The Sisters Brothers (6 page)
Read The Sisters Brothers Online
Authors: Patrick Dewitt
The woman had some work to attend to, and excused herself while I packed my bags to leave. I searched the hotel to say good-bye but could not find her, so I made her a present of five dollars, hiding the coin beneath the sheets, that she might associate her thoughts of me with the notion of a marriage bed, or anyway a bed. Charlie caught me doing this and said he admired the gesture but that my plan was flawed in that the sheets were dirty and would continue to accumulate dirt because the woman had no interest in keeping a tidy business. ‘You are only giving away that money to the next man who sleeps in this room.’
‘She may find it,’ I said.
‘She will not, and besides that, five dollars is too much. Leave her a dollar at the front desk. She could have her smock cleaned, with enough left over to drink herself into a stupor.’
‘You are only jealous because you don’t have a girl.’
‘Is that hard scrubber your girl? My congratulations. It’s a shame we couldn’t take her to Mother. She would be so glad to meet the delicate flower.’
‘If it’s a question of talking with a fool or not at all, I will choose the second.’
‘Spitting into the dirt, wiping her nose on her sleeve. A very special lady indeed.’
‘Not talking at all,’ I said, and I left him to gather his things. Stepping into the road to meet Tub, I greeted him and asked how he was feeling. He appeared more alert than the day previous, though his eye was so much the worse, and I found myself sympathetic to the animal. He was resilient, if nothing else. I moved to stroke him but when my hand landed on his face he started, and I experienced shame at this, that he was so unused to a gentle touch. I decided to try to show him a better time, and made a private promise to this effect. Now Charlie exited the hotel, chuckling at the tender scene. ‘Witness here the lover of all living things,’ he called. ‘Will he leave his faulty beast cash in its feedbag? I would not put it past him, friends.’ He approached and snapped his fingers on either side of Tub’s head. Tub’s ears twitched and Charlie, satisfied with the test, moved to attend to Nimble. ‘We will be out of doors for the rest of the trip,’ he said. ‘No more lazing about in hotel rooms for us.’
‘It makes no difference to me,’ I told him.
He paused. ‘I only mean, if you suffer another of your spells or illnesses, I will have to carry on without you.’
‘Spells or illnesses? That’s fine, coming from you. Two times now you’ve slowed our progress with your drinking.’
‘All right then, let’s just say that we’ve had some bad luck, and set a poor example for ourselves. What’s passed is passed, but that’s the last of it, are we agreed?’
‘Let’s not hear anymore of my spells or illnesses.’
‘Fair enough, brother.’ He mounted Nimble and looked down the road, beyond the storefronts and toward the wilderness. I heard the tapping of metal on glass and saw the hotel woman standing in mine and Charlie’s room on the second story, the five dollars gripped between her fingers as she rapped it across the pane. Now she kissed the coin and held her palm to the window, and I crossed my arms at Charlie, whose face was cold and thoughtless; he kicked Nimble in the ribs and rode away. I raised a hand to the woman and she mouthed some words that I could not decipher but assumed were an expression of thanks. I turned to follow Charlie, thinking of her voice in the empty room where she worked and worried, and I was glad to have left her the money and hoped it would make her happy, if only for a little while. I resolved to lose twenty-five pounds of fat and to write her a letter of love and praises, that I might improve her time on the earth with the devotion of another human being.
There was a storm at our backs, the last true storm of the winter, but we managed to keep ahead of it and made good time through the afternoon and into the night. We set up camp in a large cave, its roof blackened with the soot of other men’s fires. Charlie made us a dinner of beans and pork and biscuits but I only ate the beans, secretly feeding the rest to Tub. I went to sleep hungry and woke up in the middle of the night to find a riderless horse standing at the mouth of the cave, breathing and rocking on its feet. It was black in coloring and slick with sweat; when he began to shiver, I approached him and tossed my blanket over his back.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Charlie, leaning up on his elbow beside the fire.
‘A horse.’
‘Where is the rider?’
‘There is no rider that I can see.’
‘If the rider appears, you may wake me.’ He turned and fell back asleep.
The horse was seventeen hands tall and all muscle. He had no brand or saddle or shoes but his mane was clean and he did not shy from my hand. I brought him a biscuit but he was not hungry and only nibbled at it. ‘Where are you headed to, running through the night like that?’ I asked him. I tried to guide him toward Nimble and Tub, to share in their huddled heat, but he pulled away and returned to the mouth, where I had found him. ‘You mean to leave me without a blanket, is that it?’ I reentered the cave to stoke the fire, curling up beside it for warmth, but I could not sleep without proper covering and instead spent the rest of the night rewriting lost arguments from my past, altering history so that I emerged victorious. By the time the sun rose in the morning I had decided to keep this horse for my own. I told my plan to Charlie as I handed him his coffee and he nodded. ‘You can have him shoed in Jacksonville. And we might get a fair price for Tub, though I doubt it—they’ll probably only slaughter him. Well, you can keep whatever money you get. You’ve had a tough time with Tub, I’ll not deny it. A happy coincidence, this horse just walking up to meet you. What will you call him? What about, Son of Tub.’
I said, ‘I should think some farmer would be happy to pay for Tub’s services. He has a few good years left yet.’
‘I wouldn’t get his hopes up.’ He turned to Tub and said, ‘Stew meat? Or pretty pasture, with the farmer’s soft-bottomed daughter?’ To me he whispered, ‘Stew meat.’
The black horse accepted the bit and saddle without incident. Tub hung his head when I slung a rope around his neck and I could not meet his eyes. We were two miles out when we found the dead Indian on the ground. ‘This will be the previous owner,’ Charlie said. We rolled him over to get a look. His body was stiff and distorted, his neck snapped back and his mouth open wide in an expression of absolute suffering.
‘Strange, though, that an Indian horse would take a bit and saddle,’ I said.
‘Must’ve been that he stole it from a white man,’ said Charlie.
‘But the horse has no shoes or brand?’
‘It’s a conundrum,’ he admitted. Pointing to the Indian, he said, ‘Ask him.’
The Indian had no wounds to explain his death but was extremely heavyset and we thought perhaps he had suffered an attack of organ failure, then fell from the horse and broke his neck. ‘Horse just kept on going,’ Charlie said. ‘Likely they were headed to the cave. I wonder what he’d have done, the two of us sleeping in his spot like that.’ The black horse lowered his head to the Indian, smelling and nudging him. At this same time I could feel Tub looking at me. I decided to return to our travels. At first the black horse didn’t want to leave but once we were clear he ran very nicely despite the rough terrain, and having Tub in tow behind us. A heavy rain began to fall but the chill was gone from the air; I was sweating, as was the new horse, and his smell and warmth were agreeable to me. His every move was sharp and graceful and I found him to be an altogether gifted runner, and though it did not feel good to think of it, I knew it would be a great relief to be free of Tub. I looked back at him and watched as he did his best to keep up. His eye was watering and bloodshot and he held his head up and to the side, as if to avoid drowning.
When we arrived in Jacksonville, I wondered if Charlie would honor his vow to sleep out of doors; I knew he would not when I saw his face look searchingly into the glowing windows of the first saloon we passed. We stabled the horses for the night. I told the hand to shoe the black horse and asked him for a price on Tub. The man held his lantern next to Tub’s injured eye and said he would tell me in the morning, when he might get a better look at him. Charlie and I parted ways in the center of town. He wished to drink and I to eat. He pointed to a hotel as our eventual meeting place, and I nodded.
The rainstorm had passed; now the moon was full and low and the stars were bright. I entered a modest restaurant and took a seat by the window, watching my hands on the bare table. They were still and ivory looking in the light of the planets, and I felt no particular personal attachment to them. A boy came by and placed a candle on the table, ruining the effect, and I studied the bill of fare posted on the wall. I had eaten little at breakfast, despite having gone to sleep with an empty stomach, and my insides were squirming with hunger. But I found the food to be of the most fattening sort, and when the waiter arrived at my side, half bowing with a pencil at the ready, I asked him if he had anything to offer that was not quite so rich.
‘Not hungry tonight, sir?’
‘I am weak with hunger,’ I told him. ‘But I am looking for something less filling than beer, beef, and buttered spuds.’
The waiter tapped his pencil on his pad. ‘You want to eat but you don’t want to become full?’
‘I want to be
unhungry,
’ I said.
‘And what is the difference?’
‘I want to eat, only I don’t want to eat such heavy foods, don’t you see?’
He said, ‘To me, the whole point of eating
is
to get full.’
‘Are you telling me there are no options other than what’s listed?’
The waiter was baffled. He excused himself to fetch the cook from the kitchen; she was overworked and annoyed at the inconvenience.
‘What’s the problem, sir?’ she asked, wiping her hands on her sleeves.
‘I never said there was a problem. I only wonder if there’s a lighter option than the meals listed on the bill of fare.’
The cook looked at the waiter and back to me. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘We could give you a half portion, if you’re not hungry,’ said the waiter.
‘I’ve already told you I’m hungry. I’m famished. But I’m looking for something that isn’t so filling, do you see?’
‘When I eat a meal, I
want
to get full,’ said the cook.
‘That’s the object of eating!’ said the waiter.
‘And then, when you finish, you pat your belly and say, “I’m full.” ’
‘Everybody does that.’
‘Look,’ I said. ‘I’ll take a half portion of beef, no spuds, with wine. Do you have any vegetables? Any greens?’
I thought the cook would laugh in my face. ‘I believe there are some carrots out by the hutches.’
‘Bring me a handful of carrots, opposite the beef, peeled and boiled. You can charge me the price of a full plate for the trouble, is that all right?’
‘Whatever you say,’ said the cook.
‘I’ll bring the wine out now,’ said the waiter.
When they brought me my plate it was heaped with limp, hot carrots. The cook had skinned the stalks but left the green tops attached, a malicious oversight, I felt. I choked down half a dozen of these but it was as though they disappeared before arriving in my stomach, and I began somewhat despairingly to root for the beef. I found this at the bottom of the pile and savored every bite, but it was gone far too quickly, and I became depressed. I blew out the candle and stared once more at my ghostly hands. When they began to tingle, I wondered about the curse from the gypsy-witch’s shack. When would it come to bloom, if ever? What form would it take? The waiter returned to clear the table and pointed at the remaining carrots. ‘Didn’t you care for the vegetables?’ he asked naively.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Take it away.’
‘More wine?’
‘One more glass.’
‘Would you like any dessert?’
‘No! Goddamnit!’
The tormented waiter hurried away from me.
In the morning I checked on Charlie and was unsurprised to find him sick and disinclined to travel. I started in with my halfhearted reprimand, but it was not necessary; he knew as well as I we could not pass another day without hard riding and he promised to be ready in one hour. I did not know what magic he thought to conjure that might bring his suffering to an end in so short a time but I did not engage him on this topic, leaving him instead to his vapors and pains and returning to the restaurant from the night previous for my much needed breakfast. The waiter was not there but in his place was a lad who resembled him and whom I assumed was his son; however, when I asked, ‘Where is your father?’ the boy gripped his hands and said, ‘Heaven.’ I ate a small portion of eggs and beans and was still very hungry when I was finished. I sat looking at the greasy plate, wishing, frankly, to lick it, but decorum kept me from doing so. When the lad came by and picked the plate up I watched it hovering across the dining room and into the kitchen, out of my field of vision. The boy returned and asked if I wanted anything more before paying up. ‘Fresh pie this morning,’ he said.
‘What kind of pie?’ I demanded. I thought, Don’t let it be cherry.
‘Cherry,’ said the boy. ‘Just out of the oven. They go fast around here. Kind of famous, really.’ I must have been making a face, for he asked me, ‘You okay, mister? You look hurt.’
Beads of sweat grew from my forehead, and my hands were trembling. My very blood wanted that cherry pie. Dabbing my face with the napkin, I told the lad I was fine, only tired.
‘Pie or no pie?’ he asked.
‘No pie!’ I said. He laid down the bill and returned to the kitchen. After paying up I set out to replenish my and Charlie’s stock of food, humming my tune of virtue. A rooster stood before me in the road, looking for a fight; I tipped my hat to him and he scooted away over the puddles, all brawn and feathers and brainlessness.
With my tooth powder dwindling, I asked the proprietor at the trading post if he carried any and he pointed to a short row of boxes, each of these advertising a different scent or flavor: Sage, pine, mint, and fennel. When he asked which flavor I was after I told him I might stick to mint, as I had been happy with its taste up to then, but the man, a pigeon-in-a-vest type, insisted I sample the others. ‘The spice of life,’ he said, and though I did not care for his satisfied attitude, I was curious about these others and carried them to a washbasin in the back room, careful not to bend or damage the boxes lest I be forced to purchase one I did not care for. I sampled them one after the other. Returning to the front room I told the proprietor, ‘The pine is all right. It offers a fine, clean feeling on the tongue. The sage burns my throat; I did not like it much. The fennel is downright foul. I will take this mint one, as I said before.’
‘It is always better to know for sure,’ he said, an obvious, somewhat idiotic statement to which I did not respond. In addition to the powder I purchased a pound of flour, a pound of coffee, a half pound of sugar, two pounds of beans, two pounds of salted pork, and two pounds of dried fruit, my stomach now actively groaning. I drank a large cup of water and walked to the stable, my insides sloshing with each step.
The stable hand had just finished shoeing the black horse when I entered. ‘I will give you six dollars for the low-backed animal,’ he said. ‘We will call it a dollar for the shoes, so let’s say five dollars.’ I approached Tub and placed a hand on his muzzle. ‘Good morning,’ I told him. I felt he recognized me; he looked at me honestly, and without fear or malice. The stable hand stood at my back. ‘He’ll very probably lose that eye,’ he told me. ‘Will he even pull a cart? I will give you four dollars.’
‘I have decided not to sell him,’ I said.
‘I will give you six dollars, including the shoes.’
‘No, I have changed my mind. Let us discuss the black horse.’
‘Seven dollars is my final offer for the low-backed animal.’
‘What will you give me for the black horse?’
‘I cannot afford the black horse. I will give you eight dollars for the other.’
‘Make me an offer on the black horse,’ I said.
‘Twenty-five dollars.’
‘He is worth fifty dollars.’
‘Thirty dollars with the saddle.’
‘Don’t be ignorant. I will take forty, without the saddle.’
‘I will give you thirty-five dollars.’
‘Thirty-five dollars without the saddle?’
‘Thirty-five, without the saddle, minus a dollar for the shoes.’
‘You expect me to pay for shoes on a horse I’m not keeping?’
‘You asked me to shoe him. Now, you must pay for the service.’
‘You would have shoed him anyway.’
‘That is neither up nor down.’
‘Thirty-four dollars,’ I said.
The hand disappeared into his quarters to fetch his money. I could hear him arguing with a woman about it. He spoke in a hiss, and though I could not grasp the words, I understood the sentiment:
Shut up! The man out there is a fool!
Charlie entered the stable then, green at the neck but hoping to hide it. When the hand came out with the money, he also brought a bottle of whiskey to toast the deal in good faith. I offered a drink to my brother and he swooned. He was so distracted by his own suffering he did not notice my business dealings until we were ten miles out of town.