Wanting to get it over with, I unstopped the bottle and took a step toward Tub when the hand said, ‘I wish you’d take him outside. I just barely got the first hole covered without him kicking a new one.’ He pointed and I saw his pitiable patch job, the damaged timber gone over with scraps. I led Tub out and tied him to a hitching post. His socket had crusted blood and pus around its rim, and without the eye to hold its form the lid sagged at its center. I poured in a good amount of the alcohol and stepped clear of him. ‘Heee!’ said Tub, kicking and bucking and urinating and defecating. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about that, Tub. Sorry, sorry.’ His discomfort passed and I retrieved the saddle from the stable. Charlie led Nimble out and stood beside Tub and I.
‘Ready?’ he said.
I did not answer but climbed onto Tub. His back and legs had more give than before, his muscles stringy with fatigue; also he was confused by the loss of half his sight, and he craned his neck to the left to see from his right eye. I backed him into the road and he walked in a tight, full circle, then another. ‘He is getting his bearings,’ I said.
‘It is wrong to ride him so soon,’ said Charlie, climbing on Nimble. ‘You can see he needs rest.’
I pulled hard on the reins and Tub ceased his spinning. ‘Let’s not pretend you care for his well-being all of a sudden.’
‘I don’t give a damn about the horse. I’m talking about what’s right for the job.’
‘Oh! Yes! Of course! The Job! I nearly forgot about it! Our preeminent purpose! Let’s talk about it some more! I will never tire of the subject so long as I am living!’
I found my lip was quivering; my feelings were so deeply injured that morning, looking at my brother on his fine, tall horse, and knowing he did not love me the way I had always loved and admired him and looked up to him; my lip quivered and I found myself shouting like this so that people walking past made comments and stared.
‘The Job! Yes! The Job! But of course that’s what you were referring to!’
Charlie’s eyes hooded with contempt, and shame enveloped me like a fever. Without a word he turned and rode off, cutting through the crowded streets and disappearing on the far side of a covered wagon. I scrambled to regain sight of him but Tub continued to crane his neck and walk sideways; I jabbed him with my heels and the pain righted him, but his breath was ragged as we ran, and my shame redoubled. I very much wanted to simply quit then, to stop and walk away from Tub, and from the job, and Charlie, to return on a new horse for my pile in Mayfield and construct a separate life, with the pale bookkeeper or without, just as long as everything was restful and easy and completely different from my present position in the world. This was my dream, and it was a powerful, vivid one, but I did nothing to enact it, and Tub continued his running and wheezing and I made it to the beach and rejoined Charlie, falling in beside him as we headed for the ferry landing. We passed the spot where the horse belonging to the man with the winch had died. The animal was partially skinned, with a good portion of its meat hacked away. Crows and gulls fought over what was left, hopping and pecking, the clammy flesh gone purple, the wind coating it in sand, and the flies insinuating themselves where they could. I felt San Francisco standing behind me but I never looked back, and I thought, I did not enjoy my time here.
Chapter 43
The ferry was a smaller-sized paddle wheeler called Old Ulysses that had a corral at its foremost end that housed horses alongside sheep and cows and pigs. Just as soon as Charlie tied off Nimble he left me; I did not follow after him but stayed behind to pet Tub and say sweet things to him, offering him comfort with my nearness and kindness, belated as it was. I had a plan to stay down there for the entire eight-hour voyage but the water was rough and the pigs became seasick (only the pigs became seasick), and I found it necessary to take in the air topside. I never once saw Charlie and nothing of consequence happened for the rest of the trip, except for this: I asked a woman if she had the time, and she looked me up and down and said, ‘I have no time to share with you,’ and walked away. I bought some mealy apples from a blind man and fed these to Tub as the boat was shoring up in Sacramento. His legs were trembling. It was late afternoon.
Charlie and I rode clear of civilization and entered into a forest of oak trees, dense and damp and impossible to navigate incautiously. It was slow going, made all the more so by the fact of our not speaking. I thought, I will not speak first. Then Charlie spoke first.
‘I would like to discuss our methods for dealing with Warm.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let us cover the angles.’
‘That’s it. Starting with our employer. What might he want us to do?’
‘Kill Morris first, quickly, and without malice. From Warm, extract the formula, then kill him, also, but slowly.’
‘And what would we do with the formula?’
‘Return this to the Commodore.’
‘And what would he do with it?’
‘He would claim to be its author, and he would become ever more infamous and rich.’
‘And so the actual question is: Why are we doing this for him?’
‘But this is just what I have been getting at.’
‘I want to talk it through, Eli. Answer me, please.’
I said, ‘We are doing this for a wage, and out of your reverence for a powerful man whom you hope to one day usurp or somehow become.’
Charlie made a stretched-out face that said: I did not know you knew that. ‘All right. Let us assume that is true. Would it make sense then to empower the Commodore? To enable him in such a significant way?’
‘It would not make sense.’
‘No. Now, would it make sense for us to follow the Commodore’s instruction just shy of the last? Just shy of handing over the formula?’
‘To kill the two innocent men and steal their hard-won idea for ourselves?’
‘Morals come later. I asked if it would make sense.’
‘It would at least make sense, yes.’
‘Fine. Now, let us discuss the consequences of disobeying the Commodore.’
‘It would be unpleasant. I should think we would be hunted all our lives.’
‘Unless?’ he said, lips upturned. ‘Unless?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We would have to kill him.’
‘Kill him how?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Lie in wait for him? Make it known we are after him? Go to war with his lieutenants? He has men in most every outpost and town, remember.’
‘No, the only way would be to get it over with right off. To head back just as if we were still working for him, then kill him in his house, and flee.’
‘Flee where? Who would come after us if the man himself was dead?’
‘I would be surprised if he did not have explicit orders to be carried out in case of untimely passing.’
Charlie nodded. ‘He absolutely does. He has spoken to me about it in the past. “If my blood is spilled prematurely, there will be an ocean of blood spilled in response to it.” So: How might this inform our plans?’
I said, ‘The only way would be to kill him in total secrecy.’
‘Total secrecy,’ Charlie agreed.
‘We would have to arrive under cover of night and shoot him as he sleeps. After this, run into the wild and hide away for many days, then return empty-handed, as though coming from San Francisco, claiming to have missed the formula, to have lost Morris and Warm. We would act very surprised when we learned of the Commodore’s death, and we would offer our services in tracking down and killing any of those possibly involved.’
‘That is all fine, except for the last part,’ he said. ‘If the Commodore is murdered, accusations will fly in every direction, and there will be a good deal of violence because of it. I would be surprised if we were not accused; and it would be suspicious if we in turn did not level accusations of our own. A lot of blood work then, and for what? When the man with the money is already gone?’