‘The women are fine, thank you.’
‘Maybe it is the brandy that makes you curl your lips when you speak?’
‘The brandy is also fine.’
‘It is too smoky in here, is that it? Shall I open a window? Would you like a fan?’
‘Everything is fine.’
‘Perhaps it is the custom where you come from, to squint and glare at your host.’ Turning to Charlie, he said, ‘I must admit I did not care for Oregon City, the one time I visited there.’
‘What was your business in Oregon City?’ Charlie asked.
‘You know, I cannot exactly remember. In those younger days, I followed one mad idea after the other, and my purpose was often blurred. But Oregon City was a dead loss. I was robbed by a man with a limp. Neither of you has a limp, do you?’
‘You saw us come in yourself,’ I said.
‘I was not paying attention then.’ Half seriously he asked, ‘Would you two object to standing and clicking your heels for me?’
‘I would object to that strongly,’ I told him.
‘We are both healthy in our legs,’ Charlie said assuredly.
‘But you would not do it?’ he asked me.
‘I would sooner die than click my heels for you.’
‘He is the unfriendly one,’ Mayfield said to Charlie.
‘We take turns,’ Charlie said.
‘Anyway, I prefer you to him.’
‘What did this limping man get away with?’ Charlie asked.
‘He took a purseful of gold worth twenty-five dollars, and an ivory-handled Paterson Colt revolver that I could not put a price on. The name of the saloon was the Pig-King. Are you boys familiar with it? I would not be surprised if it wasn’t there anymore, the way these towns jump up and down.’
‘It is still there,’ Charlie said.
‘The man who robbed me had a knife with a hooked blade, like a small scythe.’
‘Oh, you are talking about Robinson,’ said Charlie.
Mayfield sat up. ‘What? You know the man? Are you sure?’
‘James Robinson.’ He nodded.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked. Charlie reached over and pinched my thigh. Mayfield, fumbling with his ink pot, was scribbling the name down.
‘Does he still live in Oregon City?’ he asked breathlessly.
‘Yes, he does. And he still carries the same curved blade he used to rob you. His limp was only a temporary injury that has since healed over, but you will find him sitting at the King, just as before, making jokes that no one enjoys and that in fact almost never make sense.’
‘I’ve thought of the man many times, these last years,’ Mayfield said. Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, ‘I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.’ At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not help but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man. Mayfield excused himself to make water; in the thirty seconds he was away my brother and I had this quickly spoken, whispered discussion:
‘What do you mean, giving Robinson away like that?’
‘Robinson died of typhus half a year ago.’
‘What? You sure?’
‘Sure I’m sure. I visited his widow last time we were in town. Did you know she had false teeth? I nearly gagged when she plopped them in her water glass.’ A whore passed him by, tickling his chin; he smiled at her and asked me distractedly, ‘What do you think about staying the night?’
‘I’m for moving on. You’ll just be sick in the morning and we’ll miss another day of travel. Plus, there’ll be trouble with Mayfield.’
‘If there’s trouble, it’ll be trouble for him, not us.’
‘Trouble’s trouble. I’m for moving on.’
He shook his head. ‘Sorry, brother, but the pipsqueak’s going to war tonight.’
Mayfield emerged from the water closet, buttoning up his pants. ‘What’s this? I would never have pegged the famous Sisters brothers as secret tellers.’
With the whores like cats, circling the room behind us.
Chapter 29
Charlie had drunk three glasses of brandy and his face was turning the familiar scarlet color that indicated the onset of sloven drunkenness. He began asking Mayfield questions about his business and successes, these put to the man in a deferential tone in which I did not like to hear my brother speak. Mayfield responded to the queries vaguely but I deduced he had hit a lucky strike and was now spending his golden winnings as fast as he was able. I grew tired of their strained banter and became quietly drunk. The women continued to visit and tease me, sitting on my lap until my organ became engorged, then laughing at me or it and moving on to my brother or Mayfield. I recall standing to correct and retuck the bloated appendage and noticing that both my brother and Mayfield were likewise engorged. Just your everyday grouping of civilized gentlemen, sitting in a round robin to discuss the events of the day with quivering erections. As the brandy took hold of my mind, I could not seem to place one particular girl; their cackles and perfumes blurred together in a garish bouquet that I found at once enticing and stomach turning. Mayfield and Charlie were ostensibly involved in a conversation, but really they were speaking to themselves and wished only to hear their own words and voices: Charlie made fun of my toothbrush; Mayfield debunked the myth of the divining rod. On and on like this until I despised them both. I thought, When a man is properly drunk it is as though he is in a room by himself—there is a physical, impenetrable separation between him and his fellows.
Another brandy, then another, when I noticed a new woman in the far corner of the parlor standing by herself at a window. She was paler and not so meaty as the others, her eyes ringed with worry or lack of sleep. Despite her sickliness, she was a true beauty, with jade-colored eyes and golden hair running to the small of her back. Emboldened with brandy and its attendant stupidity, I watched her alone until she could not help but return my attentions, when she offered me a pitying smile. I winked at her and her pity doubled. Now she crossed the parlor to leave, but with every step her eyes remained fixed upon me. She exited the room and I stared awhile at the door, which she had left ajar.
‘Who was that?’ I asked Mayfield.
‘Who was who?’ he said.
‘Who-be-do?’ said Charlie, and the whores all laughed.
I left the parlor and found the woman smoking a cigarette in the hall. She was not surprised I had followed her out, which is not to say she was happy about it. It was likely that each time she left a room, some man or another followed after her, and over time she had become accustomed to it. I reached up to remove my hat but it was not on my head. I told her, ‘I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of that room.’ She said nothing. ‘My brother and I sold Mayfield a pelt. Now we are obliged to sit and listen to his boasts and lies.’ She continued only to stare, smoke draining from her mouth, a smile lingering on her lips, and I could not decipher her thoughts. ‘What is your business here?’ I asked.
‘I live here. I’m Mr. Mayfield’s bookkeeper.’
‘Are your quarters a hotel room, or somehow different?’ I thought, Here is precisely the wrong kind of question to ask, and I am asking it because of the brandy. I thought, Stop drinking brandy! Happily, the woman was not small about it. ‘My room’s a regular hotel room. But sometimes I’ll sleep in a vacant room, just for the fun of it.’
‘How is it fun?’ I asked. ‘Aren’t they all the same?’
‘They are the same on the surface. But the differences in actuality are significant.’
I did not know what to say in response but the brandy implored me to blather on, and I was opening my jaws to do just this when some deeper reasoning took hold and I closed my mouth, maintaining my silence. I was congratulating myself inwardly when the woman began casting around for somewhere to put her cigarette. I volunteered to dispose of it and she dropped the smoldering lump into my outstretched palm. I pinched its light shut between my fingers while staring coolly at the woman, hoping, I suppose, to display my threshold for pain, which has always been abnormally high: Stop drinking brandy! I put the ash and charred paper into my pocket. The woman’s attentions remained foreign, separate. I said, ‘I can’t tell about you, ma’am.’