The Sisters Brothers (14 page)

*
It is hours later, and I am still sitting here. The answer lies before me, it is plain to see it, but it is so bold as to be unfathomable. I have no one to turn to in this, and will have to answer the call on my own. I am extremely uneasy.

*
I did not sleep hardly at all last night, and when Warm returned this morning I formally agreed to take part in his expedition to the River of Light. I am convinced now of his genius, and though I am loath to abandon my post I have elected to follow my heart and do just this. What am I living for, after all? I look upon my past with disgrace. I was herded and instructed. But I will be herded and instructed no more. Today I am born anew, and my life will become my own again. It will be different ever after.

Chapter 38

There was a concentrated silence as Charlie and I sat digesting this remarkable story. I approached the dining table and dragged a finger across its surface. There was a dusting of soil resting upon it; when I showed my trembling hand to Charlie he tossed the journal aside and said, ‘I believe it. I believe it all. The Commodore’s instruction was explicit on one point: Prior to killing Warm I was to obtain by whatever manner of violence necessary what was described to me only as “the formula.” When I asked him what the formula was, he said it was none of my affair, but that Warm would know what I meant, and that once I had it I was to guard it with my life.’

‘Why didn’t you speak to me about this before?’

‘I was told not to. And anyway, what could it have meant to you? It was so vague, I myself hardly gave it a thought. There is always some cryptic obscurity present in the Commodore’s orders. Do you remember the job before last, where I first blinded the man before killing him?’

‘The Commodore said to do that?’

Charlie nodded. ‘He said the man would understand it, and that I should let him “sit awhile in the dark” before putting my bullets in him. This formula business seemed to be more of the same, so far as I could see.’ He stood away from the bed and moved to the window, clasping his hands at the small of his back and peering up the hill. He was silent a minute or more, and when he finally spoke his voice was solemn and soft: ‘I have never minded cutting down the Commodore’s enemies much, brother. It always happens that they are repellent in one way or the other. Lesser villains, men without mercy or grace. But I do not like the idea of killing a man because of his own ingenuity.’

‘I don’t, either. And I’m very glad to hear you say it.’

He exhaled through his nostrils. ‘What do you think we should do?’

‘What do
you
think we should do?’

But neither of us knew what to do.

Chapter 39

The Black Skull was just as Morris had described it, a lean-to fabricated of scrap wood and tin, situated in a slim alley between two much larger brick buildings, giving it the appearance of being slowly crushed. The interior was similarly unimpressive or negatively impressive: Mismatched chairs and tables were scattered about the room, and a stovepipe leaked acrid smoke from what looked to be a most disorganized and ill-fated kitchen. We entered unhungry and remained so, the smell of horse meat being thick on the air. The checkered eye patch man from the diary was standing in the corner with a tall and picturesque woman, incongruously well dressed in a bright green sleeveless silken gown. These two were engaged in some manner of entertainment and did not notice us as we took up our position at their side.

The woman was a stunning picture, and the gown was the least of it. Her arms were so very beautiful and fine I found myself wanting instantly to put my hands on them; her face, too, was uncommonly lovely, with a handsome Indian profile and a pair of green eyes that when she set them upon me made me jerk my head away, for it was as though she were looking through my body to a point across the room, and when she did this I felt my core doused in ice-cold water. The proprietor glanced at us automatically and nodded before returning to their sport, which I will now describe:

The woman held her palms out. In her right hand was a small piece of fabric, the same that her dress was made of, its edges sewn with a length of heavy golden thread. I do not know why but there was something magnetic about that bit of cloth; I found it pleasing to gaze upon, and a smile appeared on my face. I noticed the proprietor was also staring and smiling. Charlie was staring but his face remained in its typical unfriendly countenance.

‘Are you ready?’ the woman asked the proprietor.

He focused his eyes steadfastly on the fabric and his entire being became stiff. He nodded and said, ‘Ready.’

Just as soon as he uttered the word, the woman began passing the cloth back and forth, snaking it through her fingers and across the knuckles, working with such speed and cunning that the fabric was lost to the naked eye. Now she balled her hands to fists and held them before the proprietor, addressing him in a low and monotone voice: ‘Pick.’

‘Left,’ he said.

The woman opened her left hand: No cloth. She opened the right to reveal the green and gold square; it had been bunched in her grip but was unfolding itself to lay flat. ‘Right,’ she said.

The proprietor handed the woman a dollar and said, ‘Again.’

The woman held out her hands, palms facing up. ‘Are you ready?’

He said that he was. They played another round and this time I focused more intently. The proprietor must have noticed this, for when the woman brought up her fists, he invited me to choose. I believed I knew where the cloth was and gladly joined in. ‘It is there,’ I said. ‘The right hand.’ The woman opened her fist and it was empty. ‘Left,’ she said. I dug into my pocket for a dollar, that I might take a turn.

‘I have not finished my engagement with her,’ said the proprietor.

‘Let me have a single play.’

‘You just have had one.’

‘Let us go one and then the other.’

He grunted. ‘I have engaged her for the time. You may take your turn after I’m through, but for now I need to concentrate completely.’ He turned back to the woman, passing her another dollar. ‘All right,’ he said, and her hands began their slippery movements. Accepting my role of nonparticipant, I paid attention to the woman’s hands just as closely as I was able. I do not think I ever paid such close attention to one particular thing in my life. When her hands came to rest I would have bet every penny I had that the cloth was in her left hand. ‘The left hand,’ said the proprietor, and I twitched in anticipation. Alas, the woman unballed her fist and it was empty, and the proprietor jumped up in anguish. He actually performed a small jump. I hid my feelings as best I could, but inwardly I too was crestfallen. Charlie had been following along with the game; he was partially amused and partially annoyed.

‘What is the purpose of this?’ he asked.

‘To find the bit of cloth,’ said the proprietor innocently.

‘But what is its appeal? How often do you win?’

‘I have never won.’

‘And how many times have you played?’

‘Many, many times.’

‘You are throwing your money away.’

‘So is everyone throwing their money away.’ He regarded us more closely, now. ‘What do you two
want,
can I ask? Are you here to eat?’

‘We are looking for Warm.’

At the name, the proprietor’s face dropped, and his eyes filled with hurt. ‘Is that a fact? Well, if you find him, you send him my regards!’ This was spoken so bitterly that Charlie was moved to inquire, ‘You have some dispute with him?’

‘I fed him many times over after he dazzled me with his trick of lights and shadows. I should have known he would run out on our bargain.’

‘What was the bargain, exactly?’

‘It is a personal matter.’

I said, ‘You were to escort him to the River of Light, is that it?’

He tensed, and asked, ‘How did you know about that?’

‘We are friends of Warm,’ said Charlie.

‘Warm has no friends besides me.’

‘We have enjoyed a long and healthy friendship with him.’

‘I’m sorry, but I do not believe you.’

‘We are his friends,’ I said, ‘and we know he has others, also. He recently dined here with a Mr. Morris, for example.’

‘What, the dainty little fellow?’

‘They have gone to the river together, is what we have heard.’

‘Warm would never entrust his secrets to a fancy man like that.’ But he pondered this a moment and apparently came to believe it as fact. He sighed. ‘My spirits are low today. I would like to be alone to play this game. You gentlemen have a seat if you want to eat. If not, you will leave me in peace.’

‘Do you have any notion where he was planning on setting up his operation?’

The man did not answer. He and the woman began another round of play. When her fists became still he said, ‘Right hand.’

‘Left,’ said the woman.

He paid out another dollar. ‘Again,’ he said, and the woman’s hands resumed their dancing.

‘We have thought to visit him at his claim,’ I said.

The woman held up her fists and the proprietor exhaled sharply. ‘It is the left.’

‘Right,’ she said.

‘Will you tell us when it was you saw him last then?’ I said.

‘Did you not hear me say I wished for solitude?’ he asked.

Charlie pulled his coat back to reveal his pistols. ‘I want you to tell us everything you know, and right now.’

The proprietor was not surprised or alarmed by this. ‘Hermann spoke of the day you men would come. I did not believe him.’

‘When did you see him last?’ I asked.

‘He came in four or five days ago. He had a new hat to show me. He said he would fetch me the next morning to make for the river. I sat here, in this very room, like an ass, for several hours.’

‘But he never said which river, never gave a clue?’

‘He has always spoken of following his river upstream to the fountainhead.’

‘His river where he had a claim you mean?’

‘That’s what I mean.’

‘Why do you not go there?’

‘Follow after him? And then what? Force myself into their company? No, if he had wanted me to go, he would have come for me. He has made his decision to travel with the other man.’

Charlie found the proprietor’s attitude distasteful. ‘But what of your agreement?’ he asked. ‘What of the gold?’

‘I don’t care about money,’ the proprietor answered. ‘I don’t know why. I should pay more attention to it. No, I was looking forward to an adventure with a friend, is the long and short of it. I had thought Warm and I were close companions.’

These words brought an expression of disgust to my brother’s face. He buttoned his coat and retired to the bar for a drink. I stayed behind to watch the man lose another dollar to the woman, then another.

‘It is hard to find a friend,’ I said.

‘It is the hardest thing in this world,’ he agreed. ‘Again,’ he said to the woman. But he was tiring, it was clear. I left them to their game. My brother had drunk a brandy and was waiting in the road for me. We walked in the direction of Morris’s hotel, passing the livery where we had stabled Tub and Nimble. The hand spied me walking by and called out. ‘It is your horse,’ he said, beckoning for me to enter. Charlie said he would take in the sights and return in half an hour, and we parted ways.

Chapter 40

As I entered the stable I found the hand, a stooped and bowlegged old freckle-spotted bald man in coveralls, inspecting Tub’s eye. I stood next to him and he nodded a hello, saying, ‘He has an uncommonly agreeable personality, this one does.’

‘What about that eye?’

‘Here is what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s going to have to go.’ He pointed and said, ‘Two doors down and there’s an animal doc.’ I asked how much the procedure might cost and he told me, ‘Twenty-five dollars, is my guess. You’ll want to check with the man himself, but I know it’d be close to that.’

‘The entire horse is not worth twenty-five dollars. An eye shouldn’t cost me more than five, I wouldn’t think.’

‘I’ll take it out for five,’ he said.

‘You? Have you done it before?’

‘I have seen it done on a cow.’

‘Where would you do it?’

‘On the floor of the stable. I will drug him with laudanum; he will feel no pain.’

‘But how would you actually remove the eye?’

‘I will use a spoon.’

‘A spoon?’ I said.

‘A soup spoon,’ he nodded. ‘Sterilized, of course. Dig out the eye, snip away the tendons with scissors—that’s how it was with the cow. Then the doc filled the eyehole with rubbing alcohol. This woke the cow up! Doc said he didn’t give it enough laudanum. I’ll give your horse plenty.’

Stroking Tub’s face, I said, ‘There isn’t any medicine I might give him instead? He has had a tough time of it already without being half blind.’

‘A one-eyed horse isn’t worth much to a rider,’ the hand conceded. ‘Your wisest course might be to sell him for his meat. And I have horses for sale out back. Would you like to see them? I’d give you a fair deal.’

‘Let’s go ahead with the eye. We will not be riding very far, and perhaps he will still be of some use to me.’

The hand gathered the tools for the operation and placed these atop a quilt he had lain on the ground beside Tub. He brought out a ceramic bowl filled with water and laudanum; as Tub drank this the hand called me to his side. As if in secret, he whispered, ‘When his legs begin to buckle I want you to push with me. The idea is that he falls directly onto the blanket, understand?’ I said that I did, and we stood together, waiting for the drug to take hold. This did not take long at all and in fact happened so quickly it caught us off guard: Tub’s head dropped and swayed and he stumbled heavily toward the hand and myself, pinning us against the slatted sides of the stable. The hand became frantic under the weight; his face grew red as clay and his eyes bulged as he pushed and cursed. He was scared for his very life, and I found myself laughing at him, squirming around with not the slightest sense of dignity, something like a fly in honey. The hand was humiliated and then infuriated by my lightheartedness; his squirming became all the more frenzied and wild. Fearful the man might faint or otherwise harm himself, I reached up and slapped Tub’s backside as hard as I was able; he winced and stood away from us and the hand shouted, ‘Push, goddamnit, push!’ I choked off my laughter and put all my weight against Tub’s ribs and belly. Between my efforts and the hand’s, in addition to Tub’s woozy attempt to regain his footing, we pushed him clear to the other side of his stable, cracking and snapping the slats as he crashed against them. Now the hand grabbed my arm and yanked me back just as Tub, rebounding off the wall, fell to the ground, his head perfectly placed on the quilt, out cold. The hand was panting and sweat covered, and he regarded me with the most sincere contempt, his twisted fists pinned to his denim hips. ‘Can I ask you, sir, just what in the hell it is that you’re celebrating?’ He was so very upset, standing there before me, it took no small amount of self-control not to laugh again. I managed it, but barely. Speaking penitently, I told him, ‘I’m very sorry about that. There just seemed something funny about it.’

‘To be crushed to death by a horse, this is your idea of carefree entertainment?’

‘I am sorry to have laughed,’ I said again. To change the subject I pointed at Tub and said, ‘At any rate it was a dead shot. Right on the quilt.’

He shook his head and growled lowly, phlegm percolating in his throat. ‘Except for one detail. He is lying on the wrong side! How am I to get at the eye, now?’ He spit the phlegm on the ground and watched it. He watched it a long while. Whatever in the world was he thinking about? I decided to regain the hand’s trust, if only to do right by Tub, for I did not like the idea of the old man performing such a delicate operation while he was angry.

There were several lengths of rope on the wall at the rear of the stable, which I removed and tied to Tub’s ankles, that I might pull him over. The hand surely knew what I was doing but did not offer his help, and began instead to roll a cigarette. He did this with great seriousness, as though it required the extent of his concentration. Tying off Tub’s ankles took five minutes, during which time the hand and I shared not a word, and I was becoming annoyed with him, feeling his sullenness was exaggerated, when he approached with a second cigarette, this rolled for me. ‘Don’t ash in the hay, will you?’ There was a single pulley hanging above the stable; we ran the two lengths of rope through the swivel, one over top of the other. With the both of us pulling it was not difficult to turn Tub over. After our working and smoking together the hand and I were friends again. I could see why he had been angry. He did not understand about my laughing. But we were very different kinds of people, and many of the things I had come to find humor in would make your honest man swoon.

Tub lay dozing and breathing, and the hand went to fetch a spoon that had been sitting in a pot of boiling water in his kitchen. Returning to the stable, he tossed the steaming utensil back and forth to avoid burning himself. His hands, I noticed, were filthy, though our alliance was so tentative I dared not comment. Blowing on the spoon to cool it, he instructed me, ‘Stay away from the rear of this animal. If he comes to the way that heifer did, he’ll kick a hole right through you.’ He pushed the spoon into the socket, and with a single jerk of his wrist, popped the eye out of its chamber. It lay on the bridge of Tub’s nose, huge, nude, glistening, and ridiculous. The hand picked up the globe and pulled it to stretch the tendon taut; he cut this with a pair of rusted scissors and the remainder darted into the black socket. Holding the eye in his palm, now, he cast around for a place to put it. He asked if I would take it and I declined. He went away with the eye and came back without it. He did not tell me what he had done with the thing and I did not ask.

He took up a brown glass bottle and uncorked it, glugging the contents into Tub’s eye socket until the alcohol spilled over, leveling to meet the rim. Four or five pregnant seconds passed when Tub’s head shot back, arching stiffly, and he made a shrill, raspy noise, ‘
Heeee!’
and his hind legs punched through the rear wall of the stable. Seesawing on his spine, he regained his footing and stood, panting, woozy, and less an eye. The hand said, ‘Must sting like the devil, the way it wakes them up. I gave him one hell of a lot of laudanum, too!’

By this time Charlie had entered and was standing quietly behind us. He had bought a bag of peanuts and was cracking their shells and eating them.

‘What’s the matter with Tub?’

‘We have taken his eye out,’ I told him. ‘Or this man has.’

My brother squinted, and started. He offered me his peanut bag and I fished out a handful. He offered the bag to the hand, then noticed the man’s outstretched fingers were slick, and pulled it away, saying, ‘How about I pour you out some?’ The hand opened his palm to receive his share. Now we were three men eating peanuts and standing in a triangle. The hand, I noticed, ate the nuts whole, shell and all. Tub stood to the side, shivering, the alcohol draining down his face. He began urinating and the hand, crunching loudly, turned to face me. ‘If you could pay out that five dollars tonight, it would be a help to me.’ I gave him a five-dollar piece and he dropped it into a purse pinned to the inside of his coveralls. Charlie moved closer to Tub and peered into the empty socket. ‘This should be filled with something.’

‘No,’ said the hand. ‘Fresh air and rinses with alcohol are what’s best.’

‘It’s a hell of a thing to look at.’

‘Then you should not look at it.’

‘I won’t be able to control myself. Couldn’t we cover it with a patch?’

‘Fresh air and rinses,’ answered the hand.

‘When will he be fit to travel?’ I asked.

‘Depends on how far you’re going.’

‘We are headed to the river diggings east of Sacramento.’

‘You will be traveling by ferry?’

‘That I don’t know. Charlie?’

Charlie was walking around the stable and smiling at some discreet amusement. He had had another drink or two, judging by his friendliness and happiness. Anyway, he had not heard my question, and I did not press him for an answer. ‘Likely we will be traveling by ferry,’ I said.

‘And when were you planning on going?’

‘Tomorrow, in the morning.’

‘And once you arrive at the diggings, you will be sleeping out of doors?’

‘Yes.’

The hand thought about this. ‘It is too soon to go,’ he said.

I patted Tub’s face. ‘He appears alert.’

‘I am not saying he cannot do it. He is a tough one. But if he were my horse I would not ride him for a week, at least.’

Charlie returned from his perambulations and I asked for more peanuts. He held the bag upside down: Empty. ‘What is the most expensive restaurant in town?’ he asked the hand, who whistled at the question, scratching simultaneously his forehead and genitals.