouth and closed it. She shook her head. ‘I will not tell you.’ Her dress hem spun in a wheel as she turned and retreated. I searched around for a rock to throw at her but there were none within reaching distance. Charlie was still watching the jar, propped in the mud. ‘I am damned thirsty,’ he said.

‘She wished to kill you dead,’ I told him.

‘What, her?’

‘I saw her poison a dog before.’

‘The pretty little thing. Why in the world would she do that?’

‘Just for the evil joy of it, is all I can think.’

Charlie squinted at the purpling sky. He lay back his head and closed his eyes and said, ‘Well, world?’ Then he laughed. A minute or two passed, and he was sleeping.

END INTERMISSION II

Chapter 59

Charlie had his hand cut off by a doctor in Jacksonville. His pain by this time had lessened but the flesh had begun to rot and there was nothing else but to remove it. The doctor, named Crane, was an older man, though alert and steady; he wore a rose in his lapel and from the start I had faith in him as a person of principles. When I spoke of my and Charlie’s financial straits, for example, he waved away my comment as though the notion of receiving a wage was little more than an afterthought. There was an incident when Charlie produced a bottle of brandy, saying he wished to get drunk before the procedure, which the doctor was against, explaining that the alcohol would cause excessive bleeding. But Charlie said this made no difference, he would have his way and nothing in the world would stop him. At last I took Crane aside and told him to give Charlie the anesthetic without telling him what it was. He saw the wisdom in my plan, and after successfully sedating my brother everything went as well as such a thing can. The operation took place in the candlelit parlor of Crane’s own home.

The rotting had crept beyond the wrist and Crane made his cut halfway up the forearm with a long-bladed saw manufactured, he said, specifically for severing bone. His forehead was shining with perspiration when he was through and the blade of the saw, when he accidentally touched it afterward, was hot enough that it burned him. He had laid out a bucket for the hand and wrist to drop into but his aim or placement was off and it landed on the floor. He could not be bothered to retrieve this, busy as he was caring for what remained of Charlie, and I crossed over and lifted it myself. It was surprisingly light; blood dripped freely from the open end and I held this over the bucket, gripping it by the wrist. My touching Charlie’s arm like this would not ever have happened when it was attached, and as such I blushed from the foreignness of it. I found myself running my thumb over the coarse black hairs. I felt very close to Charlie when I did this. I placed the hand and wrist standing upright in the bucket and removed this from the room, for I did not want him to see it whenever he awoke. After the surgery he lay on a tall cot in the center of the parlor, bandaged and drugged, and Crane encouraged me to take in the air, saying it would be many hours before Charlie was conscious again. I thanked him and left his home, walking to the far edge of town, to the restaurant I had visited on the way to San Francisco. I sat at the same table as before and was received by the same waiter, who recognized me, and asked in an ironic voice if I had returned for another meal of carrots and stalks. But after witnessing the operation, and with dried droplets of my brother’s blood decorating my pant legs, I was not hungry in the least, and asked only for a glass of ale. ‘You have given up food entirely then?’ he said, snuffling into his mustache. I found myself offended at his tone and told him, ‘My name is Eli Sisters, you son of a whore, and I will kill you dead where you stand if you don’t hurry up and serve me what I asked for.’ This brought the waiter’s gawking and leering to an end, and he was cautious and respectful afterward, his hand atremble as he placed the glass of ale before me. It was out of character for me to lash out in so common and vulgar a way as this; later, as I walked away from the restaurant, I thought, I must relearn calmness and peacefulness. I thought, I am going to rest my body for one full year! Here was my decision, and one that I am happy to say I eventually realized, one that I thoroughly relished and basked in: Twelve months of resting and thinking and becoming placid and serene. But before this dream-life might come to pass, I knew, there was one last bit of business I would have to see through, and which I would see through on my own.

Chapter 60

It was ten o’clock at night when we finally arrived at our shack outside of Oregon City. I found the door knocked off its hinges and all our furnishings overturned or destroyed; I walked to the rear room and was unsurprised to find my and Charlie’s stash gone from its hiding place behind the looking glass. There had been more than twenty-two hundred dollars tucked into the wall, but now there was nothing save for a single sheet of paper, which I took up, and which read thus:Dear Charlie,I am a bastard I took your $, all of it. I am drunk but I don’t think I will return it when I’m sober. Also I took your brother’s $ and I’m sorry Eli, I always liked you when you weren’t looking at me cockeyed. I am going far away with this $ and you can try to find me and good luck on that score. Any rate you will both earn more, you were always good earners. It’s a hell of a way to say so long but I’ve always been this way and I won’t even feel bad about it later. There is something wrong with my blood or mind or whatever it is which guides a man.—Rex

I folded the note and returned it to the carved-away wall. The looking glass had been dropped and broken, and I pushed around the shards with my boot. I was not thinking but waiting for a thought, or a feeling. When this did not materialize I gave up on it and went outside to pull Charlie down from Nimble. Crane had given him a dropper bottle of morphine and he had been more or less catatonic for the duration of our return trip. I had found it occasionally necessary to tie him to Nimble and lead him by a length of rope. And he was several times jarred from his stupor by the realization his hand was no longer attached to his body. It was something that slipped his mind again and again; when he noticed, he was run through with shock and miserableness.

I walked him to his room and he crawled onto his naked, lopsided mattress. Before he dropped away I told him I was going out, and he did not ask where, and he could not possibly care. He clapped his jaws and held up his bandaged stump to wave it. Leaving him to his drugged slumber, I stood awhile at the entrance of our home, taking stock of our wrecked and meager possessions. I had never had any strong feelings for the place; looking around now at the wine-stained bedding and cracked plates and cups, I knew I would never sleep there again. It was an hour’s ride into town. My mind was intent and clean and focused. I had been traveling for many days but was not in the least bit fatigued or compromised. I was not in any way afraid.

The Commodore’s mansion was dark save for his half-lit rooms on the top story. The moon was high and bright and I hid beneath the shaded boughs of an ancient cedar that stood on the border of the grand property. I watched a servant girl leave out the back with an empty washtub under her arm. She was angry about something, and as she made for her cabin, separate from the main house, she cursed under her breath. I waited fifteen minutes for her to exit; when she did not, I crossed the yard in a crouch, moving toward the house. She had failed to lock the back door and I crept fully into the kitchen. It was still and cool and orderly. What had the Commodore done to the girl? I stole another glance at her cabin; all was quiet and unchanged, except she had lighted a single white candle and placed this in her window.

I climbed the carpeted stairs and stood outside the Commodore’s quarters. Through the door I heard him berating and insulting someone; whom I did not know, for the man only mumbled his apologies, and I could not tell who he was or what he had done wrong. When he had had enough abuse he made to leave the room; as his footsteps drew closer I pressed myself against the wall beside the door hinges. I had no pistol, merely a squat, blunt blade, what I have always heard called a plug blade, and I took this up in my hand. But the door swung open and the man descended the stairs with no knowledge of my being there. He left out the back door and I snuck to a window at the end of the hall to follow his movements. I watched him enter the servant girl’s cabin; he appeared in the window, glaring bitterly at the mansion, and I hid in the shadows to witness the hurt in the man’s eyes. His hideous face was descriptive of a violent life, and yet there he stood, bullied and cowed and impotent to defend himself. When he blew out the candle the cabin fell dark and I backtracked down the hall. The door had remained open and I entered.

The Commodore’s quarters accounted for the entire top floor of the mansion, and there were no walls in this vast space, no rooms, but the furniture was grouped together as though there were. It was darkened save for the low lights of the occasional table lantern or flickering sconce. In the far corner behind a Chinese folding screen rose a plume of blue cigar smoke; when I heard the Commodore’s voice I paused, thinking him not alone. But as I listened I heard no second voice, and deduced he was only speaking to himself. He was resting in the bath and giving an imaginary speech and I thought, What is it about bathing that prompts a person to do this? I gripped the plug blade and walked across to meet him, following a line of rugs so as not to make a sound. I came around the screen, blade aloft, prepared to stick this into the Commodore’s naked heart, but his eyes were covered with a cotton cloth and I found my arm dropping in degrees to my side. Here was a man whose influence could be found in every corner of the country, and he sat drunk in a copper bathtub, his body hairless, his chest scooped and bony, an overlong ash dangling perilously from his cigar. His voice was reedy:

‘Gentlemen, it is a question often asked, and today I put it to you, and let us see if you know the answer. What is it that makes a man great? Some will point to wealth. Others to strength of character. Some will say it is a great man who never loses his temper. Some that it is one who is fervent in his worship of the Lord. But I am here to tell you precisely what it is which makes a man great, and I hope that you will listen to my words on this day, and that you will adopt them into your hearts and souls, and that you will understand my meaning. For yes! I wish to bestow greatness upon you.’ He nodded, and held up a hand, in appreciation at his phantom applause. I took a step closer to him and leveled my blade at his face. I knew I should kill him while I had the chance but I wanted to hear what he had to say. He lowered his hand and took a long drink of his cigar. This upset the ash, which fell into the bath with a hiss; he splashed the water with his fingertips where he imagined the ash had landed. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you, thank you.’ He paused, sucking in a chestful of air. Now he spoke with emphasis, and loudly. ‘A great man is one who can pinpoint a vacuity in the material world and inject into this blank space an essence of himself ! A great man is one who can create good fortune in a place where there previously was none through sheer force of will! A great man, then, is one who can make something from nothing! And the world around you, assembled gentlemen, believe me when I say it is just that—nothing!’

In one quick movement I was upon him. Casting the plug blade to the ground I pressed down on his shoulders so that his head dropped beneath the surface of the water. He began at once to splash and flail; he coughed and choked and made a noise that sounded like ‘Hesch, hesch, hesch!’ This reverberated against the walls of the bathtub and I felt it tickling through my legs and up into my trunk. The Commodore’s life instinct was awakened and his struggling became ever more fierce, but I had all my weight upon him and he was pinned and could not move. I felt very strong, and correct, and nothing in the world could have prevented me from seeing the job through.

His washcloth had fallen away from his face and he stared up at me through the water, and though I did not want to look at him I thought it would not have been proper otherwise and I matched his eyes with mine. I was surprised by what I saw, because he was only afraid, just like all the others who had died. He recognized me, but that was it. I suppose I had wanted him to see me and lament that he had not shown me the proper respect, but there was no time for that. Speaking practically, I thought there was perhaps an explosion of colors in his mind, then a limitless void, like a night, or all nights stirred together.

The Commodore died. After this I pulled him up so that his head was only halfway submerged, to make it look as though he had drunkenly drowned himself. His hair was pasted over his forehead and his cigar floated near his face and there was nothing dignified about his closing setting. I left through the front door and rode back to Charlie’s and my shack, where I found him asleep and in no mood for travel. Despite his protestations I roused him and tied him to Nimble and we rode in the direction of Mother’s.

Epilogue

There was silver in the dawn, and heavy dewdrops weighed down the stalks of tall grass. Charlie had finished his morphine and lay snoring on Nimble’s broad back as we rode up the trail to the property. I had not seen the house in years and wondered if it might be in ruins, and what I would do if Mother was not there. When the house came into view I saw that it was newly painted, and that a room had been added to the rear; there was an orderly vegetable garden with a scarecrow, and the scarecrow looked familiar to me. I recognized it was wearing an old coat of my father’s, and also his hat and pants. I dismounted Morris’s horse and approached the visage to check its pockets. There was nothing in them but a single spent match. I put this into my own pocket and stepped to the front door. I was too nervous to knock and so for a time merely watched it. But my mother had heard me walk up and met me at the door in her nightgown. She looked at me with not a trace of surprise, and over my shoulder.

‘What happened with him?’ she asked.

‘He has injured his hand, and is tired about it.’

She scowled, and asked me to wait on the porch for a moment, explaining that she did not like for people to see her climbing into bed. But I already knew this and told her, ‘I will come when you call for me, Mother.’ She walked away and I sat on the railing, swinging my leg and looking all around at the house’s every detail. I was feeling tenderhearted and aching about it. Looking at Charlie, slack on his horse, I thought of the times we had had there. ‘They were not all bad,’ I said to him. My mother called my name and I walked through the house and into the back, the added room, where she lay in her tall bed of brass and soft cotton. She patted her hands over top of the blanket. ‘Where are my glasses?’ she asked.

‘They are in your hair.’

‘What? Oh, here. Yes.’ She put them on and looked at me. ‘There you are,’ she concluded. Her face broke into a frown and she asked, ‘What happened to Charlie’s hand?’

‘He had an accident and lost it.’

‘Misplaced it, did he?’ She shook her head and muttered, ‘As though it is only a trifle or inconvenience.’

‘It is no trifle to me or him, either.’

‘How did he lose it?’

‘It was burned, and then infected. The doctor said it would kill his heart if Charlie forwent the surgery.’

‘Kill his heart?’

‘That is what the doctor said.’

‘He used those exact words?’

‘Words to that effect.’

‘Hmm. And was the operation very painful?’

‘He was unconscious for the actual cutting. He says now there is a burning, and that the stump itself itches, but he is taking morphine, which helps. I should think he will be healed soon. The color has returned to his face, I noticed.’

She cleared her throat, and then again. Her head began to tick and tock, as though she were weighing her words; I implored her to speak her mind and she said, ‘Well, it’s not that I am not happy to see you, Eli, because I am. But could you tell me just what prompted your visiting me after all this time?’

‘I felt a need to be near you,’ I told her. ‘It was very strong, and it overcame me.’

‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘And would you explain to me, please, just what in the world you are talking about?’

This made me laugh, but then I could see she was serious, and I made an attempt to answer honestly: ‘What I mean is, all of the sudden, at the end of a long and difficult piece of work, I didn’t understand why we should not be near each other, when we were always so close before, you and I, and even Charlie.’

She did not appear to think very much of this answer; or perhaps she did not believe it. As though to change the subject, she asked, ‘How have you been in terms of your temper?’

‘It will get away from me on occasion.’

‘What of the soothing method?’

‘I still use the soothing method from time to time.’

She nodded and took up a cup of water from the nightstand. After drinking, she dabbed her face with the collar of her gown; in doing this, her sleeve dropped and I saw her crooked arm. It had been set improperly and looked irregular, as though it might cause her discomfort; at the sight of it I felt a ghostly pain or what some call a pity pain in my own arm. She caught me looking and smiled. Her smile was beautiful—my mother was a famously beautiful woman when she was young—and she said gladly, ‘You look just the same, do you know?’

I cannot state how much of a relief it was to hear her say this, and I told her, ‘When I see you, I feel the same. It is when I am away that I lose myself.’

‘You should stay here then.’

‘I would like to stay. I have missed you very much, Mother. I think of you so frequently, and I believe Charlie does, also.’

‘Charlie thinks of himself, is what Charlie thinks of.’

‘He is so hard to get ahold of, always breaking away.’ I felt a sob growing in my chest but I pushed this back and extinguished it. Exhaling, I gripped myself. Soberly, I said, ‘I don’t know if I should leave him outside like that. Might I bring him in the house?’ I was quiet for a time. I waited for my mother to say something, but she never did. Finally I told her, ‘We had many adventures together, Charlie and I, and we saw things most men do not get to see.’

‘And is that so important?’

‘Now that it is over it seems so.’

‘Why do you say that it’s over?’

‘I have had my fill of it. I am after a slower life, is the thing.’

‘You have come to the right house for that.’ Pointing around the room she asked, ‘Did you see all the improvements? I keep waiting for you to compliment—anything.’

‘Everything looks splendid.’

‘Did you see the garden?’

‘It is fine. The house, also. And you. Are you feeling well?’

‘Yes and no and in between.’ Thinking, she added, ‘Mostly in between.’

A knock on the door, and Charlie entered the room. He took off his hat and hung it from his stump. ‘Hello, Mother.’

She watched him for a long time. ‘Hello, Charlie,’ she said. When she did not look away he turned to me. ‘I didn’t know where we were at first. The house was so familiar but I couldn’t place it.’ Whispering, he said, ‘Did you see the scarecrow?’

Mother sat watching us with something like a smile on her face. But it was a sad smile, and far away. ‘Is either of you hungry?’ she asked.

‘No, Mother,’ I said.

‘Neither am I,’ said Charlie. ‘But I would like to take a bath, please.’

She told him to go ahead and he thanked her, making to leave. As he stood in the doorway to face me his expression was guileless and straight and I thought, There is not the slightest bit of fight left in him. After he had gone, Mother said, ‘He looks different.’

‘He needs a rest.’

‘No.’ She tapped her chest and shook her head. When I explained he had lost his shooting hand she said, ‘I hope the two of you don’t expect me to lament that.’

‘We expect nothing, Mother.’

‘No? It seems you are both expecting me to pay for your food and board.’

‘We will find work.’

‘And what would that be, exactly?’

‘I have given some thought to opening a trading post.’

She said, ‘You mean you will invest in one? You don’t mean you will work in one? With all the customers, and their questions?’

‘I have imagined doing it myself. Can’t you picture it?’

‘Frankly, I can’t.’

I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.’

‘All right,’ she said, relenting. ‘You and your brother can sleep in your old room. If you truly mean to stay on, we can add another room later. And when I say we, I mean you and Charlie.’ She reached for a hand mirror and held this up before her. Smoothing her hair she told me, ‘I should probably be glad you two are still a united front. Since you were boys, and it was always the same.’

‘Our alliance has been broken and mended many times.’

‘Your father brought you close.’ She lowered the mirror. ‘We can thank him for the one thing.’

I said, ‘I think I would like to lie down, now.’

‘Should I wake you for lunch?’

‘What are you making?’

‘Beef stew.’

‘That’s fine, Mother.’

She paused. ‘Do you mean: That’s fine, don’t wake me? Or: That’s fine, do?’

‘Do wake me, please.’

‘All right then. Go and get some rest.’

I turned away from her and looked down the hallway. The front door hung open and presented me with a block of pure white light. Passing under mother’s jamb I thought I heard her voice; I swung around and she watched me expectantly. ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Did you call for me?’ She beckoned and I crossed the room. Standing beside her bed, she reached up and gripped my fingers. Now she pulled me to her, hand over hand up my arm as though she were scaling a rope. She hooked her arms around my neck and kissed me below my eye. Her lip was wet and cool. Her hair and face and neck smelled of sleep and soap. I walked away to my and Charlie’s old room and lay down on a mattress on the floor. It was a comfortable and clean space, if small, and I knew it would do for a while, and in its way was perfect. I could not recall a time when I was precisely where I wanted to be, and this was a very satisfying feeling.

I dropped into sleep but awoke with a start some minutes later. I could hear Charlie in the next room, washing himself in the bathtub. He was saying nothing and would say nothing, I knew, but the sound the water made was like a voice, the way it hurried and splashed, chattering, then falling quiet but for the rare drip, as if in humble contemplation. It seemed to me I could gauge from these sounds the sorrow or gladness of their creator; I listened intently and decided that my brother and I were, for the present at least, removed from all earthly dangers and horrors.

And might I say what a pleasing conclusion this was for me.

Acknowledgments

Leslie Napoles

Gustavo deWitt

Gary deWitt

Nick deWitt

Mike deWitt

Michael Dagg

Lee Boudreaux

Abigail Holstein

Daniel Halpern

Sara Holloway

Sarah MacLachlan

Melanie Little

Peter McGuigan

Stephanie Abou

Daniel McGillivray

Hannah Brown Gordon

Jerry Kalajian

Philippe Aronson

Emma Aronson

Marie-Catherine Vacher

Azazel Jacobs

Monte Mattson

Maria Semple

George Meyer

Jonathan Evison

Dave Erikson

Dan Stiles

Danny Palmerlee

Alison Dickey

John C. Reilly

Carson Mell

Andy Hunter

Otis the dog

About the Author

PATRICK DEWITT is the author of the critically acclaimed Ablutions: Notes for a Novel. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in California, Washington, and Oregon, where he currently resides with his wife and son.

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Also By Patrick deWittFiction

ABLUTIONS

Credit

Jacket art and design by Dan Stiles

Copyright

THE SISTERS BROTHERS. Copyright © 2011 by Patrick deWitt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-0-06-204126-5

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada

Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Art du Canada, qui a investi 20,1 millions de dollars l’an dernier dans les lettres et l’édition à travers le Canada

EPub Edition © May 2011 ISBN: 9780062041272

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