The Sisters Brothers Read online

  ‘I’m tired of this,’ he said. ‘Everybody’s always hitting me on the head.’

  ‘You’re lucky I didn’t take yours off with a bullet,’ said Charlie.

  ‘We won’t hit you again,’ I told him, ‘as long as you don’t try anything smart. Now, eat your pork before it gets cold.’

  The boy cleaned his plate but quickly vomited it back up. He had gone too long without solid food and his stomach could not accept so much out of the blue. He sat there looking at his half-digested lunch on the ground, wondering I suppose if he should scoop it up and try again. ‘Kid,’ Charlie said, ‘you so much as touch it and I’ll shoot you dead.’ I gave the boy the bulk of my plateful and instructed him to eat slowly, and afterward to lay back and breathe in plenty of fresh air. He did this and fifteen minutes passed without incident, though his stomach was loudly squirming. The boy sat up and asked, ‘Aren’t you going to be hungry now?’

  ‘My brother is fasting in the name of love,’ said Charlie.

  I blushed and said nothing. I had not known my brother was aware of my diet; I could not match his playful gaze.

  The boy was looking at me for an explanation. ‘You got a yourself a girl?’ Still I said nothing. ‘I got one too,’ he told me. ‘At least she was my girl when Daddy and I left Tennessee.’

  Charlie said, ‘How it is that you’ve found yourself alone with three wagons, no animals, and no food?’

  He said, ‘There was a group of us heading out to work the California rivers. Me and my daddy and his two brothers, Jimmy and Tom, and one of Tom’s friends and then Tom’s friend’s wife. She was the first to die. Couldn’t keep any food in her. Daddy said it was wrong to’ve brought her, and I guess it was, too. We buried her and kept on, then Tom’s friend turned home, said we could keep his wagon and gear because his heart was broken and he wanted to get back to start his grieving. Uncle Tom took a shot at him once he was about a quarter mile out.’

  ‘Just after the man’s wife died?’ I asked.

  ‘It was a couple days after she died. Tom wasn’t trying to hit him, just scare him. A bit of fun, he called it.’

  ‘That’s not very kind of him.’

  ‘No, Uncle Tom never did anything kind in his life. He died next, in a saloon fight. Took a knife in the belly and the blood pooled out like a rug underneath him. We were all pretty glad he was gone, to tell you the truth. Tom was hard to be around. He hit me on the head more than anybody else. Didn’t even need a reason, just passing time.’

  ‘Didn’t your daddy tell him to stop?’

  ‘Daddy was never much for talking? He’s what you might call the private type.’

  ‘Carry on with the story,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Right,’ said the boy. ‘So Tom’s dead, and we sold his horse and tried to sell his wagon, but nobody wanted it because it was so poorly outfitted. Now, we got two oxen pulling three carts, and what do you think happens next? The oxen die, starved and thirsty, with whipping wounds on their backs, and now it’s me and Daddy and Uncle Jimmy, and the horses are pulling the carts, and the money’s going quick and so’s the food, and we’re looking at one another and we’re all thinking the same thing: Dang.’

  ‘Was Uncle Jimmy nasty, too?’ I asked.

  ‘I liked Uncle Jimmy right up until he took all the money and ran out on us. That was two weeks ago. I don’t know if he went east or west or north or south. Daddy and I’ve been stuck here, sitting and thinking what to do. He left, like I said, a week ago. I expect he will be back soon. I don’t know what could have taken him so long as this. I’m obliged to you for sharing this food with me. I nearly killed a rabbit yesterday but they’re hard to lay a bead on, and my ammunition’s not very well stocked.’

  ‘Where is your mother?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Thank you. But she was always dead.’

  ‘Tell us about your girl,’ I said.

  ‘Her name is Anna, and her hair is the color of honey. It is the cleanest hair I have ever seen and runs halfway down to the ground. I am in love with her.’

  ‘Are your feelings reciprocated?’

  ‘I don’t know what that word means.’

  ‘Does she love you too?’

  ‘I don’t think she does, no. I have tried to kiss and hold her but she pushes me away. Last time, she said she would have her father and brothers beat me if I did it again. But she’ll change her tune when she sees my pocketful of riches. There is gold tumbling down those California rivers like hop-frogs, and all you have to do is stand still and catch them in your pan.’

  ‘Is that what you believe?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘It said as much in the newspaper.’

  ‘You are in for a rude awakening, I fear.’

  ‘I just want to get there already. I’m tired of sitting here with nothing to do.’

  ‘You’re not far now,’ I told him. ‘That’s California just over the pass, there.’

  ‘That’s the direction Daddy went.’

  Charlie laughed.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ asked the boy.

  ‘Nothing,’ Charlie answered. ‘He probably just dashed over to catch a few pounds of tumbling gold. He’ll be back with some ready cash by suppertime, I am sure of it.’

  ‘You don’t know my daddy.’

  ‘Don’t I?’

  The boy sniffed and turned to me. ‘You never told me about your girl. What color is her hair?’

  ‘Chestnut brown.’

  ‘Mud brown,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked. I watched him, but he did not answer.

  ‘What’s her name?’ asked the boy.

  I said, ‘That is all to be worked out.’

  The boy drew in the dirt with a stick. ‘You don’t know her name?’

  ‘Her name is Sally,’ Charlie said. ‘And if you’re curious how I know that and my brother doesn’t, so should he be.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’ I asked sharply. He still did not answer. I stood and looked down over him. ‘What the hell does it mean?’

  ‘I only say it to put you on the proper path,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Only say what?’

  ‘That I got for free what you paid five dollars for and still did not get.’

  I started to speak but trailed off. I remembered meeting the woman on the stairs of the hotel. She had been in Charlie’s room, filling his bathtub, and she was upset. ‘What did you do to her?’

  ‘She laid it out for me. I wasn’t even thinking of it. Fifty cents for hand work, dollar for the mouth, fifty cents more for the whole thing. I took the whole thing.’

  My head was thumping hard. I found myself reaching for a biscuit. ‘What was she so upset about?’

  ‘If you want the truth, I found the service lacking. My payment reflected this, or should I say my nonpayment, and she took offense. You have to know, I wouldn’t have touched the girl if I’d known how you felt. But I was sick, you’ll remember, and in need of comfort. I’m sorry, Eli, but at that time, far as I knew she was up for grabs.’

  I ate the biscuit in two bites and reached for another. ‘Where’s the pork fat?’ The boy handed me the tin and I dipped the biscuit whole.

  ‘I let your five dollars slide,’ Charlie continued, ‘but I didn’t want to see you starve yourself for no reason.’ My blood was pulsing ebulliently in celebration of the arrival of the heavy food, while my heart was struck dumb from this news of the hotel woman’s character. I sat back down, chewing and thinking and brooding. ‘I could make some more pork,’ Charlie offered peaceably.

  ‘Make more of everything,’ I said.

  The boy pulled a harmonica from his shirt pocket and tapped it on his palm.

  ‘I will play an eating song.’

  Part Two

  CALIFORNIA

  Chapter 25

  The boy said he had a horse hidden in a nearby cluster of timber, and asked if he could ride along with us to the Ca
lifornia border. Charlie was against it but I could not see the harm and told the boy he had five minutes to gather his effects. He left and returned with his horse, a small and sickly thing with no saddle or accoutrements, and with patches of its hair fallen away, exposing raw flesh and rib bones. In response to our concerned expressions the boy replied, ‘I know he doesn’t look like much, but Lucky Paul can climb these steep hills like a spider climbs a wall.’

  Charlie asked me, ‘Will you speak to him, or shall I?’

  I said that I would and Charlie stepped away. I was not sure where to begin but decided to address the problem from the practical standpoint.

  ‘Where is your saddle, boy?’

  ‘I have a blanket, and my own personal padding.’ He tapped his backside.

  ‘No bit? No reins?’

  ‘Uncle Jimmy took those with him. Who knows why. But it doesn’t matter. Lucky Paul knows which way to go.’

  ‘We will not wait for you,’ I told him.

  He was feeding the horse a biscuit. ‘You do not understand, but you will. He is fed and rested and ready to cover some ground.’

  His confidence was true, and I had a hope Lucky Paul was just the type of runner the boy claimed him to be, but this was not the case, and we lost them instantaneously. The horse had no interest in climbing the long pass; looking back I saw the boy pummeling him about his skull and neck. Charlie nearly fell off Nimble from laughing, and neither was the humor of the episode lost on me, but this diversion quickly lost its appeal and we settled into some serious riding, so that we hit the snowy summit in a matter of four hours. Despite Tub’s eye wound he never so much as stumbled, and I felt for the first time that we knew and understood each other; I sensed in him a desire to improve himself, which perhaps was whimsy or wishful thinking on my part, but such are the musings of the traveling man.

  The far side of the pass presented us with more favorable terrain, and by dusk we had crossed beneath the snow line, where we set up for the night. In the morning we slept late and rode at a moderate pace into California. We entered a dense and tall forest of pines late in the afternoon and happened on a small, winding stream, the sight of which gave us pause. Here before us was the very thing that had induced thousands of previously intelligent men and women to abandon their families and homes forever. The both of us stared at it, saying nothing. Finally Charlie could not help himself; he dismounted and squatted beside the stream, pulling up a handful of wet sand and rooting through it with his finger.

  I spied a tent on the far side of the water, a quarter mile to the north. A lone face, bearded and extremely dirty, peered out from behind it. I held up my hand in greeting and the face darted back. ‘I believe we have us a real live prospector,’ I said.

  ‘Pretty far out to be working, don’t you think?’

  ‘For all we know. Shall we pay him a visit and see how he is doing?’

  Charlie threw the sand back. ‘There is nothing in this river, brother.’

  ‘But you’re not curious to know?’

  ‘If you want to check in with him, you go ahead while I make my toilet. But I cannot invest my own time with every curiosity.’

  He walked into the forest and I rode Tub upstream, calling my greeting from across the water, but there was no sign of the bearded man. I saw a pair of boots in front of his tent and a small fire in a pit; there was a saddle on the ground, but no horse that I could see. I called out once again, and again I heard nothing. Had the man run barefoot into the woods rather than share news of unknown riches? But no, the sight of the blighted camp told me the prospector was not having any successes. Here was a man greedy for gold but not hearty enough to brave the wasps’ nest that was California proper. He would find nothing, he would starve, he would rave and expire—I could see his naked body picked over by blackbirds. ‘One of these cold mornings,’ I said.

  There came the sound of a rifle being cocked behind me. ‘Cold mornings what?’ said a voice. I raised my hands and the prospector began laughing, relishing his position.

  ‘Tunnel under the river,’ he said. ‘Weren’t thinking of that, were you?’ He jabbed my thigh painfully with his gun muzzle and I began to turn. ‘Look at me, I’ll shoot your face off, bastard,’ he hissed.

  ‘There’s no need for this,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean you any harm.’

  He jabbed my leg again. ‘Maybe I do you, think of that?’ His laughter was high pitched and wistful and I thought he had likely gone crazy or was going crazy. I realized with annoyance that Charlie had been correct to leave the man alone. ‘You’re a hunter, that it?’ he asked. ‘You looking for the red-haired she-bear?’

  ‘I don’t know about a red-haired she-bear,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a red-haired she-bear near here. Mayfield put the price of a hundred dollars on her and now the hunters are going mad for the pelt. I saw her two miles north of camp yesterday morning. Took a shot but couldn’t get in close enough.’

  ‘I’m not interested in it one way or the other, and I don’t know anyone called Mayfield.’

  He jabbed my leg again. ‘Wasn’t you just with him, you son of a bitch? And him checking the sand in my riverbed?’

  ‘You’re talking about my brother, Charlie. We’re heading south from Oregon Territory. We’ve never been through this way and don’t know anyone in these parts.’

  ‘Mayfield’s big boss around here. Sends men over to upset my camp when I’m in town fetching supplies. Sure that wasn’t him a minute ago? I thought I saw his stupid, laughing face.’

  ‘That’s only Charlie. He’s ducked into the woods to make his toilet. We’re on our way south to work the rivers.’

  I heard him step around to Tub’s far side, and then back. ‘Where’s your gear?’ he asked. ‘You say you’re going to work the rivers but you got no gear?’

  ‘We will buy our gear in Sacramento.’

  ‘Right off the top then, you’re losing money. Only a fool buys his gear in town.’

  I had nothing to say to this. He jabbed my thigh and said, ‘I’m talking to you.’ I said nothing and he jabbed me.

  ‘Stop jabbing me like that.’

  He jabbed me. ‘Don’t like it, do you?’ He jabbed me.

  ‘I want you to stop.’

  ‘Think I care what you want!’ He jabbed me and held the gun against my smarting leg. A twig snapped in the distance and I felt the gun go slack as the prospector turned to look. I grabbed the rifle barrel and yanked it away. The prospector lit out for the woods and I turned and pulled the trigger but the rifle was not loaded. I was reaching for my pistol when Charlie stepped from behind a tree and casually shot the prospector as he ran past. It was a head shot, which took the back off his skull like a cap in the wind. I dismounted and limped over to the twitching body. My leg was stinging terribly and I was possessed with a rage. The man’s brain was painted in purple blood, bubbling foam emerging from its folds; I raised up my boot and dropped my heel into the hole with all my weight behind it, caving in what was left of the skull and flattening it in general so that it was no longer recognizable as the head of a man. When I removed my boot it was as though I were pulling it from wet mud. Now I walked away from the body, without purpose and for no reason besides needing to escape my own anger. Charlie called my name but did not pursue me, knowing to leave me alone when I am like this. I walked a half mile and sat beneath a broad pine, tensing and untensing my body with my knees against my chest. I thought I would break my own jaw from clenching, and stuck my knife’s leather sheath between my teeth.

  Rising to my knees, I pulled down my pants to check the state of my leg. The skin was inflamed and I could make out the perfect circular shape of the barrel, or series of barrels, a half-dozen red zeros—the sight of these made me frustrated all over again and I wished the prospector might come back to life so I could kill him myself, but slowly. I stood, thinking I would return to mutilate his body further, to unload my pistol in his stomach, but after a moment I decided against it, thankfully. My
pants were still down and after collecting my emotions I took up my organ to compromise myself. As a young man, when my temper was proving problematic, my mother instructed me to do this as a means of achieving calm, and I have found it a useful practice ever since. Once accomplished I headed back to the river, feeling empty and cold inside but no longer angry. I cannot understand the motivation of a bully, is what it is; this is the one thing that makes me unreasonable.

  I located the dead prospector’s tunnel, so-called. I had imagined a head-high underground pathway with wooden supports and hanging lanterns, but it was barely large enough around to crawl through, and as it was located at the stream’s thinnest point, only a few feet across. We dragged the prospector over and pushed him into the hole. I rode Tub over top of this, marching from one side of the stream to the other to cave it in. We had found little on his person, a pocketknife, a pipe, and a letter, which we buried with him, and which read:

  Dear Mother,

  I am lonely and the days are long here. My horse has passed and he was a close friend to me. I think of your cooking and wonder what I am doing. I believe I will come home soon. I have near two hundred dollars in gold dust. It is not the pile I had hoped for, but good enough for now. How is Sis? I do not miss her so much. Did she marry that Fat man? I hope he took her far away! The smell of smoke is in my nostrils always and I haven’t had a laugh in such a long, long while. Mother! I think I will leave here very soon.

  Loveingly,

  Your Own Son.

  Thinking of it now I suppose it would have been best if I had posted the letter. But as I said, when my temper is up everything goes black and narrow for me, and such notions were not in my mind. It is lonesome to think of a headless skeleton under that cold, running water. I do not regret that the man is dead but wish I had kept better hold of my emotions. The loss of control does not frighten me so much as embarrass me.

  Once the prospector was out of sight, Charlie and I began rooting around in search of his gold. It was not difficult to find. He had set it away from the camp twenty yards, marked with a small crucifix fashioned from twigs. It did not look like two hundred dollars’ worth but I had never dealt with the powder and chunky flakes, and so could not be sure. We divided it fifty-fifty and I emptied my share in an old tobacco pouch I found buried in my saddlebag.