Steve Erickson - Rubicon Beach

One more match, the men of the Crowd shouted. We’ll each put up ten of our coins against that one of yours.

It’s nothing, shrugged the sailor. He sighed deeply. It’s nothing, ten from each of you, because you don’t risk what I risk. You don’t risk everything.

All right, the men said. Twenty coins from each of us. Let’s play.

You haven’t understood the game, Coba said. He kept sighing more and more deeply. Of course I’d like to give you a match but it’s a violation of the code of what one risks. You have to match not coin for coin but risk for risk.

Meaning what? said the men.

Meaning I risk everything, Coba said, when I risk this single coin. He held it up again between his fingers. Each man sitting around the fire with a stack of coins before him gazed at Coba’s single coin and smacked his lips. All right then, they shouted. You risk everything, we risk everything, but get those cards out and let’s play. They pushed their coins into a pile and started jumping around as if their feet were on fire, excited about the big game.

But it’s nothing, Coba said, gesturing at the pile of coins. The men of the Crowd stopped dancing around and blinked at him, dumbfounded. How can you insuIt me this way? Coba said. You offer me my own money, which was never yours to begin with, and argue that you’re risking everything. He allowed himself a small smile. You see how it isn’t so, he said. What do you want, the men said, the whole fucking village? The sailor saw he couldn’t push things much further. Not necessary, he answered, waving his hands. Not necessary at all. The money, of course, is a good start, he said, pointing at the pile, but something of value of yours. .

Such as, the men said.

Such as your best boat. Not a fleet, mind you. One very good boat.

Anything else? the men asked dryly.

Coba locked the fingers of his two hands behind his head and moved his shoulders up and down. He considered the cool pleasant air of the evening. Not too obviously he let his eyes drift as though he were thinking. As though it had never occurred to him. He grimaced a little as though with the difficuIty of the decision before him. The men tapped their feet impatiently. Then he nodded. I think so, yes, he agreed. And he watched her across the water as he had done every day since he’d come. They don’t know what she has anyway, he thought. They don’t understand the irrational, nonfunctional, unprogenitive beauty of a woman’s face.

The queen of clubs, he said.

The men looked at him and at each other and back at him. There was silence and then one of them chortled. Another man laughed and then another, and soon they were all laughing, slapping the sides of trees and kicking red embers with hilarity. The witch, they said, you want the witch? Sailor, if you lose you can have the witch as far as we’re concerned. The sailor laughed along with them as if to say, Yes, it’s foolish, isn’t it? What an idea, gambling the witch. Then they stopped laughing and there was a nervous moment and it started up again for a while. They were all struck by the oddest notion that the sailor wasn’t joking, this wasn’t another of his wild stories. The men looked around for Catherine’s father and then back at Coba. He wouldn’t think this was so funny, they said, your gambling for his daughter.

He wouldn’t think it so funny, Coba said, your putting her up for stakes. But then, you know, my luck’s been bad.

They looked around once more and then back at him with dull leaden eyes. They crouched in the light of the fire.

They whispered, Deal.

Ten minutes later Coba explained One’s luck changes. He had before him a very large pile of money and a Crowd of decidedly nonplussed former gamblers. The fire seemed to burn low very quickly. Coba put the cards away in his pocket. That’s the way of luck, he said smiling. The men glowered and he scooped up the winnings into his chest, which just happened to be a few feet away, out of view of the others. It had all the appearances of someone planning to leave soon.

The boat, he said. The boat and the girl.

Later it would strike him that he had saved the day by insisting on the girl. Later it would strike him that the men of the Crowd had very well determined it was worth giving the sailor a boat and returning his nest egg to have him transport the witch from their village. But there was the matter of Catherine’s family, so the men were careful about it. We gambled the witch, they said to him, because your luck has been so bad.

One’s luck changes, Coba said.

Yes, you’ve explained that to us, said the men. But the girl, there’s her father and family to deal with, they said.

But I won the wager, Coba said.

You have fairly won her in our eyes, answered the men, and we’ll do nothing to stop you from taking her. But the taking is up to you.

Coba glanced across the slough with some anxiety; Catherine was nowhere to be seen. He quickly pulled together his chest and his few belongings and went down to the banks where a boat was now waiting for him. It wasn’t the best boat in the village, as had been agreed upon, but it was a solid enough boat, and Coba decided he’d get while the getting was good. But the getting wasn’t finished. He looked back over to the other side of the water and pushed the boat to the other bank. He stepped up on shore and turned to see the men watching him. He pointed in the direction of the trees and they pointed in the same direction, and he inhaled and nodded.

He went into the trees, where the mouth of the sea flooded the roots and the low thick branches formed a mass of walkways. He came to the sheIter where Catherine lived with her family. Catherine was lying on her bed in the back of the hut, where she’d been the night of the storm when her father wept in his hand. Coba walked right up to her, took one wrist in one hand and another in the other hand, and pulled the girl to her feet before she was aware of what was happening. He drew Catherine out among the trees and pulled her along the branches to the land; they were halfway to the boat before she’d figured out enough to wrap his hair around her hand and give it a very earnest yank. He responded by bringing his fist not across her face, ever aware as he was of his investment, but into her belly. She went stone-white. At this moment her father could be heard yelling from the thicket and nearing the slough. Coba threw Catherine into the bottom of the boat as her father came running out of the trees.

He shouted to the men that the sailor had his daughter, as though the men of the Crowd, standing there on the banks of the river, didn’t know this. He shouted to them to stop the boat. The men didn’t move. Coba in the boat pushed away with the oar. The father kept screaming to no avail. Behind him ran Catherine’s mother, also crying, and the brothers. Their tumuIt was utterly isolated, a smudge of action and noise in the midst of the silent still jungle, before the silent still witness of the Crowd.

Catherine’s father ran into the water, reaching the edge of the boat.

Catherine, enveloped in nausea and a hush in her ears, caught her breath enough to raise her head and her eyes to the shore. She saw her father in the river, and her mother and brothers emerging from the trees.

She had to blink twice, then again, then many times when Coba, in a way that reminded her remorsefully of her attempts to kill the watercreature, took the huge wooden oar and brought it whistling down from the sky squarely into her father’s skull.

She kept blinking many times at it, a funny befuddled expression on her face. If she could not convince herself of what she saw, she could not mistake, she knew there was no mistaking the sound of the crack, the sound of her mother, and then her own sound, a wail that was reeled from the pit of her, as though it was on the end of a string.