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Chapter 35

We rode out of town and followed the shallows of the river. We were days late for our meeting with Morris but neither of us was much concerned about this. I was reliving and cataloging the events of the previous thirty-six hours when Charlie began to chuckle. Tub and I were in the lead; without turning I called out, asking him what was so amusing.

‘I was thinking of the day Father died.’

‘What about it?’

‘You and I were sitting in the field behind the house, eating our lunch when I heard he and Mother arguing. Do you remember what we were eating?’

‘What are you telling me?’ I asked.

‘We were eating apples. Mother had wrapped them in a strip of cloth and sent us outside. She had known they would argue, I believe.’

‘The cloth was faded red,’ I said.

‘That’s right. And the apples were green, and underripe. I remember you making a face about it, though you were so young I’m surprised you cared.’

‘I can remember the apples being sour.’ The vividness of the memory brought a pucker to my mouth, and saliva washed over my tongue.

Charlie said, ‘It was the hottest day of a bona fide heat wave, and we were sitting there in the long grass, eating and listening to Mother and Father’s screaming. Or I was listening to it. I don’t know if you noticed.’

As he told the story, though, it was as if the scenario was coming into view. ‘I think I noticed,’ I said. Then I was sure I had. ‘Did something break?’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘You really do remember.’

‘Something broke, and she screamed.’ My throat began to swell, and I found myself holding back tears.

‘Father broke out the window with his fist and then hit her on the arm with an ax handle. He had gone crazy, I think. Before that he’d edged up next to craziness but when I entered the house to help Mother, I felt he had given over his whole being to it. He didn’t recognize me when I came in with my rifle.’

‘How is it that people go crazy?’

‘It’s just a thing that sometimes happens.’

‘Can you go truly crazy and then come back?’

‘Not truly crazy. No, I don’t think so.’

‘I’ve heard a father hands it down to the next.’

‘I have never thought of it. Why, do you ever feel crazy?’

‘Sometimes I feel a helplessness.’

‘I don’t think that is the same thing.’

‘Let’s hope.’

He said, ‘Do you remember the first rifle of mine? The gun that Father called my pea shooter? He made no jokes about it when I began pulling that trigger.’ Charlie paused. ‘I shot him twice, one in the arm and another in the chest, and the chest shot brought him down. And he lay there, spitting at me, over and over—spitting and cursing and hating me. I have never seen hatred like that, never before or since. Our father, lying there, coughing up thick blood and spitting it at me. Mother was knocked out. Her arm was badly broken, and the pain made her faint. That’s some kind of blessing, I guess, that she didn’t have to see her son kill her husband. Well, Father laid his head down and died, and I dragged him out of the house and into the stable and by the time I came back, Mother’d woken up and was in a trance of pain or fright. She kept saying, “Whose blood’s that? Whose blood’s that on the floor?” I told her it was mine. I didn’t know what else to say. I helped her up and out, walked her to the wagon. It was a long ride into town, with her screaming every time I hit a bump in the road. Her forearm was bent like a chevron. Like a shotgun opened for loading.’

‘What happened next?’ I asked, for this I could not recall.

‘By the time I got some medicine in her, got her splinted up, it was late afternoon. And it wasn’t until I was halfway back that I remembered about you at all.’ He coughed. ‘I hope that doesn’t make you feel hurt, brother.’

‘That does not hurt me.’

‘I had been distracted. And you were always off in your private world of thoughts, quiet in the corners. But as I said, it was powerfully hot that day. And of course just as soon as I left you, you pulled your bonnet off. And there you sat, for four or five hours, with your fair hair and skin. Mother was sleeping in the wagon, drugged, and I left her there to rush out and see about you. I had not thought of you getting burned—my concern was that a coyote might have come along and picked you apart, or that you had walked down to the river and drowned. So I was very relieved to see you sitting there in one piece, and I ran down the hill to collect you. And you were just as red and burned as could be. The whites of your eyes turned red as blood. You were blind for two weeks and your skin peeled away in swaths like the skin of an onion. And that, Eli, is how you got your freckles.’

Part Three

HERMANN

KERMIT

WARM

Chapter 36

The harbor, at first sight, I did not understand it. There were so many ships at anchor that their masts looked to be tangled impossibly; hundreds of them packed together so densely as to give the appearance of a vast, limbless forest rolling on the tides. Charlie and I threaded our way up the shoreline, and all around us was chaos: Men of every race and age rushing, shouting, pushing, fighting; cows and sheep were directed this way and that; horse-led wagons carried lumber and bricks up the mud-slick hill, and the sound of hammering and building echoed from the city out to sea. There was laughter in the air, though it did not give me the impression of gaiety, but something more maniacal and evil wishing. Tub was nervous, and so was I. I had not seen anything remotely like it and I wondered how we might possibly find one man in these labyrinthine streets and alleyways, where all was queer and dark and hidden.

‘Let us search out Morris,’ I said.

‘He has already waited weeks for us,’ said Charlie. ‘Another hour won’t change anything.’ Of course my brother liked the atmosphere, and was not the least bit uneasy.

I saw that many of the ships seemed to have been at anchor a long while, despite their still being loaded down with cargo, and I asked a man walking past about this. He was barefoot and held a chicken under his arm, which throughout our conversation he stroked lovingly on the head.

‘Abandoned by their crews,’ he told us. ‘When the fever to dig is upon you, there is not a second to spare. Certainly one cannot be expected to unload crates of flour for a dollar a day with the rivers singing their song so nearby.’ Blinking at the horizon, he said, ‘I often look out at these boats and imagine their baffled investors, impotently raging in New York and Boston, and this pleases me. Can I ask, are you men just arriving in San Francisco? How are you finding it?’

‘I can only say I am eager to know it better,’ said Charlie.

The man said, ‘My feelings about San Francisco rise and fall with my moods. Or is it that the town alters my moods, thus informing my opinions? Either way, one day it is my true friend, a few days after, my bitterest enemy.’

‘What is your feeling this morning?’ I asked.

‘I am halfway between, just now. Altogether I am doing decently, thank you.’

Charlie said, ‘How is it that these vessels have not been looted?’

‘Oh, many have been. The ones that remain untouched are either guarded by their stubborn captains or else are filled with nonvaluable cargo. No one has any concerns for free wheat or cotton, just now. Or should I say, almost no one.’ He pointed to a lone man rowing a small boat in the bay, making his way between the tall ships. His skiff was ridiculously loaded down, and he dipped his oars with great caution so as to avoid tipping. ‘That there is a fellow called Smith. I know him well enough. What will he do when he gets to shore? He will strap those heavy boxes to his sickly mule’s neck and drag them up to Miller’s General Store. Miller will skin Smith on the price and the money Smith receives for his backbreaking work will be lost in a single round of cards, or it will scarcely buy him a meal. I wonder if you two have had the pleasure of dining in our fair city? But no, I would know if you had, for your faces would be bloodless, and you would be muttering ceaseless insults to God in heaven.’