The Drop Edge of Yonder

by Rudolph Wurlitzer

  "I'm pullin' out." Hatchet Jack's hands shook as he swung into the saddle. "Some of the medicine worked and some went south." He looked at Plaaico, then at Annie May. "The spirits told me it wouldn't be a good idea to give you the horse."

  "Who cares about any of it?" Annie May said softly "It's all the same, horse or no horse."

  They watched Hatchet Jack gallop off without a wave or a look back, as if pursued by a confusion of unknown mysteries.

  "He talked to some of the spirits all right," Plaxico said. "But he choked on the rest. Too big a meal for a beginner."

  And then he, too, was gone, disappearing back inside the pueblo.

  NNIE MAY AND ZEBULON SMELLED BROKEN ELBOW BEFORE they saw it. What had been a trading post and a few shacks only a year ago was now a long, rutted street dominated by pandemonium and open sewage. Drunken miners shouted back and forth in a dozen languages, a naked Chinaman crawled past them into an alleyway pursued by a screaming whore, halfdead oxen pulled overloaded supply wagons through mud and melting snow, past signs advertising wares at outrageous prices: Boots $30, Flour $35, Blankets $30, Washing $20. Every square foot of ground that was not lived on was cluttered with mining equipment, dead dogs, pigs rooting in piles of stinking garbage, wagon beds, spare wheels, barrels, and stacks of lumber, as well as makeshift corrals where mules and horses stood kneedeep in muck. Further away, on the banks of a swiftly moving river, hundreds of high-booted men - most of them Indians, Mexicans, and Chinese - squatted beside cradle-like gold washers and sluice boxes while others worked up a canyon in steep pits, hacking at the soil with picks and shovels.

  At the end of the street, they reined up in front of a twostory trading post.

  Inside the cavernous room, clerks ran back and forth filling orders in Spanish, French, and English for rifles, canned goods, farming equipment, wagon beds, and sacks of feed. A few of the older clerks waved to Annie May as she approached a plump young man perched at a high-top desk, adding up small sums inside a huge ledger.

  Annie May pulled herself up to her full height, which was barely up to the level of the desk.

  "I'm Annie May Shook, and I'm here to sell my pelts."

  The clerk nodded, not looking up as he took off his glasses and rubbed his strained red-rimmed eyes.

  Annie May rapped on the desk with the barrel of her shotgun. "I want both ears when I'm talkin', Mister. Where be the major?"

  The clerk took his time placing his glasses over his nose. "Major Poultry sold out last winter. You'll deal with me now"

  'Always was partial to the major," Annie May said. "Dealt with mountain folk straight up."

  "Business is business," the clerk said with measured patience. "Whoever be the buyer or seller."

  Annie May scratched her head, took out her pipe, began to light it, then shoved it back inside her buffalo robe. "All right, then. What be the price of pelts?"

  The clerk looked down at Annie May as if her presence was an annoying fly. "The bottom has fallen out of the fur market. It will never come back. That said, I'll give you fifty cents a pelt. Take it or leave it."

  She stared up at him, unable to comprehend. "The hell you say.

  "The numbers come down from St. Louis, Ma'am. Trade or cash."

  Her voice rose to a shout. "Two dollars a pelt, Mister St. Louis. And my usual loan on 'baca, cartridges, and flour. That's the way it's been for these thirty years, and that's the way it'll be. Nothing more, nothing less."

  The clerk shut the ledger with a loud snap. "I'm afraid that's impossible."

  "Well then, Mister St. Louis, let an old mountain sage hen show you her possible bag."

  Annie May waved her shotgun at the clerk, then at a window, then at a row of pickle jars.

  The terrified clerk backed away, bumping into Zebulon who shoved him against a shelf of canned goods, sending him and the cans crashing to the floor.

  This was more like it, Zebulon thought, looking around the room. This was what the old Spirit Doc ordered when he needed to stir things up. He reached behind the counter for a jug of liquor, uncorked it and took a long pull, then tossed it to Annie May, who caught it in one hand. As the clerk staggered up from the floor, she smashed the jug over his head.

  "Hurrah fer mountain doin's!" she shouted.

  Hauling herself onto a table, she fired her shotgun into the air. The pellets struck an overhead gas lamp that exploded when it hit the floor, sending a rush of flames roaring towards the ceiling.

  "Hurrah fer mountain doin's!" Zebulon shouted.

  He yanked off a large gold nugget that hung from a string around the clerk's neck.

  "For settlement," he said.

  Then he picked up an ax handle and knocked over a shelf of air-tights and smashed a window as customers grabbed whatever goods were close to hand and started for the door.

  Zebulon found Annie May slumped underneath the table, a bullet through her chest. As he gently gathered her into his arms, a barrel of kerosene exploded behind them, collapsing the ceiling, blowing out windows, killing two miners, and setting the building on fire.

  Zebulon carried Annie May outside and laid her on the sagging wooden sidewalk. Around them, a line of men were hand-rushing buckets of water to pour on the flames.

  Annie May's voice faded to a whisper. "Deer is deer... elk is elk and this mountain oyster is a gone coon.... I done you wrong a time or two, son, as you did me... but that's family." She raised herself up, trying to see him as her eyes clouded over. "Always figured I'd go out the old way Straight up and on my own breath.... But we caused a commotion in this town, did we not, son?"

  "So we did, Ma," he answered.

  "Did I ever tell how Hatchet come to be with us?"

  "You never did," he replied, even though she had told him endless times.

  "Pa won him from a Mex at a rendezvous down on the Purgatory.... Everything was in the pot, everything the Mex had - his traps, horses, pelts, and even little Hatchet as a throw in. No more than a stump, he was. When Pa palmed the last card, he got caught, which bothered him enough to carve the Mex up for callin' him out. Pa took Hatchet back with him out of guilt, and maybe because he thought he could use another hand. He was always one for slaves, your Pa...."

  Her voice stopped and he thought she was gone, until he heard her again.

  "Are you with me, son?"

  "I'm here, Ma."

  "All right, then. Hatchet was a weird boy. Always tryin' to drown you in the river. And then you tried to do the same to him, just to get even.... When you find your Pa... tell him.... Hell, don't tell him nothin'. He never did a damn thing for us except bring miser: And now he's trotted off to the gold fields. The old cocksucker."

  She looked up, her eyes pleading with his not to ever let her go, and then she died.

  He sat holding her as the lines of water buckets were passed back and forth. When the fire was out, the sheriff and the owner of the trading post, along with several clerks, surrounded him with drawn pistols. One of the clerks carried a rope with a noose tied at the end.

  As Zebulon was pulled to his feet, Hatchet Jack galloped through the crowd, pulling a saddled horse behind him.

  Shots were fired, but before anyone could mount up to follow, Zebulon and Hatchet Jack had disappeared down the street.

  Ten miles outside of town they parted company, Zebulon for old Mel, Hatchet Jack for California, where he figured to make peace with Elijah.

  'HEN ZEBULON REACHED THE HIGH DESERT, HE HESITATED, then rode back to the mountains. Two days later he arrived at the cabin in the middle of the night. His Ma's deck of cards was still spread out on the table. He removed a card and pushed it back into the deck without looking to see if it was the queen of hearts. What's done is done, he thought, lighting up her clay pipe and sitting down at the table. And none of it was coming back. No more mountain doin's. All gone. Forever gone.

  Not able to sleep in the house, he went outside and built a small fire. When the first light of dawn prowled like a hungry preda
tor over the mountains, he picked up a burning stick and tossed it inside the door. Then he walked around the burning cabin, yelling to his Ma his last mountain goodbyes: "Waaaaaaaaagh... Waaaaaaaaagh...! Waaaaaaaaagh!"

  When he reached the end of the valley, he turned for a last look. All that remained was a thin cloud of smoke drifting into the sun.

  From then on, it was a fast ride across the high desert towards Mexico, with a pause in Alamogordo long enough to hold up the town bank - an act that he performed with such careless disregard for his own safety that he not only escaped without a scratch, but with half a saddlebag of gold coins. Continuing south by southeast, he heard distant gunshots and shifted his direction, narrowly avoiding a band of White Mountain Apaches trapped inside a basin by a platoon of black cavalry. The next day he crossed the Rio Grande, then rode east across Chihuahua towards the Gulf of Mexico and down to Vera Cruz, where no one asked or cared who he was or where he came from.

  In Vera Cruz he rented a room in the best hotel, spending his money on the sultry passions of a one-armed saloon singer who played with his broken spirit like a seasoned cat before a kill. Never mind, he told himself, Miranda Serenade, for that was her billing, healed the cravings of his body if not the confusions of his heart. Within a week, he had moved into Miranda's room above the saloon; his only excursions were nightly visits downstairs, where he gambled compulsively and bought wall-towall drinks after each set of his lover's sentimental love songs.

  Miranda was pleased with him, at least for openers, as he was handsome and profligate enough to ease her constant insecurities about money and advancing age. He bought her a black pearl necklace and an elegant horse and carriage and filled her head with fanciful plans. The most prominent being a mad scheme he had overheard on the waterfront about a company of men led by a General Walker, all of them skilled adventurers planning to conquer Nicaragua - a conquest, he assured her, that was bound to be successful. She would be with him every step of the way, he promised, his muse, his fiery goddess, even his minister or queen of culture if that was her inclination. They would inhabit a palace in Leon or Granada, with all the finery of European royalty. She would have her own saloon, maybe two, and enough servants to satisfy every whim. If they grew bored running the country, they could retire to Madrid or Bahia or the new city of San Francisco, where half the planet now seemed to be headed. Or all three. It didn't matter. The choice would be hers. Of course, neither of them believed a word, his plans having been conceived after an afternoon of compulsive lovemaking followed by generous dollops of laudanum. Miranda's designs were more practical: an upscale milliner's shop for aristocrat ladies or a music palace in the center of town. Business first. Baby second. Love, if not exactly an afterthought, a distant third.

  When his money ran out after an all-night card game, he was unable to face Miranda's wrath. Looking down at her as she lay sleeping in the black silk nightgown he had bought her that very morning, he kissed her for the last time and shut the door softly behind him.

  Twenty miles into Texas, he noticed a wanted poster nailed to the side of a feed store:

  Zebulon Shook Wanted Dead or Alive for Bank Robbing, Murder, Arson, and Horse Theft.

  It wasn't his reputation or fear of the law that made him return to Vera Cruz. The pathetic truth was that he missed Miranda Serenade, a raw and vulnerable feeling that he had never experienced before.

  iranda greeted him at the door in the middle of a steamy, claustrophobic afternoon. She was wearing her black silk nightgown and pointing a pearl-handled pocket derringer straight at his aching heart.

  "You want to know who you are, Zeb-a-Ion? One more fuckinggthgo cabron asshole with a used-up firecracker for a dick and no heart."

  When he told her that he was prepared to give her what she wanted, within reason, she said she'd consider it when he put something real on the table. Like money. Never mind his rotten used-up heart. She had given up on that part of him.

  When he didn't answer, she slammed the door in his face.

  He sat on a park bench and thought it over. Except for his horse and army Colt revolver and enough cash to last a week, he possessed nothing of value. He could always ride back to the mountains and try to rescue the family business. He had been good at the fur trade and was widely known and respected. But he had celebrated a last adios to that way of life, and there was no returning to what was forever gone. There was always the outlaw trail. With his new credentials as a wanted man, he could ride up to Arizona, where there was a local war going on. Or he could sign up with any number of desperadoes. Or he could disappear into the Far West, make his way to the Oregon territory, or Alaska where no one would have heard of him. And then there was Miranda. He could beg her for another chance, although if she was foolish enough to take him back, he knew that she would end up braining him with a frying pan. Or worse. Not to mention what he might do to her, heart or no heart.

  Across the park a mariachi band was serenading a lavish birthday party in honor of a local politician. Further away, two Texas mercenaries leaned against the trunk of a cottonwood tree, sharing a bottle of mescal. He had run into them in a saloon a few nights previously, bragging about their knowledge of explosives and firearms and how much their specialties were in demand from various well-heeled banditos and revolutionaries. The older man, who went by the alias of "Salty Smith," was rumored to have broken out of the hard-rock prison at Yuma, killing two guards in the process before he joined John Wesley Harden on his last furious rampage through Texas.

  The mercenaries weren't pleased to see him, having heard there was a wanted poster on his head and that he was one of those mountain lunatics who brought more trouble to the table than he was worth. After he took a slug from their bottle of tequila, he asked if they could put him on to a job. "Anything but cleanin' up saloon slop or runnin' errands for Mexican floozies."

  Salty nodded, barely hearing the question, his attention directed across the park. He raised his hand towards a waiter standing at the edge of the birthday celebration. From then on everything slowed down. The waiter lit a match, cupping it in his hands as if it were a precious flame, while another waiter cautiously lifted up a large wooden box. The two mercenaries stood up, dusting off their pants as their eyes shifted across the park and down the side streets. Slowly, with studied nonchalance, they walked out of the park as a bomb exploded behind them, blowing up the politician and several guests. The act was followed by a line of men appearing on a rooftop, firing down at the crowd as they screamed and scattered in every direction.

  Zebulon ran down a winding street, then turned into an alley as a platoon of mounted police appeared around a corner. Reversing direction, he stumbled into a crowded street full of cafes and clothing stores. A few people had stopped in the middle of the street to listen to the shots, which sounded, in the distance, like firecrackers. He ran past them towards the waterfront. Suddenly the shots stopped. Birds chirped from tree branches. Three young boys kicked a rolled-up ball of rope against a mud wall. Near them a vendor stood by a cart, calling out selections of fresh fish and crabs. Forcing himself to slow down, he walked on until he reached the harbor. When a cannon boomed a few blocks away, followed by more rifle shots, he turned into the door of a palatial three-story hotel.

  The spacious high-ceilinged lobby was empty except for a well-dressed couple engaged in booking a room. Neither seemed aware of what was going on in the rest of the city. Zebulon picked up a newspaper and sat down in an armchair. Pretending to read, he was unable to stop glancing at the woman standing at the front desk with her back to him. A red silk shawl was draped across her shoulders, and her thick spill of black hair was as luminous as polished ebony It was Delilah, the woman from the bar in Panchito.

  Outside the hotel, a man was singing a plaintive song about a woman's soul that no one, not even the lover he was singing to, was able to comprehend. The man's voice made it seem as if he was drowning or committing suicide inside someone else's dream.

  Zebulon sto
od up with no idea where he was going or what he wanted to do. He was halfway out the door when Delilah called out to him.

  "I thought you were dead."

  Her eves focused on the Colt holstered around his waist, then shifted to the fifteen-inch Green River bowie knife tied to his right thigh, then to his Mexican trousers with silver buttons down the sides, his black sombrero, and finally, the bright blue serape that matched the color of his startled eyes.

  "You seem to have recovered," she said. "My congratulations."

  As he took a step towards her, she crossed both hands in front of her breasts. Help me, her gesture implied. And... whatever you do, stay away.

  As impulsively as she had called out, she turned away, leaving him staring at Ivan, her companion that he remembered from the card game in the saloon. He wore a white flat-brimmed felt hat tilted over one side of his face and the same black cape was draped over his shoulders. Walking back and forth across the lobby in yellow hand-tooled leather boots, he banged a silverhandled cane on the floor, his voice rising as he argued in Spanish over the availability of the hotel's honeymoon suite, which, he claimed, he had booked three weeks before. The clerk threw up his hands, shouting that there was no record. Nada. Nada. Nada. There never was and there never had been. The only room was on the second floor facing the street. It was their choice. Take it or leave it. He had nothing more to say

  Zebulon walked across the room as if pulled by an invisible rope. "Give them what they signed up for," he said to the clerk. "Or deal with one malo loco gringo. Conprende?"

  Grabbing the clerk by the collar, he lifted him over the counter and dropped him to the floor. Then he removed the Colt from his belt and pointed it at the clerk's forehead, pulling back the hammer.

  The clerk handed over the keys and yelled for a porter to carry the guests' luggage to the presidential suite rnuy pronto.