The rotting had crept beyond the wrist and Crane made his cut halfway up the forearm with a long-bladed saw manufactured, he said, specifically for severing bone. His forehead was shining with perspiration when he was through and the blade of the saw, when he accidentally touched it afterward, was hot enough that it burned him. He had laid out a bucket for the hand and wrist to drop into but his aim or placement was off and it landed on the floor. He could not be bothered to retrieve this, busy as he was caring for what remained of Charlie, and I crossed over and lifted it myself. It was surprisingly light; blood dripped freely from the open end and I held this over the bucket, gripping it by the wrist. My touching Charlie’s arm like this would not ever have happened when it was attached, and as such I blushed from the foreignness of it. I found myself running my thumb over the coarse black hairs. I felt very close to Charlie when I did this. I placed the hand and wrist standing upright in the bucket and removed this from the room, for I did not want him to see it whenever he awoke. After the surgery he lay on a tall cot in the center of the parlor, bandaged and drugged, and Crane encouraged me to take in the air, saying it would be many hours before Charlie was conscious again. I thanked him and left his home, walking to the far edge of town, to the restaurant I had visited on the way to San Francisco. I sat at the same table as before and was received by the same waiter, who recognized me, and asked in an ironic voice if I had returned for another meal of carrots and stalks. But after witnessing the operation, and with dried droplets of my brother’s blood decorating my pant legs, I was not hungry in the least, and asked only for a glass of ale. ‘You have given up food entirely then?’ he said, snuffling into his mustache. I found myself offended at his tone and told him, ‘My name is Eli Sisters, you son of a whore, and I will kill you dead where you stand if you don’t hurry up and serve me what I asked for.’ This brought the waiter’s gawking and leering to an end, and he was cautious and respectful afterward, his hand atremble as he placed the glass of ale before me. It was out of character for me to lash out in so common and vulgar a way as this; later, as I walked away from the restaurant, I thought, I must relearn calmness and peacefulness. I thought, I am going to rest my body for one full year! Here was my decision, and one that I am happy to say I eventually realized, one that I thoroughly relished and basked in: Twelve months of resting and thinking and becoming placid and serene. But before this dream-life might come to pass, I knew, there was one last bit of business I would have to see through, and which I would see through on my own.
Chapter 60
It was ten o’clock at night when we finally arrived at our shack outside of Oregon City. I found the door knocked off its hinges and all our furnishings overturned or destroyed; I walked to the rear room and was unsurprised to find my and Charlie’s stash gone from its hiding place behind the looking glass. There had been more than twenty-two hundred dollars tucked into the wall, but now there was nothing save for a single sheet of paper, which I took up, and which read thus:Dear Charlie,I am a bastard I took your $, all of it. I am drunk but I don’t think I will return it when I’m sober. Also I took your brother’s $ and I’m sorry Eli, I always liked you when you weren’t looking at me cockeyed. I am going far away with this $ and you can try to find me and good luck on that score. Any rate you will both earn more, you were always good earners. It’s a hell of a way to say so long but I’ve always been this way and I won’t even feel bad about it later. There is something wrong with my blood or mind or whatever it is which guides a man.—Rex
I folded the note and returned it to the carved-away wall. The looking glass had been dropped and broken, and I pushed around the shards with my boot. I was not thinking but waiting for a thought, or a feeling. When this did not materialize I gave up on it and went outside to pull Charlie down from Nimble. Crane had given him a dropper bottle of morphine and he had been more or less catatonic for the duration of our return trip. I had found it occasionally necessary to tie him to Nimble and lead him by a length of rope. And he was several times jarred from his stupor by the realization his hand was no longer attached to his body. It was something that slipped his mind again and again; when he noticed, he was run through with shock and miserableness.
I walked him to his room and he crawled onto his naked, lopsided mattress. Before he dropped away I told him I was going out, and he did not ask where, and he could not possibly care. He clapped his jaws and held up his bandaged stump to wave it. Leaving him to his drugged slumber, I stood awhile at the entrance of our home, taking stock of our wrecked and meager possessions. I had never had any strong feelings for the place; looking around now at the wine-stained bedding and cracked plates and cups, I knew I would never sleep there again. It was an hour’s ride into town. My mind was intent and clean and focused. I had been traveling for many days but was not in the least bit fatigued or compromised. I was not in any way afraid.
The Commodore’s mansion was dark save for his half-lit rooms on the top story. The moon was high and bright and I hid beneath the shaded boughs of an ancient cedar that stood on the border of the grand property. I watched a servant girl leave out the back with an empty washtub under her arm. She was angry about something, and as she made for her cabin, separate from the main house, she cursed under her breath. I waited fifteen minutes for her to exit; when she did not, I crossed the yard in a crouch, moving toward the house. She had failed to lock the back door and I crept fully into the kitchen. It was still and cool and orderly. What had the Commodore done to the girl? I stole another glance at her cabin; all was quiet and unchanged, except she had lighted a single white candle and placed this in her window.
I climbed the carpeted stairs and stood outside the Commodore’s quarters. Through the door I heard him berating and insulting someone; whom I did not know, for the man only mumbled his apologies, and I could not tell who he was or what he had done wrong. When he had had enough abuse he made to leave the room; as his footsteps drew closer I pressed myself against the wall beside the door hinges. I had no pistol, merely a squat, blunt blade, what I have always heard called a plug blade, and I took this up in my hand. But the door swung open and the man descended the stairs with no knowledge of my being there. He left out the back door and I snuck to a window at the end of the hall to follow his movements. I watched him enter the servant girl’s cabin; he appeared in the window, glaring bitterly at the mansion, and I hid in the shadows to witness the hurt in the man’s eyes. His hideous face was descriptive of a violent life, and yet there he stood, bullied and cowed and impotent to defend himself. When he blew out the candle the cabin fell dark and I backtracked down the hall. The door had remained open and I entered.
The Commodore’s quarters accounted for the entire top floor of the mansion, and there were no walls in this vast space, no rooms, but the furniture was grouped together as though there were. It was darkened save for the low lights of the occasional table lantern or flickering sconce. In the far corner behind a Chinese folding screen rose a plume of blue cigar smoke; when I heard the Commodore’s voice I paused, thinking him not alone. But as I listened I heard no second voice, and deduced he was only speaking to himself. He was resting in the bath and giving an imaginary speech and I thought, What is it about bathing that prompts a person to do this? I gripped the plug blade and walked across to meet him, following a line of rugs so as not to make a sound. I came around the screen, blade aloft, prepared to stick this into the Commodore’s naked heart, but his eyes were covered with a cotton cloth and I found my arm dropping in degrees to my side. Here was a man whose influence could be found in every corner of the country, and he sat drunk in a copper bathtub, his body hairless, his chest scooped and bony, an overlong ash dangling perilously from his cigar. His voice was reedy: