The Drop Edge of Yonder (30 page)

When Elijah's head sagged to his chest, Zebulon thought he was dead.

"Your Ma and me had our times," Elijah finally whispered. "Truth is, she couldn't wait to see me off... and me bein' the righteous stand-up man that I am, I obliged her."

He looked up. "Did she get to plug any of them store-bought vermin on her way out?"

"She took down seven or eight," he lied. "Maybe more."

"She always could shoot better'n you or me."

Zebulon handed Elijah the bottle and pouch of tobacco, which he was glad to have, swallowing and chewing all at once.

"I always figured to go back home one last time," Elijah said. "Make it up to her with a big sack of gold dust. Enough to buy some female fineries. God bless her. I'll be seem' her soon enough."

A voice spoke up from the other side of the room. "Well, well. If it ain't Zebulon Shook. Last I saw, you was takin' a jump off that devil ship, and I was floatin' my stick to San Francisco."

Plug sat slumped against the bar, holding a snake-bit ankle with both hands. A rattler was curled a foot away, its crazed head swaying back and forth.

Plug pointed at a mural of several scenes running above the length of the bar. "How do you favor the artwork, Zeb?"

The mural showed a series of images: Zebulon plowing his horse down a snow-peaked mountain, then riding across a high plateau, a posse galloping him. At the end of the mural, a fullrigged schooner sailed through heavy seas. Other scenes showed San Francisco destroyed by fire, a wanted poster for Zebulon Shook in large bold letters, and finally, Zebulon jumping into a river of flames from the deck of a sinking prison ship.

"They paid me good money for this art," Plug said. "Soon as I'm shut of this place, I'll paint your story from Hangtown to Mariposa, and who knows, maybe back East."

Elijah loaded up the Sharps and pulled back the hammer, aiming it at Plug.

"Hold on," Plug yelled. "I still got to paint the scene with the two of you. Then they'll come from all over. This town won't never be the same. Guaranteed."

He screamed as the snake buried its fangs into his foot.

Elijah pointed the Sharps at the snake, then at the doc. Unable to make up his mind, he dropped the Sharps on the floor.

Zebulon picked it up. "I ain't exactly partial to the Sharps. Stock's too heave Chamber overheats."

"It's you that's overheated," Elijah said. "Ever since you was a little pecker-head."

Zebulon fired, blowing the head off a snake sliding across the floor towards them. Another bullet took care of the snake coiled next to Plug; not that it mattered as far as Plug was concerned, his face having turned blue as his breath left him.

Before Zebulon could shoot again, he was interrupted by a yell from outside:

"Hallooo the saloon!" the Sheriff called out. "Anyone alive in there?"

Zebulon crawled to the window.

"We're shootin' snakes," he yelled. "Hold your fire. I'm comin' out."

He turned to Elijah. "I'll make a deal."

"Too late for deals, son," Elijah said. "I'm past comin' and goin'. But if those pilgrims are dumb enough to put a rush on me, I'm happy to shoot out their lights."

Zebulon walked out the door.

The Sheriff and most of the population of Greasy Springs were gathered behind the overturned wagons, drinking whiskey and eating what was left of the barbecue.

"I need you to hold your fire for the rest of the night," Zebulon said to the Sheriff. "Otherwise he'll take out the doc and the artist and most likely some of us, me included."

"Take it easy," the Sheriff said. "As long as you take him."

"One more thing," Zebulon added. "If I bring him out alive, he goes back to the mountains."

"Done," the Sheriff said.

Zebulon nodded, his eyes on the prison photographer from Sacramento. He was standing behind a wagon loading a glass plate into his box camera.

He looked up as Zebulon walked over. "I won't say nothing to nobody about who you are," he said. "As long as you don't interfere with me taking your picture."

"How long do I have?" Zebulon asked.

"Two days. No more. Not with the Warden and half the state lookin' for you."

"It has to be until I get out of town," Zebulon said.

"All right." The photographer swiveled the camera towards Zebulon. After he arranged the bellows, he held up his hand, then ducked underneath the black cloth.

"Wait," the Sheriff called out. "You forgot the most important thing."

The Sheriff and the town's citizens arranged themselves around Zebulon, all of them staring straight at the camera. Behind them, inside the saloon, Elijah was singing his death song:

By the time Zebulon lowered himself back over the windowsill, Elijah's song had ended and the last rays of evening sun were sliding across the saloon's floorboards, highlighting the dead snakes, the mural, and Elijah, still leaning against the overturned table, spitting up clots of blood.

"Did you make a deal?" Elijah asked.

Zebulon shook his head.

"Tell me, son. Are you still foolish on shootin' billiards?"

"Of and on," Zebulon replied. "Enough to keep my stroke oiled."

Elijah sighed. "You recall that little spit of a town, Repose, I think it was, and that stiff-backed Swede that run the table on you? He cleaned you out with no more than a broom handle. Took your belt buckle, shotgun, boots. Lucky he didn't take your topknot. He plumbed your bones, that Swede. Your Ma was there. And Hatchet."

"I remember all that," Zebulon said.

Elijah looked across the room with dying eyes. "There are things that me and your Ma never told you. How when you was little we thought you was demonized, all the time speakin' to critters and seein' spirits no one else did. We took you south of Pueblo to an old Arapahoe squaw with second sight. She said you was born in some in-between place. Between the worlds, she said.... Another thing: I never told you how I won Hatchet from a bean-eater half-breed Mex down in Corrolitos who had him trained head to tail as a slave."

"I know that, Pa," Zebulon said.

"Not all of it," Elijah said. "I won him with a high straight flush. The Mex couldn't pay, so he gave me Hatchet. I packed him home, thinkin' he could be useful. When I asked the Arapahoe what went down, she said that the Mex put a curse on me. There's more that I can't hardly recall. But so what? We're all cursed when we come into this world. Same as when we leave."

Elijah shifted his head to Zebulon's stomach. "Is Hatchet followin' you? Or me? If it be me, tell him we're all squared up. No hard feelin's."

In front of the saloon, two fiddlers and a harmonica player began to play a lively jig as the population of Greasy Springs made the best of what promised to be a long night.

Elijah nodded his head with the music, then jerked the rope tied around the doc's neck, making him scream and howl.

He reached for the Sharps and propped himself up.

"I come into this town wrong," he announced. "I'll go out right-side up."

"Hold on, Pa," Zebulon said.

Elijah hesitated. "Hold on to what?"

"I made a deal for you to ride off"

"Nowhere to ride off to, son. Them days is gone."

When Zebulon tried to hold him back, Elijah slammed the stock of the rifle into his chest, sending him to the floor. "This dance is mine. I started the ball rollin' and I'll see it through. We all be pilgrims slidin' down life's chute, but now is my time to howl. Your turn will come soon enough."

Elijah took off his otter cap and dropped it on Zebulon's lap. "Elk's elk and meat's meat, son, and nothin' matters, and to hell with the rest of it. I seen air whistle through rocks, and water turn to fire. I lived hard and wasn't afraid to look straight at the misty beyond. I don't give a damn who or what is waitin' for me on the other side. I'll deal with that party when it happens. Or not."

He leaned down and kissed his son on the head, then hobbled to the door, returning to his death song:

There was a moment when Zebulon wanted to join the old bastard, to go out the old way, both of them straight up with their socks on. But there was a deeper pull that kept him on the floor, watching Elijah stagger out the door, firing his Sharps with one hand, the pistol with the other, yelling out a last mountain cry: "Waaaaaaaaagghhhaaahh!T'

Every weapon in Greasy Springs fired back, the bullets slamming Elijah through the door and across a table, and then to the floor where he landed on top of Zebulon.

None of the crowd looking through the saloon windows spoke until the doc was untied and Zebulon was carried over to the billiard table.

After the doc tore open Zebulon's shirt, the Sheriff handed him his medical bag and a bottle of whiskey; together they forced a slab of cowhide between Zebulon's teeth and poured whiskey over his wound. Then the doc took a knife out of his bag and probed for the bullet.

"I'll be damned," he said. "There's a slug in there all right, but it's an old one."

The bartender, convinced that he was witnessing a miracle, poured drinks for the Sheriff and the doc, as well as for the photographer and the rest of the town, who had lined up cheek to jowl at the bar.

"We'll need proof about what happened," the Sheriff said. "Otherwise people will think we made it all up."

Opinions flew back and forth:

"A slug tore through him."

"It was the old man that shot him."

"It was the artist. He shot him."

"Hell, we all shot him. Every last one of us."

"Three bullets right through his pump."

"He ran out, then he was hit. Twice."

"Then the other one got hit. The one that went in to get him."

"Do you people know who's lying on the billiard table?" the doc asked after the crowd quieted down and were concentrating on their whiskey. "Zebulon Shook, that's who. I saw his picture in Sacramento. You're lookin' at the biggest damn outlaw in the entire state of California. There's a five-hundred-dollar reward on his head, dead or alive."

As his name rippled through the saloon and out to the street, the photographer rushed outside to get his camera.

The Sheriff shook his head, trying to understand. "You're sayin' he's that same outlaw that broke out of jail in Sacramento?"

The doc nodded. "That's what I'm sayin'."

"I don't care who he is," said a voice from the bar. "The man's a goddamn hero."

"He saved us and saved the town," voices shouted.

The doc turned to the Sheriff. "If he pulls through, then what?"

"Lock him up. What the hell else can I do?"

"You'll be run out of town," the bartender said. "Or worse."

"All right," the Sheriff said, backing down. "We'll take care of him until he's ready to leave. We owe him that. We'll give him a room upstairs and three squares."

The crowd cheered.

The photographer placed his camera in front of the billiard table and lined up a shot of Zebulon, who had been propped up, his arms arranged around his dead father.

The camera's flash was followed by the largest celebration Greasy Springs had ever experienced.

EBULON WAS AWAKE WHEN HE SLEPT, AND SLEEPING WHEN he was awake, his mind dissolving into dreamy shadows and visitations that he had no control over. Voices whispered and echoed around him. During the day, rays of light circled him. At night, dark shapes crouched by the foot of the bed. There was a bear and a two-headed eagle and a croaking frog sitting underneath a one-eyed goat. Mountain lunatics appeared, sitting cross-legged beneath the window, spinning windy tales of disaster and deliverance. Sioux, Comanche, and Crow drifted by with faces decorated in war paint, their lances and tomahawks raised. Greasers, red niggers, and Chinese celestials showed up. And Delilah, sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his heart. Pigs rooted for turnips beneath the bed and curved-beaked shorebirds flew over the windowsill. And there, right in front of him, were his Ma and Pa and Hatchet Jack, arguing about separation and loss and how to stand your ground. Behind them, gamblers and outlaws drifted by wearing long canvas dusters and scarves pulled over their faces. Did they know there was a price on his head? Dead or alive.