The Drop Edge of Yonder (10 page)

"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 appeared, 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.