The Drop Edge of Yonder (24 page)

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."

He signaled to Bent, who quoted from memory: "'Then Joseph's master led him into the prison, into a place where the king's prisoners were confined, and he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with him, and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.' Genesis 39: 20-23."

The Warden removed his glasses, massaging the bridge of his aquiline nose. "It is my conviction that even the most challenged and evil among us can achieve salvation, Mister Shook"

The Warden gestured to Bent, who jerked Zebulon's ankle shackles with both hands, sending him sprawling face-down on the floor.

"Do you have anything to confess before you're consigned to quarters?"

Zebulon shook his head.

"Good. Not only is silence golden, on this ship it's also practical."

The Warden pulled on his boots. "To survive, abide by the rules. The least display of anger, selfishness, or resentment will not be tolerated. The slightest tendency towards chaos or anarchy or any kind of trickery will be noticed and dealt with. Again, I refer you to the Old Testament. Any false statement or surly countenance will be punished with a straitjacket and a gag. If you indulge in stealing, fighting, or breaking ranks, you will be flogged and chained to a wall for an indefinite period. Any attempt at escape, or even an impulse to stray from your routine, and you will be hung from a block with only the tips of your toes brushing the floor. If you persist in a second attempt, you will be lowered over the side of the ship with only your nostrils above the water."

The Warden stood up, clapping his hands. "Order. Diligence. Cleanliness. The trilogy that we serve, Mister Shook. Otherwise, we would be faced with the abyss. As the book says, `Whatsoever a man sows, so shall he reap."'

Bent removed a bottle of brandy from a side table and filled two shot glasses, handing one to Zebulon, the other to the Warden.

"Fate has consigned us to Sacramento, Mister Shook. A name, by the way, that means `sacrament,' a commitment to a sacred oath, or, if you will, a covenant between man and God. This is the last libation you will have for twenty years, or until your stay with us comes to an end."

He lifted his glass: "To salvation."

After they drank, the Warden took his cards from his ivory box and spread them out for a game of solitaire, leaving Bent and a guard who had been stationed by the door to escort Zebulon to the prison hulk.

The guard, whom Bent referred to as Snake Eyes, was a sallow-faced teenager with a struggling mustache. Once they reached the river, Snake Eyes established his authority by slamming his rifle against Zebulon's legs, then shoving him facefirst into the small flat-bottomed boat that serviced the prison hulk.

ebulon rowed while Bent and Snake Eyes sat opposite him.

"So you're one of them mountain men," Snake Eyes said. "Word is that you're an Injun killer, bank robber, gunslinger, and desperado. That's one hell of a big stack for just one man."

Zebulon didn't answer. He had never rowed a boat before with his wrists chained and he was having trouble with the oars.

"How many notches you got on your belt, Mountain Man?" Snake Eyes asked.

Zebulon raised the ante. "Fifty, more or less. After twenty you lose count."

"I notched my share," Snake Eyes said. "Last month I shot two prisoners tryin' to swim down the river. That gives me six in all."

Bent shook his head, embarrassed to have a man of Zebulon's reputation exposed to such crude braggadocio. "It's a shame all the real men are off in the gold fields and all that's left are young greenhorns dumber'n sticks."

"Haul it in, old man," Snake Eyes said. "Don't give me that `I seen it all' bullshit. I'm talkin' to a real live bastard that's pullin' twenty years. He's mistaken if he thinks he can pull my Johnson just 'cause he's more famous than the governor."

Snake Eyes lit another cigarette, blowing smoke into Zebulon's eyes as the prison hulk loomed up through the mist. "Manslaughter. Ain't that what you're in for? How come you weren't able to do some real killin' on your way out of that town? But maybe you did. Maybe you smoked them in the back and didn't have enough jingles to own up to it. One way or the other, I guarantee you'll end up under the grass sooner than later."

After the dory was tied up alongside the prison hulk, Snake Eyes and Bent led Zebulon up a gangplank, where a guard was waiting to take him below.

NCE AGAIN, ZEBULON FOUND HIMSELF TRAPPED INSIDE the stinking carcass of a ship. No sails billowed above or water slid below There was no past, no future. Only backbreaking daily routine.

At night his legs were shackled to a bulwark below deck along with twenty-two other lost souls. He knew their stamp: horsethieves, high-line riders, short-trigger men, bunko artists. Seven women were quartered on the other side of the foc'sle, mostly whores and thieves along with an ax-murderer and a cook who had poisoned the owner of a Hangtown saloon after he insulted her pork chili. Through the long suffocating nights, men and women prisoners shouted insults and declarations of love back and forth, pounding and throwing their broken bodies against the bulkhead. At dawn they were transported across the river under armed guard, the women in a separate dory to cook the prisoners' greasy midday gruel or clean up the Warden's house and wash his family's laundry. At night they rowed back to the prison hulk. Too exhausted to speak, they were allowed a halfan-hour on deck, where they stared with vacant eyes at the river that never moved or offered the hint of a breeze.

Jammed head to toe on hard wooden planks, they were never alone. Rats as big as possums scurried and sniffed across the deck, wet with vomit and slop from blocked weep holes and overflowing buckets of waste. Mosquitoes that felt big enough to mount swarmed through open portholes to feed on raw, exposed flesh. At night, rinky-dink piano music from one of the city's saloons drifted across the river, invading their wretched dreams like a drunken surgeon scraping flesh from bone. Every sound and movement seemed designed to encourage their longings for early death.

Zebulon dealt with despair the way his Pa had taught him: by beating up the first man that crossed his path or dared to step on his shadow. In this case, rather than some lost mountain man gone loco from lack of stimulation, the target available on the neighboring bunk was a twisted sack of venom by the name of Plug. He was a scrawny bank clerk convicted of killing a stagecoach driver and two female school teachers when their combined savings didn't measure up to a steamship ticket to Brazil, much less a stake to Mexico. Due to a shortage of manpower to help build the booming state capital, Plug's execution, along with that of three others, had been delayed until further notice. Zebulon didn't give a damn about Plug's past. What bothered him was Plug stealing his tobacco and using his waste bucket when his own was only half-f. Not to mention Plug's nightly screams for a whore named Lucy Goosey who had left him to run off to Hawaii with a shipping clerk. The final straw, one that made Zebulon jam his knee into Plug's stomach and smash his nose into his forehead with an open palm, was waking up with Plug's fingers around his neck, whispering to his darling Lucy Goosey that when he broke out he was going to track her down, wherever she was, and nail her fat whore's ass to the outhouse door. It was a satisfying solution, smashing up Plug, but the result wasn't worth it.