The Drop Edge of Yonder

by Rudolph Wurlitzer

  "Absolutely not," the Count said.

  The crew and the rest of the passengers, who had all become increasingly anxious, insisted that the ship was fully booked and that the Captain would never accept another passenger, particularly a black man without means, unless, of course, he would agree to become a slave.

  Delilah advised the Negro that unfortunately all of the ship's passengers were obsessed with greed and conquest. Not only that, but she had been having ominous premonitions about the man she was traveling with - a man who, she confessed, had once owned her, but who now, even though he had finally released her from bondage, had become increasingly cruel and unhinged.

  The Negro pulled himself up to his full height, his sad blazing eyes staring into hers. Perhaps she was right. If she was foolish enough to become involved with such confusion and venal behavior, he would be better off where he was.

  He walked away, then paused and slowly turned back, asking if he could buy or trade for her. He had plenty of beads and skins to bargain with, as well as all the fruit the ship would need. He looked over at Zebulon. Not only that, but it was clear that she should run away as soon as possible, as one of the men she was traveling with was possessed by a very strange spirit, unlike any he had ever witnessed.

  Delilah replied that having been given her freedom, she was no longer for sale and that if she ran away it would be on her own terms, no one else's.

  The Negro nodded, not believing a word. Removing a handful of cowry shells from a small bag hanging from a string around his neck, he tossed them high in the air, then knelt to study the patterns they formed on the sand.

  She was owned, he told her. But not by a man. She was owned by a curse.

  Impatiently, the Count took her arm. "Are you coming, or do you prefer the company of a savage?"

  When she hesitated he stomped after the others, all of whom - except for Zebulon, who had remained behind - were already halfway to the lifeboat.

  "Would you consider abandoning the ship?" she asked, only half-joking.

  "Not hardly," Zebulon replied. "Not when there's gold to be found."

  The Negro, who had been watching their exchange, nodded abruptly to Delilah, then walked back over the dune with the Seminoles.

  ebulon and Delilah were in the lifeboat and halfway back to The Rhinelander when the Negro reappeared on top of the dune.

  Bending a long bow, he shot an arrow in a high arc towards them, a flight that missed the lifeboat by less than a foot.

  EBULON LAY ON HIS BUNK LISTENING TO THE SHOUTS OF men climbing into the rigging. Hours later, the ship under full sail, he heard sounds coming from the next cabin; they were sonorous and melancholy chords from an instrument he had never heard before. As he listened, he remembered the shape of Delilah's ankles and the slow sway of her broad hips as she stepped out of the lifeboat.

  That night at dinner she was sitting next to the Count at the end of a rectangular oak table supported at each corner by ropes hanging from the ceiling. The Captain sat in the middle of the table, expounding on his favorite topic: the world's obsession with gold at the expense of freedom and happiness.

  "Gold is a curse," the Captain pronounced, "a dangerous mistress seducing everything in her path. I am now on my third voyage to California. Going there is always hope fueled by addiction and greed. Returning, all is loss and desolation."

  Most of the passengers were no longer listening, having heard this speech all the way across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean.

  The Captain shifted his focus to Zebulon, who represented, among other curiosities, a new ear. "I understand that you have been in California, Mister Shook. I'm curious why you have chosen to return?"

  "I guess you might say that my bucket sprang a leak."

  "And now you are returning to fill your bucket?"

  Zebulon nodded, his eyes gazing through a porthole at flakes of green phosphorous dancing across a black sheen of water.

  "Gold is a blessing that provides the fuel that creates transportation and business," offered Artemis Stebbins, the New York Journalist. "There's never been anything remotely like it in the entire history of the world. Thank god that this country is on a gold standard!"

  "A blessing that will produce its share of casualties," the Captain added.

  "The price we must pay," said Cox.

  "I am happy to pay," the Finn said. "I want to be rich."

  "If we don't risk, we die," added the Polish merchant.

  "My brother and me, we have tried once before, and now we try again," said Heinrich, the oldest of the German merchants. "Otherwise what? Sell fancy shoes and women under-wears?"

  "There are those who would agree with you," the Captain observed: "businessmen, preachers, doctors, soldiers, criminals. Good men and bad, all running from their past. To what end? To die of cholera or be scalped or shot or driven mad with no one to say prayers over their unmarked graves. Why? I will tell you why: greed. Nothing else."

  He looked around the table. "I sleep at night because I have chosen this ship to be my prison. Because of that choice, I am free."

  "You are stupid," Heinrich said. "We are here. Where else are we? We go on. No one knows what will happen."

  "Nothing ever moves in a straight line," the Count said, "even if man must be convinced that it does. Otherwise, he has no hope."

  "Hope?" The Captain lit a cigar, pleased, finally, to be engaged in a stimulating conversation. "Man is not a shark, always moving forward. He goes backward. He holds his ground. By changing directions he avoids boredom, which, I submit, is the biggest curse of all."

  "Curse?" the Pole asked. "What curse? I don't know any curse.

  Zebulon felt Delilah's hand on his knee. When he reached down, his hand closed over a slab of butter.

  "Always we search for new gods," Hans said.

  "Otherwise we are donkeys," Heinrich replied.

  "Better new gods than old demons, or the hounds of hell," added the Pole.

  "A man needs a target," Cox insisted. "Otherwise he faces chaos."

  "Chaos," the Count reached for Delilah's hand, "the mother of creation."

  The Count exchanged his plate for Delilah's, which had remained untouched. "Why else would we suffer the stagnation and boredom of a sea voyage?"

  "When I was young I sleep on a dirt floor," the Finn said. "I am cold and lonely. Cossacks kill my mother and father. When I find gold I am buying a woman and making a big house. I am having walls inside walls and never open the door."

  "And you, Mister Shook?" the journalist asked. "What do you think?"

  "A man traps what he can and heads for high ground," Zebulon replied. "If he's lucky, he gets to do it again."

  The Captain nodded. "In my world, when a sailor tacks before the wind in the middle of a storm, he makes a deal with nature. Either that, or he finds himself at the bottom of the sea." He looked over at Delilah. "My dear Lady, as the only woman among us, I am curious to know your opinion."

  "I have no opinion," Delilah said. "I surrender to what is given.

  Cox lifted his wineglass. "A toast to a wise woman."

  The Count struck his fork against his glass. "A song! A song from Delilah!"

  "Here! Here! Here!" the others chanted.

  She shook her head, her eyes pleading with the Count.

  "If not a song, at least a poem," the Count insisted.

  "I have no poems," she said, looking down at her plate, "and I have no songs." Then she stood up and, not looking at anyone, left the cabin.

  The rest of the meal was spent in distracted chatter: "Will there be rain -"; "So humid -"; "When do we reach the equator -"; "Do the Germans or the Belgians make the best potato pancakes -"; "I detest French opera. So inferior to the Italians -"; "You can't improve on the Greeks when it comes to fish -"; "But the French... their bouillabaisse... impeccable -"

  No one except the Count paid any attention when Zebulon left the table.

  ebulon was standing on the stern deck when the Count app
eared, offering him a cigar. "Mexican, I'm sorry to say. Not up to Cuban standards."

  "I never refuse a smoke," Zebulon replied, accepting the cigar.

  "Such a melancholy overture," the Count remarked. "So different from the false promise of dawn. But then endings are usually more complex than beginnings, are they not...?"

  He pointed towards the sun sinking over the horizon. "Look! There she goes. Like a wilted flower."

  "Or a squashed tomato," Zebulon added.

  "Or an Easter bonnet," the Count replied, surprised at Zebulon's use of metaphor.

  "A thumb run over by a wagon wheel," Zebulon continued.

  "A red sombrero," the Count replied.

  "A smashed sweet potato."

  "A splash of blood."

  "So we agree," the Count said. "Everything, including nature, is impermanent, and you and I and everyone else are not what we appear to be."

  "I wouldn't know about that," Zebulon said.

  The Count pointed to a distant rainspout. "The banners of a retreating army?"

  "Where is she?" Zebulon asked.

  The Count shrugged, his eyes on the rainspout as it disappeared into darkness. "Waiting for me, I would assume. If not that, then perhaps she's jumped overboard. Leaving us with what, exactly? The remains of a great battle?"

  Saluting Zebulon, he turned and went below

  hat night Zebulon was woken by a sudden rain squall. Come closer, the wind and rain howled as the ship struggled over the waves, then shuddered and groaned into the troughs below; come closer to a realm where life and death are the same.

  HE NEXT MORNING, AS ZEBULON PROWLED THE DECK hoping for a sighting of Delilah he was confronted by Stebbins, who had become convinced that a story about the exploits of the legendary mountain man would be the perfect opener for his series of articles about life in the Far West.

  When he asked Zebulon for an interview, Zebulon hesitated, his eyes on the Count and Delilah as they appeared arm in arm on the other side of the deck, Delilah wearing a flowered dress and straw hat, the Count in yellow linen pants and a white shirt.

  "It would be an honor," Stebbins insisted. "Particularly as you represent a disappearing breed of men who have gone where few ever have: men who have settled the frontier, who have fought and lived with Indians and experienced unimaginable hardships. My readers will be fascinated and thrilled to read about your adventures. And I'm the one to write about them. In fact, I'm the only one."

  Stebbins produced a flask of brandy and handed it to Zebulon, who drained it before he spoke.

  "I was raised by my Ma and Pa a thousand miles from any settlement. They learned me about red niggers and how to trap and build a fire in a blizzard. Went my own way and made do. I crossed Pike's Peak barefoot; lived with the Sioux and the Hopi; hunted buffler in the Black Hills; scouted for the army; lived with the Shoshonis, who called me Man Trapped Between the Worlds; sliced off more than one man's top knot; stole horses from the Comanche and Arapahoe; trapped with Jake Spoon, him that declared war on the Crow Nation; picked nuggets off the ground in Californie as big as your fist; rustled steers from Colorady to Texas; rode the outlaw trail and was proud of it."

  He paused, looking at the Count and Delilah as they strolled towards them. When the Count said something, pointing towards him, Delilah laughed and turned the other way, only to have the Count draw her back again.

  "I advise you to keep your secrets to yourself," the Count said to Zebulon as they approached. "Or you'll find your name on a wanted poster, or, even worse, the front page of a New York tabloid."

  "I'll give you ten-to-one odds he's not a Count or even a Russian," Stebbins said as the Count and Delilah continued their promenade. "He's nothing but a flim-flam man. Take my word. I know men like him."

  Before Delilah followed the Count below, she glanced once more towards Zebulon. Come closer, her eyes said once again, and no matter n1batyou do, stay aiPPay.

  Zebulon stared at a half-moon that had appeared over the horizon. Like a broken egg, he thought. Or a whore's earring.

  S THEY APPROACHED THE EQUATOR, THE SHIP ENTERED that inversion of sea and sky known as the doldrums, an oppressive zone of entropy inhibiting all movement and sense of time. The smell of rotten food permeated the ship. Sails drooped and clouds hung over the horizon like unwashed laundry. Not a dolphin or whale or even bird could be seen. In the suffocating heat, words felt as heavy as bricks and passengers and crew moved about the deck as if under water. When an elderly sailor lay on his back, staring mutely at the drooping sails, no one had the energy to come to his aid. In a rare gesture of compassion, Captain Dorfheimer allowed a dozen skeletal slaves to be led up from the lower depths of a cargo hold, where they had been chained to a bulkhead. Like uncorked ghosts they dropped on the deck, showing no emotion even when two of their companions, dead from malnutrition and the stifling heat, were unceremoniously tossed overboard. Until then, no one except the crew had known of their existence.

  At night the passengers slept on deck, except for Zebulon and the Count and Delilah, who remained below

  Zebulon lay awake listening to the shifting tones of their muted conversations in an unknown tongue, words that were sometimes punctuated by shouts, followed by sighs and Delilah's exhausted sobs. When they were silent he imagined them making love. Once, just to make his presence known, he tried blasting a hole through the wall with his Colt, but when he pulled the trigger the chamber was empty.

  On the seventh night of the doldrums, Delilah appeared in the cabin's hatchway, looking down on him as he slept. A bloody slash ran the length of her cheek and one breast had fallen out of her cotton shift. It was only when he felt her thigh next to his that he realized he wasn't dreaming.

  They lay next to each other without moving, listening to the cello repeat the same monotonous scales over and over.

  When the scales suddenly stopped, she placed his hand on her breast, whispering into his ear, "If I'm not there, and you're not here, then where are we?"

  When the scales started up again, she walked out of the cabin.

  I hat night at dinner the Captain observed that in all his many years at sea he had never encountered such a strange and difficult passage. He cautioned the passengers to keep within themselves, not to stare at the horizon, and to sleep as much as possible. From now on, water would be severely rationed and there would be one meal a day As a reward for their endurance and patience, they would have an extraordinary celebration when they finally crossed the equator, quite different from the usual initiations imposed on those who had never crossed the line before.

  When the Count began to laugh hysterically; Delilah helped him to his feet and led him below.

  The rest of the meal continued in silence, as if any random remark might unleash the same demonic forces.

  ays stretched into weeks. The boundary between sea and sky dissolved into a greasy smudge. The hours no longer clanged from the poop deck and the smell of unwashed bodies and laundry hung over the ship like a premonition of plague. The crew barely performed the most minimal tasks and finally, not even those.

  Except for an occasional appearance on the bridge, wearing Chinese slippers and baggy French underwear, Captain Dorfheimer remained in his cabin, struggling over a letter to his wife that compared his situation to an accelerating whirlpool of tedium, a condition that made him feel as if he was descending into a black hole. He no longer referred to his charts, and at the close of each day the logbook was marked with the same comment: No wind.

  Passengers slumped on the deck as if stranded inside a waiting room. The German merchants staked out a place on the stern, playing a game of chess, sometimes taking an entire afternoon to move one piece. The Pole walked back and forth, slapping his forehead, singing and muttering to himself. Neither German noticed when he picked up a knight from the board and dropped it overboard. The Finn talked to the bare-breasted goddess on the ship's prow, confessing his marital sins as well as his secret sexual fantasies. Cox read the openi
ng page of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire over and over. Zebulon lay on his back, staring at the empty, relentless sky. Once Delilah's ankles drifted past and he heard her say to the Finn: "Have... you... ever... been... to... Iceland...?" And always there was Stebbins, whose imagination he continued to fill with accounts of Indian wars, Texas shoot-outs, and gun running in Mexico. Or maybe it wasn't Stebbins but the lethargic drift of his own mind-stream.

  Despite the brutal heat he continued to sleep in his cabin, listening to Delilah and the Count. When they were silent he wondered if they had died, until one night, just to find out, he opened the door to their cabin. The Count was sitting on the bunk, Delilah mounted on top of him, her legs wrapped around his waist.

  "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here," the Count said, quoting Dante as Zebulon backed out the door.

  nother week passed with no hint of wind. Aching lungs gasped for air, bodies remained unwashed, faces were swollen and blistered, stomachs cramped with diarrhea or constipation.

  On the twenty-third day of the doldrums, the Polish merchant appeared on the stern deck, wearing a blue suit and tie and carrying a wooden suitcase. Counting out loud he took twenty-three steps to the ship's railing, then twenty-three steps back, then twenty-three forward again. No one noticed when he swung his legs over the railing.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced in a loud, determined voice, "kings and queens, sailors and sea creatures, slaves and masters. This man no longer knows if he is dead or alive. Perhaps he is not even Polish. Perhaps this life doesn't exist or has never existed. Perhaps this is not a ship but a floating coffin. Perhaps we are dreaming and will wake up to find that everything is the same.

  When he jumped overboard, there wasn't enough time or energy to lower a lifeboat. Soon all that remained of him was his wooden suitcase, which they watched all that day and into the evening, float slowly towards the horizon like a miniature casket.