Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

"I understand, Commodore. Of course, even you must acknowledge that madmen are often successful."

"I acknowledge nothing," the Commodore said. "If you run across Walker, tell him that I hope he rots in hell. Let him know that I will do everything in my power to hinder his every progress.

Squier stood up and put on his derby and rain slicker. "Obviously; Commodore Vanderbilt, we have nothing further to discuss."

"My sentiments exactly," the Commodore said. "Bv the way, do you shoot billiards?"

Confused, Squier hesitated at the edge of the veranda. "It has never been a hobby of mine, if that's what you mean."

"Too bad, Ephraim," the Commodore replied. "Every successful man needs a hobby."

Without another word, Squier walked back into the rain.

The Commodore lit up another cigar and then smashed it out in the middle of the table. "I admit to a soft spot for Ephraim Squier. He's a decent family man that appreciates good food and stimulating conversation. But when it comes to worldly matters, his style trips him up. It requires a certain skill to play both sides against the middle. He's too refined and convoluted for his own good. But I'll hear from him again. His kind always comes back."

He took out another cigar, sniffing its length a few times before he shoved it in his mouth. "To put it bluntly, Ephraim's problem is a naive sense of integrity."

"You mean he ain't a man of his word," Zebulon said.

"That's not at all what I mean."

He looked at Zebulon as if seeing him for the first time. "What the hell do you care about any of this, anyway?"

"I don't," Zebulon said.

As the Commodore stood up to leave, a cart appeared through the rain, pulled by two horses. A twelve-foot billiard table wrapped in canvas stood in the middle of the cart. Ten men surrounded the sides and the rear of the cart, all of them pushing and swearing at the horses as they plodded through the mud.

It was another hour before the table was installed. Zebulon had never seen anything like it. The legs were made of sculpted black teak and acacia, and the four leather pockets were embroidered with the Commodore's initials. A leather covering was stretched across the table like smooth polished skin.

"Now we'll have a decent game," the Commodore said. "Of course, I never play for fun."

"I got nothin' to put up," Zebulon confessed.

The Commodore thought it over, walking around the table and rolling a cue ball into each pocket.

"Tell you what, cowboy. If I win, you give me six months of back-breaking work in Nicaragua. My steamships only go so far up the lake and then it's overland. That's where you'll come in: getting the pilgrims to the Pacific. For each one that doesn't make it, you'll owe me another week of service, including burial. If you win, I'll give you free passage to Panama, plus a stateroom and as much food as you can eat. And I'll throw in twenty-five bucks for the train across Panama.

"Three months and it's a deal," Zebulon replied.

"Four," was the Commodore's counter-offer.

"Done," said Zebulon.

The game was Fall-Ball billiards: the winner, the first to make five hundred points.

They played through the night, the contest witnessed by the Commodore's men, as well as the hotel staff and the French plantation owner and his wife.

Before dawn, the rain stopped and hundreds of black-winged moths flew into the room, banging against the oil lamps. The Commodore, who had continued to drink heavily, was obviously tired, but he was determined to press on even though he was losing by fifty points. There was no way he was going to walk away from his own table, especially when he'd be leaving it to a down-and-out hustler with nothing left to lose.

As he lined up his cue ball, he was interrupted by the sudden appearance of an aristocratic dark-haired woman, her thin shoulders covered by an expensive white-laced shawl. She was followed by a heavy-set Negro carrying an umbrella and huge leather suitcase.

The Commodore motioned for her to sit down, then returned his attention to the table. Missing an easy carom by several inches, he banged his cue stick on the floor before he finally turned to her.

"You're late."

The woman removed her shawl, glancing imperiously around the room, as if she had stepped out of a Goya painting of Spanish royalty. Her refined features expressed the worldly exhaustion and arrogance of someone seized with loathing for the carnal and financial circumstances that had delivered her to such an improbable assignation.

"I come all the way from Cartagena on horseback through a monsoon rain and clouds of mosquitoes as big as your thumb, and all you say is that I'm late?"

"Wait for me upstairs, Esmeralda," he grunted. "I've booked a room. In fact I booked the entire floor."

"I prefer to wait on your ship."

"That's not possible."

"Don't tell me you've brought your wife with you?"

"Of course not."

"Then who?"

"That, my dear, is none of your damn business."

"Business? Is that all you ever think of, Cornelius?"

"Look around you, Esmeralda. Pay attention to the situation. I'm playing a game. I will join you when I am finished. Not before."

"Yankee pig-fucker."

She looked at Zebulon. "Who are you?"

When Zebulon shrugged, she stalked upstairs, followed by her servant.

Stimulated by Esmeralda's response and the anticipation of what waited for him upstairs, the Commodore managed to conduct his cue ball around the table, making one difficult carom after another before he finally missed.

Zebulon finished off the match by making thirty-nine points on three shots, a Victory that caused the Commodore to break his cue stick over his knee and throw a glass against a wall.

When he demanded another game, Zebulon refused.

"Wait for me," the Commodore said to his men, and marched up the stairs.

It was late afternoon before the Commodore joined Zebulon and his men on the veranda.

Esmeralda watched them from an upstairs window as they trudged back to The Prometheus, the largest and most wellappointed steamship in the world.

On board, Zebulon was given the master suite with a wellstocked bar, a dining table, and a full-length mirror over the huge round bed. The only time he saw the Commodore was through the half-open door of his private lounge. He was sitting opposite Ephraim Squier, a bottle of champagne between them, both of them too engaged in conversation to notice Zebulon as he strolled past.

The journey lasted a day-and-a-half over calm seas and leaden skies. When they docked in the steamy port of Colon in the middle of the night, Zebulon was the only passenger to disembark.

EBULON STOOD AT THE END OF A SAGGING DOCK, HIS clothes drenched from suffocating heat. Lightning cracked across the harbor, exposing a sodden collection of wooden houses and shacks. As he headed towards land and then down the waterfront, he passed mining equipment shoved between half-open crates of shovels, engine parts, coffee, hides, and tobacco. Canned goods, mixed with bundles of workers' clothes, were piled next to tin boxes full of medical supplies, each tin identified in large red lettering: TYPHOID FEVER, CHOLERA, SNAKEBITE, and MALARIA.

The only signs of security were two drunken soldiers sprawled against a train locomotive; around them, half-starved dogs were lurking in the shadows of storage sheds.

On the main street, black clouds of mosquitoes swarmed over rotting flesh and open sewage. Drunken prospectors guarded supplies with shotguns and rifles; others suffering from cholera, dysentery, and malaria were propped in doorways or sprawled across wooden planks.

Zebulon embraced it all: the smells and decay and violence, all the noisy chaos that marked a new frontier.