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The Sisters Brothers

A Novel

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By Patrick DeWitt

Ecco

Copyright © 2011 Patrick DeWitt
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780062041265

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Chapter One

I was sitting outside the Commodore's mansion, waiting
for my brother Charlie to come out with news of the job. It was
threatening to snow and I was cold and for want of something
to do I studied Charlie's new horse, Nimble. My new horse was
called Tub. We did not believe in naming horses but they were
given to us as partial payment for the last job with the names
intact, so that was that. Our unnamed previous horses had been
immolated, so it was not as though we did not need these new
ones but I felt we should have been given money to purchase
horses of our own choosing, horses without histories and habits
and names they expected to be addressed by. I was very fond
of my previous horse and lately had been experiencing visions
while I slept of his death, his kicking, burning legs, his hot-
popping eyeballs. He could cover sixty miles in a day like a gust
of wind and I never laid a hand on him except to stroke him or
clean him, and I tried not to think of him burning up in that
barn but if the vision arrived uninvited how was I to guard
against it? Tub was a healthy enough animal but would have
been better suited to some other, less ambitious owner. He was
portly and low-backed and could not travel more than fifty miles
in a day. I was often forced to whip him, which some men do
not mind doing and which in fact some enjoy doing, but which I
did not like to do; and afterward he, Tub, believed me cruel and
thought to himself, Sad life, sad life.
I felt a weight of eyes on me and looked away from Nimble.
Charlie was gazing down from the upper-story window, holding
up five fingers. I did not respond and he distorted his face to
make me smile; when I did not smile his expression fell slack
and he moved backward, out of view. He had seen me watching
his horse, I knew. The morning before I had suggested we
sell Tub and go halves on a new horse and he had agreed this
was fair but then later, over lunch, he had said we should put it
off until the new job was completed, which did not make sense
because the problem with Tub was that he would impede the
job, so would it not be best to replace him prior to? Charlie had a
slick of food grease in his mustache and he said, 'After the job is
best, Eli.' He had no complaints with Nimble, who was as good
or better than his previous horse, unnamed, but then he had had
first pick of the two while I lay in bed recovering from a leg
wound received on the job. I did not like Tub but my brother was
satisfied with Nimble. This was the trouble with the horses.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt Copyright © 2011 by Patrick DeWitt. Excerpted by permission of Ecco. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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