Rudolph Wurlitzer - The Drop Edge of Yonder

"I been here before," Zebulon said, staring across the room where Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack were playing cards.

"I know the feelin'," Large Marge said. "Only I don't remember when or who I was with. Not that it matters. I didn't bust my hump all the way up here to remember where I come from. I'm here to forget."

Delilah pushed back her shot glass and walked over to the piano player as he began another tune. The snake was still moving around inside the bottle, its tongue darting in and out. As Delilah kept her eyes on the piano player's hands sliding over the beaten-up keys, Zebulon drifted past her and sat down with Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack.

"Look who's here," Dorfheimer said as Zebulon shoved his money on the table. "I thought you were dead or locked up. In fact, I bet on it."

Zebulon smiled. "Maybe I am dead."

"Or about to be," Hatchet Jack said.

"Are you tellin' me the ducks are in the noose?" Zebulon asked.

"Unless you figure another way."

After Zebulon lost three straight hands, he went over to the other side of the room and joined two sailors from The Rhinelander who were playing billiards.

Closing her eyes, Delilah improvised a song, the piano player struggling to find the right chords to keep up with her:

Large Marge, who was beginning to be overwhelmed with unsavory premonitions, placed the Warden's small golden bowl in front of the bartender and booked the most expensive room in the house — including food, drink, and laundry.

As she lumbered up the stairs, Delilah finished the song:

She started another verse, then thought better of it and walked over to Dorfheimer and Hatchet Jack.

"I thought you'd be in Mexico by now," she said to Hatchet Jack.

"I tried," he replied. "And then I tried again, even though Plaxico told me I was a fool and that I should quit while I was ahead."

"How did you find us?" Delilah asked.

"I didn't find you. You found me."

Across the room, Zebulon made three straight caroms into the same side pocket. After he picked up his bet, he walked over and sat down opposite Delilah.

"I thought you gave up on cards?" he asked.

"Some things change," she replied. "Even when they don't."

Zebulon paused, looking across the room, then back at Delilah and then at Hatchet Jack. "Choose. Him or me."

"Lately I've had trouble with choices," she said. "I'm resolved never to choose again."

"Choose anyway," Zebulon said.

"I don't know what you people are up to," Dorfheimer said, "but my advice is to stick to cards. What's done is done. No one owes anyone anything. Up here we have a chance to leave the past behind. After all, isn't that the nature of the frontier? Isn't that what the promise is? We all come with baggage, but now we can pitch it overboard. I suggest a game of chance to help us relax and not take things too seriously."

Dorfheimer shuffled the cards. "I warn you that I'm on a dangerous roll and I have no intention of taking prisoners."

Hatchet Jack looked at Delilah. "I know about that. Prisoners slow things down."

Dorfheimer picked up the deck. "Seven card stud. Nothing wild. Play it fair and square or take your problems outside."

For the first dozen hands the betting remained more or less even, with no one falling very far behind except for Dorfheimer, who bet every card as if it were his last. When Zebulon lost the biggest hand with three tens to Hatchet Jack's low straight, he pushed back his chair, sending it to the floor.

"You dealt that one off the bottom," he accused Hatchet Jack.

Hatchet Jack's hand settled on the butt of his pistol. "If you think that's true, which it ain't, we might as well take it outside"

"Your call," Zebulon said.

Hatchet Jack stood up, then slumped down again. "I came all the way up here to deal with you two and now I can't get to it."

"When you figure things out, let me know," Zebulon replied.

He walked over to the billiard table. After he won four str might games, doubling his money, he made his way back to the card table.

Hatchet Jack took a pull from a bottle of screech and handed the bottle to Zebulon. "I've been thinkin'. Maybe the two of us should ride back to Colorady. Rustle up some pelts or whatever comes to hand. Let it all bust loose like old times, maybe head down to that rendezvous on the Purgatory." He paused. "Unless you got another idea."

"Nothin' comes to mind." Zebulon drained the last of the bottle. "And I ain't about to go back to the mountains."

"Let the cards decide," Delilah said. "Winner takes all. The losers promise to go away and never come back."

"You people are crazy," Dorfheimer said. "Poker isn't a hundred-yard dash with a brick wall at the end of it, or some dumb shoot-out. It's a marathon. A game of skill and endurance. Otherwise, why bother?"

When neither Hatchet Jack nor Zebulon replied, she shuffled the cards.

"One hand." She dropped her gold and ruby necklace and all of her money on the table. "All or nothing."

"Count me out." Dorfheimer gathered up his winnings and marched towards the door.

"One winner," Delilah repeated. "Two losers. Or one loser and two winners, depending on your view"

Delilah shuffled the deck and placed it in front of Zebulon, who slowly cut the cards and shoved the deck to Hatchet Jack, who cut them again.

"Why do you have to be the dealer?" Zebulon asked Delilah. "Why not cut for high card to see who deals?"

"I'm the dealer," she said. "I have been from the beginning, whether you know it or not."

Zebulon placed the Warden's fossilized walrus penis on the table, along with all the money he had just won from playing billiards. Hatchet Jack matched him with Ivan's pocket watch, the Warden's Lakota Sioux rattle and Mandan war club, and finally, the Colt.

From the moment Delilah slid the cards across the table, Zebulon felt caught inside a repetition that he was unable or unwilling to back away from. He had been trapped here before, over and over, ever since he had first seen Delilah in the Panchito saloon. Once again he was in the same dimly lit cantina with most of the oil lamps smashed or burned out, the same restless piano chords, a mural of an unfinished journey over the bar, a deck of nubbed and bent cards, two whores staring at them from their bar stools, and now, Delilah dealing a hand where winning or losing had already been decided. And there was something else. Something that he felt doomed never to be able to realize or acknowledge.

The thought made him laugh rather than run out of the room, as if he and everyone else were part of the same joke: not knowing what they or anyone else was really up to.

When the saloon door opened, letting in a sudden blinding shaft of sunlight, he slammed his hand on the table, causing a glass to shatter on the floor.

"Quien es?" the kid at the door asked as his Pa rushed up behind him, holding him back.

Zebulon answered out loud: "One who comes, and has already gone, and is not ready to come again, but is goin' to anyway.

When his eyes finally focused on the door, the kid and his Pa had disappeared.

"You've cracked wide open," Hatchet Jack said.

"That happens when a crack lets in too much light," Zebulon said.

Hatchet Jack studied Zebulon's eyes, the line of his mouth, and finally, his hands. There was no sign of confusion or doubt.

"It won't play, messin' with my head," Hatchet Jack said. "Not when you're holding an empty hand."

Everything, including life itself, was on the table.