The Sisters Brothers
‘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:
&nbs
p; 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?’