The Sisters Brothers Read online

  ‘Six months is a long time,’ I said.

  ‘I have waited longer for less.’

  ‘I wish there was some way I could hurry it along for you.’

  She puzzled over this. ‘What a strange thing to tell a stranger,’ she said.

  Now she guided me to a small pine table, propping a looking glass before me. My overlarge face leapt into view, which I studied with my usual mixture of curiosity and pity. She fetched me a pair of scissors and I took them up, holding the blades between my palms to warm them. Tilting the glass so that I could watch myself working, I snipped at the knotted stitching and began pulling away the black string from my mouth. It did not hurt but vaguely burned, as when a rope is run through your hands. It was too early to have removed the stitches and the string was coated in blood. I stacked the pieces in a pile at my feet and afterward burned these, as their smell was ungodly. Once this was finished I elected to show the woman my new toothbrush and powder, which I had in my vest pocket. She became excited by the suggestion, for she was also a recent convert to this method, and she hurried to fetch her equipment that we might brush simultaneously. So it was that we stood side by side at the wash basin, our mouths filling with foam, smiling as we worked. After we finished there was an awkward moment where neither of us knew what to say; and when I sat upon her bed she began looking at the door as if wishing to leave.

  ‘Come sit beside me,’ I said. ‘I would like to talk to you.’

  ‘I should be getting back to my work.’

  ‘Am I not a guest here? You must entertain me, or I will write reproachful letters to the chamber of commerce.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ Gathering her dress in her hands as she sat, she asked, ‘What would you like to talk about?’

  ‘Anything in the world. What about the letter, the one that made you smile? Who in your family was sick?’

  ‘My brother, Pete. He was kicked in the chest by a mule but they tell me he’s healing nicely. Mother says you can make out the hoof shape quite clearly.’

  ‘He is lucky. That would have been a most undignified death.’

  ‘Death is death.’

  ‘You are wrong. There are many kinds of death.’ I counted them off on my fingers: ‘Quick death, slow death. Early death, late death. Brave death, cowardly death.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s weakened. I will send a letter inviting him to work with me.’

  ‘You are close with your brother?’ I said.

  ‘We are twins,’ she answered. ‘We have always had a strong connection. I think of him sometimes and it is just as though he is in the room with me. The night he was kicked I awoke with a red mark over my breast. I suppose that sounds odd.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’

  ‘I believe I must have hit myself in my sleep,’ she explained.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is that man upstairs really your brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She said, ‘You two are very different, aren’t you? He is not bad, I don’t think. Perhaps he is simply too lazy to be good.’

  ‘Neither of us is good, but he is lazy, it’s true. When he was a boy he would not wash until my mother actually wept.’

  ‘What is your mother like?’

  ‘She was very smart, and very sad.’

  ‘When did she die?’

  ‘She did not die.’

  ‘But you said she was very smart.’

  ‘I guess I only meant—well, she won’t see us, if you want to know the truth. She is not happy with our work, and says she will not speak with us until we have found some other form of employment.’

  ‘And what is it you two do?’

  ‘We are Eli and Charlie Sisters.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, my.’

  ‘My father is dead. He was killed, and deserved to be killed.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, standing.

  I gripped her hand. ‘What is your name? I suppose you have a man already? Yes or no?’ But she was edging toward the door and said she had not a minute longer to spare. I stood and moved in close to her, asking if I might steal a kiss, but she claimed once again to be hurried. I pressed her for details in respect to her feelings for me, if in fact she had any; she answered that she did not know me well enough to say, and admitted a preference for slight men, or at least men not quite as heavyset as me. She was not saying it to be cruel but the effects of her words stung me, and after she stole away I stood a long while before her looking glass, studying my profile, the line I cut in this world of men and ladies.

  Chapter 18

  I avoided Charlie all that afternoon and evening. I returned to our room after dinner and found him sleeping, the morphine bottle toppled and empty on the floor. In the morning we ate breakfast together in our room, or he ate breakfast, as I had resolved to cease filling myself so gluttonously, that I might trim my middle down to a more suitable shape and weight. Charlie was groggy but glad, and wanted to make friends with me. Pointing his knife at my face he asked, ‘Remember how you got your freckles?’

  I shook my head. I was not ready to make friends. I said, ‘Do you know the specifics of this duel?’

  He nodded. ‘One man is a lawyer, and by all accounts out of his element in such a fight. Williams is his name. He is going up against a ranch hand with an evil history, a man called Stamm. They say Stamm will kill Williams dead, no way around it.’

  ‘But what are the specifics of their quarrel?’

  ‘Stamm hired Williams to chase down some wages owed him by a local rancher. The matter went to court and Williams lost. The moment the verdict came in, Stamm challenged Williams to pistols.’

  ‘And the lawyer has no history of shooting?’

  ‘You hear talk of gentlemen gunfighters, but I’ve yet to meet one.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like much of a pairing. I would just as soon move on.’

  ‘If that’s what you wish to do.’ Charlie pulled a watch from his pocket. I recognized it as the watch of the prospector he had killed. ‘It is just past nine o’clock, now. You can go ahead on Tub, and I’ll catch up after the duel, in an hour’s time.’

  ‘I believe I will,’ I said.

  The hotel woman knocked and entered to collect our plates and cups. I bid her a good morning and she responded kindly, laying a hand on my back as she passed. Charlie also greeted her, but she pretended not to have heard. When she commented on my untouched plate, I patted my stomach and said I was hoping to slim down for reasons of the heart.

  ‘Is that so,’ she said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Charlie.

  The woman’s stained smock was nowhere in sight, replaced by a red linen blouse, cut low to reveal her throat and collarbone. Charlie asked if she would attend the gunfight and she answered in the affirmative, telling us, ‘You men would do well to hurry up and find yourselves a place to watch. The streets fill up quickly here, and people are loath to give up their positions.’

  ‘Perhaps I will stay on,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ asked Charlie.

  We three walked out to the dueling grounds together. As I pushed through the crowd I was pleased to notice the woman’s arm on mine. I was feeling very grand and chivalrous; Charlie brought up the rear, whistling a conspicuously innocent melody. We found our place in the crowd and it was as the woman predicted, the competition for choice locations was fierce. I threatened a man who pushed against her, and Charlie called out, ‘Beware the Rabid Gentleman, you faithful natives.’ As the duelists arrived a body at my back bumped into me once, and then again. I turned to complain and saw it was a man with a child of seven or eight resting upon his shoulders—the child had been hitting me with his boot. ‘I would appreciate your boy not kicking my back,’ I said.

  ‘Was he kicking you?’ asked the man. ‘I don’t think he was.’

  ‘He was, and if it happens again I will lay blame with you alone.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’ he said, making an expression that imparted his belief I was being u
nreasonable or overly dramatic. I tried to match his eyes then, that I might inform him of the peril his attitude was leading him toward, but he would not look at me, he only peered over my shoulder at the dueling grounds. I turned away to stew, the woman clutching my forearm to soothe me, but my temper was up now, and I spun around to readdress the man: ‘Anyway, I don’t understand why you would show the lad such violence at his age.’

  ‘I’ve seen a killing before,’ the boy told me. ‘I saw an Indian cut through with a dagger blade, his guts running out of him like a fat red snake. I also saw a man hanging from a tree outside of town. His tongue was swelled up in his head, like this.’ The child made an ugly face.

  ‘I still don’t think it’s correct,’ I told the man, who said nothing. The child continued to make his face and I turned back to watch the men taking their places in the street. They were easy enough to identify: The hand, Stamm, was in leather and well-worn cotton, his face weathered and unshaven. He stood alone, without a second to assist him, looking out at the crowd with a dead expression in his eyes, his arms hanging slack at his sides. The lawyer Williams wore a gray tailored suit, his hair center-parted, his mustache waxed and trimmed. His second, similarly dandified, removed Williams’s coat, and the crowd watched the lawyer performing a series of knee-bending exercises. Now he leveled a phantom gun at Stamm and imitated its recoil. These pantomimes were the cause of some stifled chuckling in the crowd, but Williams’s face was perfectly serious and solemn. I thought Stamm was drunk or had recently been drunk.

  ‘Who are you hoping for?’ I asked the hotel woman.

  ‘Stamm is a bastard. I don’t know Williams but he looks like a bastard, also.’

  The man with the child on his shoulders overheard this and said, ‘Mister Williams is not a bastard. Mister Williams is a gentleman.’

  I turned slowly. ‘He is a friend of yours?’

  ‘I am proud to say he is.’

  ‘I hope you have said your good-byes. He will be dead within the minute.’

  The man shook his head. ‘He is not afraid.’

  It was such a stupid thing to say, I actually laughed. ‘So what if he isn’t?’

  The man dismissed me with a wave. The child, anyway, had heard me; he regarded me with a knowing fear. I told him, ‘Your father wants you to see violence, and today you will.’ The man stood a moment, then cursed under his breath and moved away, pushing through the throng to watch the duel from another location.

  Now I heard Williams’s second call out to Stamm: ‘Where is your second, sir?’

  ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care,’ Stamm replied.

  Williams and his second had a private word. The second nodded and asked Stamm if he might inspect his pistol. Stamm repeated that he did not care, and the second took up the weapon to check it. Nodding his approval, he asked if Stamm wished to check Williams’s pistol, and Stamm said he did not. Now Williams approached, and he and Stamm stood facing each other. Despite the show of bravery, it did not seem that Williams’s heart was in the fight; sure enough, he whispered into his second’s ear and the second said to Stamm, ‘If you wish to make an apology, that would satisfy Mr. Williams.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Stamm.

  ‘Very well,’ said the second. He stood the men back-to-back and called it at twenty paces. He began to count it out and the duelists took their steps in time. Williams’s forehead was shining with perspiration, and his pistol was trembling, while Stamm might have been walking to an outhouse, for all the concern he displayed. At the count of twenty they swiveled and fired. Williams missed but Stamm’s bullet struck Williams in the center of his chest. The lawyer’s face transformed to a ridiculous mask of agony and surprise and, I thought, a degree of insult. Staggering this way and that, he pulled his trigger and fired into the body of onlookers. A series of shrieks, then—the bullet had struck a young woman in the shin and she lay in the dirt writhing and clutching her leg. I do not know if Williams noticed his shameful error or not; by the time I looked back at him he was dead on the ground. Stamm was walking away in the direction of a saloon, pistol holstered, his arms once more at his sides. The second stood alone on the dueling ground, looking impotently to his left and right. I scanned the crowd for the man with the boy on his shoulders, that I might make a scornful face at him, but they were nowhere to be found.

  Chapter 19

  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.


  Chapter 20

  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.’