The Drop Edge of Yonder (25 page)

From then on, Plug treated him like a savior, or at least someone he feared was crazier than he was; it was as if all the anticipation and dread Plug had projected onto the Warden, he had now switched to Zebulon. To his dismay, Plug began to follow him around like a whipped dog, offering tobacco and scraps of food and whatever else he thought Zebulon might appreciate, including a rattlesnake skin and a broken arrowhead he had found clearing brush on the riverbank. Plug also revealed a secret: any day now, wait and see, he planned to uncover a hole he had dug near his bunk and then, hallelujah, sink the entire fucking ship and everyone in it.

"It takes a Plug to work a plug," he declared. "The job will be done when we come back from work detail. Everything is ready I got other holes drilled just in case. A few of the women know about it. Large Marge, that big Irish snatch that chopped and pickled her boss, she's dug herself some holes. You wait, all hell will break loose. When the guards experience water risin' over their ankles, they'll jump like chickens runnin' from the ax. Ain't one of them can swim. That's the beauty We'll grab their rifles and shoot one or two to show we mean business. If the Warden is around, we'll skin his righteous ass or take him hostage. Glug, glug, glug. Know what I mean? Before they know it we'll be in that little skiff. Just the two of us. It'll be night, and we'll slide down that fat river like Egyptian pharaohs with the stars above and freedom just ahead. We'll row all night until we float into San Francisco. When we pass a steamer carryin' a load of gold- suckin' pilgrims headed for the gold fields, we'll stand up and shout: `You'll be sorryyyyyy, sorryyyyyy, sorryyyyyy!"'

Plug turned over on his side, chuckling and chewing his lower lip, congratulating himself on the efficiency of his plan.

A week went by. Then two. Then a month. The prisoners measured the passage of time by marking incidents and occasions on the side of the bulwark: the arrival of a prisoner, an execution, an accident. Otherwise time would stop, and a day would become a year.

The list always changed and was always the same: a card cheat committed suicide by falling onto a pick ax he had propped up on the side of the road, three runaway Chinese suffering from opium withdrawal hung themselves from their long pigtails, a Samoan whore was caught giving a blow job to Snake Eyes behind the chuck wagon. The Warden shot the whore out of hand and relieved Snake Eyes of his duties, a rejection that incited him to rob two well-heeled prospectors from Virginia of enough to make a run for the gold fields.

As the days went on, Plug fell into an increasingly dark and deluded lethargy. Unable to summon enough nerve to execute his plan, he retreated to a closed-off section of his mind and a defensive silence that was broken only by bursts of maniacal laughter and further threats to his true love, Lucy Goosey.

The Warden remained a distant and ominous presence. Occasionally he and his wife journeyed to San Francisco for a few weeks to attend the opening of an opera or music hall, or to promote himself to the Eastern businessmen that were continually staking out the city. On his return, the prisoners would often see him at dawn, standing in a nightdress in front of his house, staring at them through a spyglass as they rowed to work across the river. On one occasion as they approached the shore, oars raised, they floated past the Warden bathing waistdeep in the river. Cupping his hands, the Warden poured water over his head, smiling at them as he waved a salutation.

Plug grabbed Zebulon's arm. "Look at that slime-coated bastard. He knows what I'm up to. And you, too, for bein' an accomplice. He'll cut off our heads, that's what he's thinkin'; he'll place them on stakes in front of the courthouse. A warning to all malcontents."

Rowing back that evening, they saw the Warden and his family swinging in a hammock beneath the branch of an oak tree. A uniformed Large Marge stood in attendance before them, waiting for them to stop swinging long enough to offer cookies and lemonade from a silver tray. The Warden wore cream-colored linen pants and a long-sleeved blue-and-white striped French jersey; his wife wore an ankle-length white dress. Their son sat squirming between them as if a platoon of ants were crawling up his sailor suit.

On holidays the Warden hosted lavish picnics attended by the city's elite. Kites were flown along the riverbank, and a band from Sacramento or Sonoma played lively marching tunes and Scottish and Irish jigs. At the Warden's fiftieth birthday celebration, his son ran along the riverbank dressed as a miniature George Washington with a long white wig and a general's peaked hat, slinging rocks at the prisoners as they rowed slowly back to the prison hulk. When a rock struck Zebulon in the forehead, the band celebrated the boy's marksmanship with a triumphant drum roll and bugle blast while the guests clapped hands, applauding the boy's spunk and spontaneity.

Plug laughed hysterically, then shouted:

Before he could continue, a guard clubbed him on the back of the head with the butt of his rifle.

Minor transgressions such as Plug's were punished by a ritual flogging or a week's visit to the dungeon: an airless black box filled with water and waste-slop at the bottom of the ship's hold.

Escape attempts were treated as acts of sedition. When a guard caught an escaped Miwok horse-thief hiding outside the city at the bottom of an outhouse, the unrepentant heathen was bound hand and foot and forced to stand on deck contemplating his fate for the rest of the day.

A few minutes before sundown a drum rolled as the Warden, followed by Bent, appeared on the poop deck. Beneath them the prisoners stood at attention - men lined up in front of the women, the guards standing behind them in full dress uniform, their rifles held at port arms - as the Miwok was lowered over the side of the ship by a series of groaning pulleys. Ten minutes later the Warden ordered the prisoner raised to the deck, only to discover that he was still breathing

Shaken, the Warden turned to Bent. "We have witnessed an act of either divine intervention or, God help us, of Lucifer. The only moral solution is for the bloody heathen to be submerged again. If he survives, it will be by the will of God and I will give him his freedom."

As the Miwok was lowered once again into the river, the Warden searched his Bible for an appropriate scripture dealing with heathens and non-believers. On deck, the prisoners and guards whispered bets, the odds being twenty-to-one against the red nigger. There was no movement except for swallows swooping across the river for insects. Somewhere a frog croaked. Then silence.

Zebulon was the only one to notice two riders appearing along the riverbank. One of the riders was Delilah, the other, Hatchet Jack.

Half-an-hour later, the Warden snapped his Bible shut, and the Miwok was cranked out of the water. Once his lifeless body was laid out on the deck, the Warden, satisfied that neither the Lord nor the devil had intervened, ordered himself rowed back to his home, where dinner was waiting for him.

That night, Zebulon lay on his bunk, dreaming of water spirits rising above him like swaying anacondas. The water spirits were wrapping him inside a curse that was somehow connected to Delilah, the drowned Miwok, and from the distant past, the Shoshoni half-breed, Not Here Not There. He felt himself lifted high in the air, then dropped down a long slope, finally rolling to a stop in a ditch. Unable to move, not knowing if he were dead or alive, he was dragged out of the ditch and hitched to a wagon pulled by Delilah and Hatchet Jack.

n the days that followed, the Warden appeared before the prisoners more frequently, inspecting their progress as they shoveled dirt or broke up piles of rock for one of the new capital's ambitious networks of roads. Holding a parasol over his head against the unbearable heat, the Warden would drink from his canteen and then pour the water over his head and shoulders. When he ordered a water break for everyone else, he gave his canteen to Zebulon to refill from a water bucket. He would keep his own body as hydrated as Zebulon's was dry, so that finally Zebulon would come to understand that water was the Warden's to control and Zebulon's to be grateful for - a surrender, the Warden promised, that would ultimately lead to deliverance.

One night in the middle of a thunderstorm, a newly arrived Chinese prisoner picked the manacles that bound his ankles and wrists. Unseen and unheard, he crept across the deck towards Zebulon's bunk. Kneeling before him, he gently touched Zebulon's forehead, his fingers as delicate as the feelers of a praying mantis.

Grabbing the Chinaman by the throat, Zebulon tried to choke off his windpipe.

The Chinaman sighed, offering no resistance, then pressed his elbow into the pit of Zebulon's stomach until the pressure made Zebulon let go of his throat.

"I am Lu Yang," the Chinaman whispered. "I see you before, in Dream Palace. I open door. You are looking for dragon woman, Delilah. Special customer. Remember?"

Except for his tiny bottle-thick glasses, Lu was unrecognizable with a raw red scar running down the length of one cheek.

"Delilah say `Hello,"' Lu said.

Lu's words were painfully pronounced, as if he had learned English from a children's book. "I walk to Sacramento to find prison boss. Everyone in Sacramento talking music and making fun. Except when I pull out sausage and splash prison boss. Soldiers and prison boss became angry and bring me here."

He looked at Zebulon with a quizzical smile. "You ready to fly coop, outlaw man?"

Outside, they could hear the wind howling across the river and waves slapping against the creaking hull.

"Listen to big wind," Lu said. "Maybe you don't like wind. Delilah's mind empty. Not like wind. Like ocean. Your mind like pig running from ax. Noisy. Always thinking maybe you are dead. When dead, nothing happen. When nothing happen, then thinking comes. Now you a dead man in between too many worlds. Who tell you, be happy? Who tell you, listen? Everything okay. Then we stir soup."

Zebulon had no idea what the Chinaman was saying.

Lu smiled, as if understanding Zebulon's confusion. "No worry. Lu, Hatchet, Plug, we stir soup. We drink. Plenty spice. Then we fly coop."

Next to them, Plug's arms and legs thrashed out in the middle of a nightmare, his screams waking up the rest of the prisoners, including the women on the other side of the bulkhead. All of them began yelling and banging on the partition, convinced that someone was being killed or raped.

"I tell Plug, stir soup very slow," Lu said. "But he no listen. He go too fast and bad happen."

He sighed, then reached over and pressed a thumb into Plug's neck until he passed out.

He waited for the prisoners to quiet down before he spoke again.

"Are we bustin' out?" Zebulon asked. "Or cookin' or what?"

"First soup." Lu nodded towards Plug, who had opened his eyes. "Then Plug fly coop. Then outlaw man, Chinaman, everybody fly coop. Not now Later. Now nothing. Very difficult, nothing."

Plug sat up on his bunk. "If you ever put your paw on me again, I'll cut it off and use it for live bait."

Lu looked across the rows of sleeping prisoners, thinking it over.

"Good idea."

He floated back to his bunk as silently and ghostly as he had first appeared.