The Sisters Brothers
Charlie spent the night in the shelter and I had tried to also but could not stomach the lingering smell, both the dead prospector’s and the horse’s, which had been butchered, its meat lying on a makeshift drying rack at the rear of the tent. I slept beside the fire pit rather than contend with these fumes, passing a night under the stars. It was cold, but the cold did not have what I have heard called ‘winter weight’—it chilled your flesh, but not your muscle and bone. Charlie emerged from the shelter half an hour past the dawn, looking a decade older and a good bit dirtier, also. He slapped his chest to show the cloud of dust rise away from him; he decided a morning bath was in order, and pulled one of the prospector’s pans to the water’s edge to fill it, afterward placing this on the fire. He then located a deep spot in the stream, stripped down, and leapt in, shrieking loudly at its coldness. I sat on the bank and watched him splashing and singing; he had not had anything to drink the night before and there had been no other people around to upset his volatile nature, and I found myself becoming sentimental by this rare show of innocent happiness. Charlie had often been glad and singing as a younger man, before we took up with the Commodore, when he became guarded and hard, so it was sad in a way to watch him frolic in that shimmering river, with the tall snowy mountains walling us in. He was revisiting his earlier self but only briefly, and I knew he would return to his present incarnation soon enough. He rushed naked up the bank to stand near the fire. His genitals were shriveled and he made a joke about how swimming always brought him back to childhood. Lifting the pan from the fire, he poured the hot water over his head, which inspired another round of joyous screaming and bellowing.
After breakfast, I took advantage of his good humor, convincing him to try my toothbrush. ‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘Up and down. Now, give the tongue a good scrub.’ Breathing in, he felt the mint on his tongue and was impressed with the sensation of it. Handing back the brush and powder he said, ‘There is a very fine feeling.’
‘That is what I’ve been telling you.’
‘It is as though my entire head has been cleaned.’
‘We might pick you up a brush of your own in San Francisco.’
‘I think we may have to.’
We were preparing to leave when I saw the boy and Lucky Paul emerge from the forest on the opposite side of the stream. He had fresh blood all about his face and head and looked to be half dead. He saw me and raised his hand before dropping from his horse to the ground, where he lay still and unmoving. Lucky Paul took no notice of this but approached the river to drink.
Chapter 26
We dunked the boy in the stream and he awoke with a start. He was happy to see us, amused as he sat up. ‘I have never come to in running water before.’ He clapped the surface with his palm. ‘My God, it’s cold.’
‘What happened to you?’ I asked.
‘At the start of the woods I met a group of trappers on horseback, four of them, said they were looking for a red-colored bear. When I told them I hadn’t seen the bear they hit me on the head with a club. I dropped to the dirt and they rode off laughing. After I got my bearings I climbed back on old Paul and he led me here, to you all.’
‘He led himself to water, is what he did,’ said Charlie.
‘No,’ said the boy, patting and stroking Lucky Paul’s face. ‘His thoughts were with me, and he did what was needed.’
Charlie said, ‘You sound like my brother and his horse, Tub.’ He turned to me. ‘You and this boy should come together and form a committee or association of some kind.’
‘Which way did these men go?’ I asked the boy.
‘The Protectors of Moronic Beasts,’ said Charlie.
The boy said, ‘I heard them say they were heading back to Mayfield. Is that a town? I wonder if that’s where my father is.’
‘Mayfield is the boss man around here,’ I explained, relaying to Charlie what the prospector had said about the hundred-dollar tariff for the elusive bear’s pelt. Charlie said any man who would pay that much for a bear skin was a fool. The boy, washing the blood from his face and hair, said a hundred dollars would buy him all he needed in a lifetime. I pointed out the camp across the stream and told him he might make use of the fire and find temporary shelter there. At this, he appeared confused. ‘I thought I would come along with you two.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Charlie. ‘It was humorous the one time, but that’s the end of that.’
‘Now that we are clear of the pass, Lucky Paul will show you his stuff.’
‘Last you said he was one for the hills.’
‘He is slick as grease on the flats.’
‘No and no again,’ Charlie said.
The boy appealed to me with a sorrowful look but I told him he was on his own. He started crying and Charlie moved to strike him; I held my brother back and he broke off, returning to the camp to pack. I do not know what it was about that boy but just looking at him, even I wanted to clout him on the head. It was a head that invited violence. Now he was weeping in earnest, with bubbles of mucus blooming from his nostrils, and no sooner had the right nostril’s bubble exploded than another took shape in the left. I explained we were in no position to care for children, that our way was a swift and dangerous one, a speech likely made for nothing, the boy being so engrossed with his own sadness I do not think he heard my words. At last, fearful I might hurt him if he did not cease his mewling, I walked the boy across the stream to the prospector’s camp and pulled the tobacco pouch from my saddlebag. Showing him the gold, I told him, ‘This will get you back to your home, and your girl, if you can avoid having your skull knocked from your shoulders. There is horse meat in that shelter. I suggest you feed yourself and Lucky Paul and rest for the night. At first light I want you to backtrack, just the same way you came.’ I handed him the pouch and he stood there staring at it in his palm. Charlie had seen the transaction out of the corner of his eye and he moved to stand beside us.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked me.
‘You are giving me this?’ said the boy.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Charlie asked.
I told the boy, ‘Return over the pass and keep to the north. When you arrive in Jacksonville, find the sheriff there and explain your situation. If you think him trustworthy, ask him to exchange your dust for hard cash.’
‘Ho-ho!’ said the boy, bouncing the pouch in his hand.
‘I am against this,’ Charlie said. ‘You are throwing that money away.’
I said, ‘That was money pulled from the ground, when neither one of us needs it.’
‘Simply dug up from the ground, is that all? But I seem to recall some element of work involved outside of wholesomely burrowing in the soil.’
‘Well, the boy has my share, if not yours.’
‘When did my share enter into the conversation, even?’
‘Never mind then.’
‘Who ever said anything about it?’
‘Never mind.’ Refocusing on the boy, I said, ‘Once the sheriff sets you right with the dust I want you to outfit yourself with some new clothes, ones that make you look older. I should think it wise to buy yourself the largest hat you can find, that it might cover up your head. Also you will need a new horse.’
‘What about Lucky Paul?’ asked the boy.
‘You should sell him for whatever price you can get. If you cannot find a buyer I would advise abandoning him.’
The boy shook his head. ‘I will never part with him.’
‘Then you will never get home. He will hold you up until your money’s gone and you’re both starved. I am trying to help you, do you understand? If you don’t listen to me I will take that gold dust back from you.’
The boy withdrew into silence. I threw some wood on the fire and instructed him to dry his clothes well before sunset. He stripped down but did not hang his clothing; it lay in a heap in the mud and sand and he stood before us, lumpily naked and full of petulance and defeat. He was an unattractive creature with his cloth
es on; in the nude I thought he looked something like a goat. He began once more to cry, which I took as my cue to sever our ties. As I climbed onto Tub I wished the boy safe travels, but these were empty words, for he was clearly doomed, and it was a mistake to have given him that gold but it was not as though I could take it back now. He stood there weeping and watching us go, while behind him Lucky Paul entered and collapsed the prospector’s tent, and I thought, Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.
Chapter 27
We headed south. The banks were sandy but hard packed and we rode at an easy pace on opposite sides of the stream. The sun pushed through the tops of the trees and warmed our faces; the water was translucent and three-foot trout strolled upriver, or hung in the current, lazy and fat. Charlie called over to say he was impressed with California, that there was something in the air, a fortuitous energy, was the phrase he used. I did not feel this but understood what he meant. It was the thought that something as scenic as this running water might offer you not only aesthetic solace but also golden riches; the thought that the earth itself was taking care of you, was in favor of you. This perhaps was what lay at the very root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.
But then, as if California wished to prove me wrong on this point, we had stopped for a drink of water when the red-haired she-bear emerged from the forest and walked across the stream not thirty yards in front of us. She was fully grown and her pelt, which I had imagined might be blond-ginger, was in fact apple red. She looked at us cursorily and lumbered away into the woods. Charlie checked his pistols and made to follow after her; when I stood by he asked what I was waiting for.
‘We don’t even know where this Mayfield lives,’ I said.
‘We know he lives downriver.’
‘We have been riding downriver all morning. What if we passed him by? I don’t like the idea of climbing hills and mountains with a dead bear tied to my horse.’
‘Mayfield is only after the pelt.’
‘And which of us will skin her?’
‘Whoever shoots her, the other will skin her.’ Now he stepped away from Nimble. ‘You’re really not coming with me?’
‘There is no reason for it.’
‘Best get your knife ready then,’ he said, dashing away into the woods. I stood awhile, watching the passing trout and inspecting Tub’s worsening eye and hoping against hope I would not hear the report from Charlie’s gun. But he was a keen tracker and dead shot, and when his pistol sounded five minutes later I accepted my fate and moved toward the noise with my knife. I found Charlie sitting next to the fallen animal. He was panting and laughing, and he nudged the she-bear’s belly with his boot.
‘Do you know how much a hundred dollars is?’ he asked. I said that I did not and he answered, ‘It is a hundred dollars.’
I rolled the bear onto her back and plunged my knife in the center of her chest. I have always had a feeling that an animal’s insides are unclean, more so than a man’s, which I know does not make sense when you consider what poisons we put into our bodies, but the feeling was one I could not escape, and so I loathed and was resentful about having to skin the bear. After Charlie caught his breath he left to search out the boss-man Mayfield’s encampment, saying he had seen a series of trails some miles back, these leading away from the stream and to the west. Three-quarters of an hour later I was washing the she-bear’s fur and sticky blood from my hands and forearms, and the black-eyed pelt was lain out over some fern plants. The carcass lay on its side before me, no longer male or female, only a pile of ribboned meat, alive with an ecstatic and ever-growing community of fat-bottomed flies. Their number grew so that I could hardly see the bear’s flesh, and I could not hear myself thinking, so clamorous was their buzzing. Why and how do flies make this noise? Does it not sound like shouting to them? When the buzzing suddenly and completely ceased I looked up from my washing, expecting to find the flies gone and some larger predator close by, but the insects had remained atop the she-bear, all of them quiet and still save for their wings, which folded and unfolded as they pleased. What caused this uniform silence? I will never know. Their buzzing had returned in full when Charlie, back from his patrol, let out a shrill whistle. At this, the flies rose away from the bear in a black mass. Upon seeing the carcass my brother called out his happy greeting: ‘God’s little butcher. God’s own knife and conscience, too.’
Chapter 28
I had never before seen so many pelts and heads and cotton-stuffed hawks and owls in one place as in Mister Mayfield’s well-equipped parlor, located in the town of Mayfield’s one hotel, which I was unsurprised to learn was named: Mayfield’s. The man himself sat at a desk, behind a curtain of cigar smoke. Not knowing our business, neither who we were nor why we had come, he did not rise to shake our hands or greet us verbally. Four trappers matching the description given by the hit-on-the-head boy stood two on either side of him. These enormous men looked down on us with full confidence and no trace of concern. They struck me as fearless but mindless, and their outfits were exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness, being so heavily covered in furs and leather and straps and pistols and knives that I wondered how they stood upright to carry these burdens. Their hair was long and stringy and their hats were each matching but of a kind I had not seen before: Wide, floppy brims, with tall, pointy tops. How is it, I wondered, that they all look so similar to one another when the dress is so eccentric? Surely there was one among them who had been first to outfit himself in such a way. Had this man been pleased when the others imitated him, or annoyed, his individual sense of flair devalued by their emulation?
Mayfield’s desktop was the base segment of a moderately sized pine tree, perhaps five feet across and four or five inches thick, with the bark intact. When I reached up to touch the chunky outer ring Mayfield spoke his first words: ‘Don’t pick at it, son.’ At this I jerked my hand back, and experienced a flash of shame at succumbing to the reprimand. To Charlie, he explained, ‘People love to pick the bark. Drives me crazy.’
‘I wasn’t going to pick it, just touch it,’ I said, a statement that effectively doubled my discomfort with its wounded tone. I decided the table was the stupidest piece of furniture I had ever laid eyes on.
Charlie handed over the she-bear’s pelt and Mayfield’s face transformed from its expression of apparent indigestion to that of a lad gazing upon his first set of naked breasts. ‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Aha!’ There were three brass handbells on his desk, identical save for their sizes, small, medium, and large; he rang the smallest bell, which summoned an old hotel crone. She was told the pelt should be hung on the wall behind him and she unfurled it with a snap. But as I had failed to scrape the skin, this sent red globules of fat and blood flying across the room. These clung to the windowpane and Mayfield, scowling distastefully, called for the pelt to be cleaned. The woman rerolled it and left, her eyes on the ground as she walked.
The trappers, meanwhile, were unhappy we had usurped their glory with the she-bear and were, I felt, preparing to exhibit rudeness. To thwart this I introduced Charlie and myself, our full names, which silenced them. Now they will hate us ever more virulently, but secretly, I thought. Charlie found these men amusing, and could not help but make a comment. ‘It seems you four are involved in a kind of contest to become totally circular, is that it?’
Mayfield laughed about this. The trappers looked at one another uneasily. The largest one of the group said, ‘You do not know the customs here.’
‘If I were to linger, do you suppose I too would take on the physical proportions of the buffalo?’
‘Do you plan to linger?’
/> ‘We are only passing through, for now. But I am for getting to know a place intimately, so do not be surprised if you see me on my return trip.’
‘Nothing in this world could surprise me,’ said the trapper.
‘Nothing?’ Charlie wondered, and he winked at me.
Mayfield sent these men away. As the evening came upon us, he called for the room to be lit. This was accomplished by ringing the medium-sized bell, which produced a different tone and thus summoned a different human, a Chinese boy of eleven or twelve; we watched as he flitted from candle to candle with admirable precision and not a half second wasted. Charlie said, ‘He moves like his life depends on it.’
‘It’s not his life, it’s his family’s,’ said Mayfield. ‘He’s saving to bring them over from China. Sister and mother and father—a cripple, from what I gather, though to tell you the truth I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time. Little bastard might see his mission through, though, the way he hops to.’ When the young fellow had finished, the room was bathed in light, and he stood before Mayfield, removing his silken hat and bowing. Mayfield clapped and said, ‘Now, you dance, chink!’ With these words the boy began dancing wildly and without grace, looking much like someone forced to stand barefoot over hot coals. It was an ugly thing to witness, and if I had not before this point made my decision about Mayfield, the matter was now settled in my mind. When he clapped a second time the boy dropped to his hands and knees, panting and spent. A handful of coins were tossed to the ground and the boy scooped these into his hat. He stood and bowed, and as he left his footsteps made no noise whatsoever.