The Drop Edge of Yonder (38 page)

Delilah cried out, but not for the otters.

It was The Rhinelander, announcing her arrival from a cannon booming from her stern as she sailed through the mouth of the estuary. She was freshly painted, displaying new sails and a row of bronze swivel guns protruding from her bow

They watched the ship from the riverbank until all they could see were her running lights moving across the black water. Even for Zebulon and Large Marge, who had vowed never to set foot on a ship again, The Rhinelander offered an unexpected ray of hope, enough, in any case, to press on.

By the next afternoon they reached the peninsula, where they discovered a line of rutted wagon tracks leading to a sprawl of shacks and salmon racks. A full moon was rising while the sun sank, making it seem, in the last drop of daylight, that moon and sun were on a collision course.

The settlement's only street was deserted except for a few drunks sleeping in doorways or sprawled across soggy planks. A dog barked as cold fingers of fog swept across the estuary, sliding around the corners of a trading post and the half-finished frame of a church. At the far end of the street, past the sawmill and several large storage sheds, a piano pounded out a dance tune from The Trail's End Saloon, a ramshackle two-story building made out of shipwrecked timbers and freshly cut cedar planks.

A roof over a long porch fronting the saloon was propped up on a row of narwhale tusks. On either side of the front door, narrow windows faced the estuary and a dilapidated wharf, where The Rhinelander was tied up bow to stern. Next to her, two Russian fishing boats were lined up behind a sea-going canoe with a high-curved prow dominated by the widespread wings of a carved eagle. Further up the shore, barely visible in the fog, a line of groaning logs shifted back and forth like an undulating road.

A burst of laughter reached them from two men smoking cigarettes on The Rhinelander's stern.

"The only boat I been on was that prison hulk," Large Marge said. "They'll have to strip me naked and cut out my heart before I set foot on another one."

The wind shifted and The Rhinelander disappeared inside a thick blanket of fog.

The only way to the saloon was over a narrow plank laid across a wide ditch. As Zebulon stepped on the plank, a frog croaked beneath him. Looking down, he saw a goat staring up at him, methodically chewing on garbage.

He was unable to move. Once across, there would be no way back.

"Who's out there?" a kid yelled from the far end of the plank, his small body a vaporous outline in the fog.

"Are you from the boat?" the kid asked. "'Cause if you ain't from the boat, then where are you from?"

On a plank stretched between worlds, Zebulon thought as he took another step.

A rock hit the plank in front of him, bouncing into the ditch.

"Say somethin', Mister," the kid yelled, "so I know you ain't a ghost."

Zebulon took a small step. Then another, then stopped.

"What the hell," Large Marge muttered behind him. "Do I have to hold your hand?"

A frog croaked in the ditch.

The kid's words floated in the fog.

"Can you hear me, Mister?" The kid's words seemed to be floating somewhere above him.

"We're from California," Large Marge replied.

"Did you come up here to fish?"

Zebulon took another step. Now he saw the kid. He was wearing a rain slicker, rubber boots, and a black sailor's toque pulled halfway over his head.

"Hey kid," Large Marge called out. "Do they serve food in that saloon?"

"They have food, but my Ma won't let me go in. She says people get shot in there and all kinds of things."

"You mean they get shot because of the food?" Large Marge asked.

"My Ma says people go in there to play cards and fool around, and some shoot at each other and some of them never come out because they're dead."

The kid threw another rock, then two more and ran off into the fog.

Zebulon took a few more steps and suddenly he was across.

A small bandy-legged man in a sheepskin coat stood before him on the edge of the saloon's porch, taking a leak.

"Never mind the boy," he said. "He thought you might be a bunch of ghosts. He gets scared when a boat comes in and there's strangers lurkin' around. Last week he saw someone get shot and thrown into the ditch. Ever since then, he sees ghosts. When the fog is in, I make him stand out here, just so he knows there ain't no such thing as a ghost. That way he can shake hands with his fear."

He paused, looking at Zebulon. "Do I know you?" He reached for a pistol inside his belt. "Wait now I seen your likeness. It was on a wanted poster on that boat that come in, The Rhinelander. The poster was hung up in the Captain's cabin. A thousanddollar reward for the outlaw, Zebulon Shook. And he looks just like you."

Delilah walked up behind Zebulon. "Maybe you didn't hear what happened to Zebulon Shook. They hung him in Calabasas Springs, in California. The whole town turned out to see him hang. It was in the papers."

"I know what I seen," insisted the bandy-legged man. "That's all I'm savin'."

"Anyone can make a mistake," Zebulon said. "But if you're gonna dry-shoot someone, me included, do it with your whizzle in your pants."

He pushed past him into the saloon, not giving a damn, one way or the other.

The bandy-legged man looked at Large Marge and Delilah, then at the two whores laughing at him through the window

"Damn ferriners," he said as he shoved his whizzle into his pants. "Who cares who he thinks he is or who he thinks he ain't. Not me. But I know what I seen."

As Large Marge lumbered past him, she allowed her shoulder to slam into his back, causing him to fall face-forward into the ditch.

'WO OIL LAMPS HANGING FROM A LOW CEILING CAST A flickering glow over the gloomy smoke-filled room. Another row of lamps was empty or had been shot out. As they headed for the bar, they passed a rattlesnake coiled up inside a glass jar on top of a piano. The piano player glanced at them through rheumy half-closed eyes, then struck a series of rumbling dissonant chords that shook the top of the piano, causing the snake to wave its head back and forth as if looking for a way out or someone to sink its fangs into.

At the bar they drank several rounds of screech, a local whiskey that burned into their guts like branding irons. In back of the bar, an unfinished mural showed two Kwakiutl fishermen standing at the prow of a war canoe, their spears raised as they approached a spouting sperm whale. In the distance, under a dark gloomy sky, a three-masted schooner beat her way across a sun-splashed sea under full sail, four swivel guns protruding from her bow and stern. The ship was sailing towards two men and a woman sitting on a rocky shore. All of their faces were blank. Above the mural, five moose heads were lined up in a row, staring over the room with shot-out eyes.

"I been here before," Zebulon said, staring across the room where Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack were playing cards.

"I know the feelin'," Large Marge said. "Only I don't remember when or who I was with. Not that it matters. I didn't bust my hump all the way up here to remember where I come from. I'm here to forget."

Delilah pushed back her shot glass and walked over to the piano player as he began another tune. The snake was still moving around inside the bottle, its tongue darting in and out. As Delilah kept her eyes on the piano player's hands sliding over the beaten-up keys, Zebulon drifted past her and sat down with Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack.

"Look who's here," Dorfheimer said as Zebulon shoved his money on the table. "I thought you were dead or locked up. In fact, I bet on it."

Zebulon smiled. "Maybe I am dead."

"Or about to be," Hatchet Jack said.

"Are you tellin' me the ducks are in the noose?" Zebulon asked.

"Unless you figure another way."

After Zebulon lost three straight hands, he went over to the other side of the room and joined two sailors from The Rhinelander who were playing billiards.

Closing her eyes, Delilah improvised a song, the piano player struggling to find the right chords to keep up with her:

Large Marge, who was beginning to be overwhelmed with unsavory premonitions, placed the Warden's small golden bowl in front of the bartender and booked the most expensive room in the house - including food, drink, and laundry.

As she lumbered up the stairs, Delilah finished the song:

She started another verse, then thought better of it and walked over to Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack.

"I thought you'd be in Mexico by now," she said to Hatchet Jack.

"I tried," he replied. "And then I tried again, even though Plaxico told me I was a fool and that I should quit while I was ahead."

"How did you find us?" Delilah asked.

"I didn't find you. You found me."

Across the room, Zebulon made three straight caroms into the same side pocket. After he picked up his bet, he walked over and sat down opposite Delilah.

"I thought you gave up on cards?" he asked.

"Some things change," she replied. "Even when they don't."

Zebulon paused, looking across the room, then back at Delilah and then at Hatchet Jack. "Choose. Him or me."

"Lately I've had trouble with choices," she said. "I'm resolved never to choose again."

"Choose anyway," Zebulon said.

"I don't know what you people are up to," Dorfheimer said, "but my advice is to stick to cards. What's done is done. No one owes anyone anything. Up here we have a chance to leave the past behind. After all, isn't that the nature of the frontier? Isn't that what the promise is? We all come with baggage, but now we can pitch it overboard. I suggest a game of chance to help us relax and not take things too seriously."

Dorfheimer shuffled the cards. "I warn you that I'm on a dangerous roll and I have no intention of taking prisoners."

Hatchet Jack looked at Delilah. "I know about that. Prisoners slow things down."

Dorfheimer picked up the deck. "Seven card stud. Nothing wild. Play it fair and square or take your problems outside."

For the first dozen hands the betting remained more or less even, with no one falling very far behind except for Dorfheimer, who bet every card as if it were his last. When Zebulon lost the biggest hand with three tens to Hatchet Jack's low straight, he pushed back his chair, sending it to the floor.

"You dealt that one off the bottom," he accused Hatchet Jack.

Hatchet Jack's hand settled on the butt of his pistol. "If you think that's true, which it ain't, we might as well take it outside"

"Your call," Zebulon said.

Hatchet Jack stood up, then slumped down again. "I came all the way up here to deal with you two and now I can't get to it."

"When you figure things out, let me know," Zebulon replied.

He walked over to the billiard table. After he won four str might games, doubling his money, he made his way back to the card table.

Hatchet Jack took a pull from a bottle of screech and handed the bottle to Zebulon. "I've been thinkin'. Maybe the two of us should ride back to Colorady. Rustle up some pelts or whatever comes to hand. Let it all bust loose like old times, maybe head down to that rendezvous on the Purgatory." He paused. "Unless you got another idea."