The Drop Edge of Yonder

by Rudolph Wurlitzer

  A vaquero escorted their horses to a nearby stable, where a stooped white-haired retainer led them through a massively carved wooden door into a generous entrada lit by iron chandeliers. At the far end of the entrada they entered a library.

  Despite the logs blazing in the massive fireplace, an air of gloom pervaded the musty high-ceilinged room with its cracked and peeling walls lined with overflowing bookcases and portraits of the Spanish court by Velasquez and Goya, as well as a mural celebrating the Conquistadors conquest of Mexico.

  Don Luis sat in front of the fire in the middle of a deepseated leather couch, his frail body almost invisible inside a buffalo robe. Behind him in a far corner of the room, a threelegged French clavichord stood next to a collection of lutes, mandolins, and guitars, all hanging from the walls on sagging wires.

  They sat on a row of armchairs facing Don Luis, sipping a dry red wine from his vineyard. After waiting an hour for Don Luis to speak, Zebulon finally broke the silence. "Maybe this ain't the right time to trample on your peace, Don Luis. We can pay our respects another day."

  "In these dark days, every moment is precious," Don Luis replied. "Whoever you people are, wherever you are going, for this one night, mi casa, su casa. I am embarrassed that Calabasas Springs, a town my family has been proud to be part of for over nine generations, has now entered a state of anarchy and barbarism. In past years the entire town would have gathered at this ranch to celebrate Easter Sunday, but now.... Forgive an old man's ramblings about the ravages of time. But permit me to ask you: What is happening to this land? Why is it being raped and profaned and exhausted? But of course, how would any of you know the answer to such a question? You are obviously strangers here, and confused more than I about the way this country has always nourished itself, carried on its business, only to be - I don't know. God help me, it has all but disappeared."

  He looked at Delilah. "Is it true what those savages said back there in the town square: that you're nothing more than an ambitious slave who will stop at nothing to get her way?"

  "Perhaps at one time I could have been perceived that way" she said. "Certainly it was true for a short period in Africa, although that was due more to circumstances than character. But when Count Baranofsky made a proposal to me at an early age that I become his consort and eventually his wife, I was freed of any hunger for mere survival. He also saw to my education in many of the capitals of Europe. For his extraordinary generosity, I shall always be grateful."

  Don Luis nodded, impressed by Delilah's diction and refinement. "A noble tradition, that of the consort," he said wistfully; "one that I have personally honored from time to time, even to the point of making a fool of myself - but that's another story."

  "Certainly it has its advantages as well as its limitations," Delilah said. "On both sides."

  "Of course," Don Luis said. "Why, not long ago.... Where was it? Madrid or Mexico City? Perhaps Venice. It doesn't matter. Another time, another place."

  Don Luis shivered, pulling his robe around his shoulders as a sudden chill entered the room. "Let me add, my dear, that I was immediately struck by your courageous presence, by the way you stood on your chair calmly accepting your fate. Your resolve reminded me of my own situation - waiting... sinking... ready to depart.... I have made my final visit to Calabasas Springs. I will never go there again, not even to Mass; nor do I choose to go anywhere else.... In times past... before the insane gringos showed up... when my father was still alive... and his father and his father before him, they would have rescued your Count. No matter if he deserved to hang.... They knew how to please a guest in those days. Even if it meant arranging for his death, it would have been done in the right way-. Precisely. With a certain amount of grace. Without this useless horseshit."

  He slumped back inside his buffalo robe, his head sagging to his chest. "What I meant to say to you.... I talked to your Count last week. He told me many things about you, things that you yourself might not even be aware of. Things that were, quite frankly, disturbing."

  No one in the room spoke or even moved.

  "May I sing for you?" Delilah asked.

  Don Luis' lips whispered a reply. "Porfavor, Senora. Gracias."

  She sat down in front of the clavichord, closing her eyes. Slowly, with rising passion, she began to sing Tomas Luis de Victoria's "Ave Maria" from a Mass that Don Luis had requested that very morning to be sung at his funeral.

  As she sang, the room filled with servants, vaqueros, and caballeros, all of them gathered around the old patriarch, who had fallen deeply asleep on his couch.

  The song over, a retainer led them upstairs for the night.

  They found themselves in a large vaulted room dominated by a king-sized bed. Silk robes had been laid out for them on a leather couch, and plates of freshly prepared food had been placed on a round table lit by candles.

  After Zebulon changed into his robe he lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling as he smoked one of Don Luis' Mexican cheroots.

  When he finished the cigar, he noticed Delilah standing on the other side of the room. She was naked, her robe around her feet.

  As she slowly walked towards him, they heard a bell ringing from the church tower and shouts from the garden, announcing the death of Don Luis.

  Shen they rode back into Calabasas Springs, they found the jail burned to the ground. Three Mexicans lay dead in the middle of the street; another was spread across a wagon wheel, two men horse-whipping his back and shoulders. Except for Ivan's dead body hanging from the branch of an oak tree, the square was empty

  Before they reached the end of the street, they were surrounded by a group of armed vigilantes.

  "Don Luis is dead," Zebulon informed them.

  "Good for him," was the reply. "Now you can join him."

  As Zebulon was pulled roughly to the ground, Hatchet Jack rode down the street and grabbed the reins of Delilah's horse, and the two of them galloped off through the crowd of startled miners.

  Zebulon's last image of Delilah was her long black hair streaming behind her as she and Hatchet Jack disappeared into the night.

  No one bothered to mount a pursuit, there being no point in chasing after a whore and a half-breed with no price on their heads.

  'EBULON WAS KEPT IN A SMALL HOLDING CELL BENEATH the Sacramento courthouse, half of which doubled as a thriving saloon. Unfortunately for the Australian miners who brought him in, the reward was only a quarter of what had been advertised, and they returned to Calabasas Springs as outraged as when they had first arrived.

  The trial was jammed from the opening bell, mostly due to Artemis Stebbins' front-page article in The San Francisco Star reporting the capture of the celebrated outlaw The first week of examinations and cross-examinations proceeded at a slow pace, as everyone, including the judge, was preoccupied with rumors of a massive gold strike on the Feather River. Despite this distraction, which had already emptied half the town, there was no standing room left when the district attorney, a portly one-armed man with ambitions for the senate, approached the jury for his final summation:

  "The story is simple, folks. Zebulon Shook rode into Calabasas Springs pretending to be an alcalde, a man of the law hired by the governor. His real intention was to aid in the escape of Count Ivan Baranofsky, a convicted murderer. The same night that he arrived, all hell broke loose. The next morning, the main street of Calabasas Springs was littered with the bodies of five men and two women. Gentlemen of the jury, I submit to you that if Zebulon Shook goes unpunished for this heinous crime, anarchy will have triumphed over law and order."

  The district attorney was interrupted by a sparrow flying through a window Circling the courthouse, the sparrow flew over the crowd, including Delilah and Hatchet Jack sitting in the last row and Stebbins seated on a fold-out chair by the door.

  After another hysterical circle, the sparrow finally settled on Zebulon's outstretched hand.

  Looking first at Delilah, then at Hatchet Jack, his fingers closed slowly over
the quivering bird.

  "One minute a man is flyin' free," he said to the room at large, "then he's caught. Then he's free again."

  He opened his fingers, releasing the sparrow The bird frantically flew back and forth, until finally, with the help of a few men waving jackets, it found its escape through an open window

  Everyone in the room, except for Delilah, burst into footstomping applause until the judge banged down his gavel and yelled for silence.

  Order restored, the district attorney continued: "Gentlemen of the jury, storm clouds gather on the horizon. Our country's great and noble adventure is at risk and I fear for our safety, if not our future. If we don't protect the purity of this country from outlaws, renegades, and runaway slaves, as well as the influx of foreigners raping and pillaging our sacred heritage, then we are all to blame. I say to you, from my heart -"

  He was interrupted by a drunk in long johns and a gun-belt, stumbling into the courtroom and announcing that they'd hit a mother lode on the Feather River, the biggest in the history of California.

  When most of the room, including the lawyer for the defense, rushed outside, the judge ordered the jury to arrive at a decision within the hour, or he would be forced to postpone the trial.

  Five minutes later the jury came to a decision: Zebulon Shook was guilty of manslaughter. The judge imposed a sentence of twenty years at hard labor, and Zebulon was shackled and led out of the courtroom by two deputies. He paused in front of Hatchet Jack, who stood by the door, Delilah behind him.

  "I'll take care of her," Hatchet Jack said, "one way or the other."

  Before Zebulon could answer, a deputy pushed him through the door and down the steps of the courthouse.

  T THE CITY JAIL, A CLERK ASSIGNED ZEBULON A PRISON number, then filled out a form with his name, nationality; occupation, and religion. Zebulon gave his real name but invented the rest of his answers: free-trapper for his occupation, Wakan Tanka for his religion, and The Big Sky Country for his native land. After the clerk methodically wrote down the information, Zebulon was led to a courtyard to be photographed.

  A large crowd was waiting for him, most of them never having seen or even heard of a camera.

  Zebulon was instructed to stand against a brick wall before the photographer, a short stocky man with sad drooping eyes, wearing a French beret. As the photographer disappeared beneath the camera's black hood, it occurred to Zebulon that he was about to be executed by some new-fangled weapon. Some of the old-timers had the same thought and made sure to stand several feet behind the strange contraption.

  When the flash finally exploded, there was scattered applause and congratulations all around.

  Wearing a convict's striped pants and shirt, he was driven in an enclosed wagon to La Grange, a French schooner anchored in the headwaters of the Sacramento River that had been transformed into a prison hulk after its captain and crew deserted her for the gold fields.

  Zebulon was accompanied by the Warden's aide-de-camp, Master Sergeant Alva Bent, a peg-legged veteran of the Mexican War as well as several campaigns against the Comanche and Apache.

  They rolled past a long line of schooners and paddle steamers tied up to an embarcadero, then along a wooden levee where dozens of Chinese workers hauled furniture and lumber through a chaotic congestion of newly arrived prospectors and overloaded wagons.

  Bent lit two cigarettes, placing one in Zebulon's mouth. "A few years ago, this place had only a few saloons and a livery stable. Now it seems that every asshole in the world is paradin' around here, most of 'em with gold fever."

  He pointed towards higher ground, where building lots had been staked out in parched fields strewn with offal, broken machinery, and dead cows. "Next year there'll be a hundred goddamn houses up there. Mark my words. But don't you worry, son. By the time you get out of the lockup or they decide to hang you, it'll be back to what used to be. That's the way life is."

  He removed the last of Zebulon's cigarette from his mouth. "Tell me the truth. Were you bein' foolish with that reporter, or was that thievery and mayhem the straight tell?"

  "Coming here by boat was true enough," Zebulon acknowledged. "That and bein' hired as a guide for the gold fields. Shootin' up the citizens of Calabasas Springs and startin' a jail break was a damn lie."

  Bent took a flask out of his hip pocket and after a quick snort, offered it to Zebulon. "That's what I been sayin'. I can always smell a nosebag full of lies. It was all arranged: politicians puttin' the muzzle on all of the free-floaters, squeezin' the country, makin' it safe for business and greenhorns. `Come on out to Paradise, folks, and get rich beyond your wildest dreams. Scoop up a few bowls of gold dust. Buy yourself a big hotel and fill it with easy women, or go back where you came from richer than your biggest dreams.' Those boys in Washington have put a noose around our necks. I know I helped Fremont push the greasers back to old Mex. Fremont had his orders from back East: go for the gold and open up the sluice gates and watch the joint rip. Trains will run east to west and back. No sweat and no bufder and no red niggers and no good times. Them days is all gone. Hoe it down, boys. Plant your potatoes and tomatoes and to hell with what used to be."

  Bent lit two more cigarettes and gave one to Zebulon, then both of them finished off his flask. "Your mistake was signing up with that Russian and his slave. That was wavin' a red flag at the bull. Now you're big time, son. There's a story on you. Guilty or not. I'll stake you to some advice: the Warden will twist your tail into a knot just for fun. When he starts bangin' on about god and the devil, let him talk. If you so much as bite your lip, he'll lower you into the drink slower than molasses and smile as you go under."

  They traveled another two miles along the river, drinking and smoking, until they arrived at a newly built two-story shingled house with blue trim and an elaborate garden defined by a white picket fence. Directly in front of the house, Zebulon could see the prison hulk anchored in the middle of the river by rope cables attached to two sycamore trees.

  "Here we are, son," Bent declared: "Your home away from home."

  He led Zebulon past two guards stationed by the front door, then down a long hallway lined with presidential portraits of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison. Somewhere on the second floor a woman sang an Irish lullaby.

  Bent knocked on a door and then knocked again. When there was still no answer, he opened the door and gestured Zebulon inside.

  A thin middle-aged man wearing a white linen suit and wirerimmed glasses sat behind a desk bent over a game of solitaire. On the wall, Zebulon recognized a Hopi fertility mask hanging next to a Cheyenne war bonnet and two Crow tomahawks. A torn leather couch opposite the desk was piled with books, along with a scrimshawed whalebone, a fossilized walrus penis, a polished buffalo horn, and four Papago and Zuni baskets.

  Bent cleared his throat: "The prisoner has arrived, Sir. Safe and sound."

  The Warden gathered the cards into a deck and placed it back in its ivory box before he lifted his head and inspected Zebulon from head to foot.

  "From what I read in the newspapers I expected a bigger man. Someone huge and grotesque, possibly even a Beowulf giant. Which is not to say that your appearance is marginal, Mister Shook. Quite the contrary."

  The Warden turned his head, staring through a latticed French window at the looming silhouette of the prison hulk, which seemed, in the late afternoon light, to be suspended above the river. Then he reached into the top drawer of his desk and withdrew a small golden bowl. The bowl was no more than five inches in diameter and covered with a translucent dome, which was also made from gold and decorated with mastodon ivory carved with a barleycorn pattern.

  It was the most beautiful and finely wrought object that Zebulon had ever seen.

  The Warden began to recount the bowl's history and effect while Bent silently mouthed the words that, over the years, he had come to know by heart.

  "A precious object, wouldn't you say, Mister Shook? Hellenistic, third century Pure alchemy. Prima material, with
no beginning and no end. All differences massaged within a roundness that acknowledges no boundaries. A vessel fit for the gods! Not like this appalling rubbish they dig up around here. I don't care about the karat count of a nugget; the entire pursuit, not to mention the end result, is cursed. Vulgar loot for ignorant minds. Reflect on the beauty, Mister Shook. A work such as this possesses enough elegance to overwhelm nature. Its transcendence has the power to stop time, to invoke rapture. Which brings me back to you, Mister Shook: If you wish to stop time, and I strongly suggest that it would be to your advantage to do so, then you must firmly commit yourself to the process of salvation."

  The Warden carefully returned the bowl to its sanctuary. "Because of your reputation I was advised to transfer you to the penitentiary they've just built at San Quentin, across the bay from San Francisco. Fortunately for you, I was able to assure the governor that we are more than capable of keeping you here. Of course, if it had been up to me, I would have had you hung and been done with it. But that event will have to wait for a more appropriate moment."

  Zebulon nodded, staring at a rattle in the middle of the Warden's desk.

  "Sergeant Bent tells me it's Blackfoot," the Warden said. "Others suggest Ute or Crow"

  "Lakota Sioux," Zebulon replied. "They use it to pray to Wakan Tanka, their Grandfather Spirit. When they have a problem to work out, they take it with them into a vision pit."

  "I've heard of such things. And do you have any idea how long these vision quests last?"

  "A few days. Sometimes a week. Sometimes more."

  "Primitive, but commendable," the Warden said. "And if we are to believe some of what we hear about aboriginal behavior, rather mystical. But I'm afraid, Mister Shook, that your quest will be of a different order: your assigned pit being a dark and comfortless abode of guilt and wretchedness; a place designed for grief and penitence, according to the dictates of our Lord Jesus Christ; a place where time, as I have already suggested to you, might, if you are diligent enough, finally stop."